J is for July Fourth —The Year the Celebration Never Ended

The Fourth of July used to be my all‑time favorite holiday. Family parties with star‑spangled tablecloths and food of every description, parades where half the town’s children marched down Main Street while the other half sprawled along the tree‑lined route—those are pleasant memories now, tucked into the scrapbook of my younger days. Days when Don and I always had someplace special to go. Even before I met him, the Fourth meant a party at my folks’ summer cottage. My good memories of the holiday are endless, including the night I got my very first kiss from a boy—under a fireworks display, no less. Sweet.

Time marches on, and the only thing certain is that nothing stays the same. People move. People die. People divorce. People marry into new family units and spend their holidays elsewhere. The big family parties I loved for so many years petered out decades ago when the ones who organized them left this earth and no one stepped into their shoes. Such is the natural order of things. Whoop‑de‑do. Happy fricking Fourth of July.

If it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself, I’m not. I’m gearing up for a walk down Memory Lane to the happiest, biggest Fourth of July of my life—1976, the Bicentennial. Don and I were six years into our relationship then, still acting like kids even though we were in our thirties. I remember that summer as a blur of bluegrass festivals for us and the Ford administration for the nation. It was the year Rocky came out, along with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one of our all‑time favorites. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” topped the singles chart, and Barbara Walters became the first woman to co‑anchor the network news.

And then there was the spectacle: more than 50 tall ships from 20 nations filling the Hudson River for the celebration. A laser beam—via satellite!—cut a star‑spangled ribbon to kick off the nation’s two‑day party. That was a huge technological marvel back then. And for every dignified event, there was something quirky to balance it out—like guys sporting red, white, and blue dyed beards, or the landing pads built for UFOs that never bothered to show up. I was so disappointed!

Don and I threw ourselves 150% into the Bicentennial spirit. We went a little crazy buying ’76 souvenirs, convinced we’d someday get rich off our collection of commemorative coins, china, jewelry, McDonald’s containers, and even dry‑cleaner bags wishing America a happy birthday went into a wooden Anheuser-Busch commemorative beer case. I made myself a long, flowing hippie‑style dress out of Bicentennial fabric, and I loved wearing that thing. When I downsized to move to my CCC, I discovered—duh!—that the souvenirs weren't worth much because everyone had saved them. But remembering our enthusiasm still makes me smile. We even signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence that now sits in a time capsule. That was also the summer several nearby towns opened their 100‑year time capsules, and of course we attended those too. I loved 1976.

I wish we could stay young and carefree forever. I wish people didn’t have to die or move away. I wish our country didn’t feel so fragile right now. But since those wishes can’t come true, I’m grateful for the memories that keep me company. ©

Backpacks, Book Bags, and Breasts: A Late Summer Ramble

From pencil boxes to bug-out bags, this late-summer reflection traces the evolution of back-to-school rituals, family gatherings, and one marble sculpture with a surprising afterlife. A nostalgic, humorous look at how backpacks—and the memories they carry—have changed over the decades. AI

It’s been in the high 80s and we're only mid-way through August, but people are already grumbling about the end of summer. Considering how early kids go back to school these days, I shouldn’t be surprised. Historically speaking—does that sound better than “Back in my day”?—we never started school before Labor Day. God, I’m old.

This past weekend, I went to my youngest niece’s cottage for an end-of-summer swim party she was hosting for her grandkids and her brother’s. Normally, I wouldn’t have been included, but my nephew’s wife had recently talked to me on the phone and asked my niece to invite me. I’m not sure why, exactly—maybe I was just on her mind. It’s rare that I get to see my nephew, so I was glad for the opportunity.

All the kids in my family are growing up so fast. Even though I frequently see their faces on Facebook, I couldn’t pick most of them out in a lineup. A few had brought friends, which made it even harder to sort the wheat from the staff. Not the best metaphor for little kids, but you get my drift. I like interacting with children, but when time is limited, I’d rather the seashell or cookie conversation be with one from my own bloodline.

The Cookie Conundrum

The cookie conversation was my favorite. Three little girls—home-schooled, and I suspect not often indulged with store-bought sweets—were debating whether to choose a sugar cookie or a chocolate chip. A boy chimed in: “Have one of both!” But one of the girls quickly pointed out that there were 14 cookies and 14 kids. Finally, I suggested cutting a few cookies in half so they could sample both kinds. Their eyes lit up like little light bulbs. Problem solved. Off they went to swim in the lake.

Backpacks and Book Bags, Then and Now

 
Back-to-school shopping historically speaking didn’t include buying a backpack. (With a few tweaks, that sentence could be a tongue twister.) We didn’t even have those straps to hold books together like Laura Ingalls had on Little House on the Prairie. That show was set in the late 1800s, and their solution—a belt with new holes punched in—was surprisingly practical.

Online sources say book straps were replaced by “napsacks” in the 1930s, and backpacks didn’t really take off until the 2000s. But all I remember using were my arms—even when I took the bus daily to college. These days, I have enough canvas book bags to supply an entire grade. Of course, mine don’t feature cartoon characters or superheroes, so no self-respecting kid would want one. I’d have to ship them off to a refugee camp before they’d be appreciated for their usefulness rather than their art museum logos.

My obsession with book bags came long after I finished school. When Don and I first met, we lived a mile apart, and I was always packing up for weekends at his house—he worked on trucks, and I made wood fiber flowers thus my work was more portable than his. His neighbors nicknamed me “The Bag Lady” before we were formally introduced.

The One with the Most Toys

One of my book bags has a faded quote: “The one who dies with the most toys, wins.” That phrase was popular back in the day, printed on signs and canvas bags sold mostly in antique stores. Don took it to heart. He started collecting the toys he’d lost as a child—ones he watched a tornado hurl away from his childhood home while he stood in the doorway of the barn—old enough by then to be antiques. The storm spared a 1955 Ford tractor, which never did a day’s work again. Don eventually bought it from his mom and elevated it to sculpture status. By the time I sold it after he died in 2012, it was a classic antique destined for a full restoration. Don would’ve been thrilled. That’s what many widows try to do with their husband's treasures, isn’t it—make them happy with where they end up? Their prize possessions ended up, not the husbands.

Pencil Boxes and Marble Women 

 

Back in my day, I had my share of pencil boxes. I loved them. Still do. In college, I carried a metal fishing tackle box full of art supplies—two, actually: one king-size and one smaller,
tailored to the day’s class. Two days a week, it was sculpture class, where I spent a semester working on a headless, limbless marble woman. My poor dad and brother helped me pick up the stone—a tombstone with a misspelling, sold to students and artists—and they hauled it to the college art studio and back home again at the end of the semester. It was only half done, but the professor encouraged me to finish it over the summer. And that’s how I ended up with an ill-gotten set of marble carving tools. Oops.

The sculpture? The stone was pared down past the lettering and its classic tombstone shape was gone and a set of breasts was emerging, just enough to earn me an A. I was going to be the next Michelangelo until I learned he dissected dead people to understand anatomy. Last I saw my half-done sculpture was in my nephew’s garden. A friend once admired the flowers around it, stepped back, and said, “Is that what I think it is?” I’m afraid ask if he still has the stone at the house he bought from by brother’s estate. He’s the one with the naive, home school grandkids who debated their cookie choices so I could understand if a naked garden lady was a problem.

Backpacks in the Age of Anxiety

With kids using devices instead of books, backpacks may shrink in size. But gun violence has changed things—some schools now require clear plastic backpacks. A few worried parents go further, buying bulletproof ones. So much thought goes into picking a backpack now, beyond which superhero starred in the summer blockbuster.

The local TV station is running its annual drive to fill a moving van up with new and gently used backpacks for marginalized neighborhood schools. I have an olive green one from the Sierra Club—a donation premium—that might end up on that van someday. For now, it’s filled with bug-out gear in case of a fire or tornado. I should check its contents, swap out the energy bars, and update the emergency info. I really am getting old so maybe should also tell my nieces to look for the $50 bill tucked inside. I’m my mother’s daughter, after all—she knew how to make disposing of her stuff rewarding. ©

Until Next Wednesday.

Note: The bold headlines in between paragraphs were created by AL.

The Banana Split Society and Malted Milk Memories

 After a week of humidity so thick it could be cut with a knife, the only logical response was—ice cream. Copious, unapologetic amounts of ice cream. Not that I need much encouragement to eat the dairy treat. It’s been my favorite food group since I was a toddler. When I was a teenager in the 1950s my best friend and I would walk to the corner drug store every night after school where we’d sit at their soda fountain drinking chocolate malts. And, yes, if we were lucky there was a little flirting with the boys involved. You can’t get malts made as well as they did back then when they used four scoops of ice cream, three scoops of Carnation brand malted milk powder, a dash of milk and a lot of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. 

I’m quite sure our Life Enrichment Director has one of those calendars of ‘special days’ that helps drive consumer consumption of certain foods and beverages. This week the management at my continuum care facility served malted milks at 3 PM effectively murdering our appetites for dinner at five. Not unlike the time time they served us pie on National Pi Day back in March or pączki’s on Fat Tuesday. They didn't make that mistake for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day in April. The lunch special that day was an Elvis Burger that generated a lot of talk. Some people flatly refused to believe that Elvis Presley’s personal favorite would be anything but gross. I’m a fan of peanut and jelly so I was game to try it and I liked it. My favorite was National Wine day in May. They did a free wine tasting on the 25th. They did a beer tasting once, too, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what I’ve known since my very first taste of beer is that unless they make it into ice cream floats I will never be talked into drinking hops based drinks again.

At another lunch time this past week five of us formed The Banana Split Society. We sat at the same table---apart from our normal table of twelve residents and we all ordered banana splits. We were separatists determined to defend our right to a full serving. It’s been on our menu all summer but all of us confessed to being embarrassed about ordering one while sitting at our usually lunch table where the norm has morphed into sharing with others as if spoons full of ice cream is the same as picking a French fry or potato chip off an offered plate. I’m a bit of a germaphobic and I don’t like sharing food and flatly refuse to where cutlery is involved. Besides, we all though we could eat a two scoops banana split all by ourselves instead of finding a partner to share one. One dish and three or four spoons. I couldn’t do that if it was the last dish of ice cream on earth. When we have our second Banana Split Society meeting the first week in August we’ve got two newbies who want to join us. Our society has only two 

two rules: 1) No sharing and 2) no regrets. Not to worry, it will be off the menu in mid-September so two more banana splits monthly meetings can’t do a lot of damage to my hips. 

Did I tell you I used to have quite a reputation for being a connoisseur of ice cream? When Don and I first started dating he teased me unmercifully about my ice cream “addiction.” He said I couldn’t pass up a cone shop if my life depended on it and he took the photo posted

to the right during one of his teasing sessions. For my birthday one year he went to a local ice cream factory/dairy and got me a twenty gallon can of my favorite flavor. Those heavy, metal dairy cans were meant for commercial use only but that didn’t deter Don from talking his way into buying one. Mint ice cream with chocolate chips, by the way, is still a favorite favor fifty something years later. 

Another year he gave me a sculpture of a girl eating an ice cream cone and I made him take it back. I was sure it would be like a bell to Pavlov’s dog, producing a conditioned reflex that would make me want ice cream every time I walked by it. I wish I had that sculpture now only because making him return it hurt his feelings---so much so that I never asked him to return a gift again. However, there were more than a few times when I could have made good use of a rubber stamp proclaiming “return for a refund.” Darn it! In my defense he did have some goofy ideas in the gift buying department. But that was Don---silly, outlandish quirks and all. Exhibit A: The year he gave me a 50 gallon gas tank for my pickup truck for Valentine’s Day and he filled it up. Granted, it was the year during Jimmy Carter’s administration when there were long lines at the gas stations and surging prices, but short-sighted me I would have rather had something romantic. Women! There is no pleasing some of us. Too bad I can't make the 'no regrets' rule apply to a few missteps and mistakes I've made in the past. ©

Until next Wednesday!

 “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

Soren Kierkegaard 

Binging Netflixs, TV Habits and a Trip to Memory Lane

I don't watch a lot of television which is a stark change from my viewing habits before moving to this continuum care campus in 2021. Back in my other life I had three TVs---one in the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen---and often they'd all be turned on to mostly CNN from morning to night. To say I was a news junkie would be an understatement. And I loved the freedom of not having to sit in one place to watch something. I could do my housework, work on my computer or hobbies, be at the beck and call of my disabled husband and take care of life's other requirements without missing a thing on TV. 

There are several reasons why I no longer watch TV as much as I used to do. Aside from there being a lot of things to do on campus, liking going to a staff retirement party this afternoon and a Memorial Day presentation tomorrow, I hate the fact that we only have one TV hook up to the free cable aka they didn't wire the building so people can have cable TV in the bedrooms. If we want to pay $145 we can get an exterior cable strung around our living room and through the wall to the bedroom but I'd hate the visual of a cable going along the baseboard and up around the door frame. It seems too ghetto to me. So in the bedroom I have a TV with a modern version of the old rabbit ears but it has limited channels to watch and try as I might there is no way to set both TVs to the same program at the same time. At bedtime in my old life, I always watched the late night comedians but I can't do that here. So my bedroom TV has morphed into a binge-watching Netflix box. Question: Is it just me, or has Netflix been offering fewer new choices in the last couple of months? 

Currently I'm binging a show with four seasons and I'll polish off the last season this coming week so I’m looking for suggestions for another binge worthy series. I like political stuff like Madame Secretary and Designated Survivor, crime stuff like Black List, White Collar, The Recruit, Night Desk and Ozark. I love law series, too, like Suits and Your Honor. Sci-fi like Roswell and Lost. Quirky stuff like Shameless, In the Dark, Loudermilk, Hab and Lenard, Six Feet Under, North of North, This is Us and Dead to Me. I've also binged on more "normal" choices like Grey Anatomy, Bridgeton, Outlander, and Downton Abby. I say 'more normal choices" because, with the exception of Downton Abby, I've yet to find any of my fellow residents who have the same tastes in Netflixs that I do, and with regular TV I've only found one person who likes American Idol and Shark Tank which are the only shows besides cable news that I currently watch.

Though, it goes without saying that my Liberal Ladies, Tuesday night dinner companions and I all consume a lot of the same news shows. I love our Tuesday dinners. There are twelve of us with three others who would love to join us but we can't make reservations for more than twelve, so they fill in when someone can't make it. Speaking of large groups there are sixteen Catholics living here and recently I landed at a lunch table with five-six of them. They were bashing the new pope. It seems that before becoming the pope he criticized the moral fiber of the president. I had to bite my lip from asking how they can justify accepting a different standard of morality for 45/47 than they do for the common man on the street. Aren't we all supposed to do our best to follow the Ten Commandants and do on to others as we would have them do on to us? "The pope needs to stay in his own lane," one of the ladies said and I came close to saying, "I personally think the pope was voted in for precisely the reason you don't like him." The Catholic hierarchy sees the evil that Trump is spreading around the world and they want a pope who isn't afraid to challenge him. I doubt that all the Catholics living here are MAGAs, but at least six are. How they can admire 45/47 and bash the pope is beyond my understanding---all the while thinking of themselves as good Christians.

Back on Topic: My current binge worthy show is Good Girls. It reminds me of Ozark because the three women who are the lead characters find themselves getting dragged deeper and deeper into a life of crime only the show is billed as a comedy so it's lighter viewing than Ozark. My favorite character is Rio played by Manny Montana---a porn star name if I've ever heard one which I'm quick to admit that that's an area I know very little about. Linda Lovelace is the only name I can come up with and she must be as old as dirt by now. And dare I say our First Lady did her share of soft porn before she hooked The Donald. Anyway, there is something about Manny's gravelly voice or the way he moves that gets to me. He's a crime boss in the series so it's not the character he plays that I like and he's not what I'd call good especially looking either. God only knows why I like the guy but if you watch the video below and have a theory let me know. 

There's no smooth segway I can use to change the subject so I'll just do it. I've been walking down Memory Lane this past week. It all started when a great-nephew on my husband's side of the family reached out to me on Facebook. He wanted my address to send me an invitation to his daughter's graduation party. Mike was one of the few people who offered to help after Don's stroke and who actually followed through in a very real and meaningful way. He took on the volunteer role of being a 'personal guide' in a wheelchair hunter's group that I got Don involved in. It freed me up from doing it and it let Don do a 'guy thing' with other guys. Along with my address I sent him a couple of hunting related stories that I originally shared in a blog posts. He loved them and asked for more so I've been binge-reading old posts and feeding them to Mike who asked if he could share them with his older brother. Don was their favorite uncle and it's been nice, having Don come alive again.  ©

                              Short pool scene from Good Girls.

If you are already a fan of Good Girls, you'll like this longer mashup titled The Hotness of Beth and Rio

Rise and Shine Morning Thoughts and Memories

My upstairs neighbor woke me up at 7:00. For such a little thing I can’t understand how she can sound like an elephant stomping around up there. I wish I could be in two places at once. If I could I’d ask her if I could follow here around to see what she is doing to make so much noise. She did tell me she pushes furniture around with her walker---she's a cleaning fanatic, does it every day to my once a month. Others in our complex complain about the same noise issue so it’s not just me in case you're thinking I have super sensitive hearing aids. They built these buildings with great sound barriers on the side walls but nothing in between floors. 

Someone asked me if I was sorry I didn’t pick a top floor apartment because they don’t hear anything. “No,” I told her, “I wouldn’t like having to take the elevator all the time and if we ever have a fire or a tornado to run from, you’ll be wishing you had a downstairs apartment.” Another woman living on the third floor thinks I’m going to get murdered in my sleep by a stranger passing by my ground floor unit. She's such a scaredy-cat I can’t help laughing at her. I’m not being naive, I look at the crime rate map from time to time and know it's very low in this area. She’s in far more danger going to the mall to walk like she does every day. I wouldn't tell her that. She thinks she's safer there and if I ever sent her a link to the crime rate map she'd never go anywhere. A new member of our Creative Writing Group called his 3rd floor apartment a penthouse apartment and I had a hard time not laughing out loud at the pretentiousness of that.

Back to the topic at hand: I laid in bed another half hour this morning wishing I could fall back to sleep but finally my bladder made me get up. I wasn’t sure what day of the week it was but I have one of those old people clocks in my bathroom that told me it was Friday, March first and confirmed the fact that it was too damn early for a night owl to be rising and shining. My mom used to wake me up by calling out, “Rise and shine! It’s daylight in the swamps!” I tried it once or twice on my husband but he was such a sound sleeper it took over a half hour of badgering and occasionally waterboarding him to get him out of bed. Before we lived together my brother, who was an electrician, made him an alarm clock out of a factory bell---the kind they ring at break time and when the shifts change. It hung over his bed and the neighbors across the street could hear it go off. They’d often come over and bang on his bedroom window to get him to wake up and turn off his super-doper alarm clock.

Since I’m looking for blog fodder today, I googled the “Rise and shine. It’s daylight in the swamps” phrase to see where it came from. On the American Heritage Magazine website I learned the last part---it’s daylight in the swamps---dates back to the colonial times. It’s the first thing generations of lumberjacks in the logging camps heard every morning: “Daylight in the swamp---all out!”

The rise and shine part of the phrase comes from biblical times and the 1611 King James version of the Bible made it popular in Isaiah 60:1 “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.” By the seventeenth century other Christian texts rephrased it to: “ “Christians (shall) rise and shine so the glory of God shall be upon them.” I also learned that I’m not the only person who is on the cutting edge of the Baby Boomers who has memories of being woke up with calls of, “Rise and shine. It’s daylight in the swamps.” Apparently some old time radio show used the phrase when it came on the air and our parents picked up on it. And men who spent time in the Marines way back before my time on earth also heard it in the mornings when they served. I often wonder how many phrases that are coined in our times will still be around several centuries from now. I’m guessing not many because with the swift moving social media the way it is today, nothing new lasts long enough for it to become a cherish memory like so many of the phrases we older people remember from our youth.

The month of March in a place like where I live---a non-profit, faith based continuum care complex---is on the boring side for those of use who are not religious because most of the lectures and activities are geared with an eye toward Easter. The Chosen movie series is once again on the agenda plus the Friday Stations of the Cross series is scheduled but not much else besides a St. Patrick’s day dinner, a Show Your Irish dress up day will probably pop up and I found special St. Patrick's Day Mahjong Cards online that we’re going to use one day to add a little spice to the game.

Co-teaching mahjong with someone with Lewy Body Dementia has been---challenging but worth it. She’s got 32 years of playing the game behind her plus she taught all our current players, but she forgets now and then. For example, she came over to my table during the last class to ask me what a one bam tile looks like and when I showed her one on the table she wanted to argue about it. I then showed her a picture of a one bam in a book that was labeled and she backed down but it was tense for a minute or two. 

The classes were my idea. I designed the class curriculum, wrote check-off teaching guides and the hand-outs for all three classes and had her proof-read it all. I also coordinated everything with our Life Enrichment Director. I did a thorough job so anything she might have missed teaching her half of the class they would get by reading the hand-outs and watching the online videos assigned for homework. We all know each other’s back stories and she’s open about her dementia and she’s tells others that I am her star pupil, the heir apparent leader for our group, so to speak. Still, I try not to overstep my place as Luke Skywalker to her Obi-wan Kenobi ...and it's hard. She thanks me often for doing all this to grow our group so I think I'm walking that fine line okay.

Until Next Wednesday. ©

* My beautiful, new mahjong set with an aluminum case. One of the racks is Barbie pink and is so bright that I might have to wear sunglasses. I'm still going to look for a butterscotch aka Bakelite antique set just because I'm not dead yet and antique picking is in my blood.

 

High Tea and the Mayor

It’s a rare occasion when I share a photo of myself online but the one below of me all dolled up and experiencing High Tea seems like a good time to do it. People on my continuum care campus are not used to seeing me put any effort into my clothing. (Jeans and a sweat or tee shirt are my uniform.) Heck, I even broke out the jewelry and I traded in my tennis shoes for some black dress shoes I’ve owned for two years and only wore once before. The self appointed mayor of our independent living building even paid me a complement while were waiting for our bus---only the third one I’ve gotten out of him in the nearly two years we’ve lived here. And one of those complements was for a poem I wrote that got me in a little trouble with the management. The third complement the Mayor gave me was when I walked a run-away at a purple fashion show for Alzheimer's Awareness. I wore a long, purple and turquoise  lounging dress of fake silk and he told me I “won the fashion show.”   

Mr. Mayor is an odd duck in many ways but in other ways he’s typical of most males born just before WWII whose ideas of the male/female roles are firmly fixed in his head. I met him the first month after we both moved in. I was in the cafe by myself and he came in and asked if he could join me. I said ‘yes’ and a scant few minutes later he got up and said he changed his mind and he moved to another table by himself. I found out later on that his wife had died not long before that and he was kind of a shy, corporate lawyer. His wife was a stay-at-home mom of five boys who always had a cocktail waiting for him when he got home from work and she laid his clothes out for him in the morning. She'd never even shaved her legs in front of him and they dressed for dinner at night. Fast forward to now, it didn’t take him long to get over his shyness and now he has what we all call his harem that he dines with him weekly at the so-called Mayor’s Table--seven women who are the cream of the crop, the head cheerleaders, the most bedazzled, the Royalty and Chosen Ones---I’ve used all these nicknames in my head and they often have cocktails beforehand in one of their apartments. His guest list changes slightly from time to time but I’ve never been invited to dine with the mayor so it's a good thing it's not on my Bucket List. In all fairness, the Harem mostly lives on the same floor which makes it easier for them to form friendships. I live on a hall with only six apartments and I rarely see anyone on my floor and I doubt I could pick two of them out of a lineup.

I do often sit at the community table with Mr. Mayor at lunch time and know how seriously he takes his job as the self-appointed mayor. He set up a residence council with by-laws and legal papers and a newsletter that he did ask me to be in charge of, which I turned down. I knew I had the experience to put one together but how he could possibility know that based on one poem I wrote and hung in the mail room is still beyond my comprehension. I’ve never told anyone here about the 24 page, by-monthly Readers Voice Newsletter I sold by subscription for ten years. I don’t even think my nieces knew about it. And Don---bless his heart---edited every word I wrote for spelling errors and in the process he learned a lot about romance books, the women who wrote them and read them. 

Anyway, back to the mayor. He’s kind of the center of every event. He makes speeches and advocates for residences on all kinds of things. For example, he got management to install dehumidifiers for those who wanted them attached to their furnaces and he wrangled a seat at the table when our CEO got promoted and the management was interviewing his replacement. He got them to agree to a matching fund to buy a baby grand for our lobby (but the majority of we residents voted the idea down). He might be a self-appointed mayor but he’s more than earned the title. 

Going to High Tea: that’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was in The Red Hat Society and I lost the opportunity to go with them. Back then we didn’t have a High Tea place in town so going was a day trip, and back then I couldn’t leave my husband alone for more than a scant two hours. My red hat sisters came back raving about how much fun it was to dress to the nines and be served exotic teas, fancy sandwiches and pastries on elegant china. 

A High Tea room opened up here in town this summer and the decor and table settings were rich and fancy with its exposed, vintage brick wall and red velvet davenports and gold trimmed china which is a good thing because the service was not great and the food was so over priced it could have ruined the experience if we had let it. (The photo of the menu is below.) By the time they added on the tax and the tip it was $49.00! per person. It looks like a lot of food for the $37 but everything you get for the $37 was two-bites and while it all tasted good, $49 plus $7 for the bus ride really put a nick in my budget. Or as one of my High Tea companions said, “I might as well have rolled up dollar bills and lite them on fire.” 

Still, the experience made me feel young again. Young enough to be having tea parties with my mom and later on with my nieces when they came along. My mom didn’t drink coffee or soda pops. I don’t even remember her drinking lemonade but I find it hard to believe that she’d have made it for us kids without pouring herself a glass or two. I also don’t remember her ever drinking ice tea but, again, I obviously didn’t pay enough attention back in those days to imprint a lasting memory of her liking ice tea or not. Her English ancestries would be proud that her appreciation for a good cup of hot tea never wavered. And that tea better be hot or she’d sent it back to where it came from for a do-over. Funny how some memories stick with you and others seem to float away like dandelions blowing in the wind. 

Until next Wednesday... ©

 

I Slept Around!

Okay, that’s a provocative title and probably a bit deceitful. But I’m taking a page from Dawn’s blog (The Bohemian Valhalla) on that one. She puts a lot of thought into her post titles, trying to lure unsuspecting readers into her little corner of mayhem, eclectic photographs and the  best food porn in the blogosphere. True, I am going to write about places I’ve slept but not in the true sense of how that slutty phrase is usually used. Not that I didn’t go through a short but memorable phase after a bad break up where I could come up with enough material to write a post like that. But that post will not be forthcoming until a week or two before I die when I’m in a mood to confess all my sins. This time I’m going to walk down Memory Lane to all the TYPES of places I have slept.

The first place I remember sleeping away from home was at a summer camp for Campfire Girls. There were canoes and a bunkhouse involved so I’m thinking it was a camp on lake but my memory isn’t all that clear on the details. I do remember making s’mores and going home with poison ivy and the Campfire Girls’ motto of "WoHeLo" which stood for "work, health, love." I want to believe we also sang the Campfire Girls’ official song back in the day but I just don’t know if memory and wishing I did got mixed up in my brain.

The next memorable place I slept away from home was on a vacation with my parents and I was probably fourteen at the time and we slept in a tourist trap kind of place that had a circle of tepees where travelers spent the night. Not authentic tepees made out of buffalo or deer hides but I was a kid and that didn’t matter in an era when my brother and I probably saw every black and white cowboys and Indians movie ever made. (And now that’s he’s an old man and living in the Memory Care building he’s back to watching them from morning to night. Note to my future cargivers: When I’m too old to remember how to change my TV channel put mine on HGTV or anything other than the old people channels. Why anyone wants to watch black and white after color was invented boggles my mind, but those channels are popular here in independent living, too, so just call me Bogglehead.)

Next up in the I-Slept-Around lineup was back here in Michigan in a cottage on Lake Michigan complete with sandy beaches and a peer where I soon learned that drawing boats coming and going was a great way to meet boys. Like the Campfire Girls' week-in-the-woods this one was also chaperoned by my mom. By then we’d moved up to be Horizon Girls and this was in our senior year. I have many fond and silly memories from that week at the beach but the one I’ll share is of my mom leaning out an attic dormer window with a broom ready to beat off the boys who were dangerously close to using that window to sneak into the house. Crowded behind her was a gaggle of screaming and laughing teenage girls.

Fast forward to a time after meeting my husband and on vacations we started out sleeping in the back of his pickup truck with sleeping bags but we soon graduated to having a camper cab in the back of the Chevy 4x4. (Not sure 'camper cab' is the correct term, but lets go with that for now.) One of those places we slept under the stars in the bed of the pickup truck I wrote about in a post titled The Happiest Day of my Life. It was written in 2012 and it my archive of memories it still lives up to that title. No bait-and-switching with that blog title.

A few years later we invested in a Northface tent that was all trick out with the latest and greatest camping gear. I've always hated cooking for everyday needs but cooking along side the tent on our trips was fun as long as Don lit the stove. One time while camping we woke up surrounded by a herd of deer grazing in the early morning mist. They were so close we could have touched a few of them. By then our dog-at-the-time was so hard of hearing he, thankfully, slept through the enchanted event. Either that or he pretending to sleep through it so he didn’t feel obligated to protect us and where would he started? There must have been twenty of them.

Our cozy little family back in the day.

I don’t remember why or when my husband decided to give up tent camping and buy a motor home. He called it our ‘Rolling Dog House’ and that might give you a clue. The dog we had before Levi and my husband were brothers by different mothers, as they say. And Don didn’t like leaving him at home and I wouldn’t let him take the dog if it was really hot. So even on day trips along Lake Michigan or to go to the heavy equipment bone yards across the state we’d take the motor home so Cooper could ride along. It was also a time in Don’s life when he was heavy into collecting his way across the country and near the end of trips it wasn’t unusual that we’d have to rent motel rooms because he had the motor home too loaded up with things for his gas-and-oil memorabilia collection and for resale in our antique booths. (Think American Pickers. We actually knew those guys before they had that TV show and Don did the same kind of picking as they did.)

 

The last memorable place I slept was in the same inn as Susan B. Anthony stayed in for a month. It’s a bed-and-breakfast in my favorite little tourist town on earth, Saugatuck, and my niece and I had a wonderful weekend that included going to a play at the local theater, driving along Lake Michigan and shopping main street. At one time I did a deep dive into all things related to getting women the right to vote so sleeping in the same place as Susan B. did was an awesome treat. She was the founder of the National Women's Suffrage Association and the bed and breakfast at one time had a bunkhouse wing with 16 bedrooms that housed 100 lumberjacks who worked the vast forest lands in the mid-to-late 1800s. Being in places with historical significance has always energized me a way that is hard to explain...like I'm a spear carrier on the timeline of humanity. Historical place remind us of what past generations have fought for, what we (hopefully) can build on it and then pass it on to the next generation.

There were other memorable place I’ve slept like on a steamship that sailed the Great Lakes and on top of a grave site during a low point in my young life and on a beach in Jamaica with a happy-happy rum buzz going on in my head, but we all have similar places we could catalog when we're as old as I am. And a second post that actually lives up to the title of this one? Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. Until someone gives me an expiration date I won’t be spilling my deepest, darkest secrets. ©

Until Next Wednesday…

* Photo at top is of the Park House Inn Bed and Breakfast in Sautatuck.

                               

Traveling the Dakotas

All of us have favorite stories we like to tell on ourselves. Undoubtedly, my husband Don had more stories in him than any human being I’ve ever known. He had the kind of memory that could recall details of everything he’d ever done in his life, every conversation he’s ever had. Those of us who spent a lot of time with Don before the stroke used to tease him that we had all his stories numbered. When he’d start a tale occasionally we’d groan out: “That’s story number seventy-seven” or “We've heard that one, Don. That’s number two hundred and twenty.” Sometimes that was enough for him to realize that he’d been dominating the conversation and it was time to let someone else talk. Other times if he was in ‘entertain mode’ the story just had to run its course.

When my dad was getting up in years, I recorded all his stories. I have his voice on six or seven cassettes; his tales of growing up in coal mining towns in Illinois are at my finger tips. Who would have ever guessed that I should have done the same with Don’s stories? All I have of his pre-stroke voice is: “Hello, you have reached 5-3-yada, yadda, yadda. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” The message was in a tapeless telephone/answering machine combo and I couldn’t bear to record over it, so I bought a new phone. I kept the phone until I downsized to move here and thus that little bit of his voice was finally gone too. After his stroke some times when we got together with close friends someone will tell one of Don’s stories for him. He loves that. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same recall that Don but if I did I'd tell about the time we roamed around rural South and North Dakota, just checking out what made those states tick. That was our style of travel: back roads, small town restaurants, local color, garage sales and auctions, if we could found them. 

Of course, you can’t travel South Dakota without stopping at the Wall Drug store. We did, and loved that blatant tourist trap because back in those days it was literally the only thing around for miles and miles. I still have one of their their signs in my curio cabinet and if you'd ever been in South Dakota back in the past century, you'll understand the humor of that. Those Wall Drug Store signs were everywhere in a hundred mile radius advertising their free glasses of ice cold water. 

Don was a masculine and virile looking guy back then in his Levi's, Stetson cowboy hat and Pendleton shirts. No tourist trap, weekend cowboy gear for him. He also had the tooled leather gun belt for his 357 that matched his fancy Tony Lama boots. He lived the western look here in Michigan whenever he could get away with it. And even though he had a gentle soul, he could bluff the Clint Eastwood tough guy thing whenever the situation called for it. 

In North Dakota, I had been driving when we stopped at their version of a rest stop---a pull-off with two outhouses. I had to go, Don didn’t. Just as I got back near our Chevy pickup two locals pulled up and asked for directions to an address in Chicago. Chicago? you're thinking! Who asks for directions to a street in Chicago when you’re sitting in the middle of no where, several states away? Don, he told me later, thought they saw me get out of the truck and they’d planned on hassling what they thought from a distance was two women alone. Anyway, Don got out of the passenger seat, grabbed a map and unbeknownst to me he jammed his 357 in the front of his jeans. It was clear that these two guys had been drinking and were up to no good. So I’m thinking, Damned it, Don! Get back in the truck so we can get out of here! Don had another idea. He tells me he’ll drive and makes a big production out of putting the gun on the hood of the truck---within easy reach---pulls open the map and says to the guys: “Now what was that address you were looking for?” Talk about leaving a dust trail. Those two Native Americans couldn’t get out of there fast enough. No one messed with Don when he was in his Clint Eastwood persona. 

But my favorite thing that we found by chance while traveling The Dakotas was a herd of buffalo. I was so excited when we came up over a hill and spotted them that all I could say was, “Buff, buff, buffalo!” And from that day on neither one of us ever said just plain old ‘buffalo’---it’s always “buff, buff, buffalo.” I'd give anything to hear Don tell about one of our adventures out west again even if it was only on a recording.  ©

Note: I wrote this 15 years ago and if you recognize it you're either a long time reader or have been doing a deep dive in my archives. I needed a writing break so my social life has a change to create something new to write about. Should be a good week for that. The photo is of Don when he was a kid.