Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, Great Books and Family Parties

Book Club: We read The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan and all twelve of us were all on the same page in our opinions of this well-written and well-researched non-fiction book about the largest mass of freshwater on the planet. (20% of the fresh water in the world is in these five, giant lakes.) The history, science and threats to the water’s safety and sustainability reads like a novel and at the end suggests what we need to do to protect the Great Lakes and the 40 million people who depend on them for our water supplies. Each invasive species is explained in detail--how they got here, what damage they are doing and how species like the quagga mussels have spread across the country on the bottoms of boats. They are a serious problem to the pipelines that bring water to our cities’ taps. The book made me want to go out and buy a  bunch of bottled water because a water crisis in a major city is just a matter of time and then our water processing plants will all fall like lines of dominoes, if we don't take action soon. And that is just one of several complex problems facing the Great Lakes.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the woman who rattled me to the point I couldn’t express myself the last time our book club met didn’t come back and we were back to our harmonious selves.

The Oscar Meyer Wienermobile: It was in our town last weekend. I know this because one of the my neighbor’s here at the CCC left a message on my phone while I was at my niece’s cottage saying she and a couple of other women where going downtown to see it and did I want to go along. The next day I saw her and explained that I didn’t get her message until late and I thanked her for the invitation. She said, “I was trying to think of who would be up for a spur of the moment adventure and I knew you would be.” Boy, does she have me pegged wrong. I’m not usual ready to just pick up and go because I have a bad habit of not doing a shower or sponge bath first thing in the morning...I wait until a couple of hours before I’m supposed to be some place. But when I thought about her experiences with inviting me to a half dozen places like the movie theater, a impromptu party or out for ice cream I just happened to have been dressed for the day. She’s very social and she's the reason I keep a wine bottle, a cheese ball and crackers on standby. Not long ago she invited 15 nuns to dinner to help her use up her food allowance rather than loss it at the end of the month. She’s one of “The Catholic Kids” who goes to church every day of the week and, boy, was it delightfully weird watching ladies in brown habits go by my window. I almost wished I'd had dinner reservations that night so I could eavesdrop on their conversations.

I missed Oscar because I was at a birthday party for a great-great niece, a five year old whose widowed mom is moving out of state soon. My brother was there and the child’s other set of great-great grandparents. The great-great grandmother asked me if I remembered the first time we met many decades ago. I didn’t. So she told me at a similar family party she walked up to me and said, “Hi Aunt Jean! I’ve been wanting to met you.” And apparently I didn’t waste any time telling her I wasn’t HER aunt Jean and I walked away. I thought I'd learned a few manners since then but when her husband started calling me "Aunt Jean" at this week's party I couldn't help myself from asking, "What did you just call me?" What can I say, I treasure my 'aunt' title and I don't want someone nearly a decade older than me wearing it out.

At 80 I was the youngest of the older generation there and we sat under a sun tent at the water’s edge, pampered by my nephew who ran up and down the hill to get us drinks, helped us in and out of beach chairs and he brought me a pillow for my back while his wife and daughter fixed us all plates of food like they'd just done for the children. That hadn't happened to me before, and it felt like I'd officially graduated into The Golden Years and I wasn't sure I if I liked it, or not. In the past I would have mingled more with the generation below me. But hasn’t it always been that way, where the oldest generation are grouped together by choice or design? 

I remember being as young as the seven kids at the party and seeing a line of elderly aunts in flowered print dresses, straw hats and clunky black shoes. I probably gave them the same weary eye and a wide berth the little kids at this party were giving me. But we all commented on how well my niece interacted with the youngest generation. At one point she had them all playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie. 

The game is based on an English nursery rhyme that’s been around since the 1790s and a widely spread rumor claims its about the plague while scholars dispute that. Wikipedia says, “English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom ‘and they’d all fall down’…The line ‘ashes, ashes’ in the colonial versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer to cremation of the  bodies.” 

The more things change the more they stay the same. Children still learn the games their mothers and grandmothers teach them. And conspiracy theories are still around and are believed above the careful research of scholars. ©

Time Marches On

Saturday was one of those rare days where I got a big girl serving of family time topped like a cherry on an ice cream sundae with a wish that I could be a young again. It was the first tine this spring that was warm enough to go without a jacket and the sun was bright enough to require sunglasses as I drove out to the boondocks to my oldest niece’s log cabin in the woods. They built the house thirty some years ago and I love it as much today was when it was new. There’s a peacefulness that comes over me when I open the old fashioned, wooden screen door that slams with a thud. That sound calls back to my youth and it says, “Hey, I remember you, welcome home!” I’ve never lived in a log cabin but I grew up in an era when everyone had wooden screen doors that made that sound. Usually it was a soft thud but when my brother rushed in and out it could be a sharp banging. Mom got so mad at him for slamming the screen door once too often that she made him stand at the door and open and close it a hundred times. 

From her house, my niece drove us to a different boondocks than I’m used to going, to a brand new house where a party was going on for a one year old boy who shares the same name as my dog. Of the nine (soon to be eleven) kids under four who form the newest generation in my family, he’s the only one who will carry on the family name. When they found out the sex of the baby, his grandmother claims I was the first person they called because they knew how much I was rooting for a boy who will keep our surname from dying out. I doubt that story is true but it seems to be part of the family folklore now and that's okay. It may be the only thing Levi will ever know about his great-great aunt Jean when he grows up.

We left the party before they served the cake and I teased my niece for “rushing me out” before I got my sugar fix so she took me to a place near the lake where I spent all my summers growing up, to an ice cream store that still has the same name but, boy, has it changed. We got cupcakes and took them to the old family cottage that she now owns, where we had tea and cake on the screen porch. I told her, “I never tire of this view” and although it’s changed a bit (trees die and others grow) that lake view reminds me of the days when I spent hours playing in and on the water---swimming, canoeing, sailing and fishing. There were also the days when we’d put peanut butter sandwiches and Orange Crush pop in an old Army surplus knapsack and we “cottage kids” spent the day walking around the lake's shoreline. In those days there were only the six-seven cottages on lake and most of the land butting up to the water was farmer’s grazing fields alternating with wooded acreage. We loved the woods because one of them had jungle-like vines that were strong enough for us to play Tarzan and Jane and the other one had catalpa trees aka to us, bean pod trees. 

My niece is doing some redecorating inside the cottage, her second reincarnation of the place. She’s going from a fun, eclectic ‘40s vibe that I loved to the growing-in-popularity mid-century modern. Slowly the cottage of my childhood is disappearing and the ‘60s look of my niece’s youth is taking its place. Both my nieces are fans of the Mad Men series and my oldest watches it for the decor in the scenes like I used to watch Little House on the Prairie for the frontier antiques. Time marches on.

Time Marches On. Do you know that Tracy Lawrence song? I hear it on Country Classic Channel every time I drive to the boondocks. I’m fascinated with how a song writer can take 171 words and tell a story that covers decades. I’m going to hear it three times in May. I have appointments lined up to finally get my tooth fixed that I broke off in February. The dentist will drill down the old molar and its huge filling, built up a core and set a new cap. I hate getting caps but what are you going to do if you still like chewing food and you’re not ready to suck all your meals up through a straw.  

Have you heard about the movement nicknamed Straw Wars? ‘National Skip the Straw Day’ took place in February so I’m late to the party. If you are too, let me introduce you to the cause. According to National Geographic Magazine Americans use 500 million plastic straws DAILY. They are a particularly insidious pollution because they are often the cause of death for marine animals. Plastic straws are an unnecessary pollutant because there are Eco-friendly wax coated paper straws and reusable stainless steel to take their place or we can go straw-less altogether. I watched a video of a sea turtle getting a straw removed from his nose, putting the big guy in obvious, bloody pain that lasted eight minutes before they got the whole thing out. That made me a believer in getting my own Eco-friendly straws to carry in my purse. Time marches on but we all need to be marching with it to solve the problems mankind created. Do what we can, where we can is a promise we can all make to the newest generation in our families. ©

Warning: Strong language at the beginning of the video.

 Straw Wars, National Geographic

 National Skip the Straw Day

Bare Naked Butts and Frog Flopping

It’s been a long while since I’ve been invited to a high school graduation party. This year it happened. The graduate was a great-great niece on my husband’s side of the family and I was happy to be included because the opportunities to see people I’ve known for close to a half century have been nearly non-existent since my husband and sister-in-law died. Before the party I couldn’t have picked the graduate out of a line up but her grandmother says the girl is “sweet inside and out.” At one point during the party she was standing with a group of friends, looking pretty with her long black hair falling half way down her backless-to-the waist dress, the hemline of its circle skirt hitting her mid-thigh when a breeze came up and exposed her entire buttock, as bare as the day she was born. My mouth dropped up and I looked at the people sitting near me for validation that I was seeing what I saw. My shock must have shown on my face because without me saying a single word her aunt said, “I saw it earlier. She’s wearing a thong made out of dental floss.” It must have been nude colored dental floss because I couldn’t see it that time or during the other opportunities that came up later to look. (It was a windy day.) Another one of her aunts said she wouldn’t let her daughter wear a thong like that and I was having a hard reconciling the label of “sweet inside and out” with a girl who must have felt the hot sun and wind on her bare butt and didn’t have enough decorum to go inside to put on some proper underwear. 

Another one of her friends was also wearing a backless-to-the waist dress that was pretty but it was completely spoiled by the fact that she was wearing a ratty looking bra with it. Who does that? Did she chicken out on going braless? That dress required it if you’re not going to spend the money on a backless support garment. Did her parents stop her as she was walking out the door? “You’re not leaving the house without your underwear!” Back in my day, we had special lingerie pins we used to make sure our bra straps didn’t slip down our shoulders and show with sleeveless blouses. How times have changed. Other than “underwear-gate” to spice up the party, it was a normal and nice afternoon spent catching up with everyone. That side of the family has the best cooks and I welcomed seeing all the classic family dishes on the buffet: The cheesy potato casserole in a crockpot; the strawberry Jello, pretzel and cream cheese salad; the pulled pork with potato buns, and other things I didn’t try so I’d have room for the best peanut butter brownies made with rice crispy cereal and marshmallow crème you’ll ever taste.

All and all, I was glad the week was over and ended with a relaxing party. I’d been on the go for six days in a row and after the party I slept like the dead. I woke up to find that my emergency dialer actually was dead. Good thing I didn’t need it during the night---made me sick-to-my-stomach to think about it. One of the things I did the day before the party was go to a Start of Summer event at a near-by small town with one of the Gathering Girls where we had lunch in a historical building. I love that place. A hundred years ago it had been a mill that used the river for its power source to grind grain into flour. We also browsed the arts and craft tents and I resisted taking an elephant ear home for dessert from the row of food trucks. 

A carnival was set up a block away from the food trucks. We didn’t walk down to their midway but just seeing the Ferris-wheel over the tree line and hearing their music brought back memories of a summer my husband was totally obsessed with a game he called ‘frog flopping’ but technically is named Flip-a-Frog. Each player gets three rubber frogs and by using a mallet to hit a frog’s launching pad you have to catapult all three frogs onto lily pads to get a stuffed frog. I don’t even want to think about how much money we spent ‘frog flopping’ but, boy, did we have fun with the silliness of it all. There wasn’t a carnival in the county that we didn’t go to that summer, looking for the game. 

Don won several frogs and when I downsized his things a few years back I agonized about put those frogs in a donation box. In the end I couldn’t let go of the memories attached so I kept one and let two others go. He sits high on a book shelve to protect it from little kids and dogs who, over the years, have wanted to play with Don’s frogs. No one plays with Don’s stuffies. It’s a house rule and has been since that summer over thirty years ago. There are no cell phone photos that captured The Summer of Frog Flopping like there would be today, nothing that showed a grown man who usually worked extremely hard having so much fun---nothing except for that frog on the shelf. And he’s the reason why Don never wanted to go the Las Vegas; he didn’t trust himself not to get addicted to something far more costly than flipping rubber frogs onto lily pads. ©

Knit, Purl and Families Coming Together

Santa Claus showed up at our family Christmas Eve party for the first time in many decades. The oldest of our five babies is two-and-a-half and none of them were too sure if the stranger in red could be trusted. As it turned out it was a great night for driving---no snow, ice, rain or fog---but my niece and her husband still insisted they drive me all the way home. I had wanted them to just take me to the south end of town where the expressway lights start and I’d drive myself the rest of the way by myself, but it was two against one. I felt a little guilty, but it gave me a chance to show them some of the vintage stuff from my childhood I had brought up from the basement last summer and painted. They both love antiques which is a good recipe for a show-and-tell session. But I regretted that I didn’t show them the half-finished bias knit architectural shawl I’ve been working on. It’s the most complicated pattern I’ve ever worked and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee—a crafter with a blog and a book---says, “A half-finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art.”

When I was looking for something to write about for this post-Christmas entry I bemoaned the fact that other than the family party and a last minute invitation for Christmas dinner with my brother and his lady friend, I haven’t been doing anything worthy of writing about except for knitting and who wants to hear about a gray-haired old woman spending her evenings knitting? At least I don’t sit in the stereotypical rocking chair, holding a cat while I work on my shawl, and did I mention I’m alternating that project with making hats on a loom? I had to make a hat because I broke the zipper in my winter coat forcing me to buy a new coat that none of my old scarves and hats matched. The only hat I could find in the store that went with the new burgundy coat was $18 and I wasn’t going to pay that much when I could buy a skein of yarn on sale for under three bucks. After that first hat was finished I made a child’s hat with the left over yarn and then I decided that I’ll get an early start on making a hat for everyone in my family for the 2017 party. Twenty-seven in all when I include the three new babies on the way. My mom used to make everyone hats for Christmas year-after-year and I’ll bet my showing up with a box of hats will bring back some good memories for more than just me. 

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee also wrote: “It is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time it takes to knit something. Birthday on Saturday? No problem. Socks are small. Never mind that the average sock knit out of sock-weight yarn contains about 17,000 stitches. Never mind that you need two of them. (That's 34,000 stitches, for anybody keeping track.)” I’ve never made socks, but if we get into a trade war with China, we could all be working a pair in a spare time. 

After reading the quote above, I did some math on the bias shawl I’m working on.  When finished it will be a total of 663,000 stitches and that’s not counting all the times I’ve had to rip out a few rows and redo them because I forgot to do the increases or decreases that are supposed to happen every other row. Stephanie also says, “In the nineteenth century, knitting was prescribed to women as a cure for nervousness and hysteria. Many new knitters find this sort of hard to believe because, until you get good at it, knitting seems to cause those ailments.” She says a lot of things that ring true like: “...knitters just can't watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can't wait in line, knitters just can't sit waiting at the doctor's office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways.” I agree with that second layer of interest. I can’t sit in a chair and just watch TV but I haven’t passed that threshold yet where I knit in public. Even though knitting has become cool again, I’m still hung up with a child’s embarrassment of having my mom knit in public. 

Traditions come in many forms from mothers who teach their daughters how to knit to old family recipes that show up at holiday parties. In the spirit of Christmas we accept new members into the fold who introduce us to their birth family’s favorites like rainbow fudge. We accept that a few people can’t be with us. We coo over the bright-eyed new babies and lovingly retell stories about those who have died. Families are a lot like knitting a scarf. You can make mistakes and start over again, add layers of color and texture, you can increase and decrease its size. And with all this “knitting” a family does to keep itself together year after year, like a scarf made on two needles that effort keeps us warm in the winds of time. ©