A two day birthday extravaganza

In truth, two regular days, with the addition of people celebrating my birthday. I went to breakfast yesterday with my BFF Carol, who I met in 1972.

Carol and I go to breakfast about once a month, to a little hole in the wall near me. We take up a corner booth for the better part of a morning, between the breakfast and lunch crowds. 

Between the mountains of Pennsylvania, and the ravines of northeast Ohio, Carol has always lived in a snow belt. A year ago February she put her house on the market, sights set on Charleston, South Carolina.

To her dismay, though not mine, the house didn’t sell. Then, yesterday, “The house goes under contract tomorrow!”  They probably won’t be gone before July. The good news—another place to visit. So, bacon and eggs and home fries and cake and which of two houses Carol will buy. She’s pretty excited.

When I picked up Laura from art class, I found Mrs. P and Laura giggling. They had not been caught shopping for a present for grandma, instead of painting a still life. A lovely bar of lemon soap.

At home, a beautiful stir fry for supper, then cards and cake. Such a cake. White almond (think marzipan!) with raspberry filling, whipped cream frosting and shaved white chocolate. I had two pieces.

And today, a birthday lunch with Beth and Bill, Ruth, Caroline and Francis, the last two still on spring break. Caroline to the left of me, Francis to the right. I wanted to hear about France’s bike trip.

France is my fourteen year old grandson; two weeks younger than Laura and far taller than either of us. His parents have raised extremely free range children. France has bikes stashed at the homes of friends, the easier to get around to after school jobs and activities. A year ago he and a friend were riding from school to Little Italy, to get a latte and a haircut. An old Italian grandma stopped sweeping her sidewalk to brandish the broom and tell them to ride in the street. “My mom won’t let me,” France had to confess.

Here’s an even better Francis story. Last December he turned fourteen, got his work permit and went on the official payroll of a restaurant near school. He came through the door waiving his first paycheck, indignantly, overhead. “They’re nickel and dimeing me to death!” he protested.

France and a classmate wanted to spend part of spring break bicycling from Columbus, Ohio to their home in Cleveland, using back roads and parts of the Buckeye and Towpath Trails. Bill and the two boys drove the route first, and arranged suitable overnight accommodations. 

The actual trip took them four days; the weather was beautiful and they didn’t see much more than cows out in the farmlands of rural Ohio. For those of you who know where they were, they picked up the Towpath Trail in Canton, where industrial civilization begins, and rode on home.

Francis had the house burger, which comes skewered with that knife.

In case you can't make it all out, there is a beef burger, bacon, cheese, lettuce, a fried egg, and possible more.

Salmon for Caroline.

The people vs. winter

I knew it was going to snow yesterday. My BFF was coming for our standing breakfast date at the local diner. But Monday I had a text, bad storm starting at 3 a.m. through noon. We rescheduled for Friday. We’ve talked about making Friday our standing day; Pam, the owner of the diner, makes cinnamon rolls that day. You must call ahead and reserve your rolls, but Carol will do that.

Pam keeps a saucepan of homemade caramel sauce if you want it. I don’t; too much sugar for me. However, soon she will be making hot cross buns, and those two lovely stripes will go down nicely. When I was very small, my grandmother and I would ride the trolley to Hough Bakery and come home with the box, tied with red and white string, of hot cross buns.

We had one minor snowstorm this season, and my road was not its usual pristine self when I went to work in the morning. I teased the new road super, when would he get to my road? He said he had salted twice, and when the snow eased on out he’d go back and plow them all. And he did. Not the sort of attention I was used to, but the road indeed was passable.

My drive begins half way up the last hill; it’s a sharp left onto the road. They never plow our apron onto the road because our apron is concrete, not asphalt as indicated in our zoning regulations. When we built that drive in 1988 we didn’t know zoning regulations. We just forged on. 

Municipal plows do not have pads under the blades to protect concrete, so our apron generally was not cleared. The last two winters the road super took pity on me and lowered the snow so I could get out. “Paycheck protection,” Tim called it. Perhaps I will mention it to the new guy, later on.

Tuesday morning was thickly white. I’m still armpit deep in all the details that will make the rest of my township year easy, so I needed get in. The drive was deep enough in snow to grab my tires, but I kept on, slow and easy through the stuff on the apron, slow and easy onto the road, slow and easy up the hill to the level. I am so glad I do not live at the bottom of my road. Every one down there knows when to go back in, and wait to be cleared.

The county road was no cleaner than mine, and Virginia Kendall, down into the valley, was most unkempt of all. I went straight on, to state route 303. Surely the state route into the valley would be pretty clean at nine a.m.; in spite of the fast falling snow.

And, it was not. In defense of snow plow teams, it was snowing heavily. On the other hand, clearing the roads is what we pay for. I made a slow and easy left turn, straightened up and began heading down. Not two hundred feet along, a police car was marking the descent of a car into the shallow ravine, burying itself completely in the bushes.

That’s one greenhorn driver, I mused, and kept on driving.

Toby, a retrospective and an achievement

Facebook sent me a picture yesterday of one of the few things I've posted there, a picture of Toby the day he came home, four years ago. I titled the picture "Lucky Kitty."

My friend Carol and I were on a two day excursion to the Three Rivers Art Festival in Pittsburgh, to visit Linda and Cara, exhibiting there, and do some shopping. Back at the motel the first night everyone heard a kitten in the bushes, in distress. No one could locate or capture it.

The next morning there stood a young girl holding the struggling kitten. The kitty app on her phone brought it straight to her, one quick nab and he was hers. Then the girl's mother was in distress; she learned the Humane Society did not open until ten and she wanted to be on the road long before then. "I'll take him," I said.

The kitten had no energy left for hissing, spitting and clawing, only to struggle to be free. Carol and I gave up all thought of a second day at the fair, and started home. The little guy and I spent two hours in a hand over hand battle. He squeezed high enough in one hand to escape and I fastened the other around him. And yes, he still howled a tiny kitten howl.

At home he fell on a bowl of kibble softened with water, drank a lot of water and climbed the quilt to sleep in my bed. I took him to the vet the next day, where he was pronounced barely four weeks old and lucky to be alive. I started a blog the same day, and my first post was about the Lucky Kitty, whose name became Toby.

Of course we take far more pictures of the babies than of the growing children. Here is the kitty his first summer, 2011.

Toby had two stepbrothers to annoy. Purrl was the outdoor cat who avoided Toby.

Ryon was the indoor cat, who he could easily annoy, especially in Ryon's safe and secret place on top of a dresser in a closet.

Ryon and Toby got along for the most part, especially as timid Ryon abdicated the catbird seat to Toby.

Yes, Toby, there is a Santa Claus.

That's the end of kitten pictures, and I had so many to select from!

He had so much energy, I bought him a gross of ping pong balls.

They were fun for quite a while,

but went on a high shelf when they weren't quite enough fun.

He has located the basketfull, and when the last little white globe disappears under a cupboard, or under the basement door and down the stairs, he merely climbs the quilt display in the studio and forks himself another from the basket.

He's more mature now. Here he is at breakfast with Laura, but only to keep her company. He will not accept table food and ignores any tidbit left in his bowl. My brother-in-law grumbles, "He won't eat real food!" He does appear from nowhere to lick the empty tuna can, however.

He still monitors the neighborhood,

and the studio,

and the front door, where he has perfected "The Lean."

He still begs for leaves every fall,

and has turned into our live-in flycatcher. No fly enters our house and lives.

Imagine Jan's surprise the other night. Toby trotted from the studio, head high. He was prevented from making the "Look what I caught!" squeak by the tail and hind feet of a mouse protruding from his mouth.  Jan called, he trotted proudly up. She picked him up, carried him outdoors and set him on the deck rail.

Not the outdoors! This cat has the same opinion of the outdoors as of table food.. It is not good. He dropped the mouse, in shock, and was rewarded by being put back in the house.

The mouse eventually left, scampered under the ramp and disappeared. Lucky for him, Purrl is on mouse patrol in cat heaven.

The helmet

This is not a nice story; it ends in two deaths. Stop here if you wish. 

I was surprised I found The Helmet on EBay. So surprised I said I knew what happened to my helmet. That was not necessary; it did not move the story along, but the helmet on the desk was something I remembered from that night.

When we bought the motorcycle that helmet was the only one of its kind. All the others were sparkly red or blue or black. That glitter was popular. Riding, I saw only one other, and that was somewhere in Missouri. We were going opposite directions through a large intersection. Each waved and pointed to our heads.

I said we were down to one car, and I used my motorcycle. I even picked Beth up from school, took her to day care and went back to work. Rain or shine. Come fall I knew I would not be riding the bike in winter. We sold it; Jim bought me a ten year old Chevy Corvair. The biggest mystery--how it became ten years old.

The helmet sat on a hall closet shelf. We divorced. The helmet sat on the shelf. My oldest and best friend, Carol, divorced not too long after I did. She had just come to work at my company as a temp; a few weeks in I told the president of the company he should hire her full time. He did. That was 1972; my divorce 1973. Hers, probably 1974.

Carol met a fellow somewhere. His name was Carl. They were together at least a year. Carl was a biker; I believe that's all the transportation he owned. He admired the helmet sitting on the shelf, I sold it to him. Carol and Carl eventually broke up. He had more women on his string than her. She was crushed.

In retrospect, I cannot remember Carol ever being a passenger on that bike. I may ask her, though the fact also doesn't advance the story. Or the Corvair, or the divorce, or Beth and day care. They're all just padding to avoid the end. Carol came rushing into the house one night, hysterical. There was an accident; Carl and his passenger were dead. A picture in the paper included that helmet, shattered in many pieces.

Bird and deer soliloquy

Carol and I went to breakfast this morning, to solve world problems. I feed the birds, she feeds everything (“…but I only put out four cans of corn and that’s all those deer get until tomorrow!”). It has been a tough winter; another forecast two inches fall as I type. Early in the morning Tom has startled deer that have joined the grounds crew under the feeders, and Jan counted a flock of seventeen turkeys passing through.

I've posted this little fellow’s picture before. From the size it is one of the fawns I saw very late in the season, September, October. Actually there are two of them. I see them often on the golf course; it seems to be their haven home. They are not together and not with the herds of deer that use the golf course.

Carol said she has two sad cases at her feeders; one a runt with one useless leg, and a grown deer with a badly injured back leg. They come singly and must be there before the group; otherwise they are blocked out of the feeders. Literally shunted aside. I wonder if that is why the two little ones I see are always alone, as well as separate.

I stopped in the drive this afternoon to admire the bird feeders and especially the ingenuity of the cowbirds. We deterred the big wanton birds from the feeders on either end by filling them with safflower seed. The middle feeder has “the good stuff”, and is adjusted so only the lighter birds can use it.

Jan’s studio window overlooks Station 61, and she told me one day we have defeated the starlings and grackles, but the cowbirds defeated the system, and keep others away by simply being on the ring, closing the feeder holes. They open a hole by one upward flap to lift their weight, get a nosh before their weight descends. I sat in the drive and watched two of them hog that feeder, simply to keep other birds away. I rest my case for not feeding them, too. As if it has done much good.

Ninety minutes later I was home again and went out to “shoot” them. Of course they were done for the day, and I had a female redbellied woodpecker on that feeder instead. This actually is a fun exercise; she demonstrates the system. She’s big; maybe nine inches, almost weighs too much and is too large for comfort. The holes are partially closed and might close entirely if she were upright.

She, however, is miffed because I have not refilled the safflower block at the other end of the line. Well, the hairys, the downeys and probably Mr. Redbelly have worked their way through the safflower block, which will not be replaced until Laura and I get back to the store later this week. To quote Carol, that’s all you get until tomorrow.

This block was finished in ten days. The cardinals like it, too, and I had a little red friend watching me from way up on the oak tree. "Will she refill it? Will she?"

One thing and another

When I was a young our house was cleaned every stinking Saturday.  I remember every Saturday of my childhood and know I scrubbed the upstairs floors and cleaned the bathroom every stinking Saturday.

Of course I grew up and eventually appreciated the value of organization over chaos.  My daughters and I cleaned every Saturday morning.  We could be done by noon and free to enjoy anything else planned for the day. 

We may have finished so quickly because the girls’ rooms were bypassed, except for vacuuming.  One time, while we were on vacation, our house was robbed.  The girls’ piggy banks were smashed on their bedroom floors.  The police remarked on the ransacking of their rooms. Except for piggy bank shards on the floor, that’s how they left them.

Cleaning this house has never come to the top of any list.  No excuses, but as if Mom, Jan and I were cleaned out.  We had Mark in the beginning, and he is a neat freak, so we could rely on him to sweep any particle up from any floor, and find an inconspicuous place for things he didn’t like to see. But he went off into the world to become a citizen and left us to dust bunnies of several cats and dogs.

We engaged cleaning people.  Some good, some not.  My friend Carol told me one is always looking for the next cleaning person.  She does know; she has twice the house and so many collections her cleaning ladies spend a day. We had cleaning ladies, too, right up to the time we decided we needed kids

.

I call them Child Help, Grandma’s Sole Proprietorship. They do a fine job.  Their rooms are never included in the schedule and the grown-ups take care of their rooms, so the job can’t be that onerous. Some weeks we give it a lick and a promise and some weeks we do a real job.

But, one thing and another, we have done nothing except keep the kitchen clean for several weeks.  And tomorrow is the big family Memorial Day picnic, before Hazel and Tony go home.  As soon as my proprietary cleaners come home from school we will tuck in and get it done.  We could be done before supper. 

There may be pictures of grandchildren scrubbing floors on hands and knees.  Nothing makes my seventy year old knees feel better.

Artist training

Long ago, when she was 18, my sister ran away from home.  I asked the plant foreman of the little manufacturing company where I worked if he would interview my sister for a job opening I knew existed.  He did, he hired her, she came to live with me.  In the four years she was there she went through all the plant’s manufacturing jobs and popped out in engineering as a draftsman trainee.

Back at home she was always drawing.  There was an artist supply store up on Mentor Avenue where she bought a lot of stuff and asked a lot of advice.  Nothing she drew or painted really pleased her.  I remember art boards with bright acrylic colors in the trash.  Lots of scrunched up paper.  I smiled; she was my little sister.

One day my friend Carol asked a favor. She would be out of town on registration day; would I go through the line at Lakeland and register her for the next semester. As I paid up for Carol I had the epiphany.  I found a listing of all the classes for the semester, found Art-Drawing 101, went back through the line and enrolled Janice.  It must be something to be learned, I reasoned, if it was taught.

A couple of times each week Jan drove to Lakeland for her art class. She learned stuff like proportion, perspective.  Artist stuff.  I have no idea, she has the right brain.  Mine is left.  I offered her another art class when Drawing 101 ended but she declined.  She knew what to do, now.

This pencil work for her class featured my octagonal dinner plates, a chicken egg from the fridge and a finch egg from Carrie Nation.  It was the first thing I didn’t see crumpled in the waste basket, and I framed it for her.

She became a pen and ink person.  Boxes of nibs.  Bottles of ink. One day a friend got up close to inspect some of the art hanging on our walls.  Then she turned around and said “You did all this!” She only knew Jan as a weaver turned quilter.

One of my favorites.  I photo shopped around with the glare and the flash and quit while I was ahead.

These days, beside designing and making quilts, and quilting, Jan is fooling around with something called Zentangle™. It’s a one line at a time technique. That’s what she told me.  I’m the left brain.  I’ve also heard her say something to the effect of what she could have done with these Micron™ pens forty years ago.

A page of Zentangles™.

Carol and Frank’s wedding, and the trip home

Frank and Carol were together more than a year when Frank had the epiphany and proposed marriage.  They were married late in February of the next year, 1978.  Saturday, February 25^th.  My dad passed away on February 20^th, in a bitter, cold winter.  His funeral was over and Mom said “I need a wedding!”, so she rode shotgun and we went to Carol’s wedding with Beth and Shelly in the back seat of my Dodge Colt wagon.

It was a clear, sunny day when we set out from Mentor, Ohio to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.  I remember a small and wonderful wedding.  Carol reminded me they ran out of food, and the photographer was working for his dinner.  No one was flush back then.  Problems with the reception hall are crystal clear in her mind and I only remember a wonderful wedding.  And the memorable trip home.

It was after dark in the mountains, but still early evening when we set out to leave.  We changed from party clothes to winter clothes and boots we brought with us, said our goodbyes and opened the door of the hall to leave.  A gentle snowfall was illuminated in all the streetlights.

We were dressed for the weather; I had snow tires on the wagon, two fifty pound weights in the back, one over each wheel, and Mom for shotgun.  I figured we could cross the three mountain ranges on old US 22 to Pittsburgh and pick up the turnpike before the snow was more than a nuisance.  The turnpike would be clean and green, a trucker term I often heard on my trusty CB radio.

Beth and Shelly were twelve and ten, and seasoned travelers; they folded down the seat in back and went to sleep with their pillows and blankets.  Mom and I chatted our way over the first two mountains.  The little Colt stuck the road, the girls slept on in the back and it had been a lovely wedding.

The last town before the turnpike, we were tested.  A long hill up and the rail road crossed at the top.  Signal lights were flashing and all the cars stopped for the train crossing were gently sliding down the hill.  Mom knew what to do about that.

“Turn left and we’ll keep looking up the side streets until we find one the train has cleared.”  It was the perfect plan and I followed it at once.  Two or three blocks produced a train free crossing up the hill, and I started up in first gear.  Only a third of the way up, we lost traction and slowly slid back down, like cartoon characters in a cartoon car.  At the bottom I revved up some more RPM’s on the little engine, gently engaged gears and started again.  Half way, and the ignominious slide to the bottom.

Determined not to be defeated, I got a few more RPM’s on my side, engaged the clutch and started back up.  Almost as far as the second time, then the gentle slide backwards.  This time I lost control of the back in the drifting snow, the gentle slide turned a little sideways until thump and we stopped with the back bumper against the front bumper of someone’s parked car.  Stuck!  We needed the owner of the car to back up a bit and we would have room to push the Colt free.

I left Mom with the car and the girls and went door to door.  I found the owner pretty far up the hill, at a bachelorette party. She was happy to oblige, Mom gave the front fender an assist and we came back down the hill front first. 

 We went back the way we came, and with plenty of hill climbing experience behind me, tackled the previous street up to the rail way crossing, topped it, and worked our way back to the highway. The hill below was a tangled mess of cars. We kept on US 22 to the turnpike.

Once there I dropped into the line of headlights and tail lights illuminating the night.  Then I pulled into the passing lane, and was immediately blinded by snow that blanketed the air as well as the highway.  I asked Mom if I could pull back.  She couldn’t see a thing, either.  I crept along until my CB roared out, “Breaker, brown car!  If you have a CB pick it up NOW.”  Mom picked up. 

We were, a trucker said, bringing the entire Pennsylvania turnpike to a virtual standstill because the fool in a brown station wagon was straddling the middle line at thirty miles per hour.

“What would you like us to do?” Mom inquired.

“Move the hell over.”

“Now, young man, there’s no need for that.  We want to get home as much as you do, and we can do this together.”

“I’m very sorry, m’am.  Now, if you ease a little to the right you’ll be in your lane.  I’ll pull in ahead of you and you can ride my slip stream for a bit.”

The little brown car and I had no fear behind the semi and stuck like glue back to Ohio, where we said goodbye and headed north and west to home.  We were the only people on the road.  We watched the sun rise as we crunched along about forty miles per hour.  We ate breakfast at an all night truck stop.  We pulled into the drive about noon, and we were all talked out.  It had been a mighty fine wedding.

 Left to right, Joanne, Janice, Beth, Mom.  Probably 1981.  At Carol and Frank's house; one of Carol's memorable Christmas parties.  Beth is not old enough to drink, and proud of it.

A story prompt

Delores, at The Feathered Nest, posted an observation today that reminded me of a story from my past.  I’m going to owe her pretty soon, but have no idea what.  Thanks, Delores, for a prompt about having a clear out.

This happened a long time ago, as I think my BFF Carol and her husband have been married thirty years, at least.  Frank told me this story; I wonder if Carol remembers this is how it happened.

On a beautiful Saturday morning Frank sat at the kitchen table enjoying the last of the toast and his cup of coffee.  Carol took care of the dishes, then started cleaning the counters and appliances as Frank looked on, making small talk.

Carol didn’t say much as she worked her way around the kitchen and back to the cupboards, which she set upon with ruthless determination.  Plates, bowls, platters came down, the cupboards were wiped clean.  Not everything went back.  Small appliances and crockery he had never seen before suddenly were landing in the trash.

Lazily curious in the warm sunshine and afterglow of a good breakfast, he idly asked why she was throwing out the item about to depart her hand into the waste basket.

Thump! went the crockery.  “If I haven’t found it useful in the last year, it’s going!” Carol informed him as she turned back to cleaning.

Frank said he proposed to Carol on the spot and bought rings that very afternoon.  I know they were married the next February, high in the Alleghany Mountains in Pennsylvania, in a blizzard, which is another story.

An anniversary

The pretty little Libester token this week caught me up short and set me thinking about the year I’ve been blogging.  It’s been way over a year since I found blogs, and followed many by bookmarking them.  Never confident enough to comment, completely entranced by the possibilities.

But, what to write about.  There really is nothing new under the sun.  One day in my kitchen I was telling Beth an old family story.  Again.  Again she said “You never told me that!”  Grrrr.  But, there it was.  I could write down as much family history as I remembered or found.  Next time I could say “Go look it up!”

The last ten years my Grandma Rolf lived, (and she lived 95 years), family members would pick her up and bring her to family events.  But she no longer looked involved, and I felt sad about her, alone on the sofa.  I’d sit down and ask her seriously about how she did something when she was young.  As if I’d wound the mainspring, she had stories for hours.  I can still see her become eighty years younger, with far away eyes, floating on air across the parlor floor to the doll on the Christmas tree.  She knew it was hers. 

I heard hours of stories and only looked at it as a way to make Grandma happy she was there. I can recall thinking “I should be writing this down.”  Of course I didn’t. I regret this. Later on, the last few years of Mom’s life, I’d ask her the same kind of questions and spent pleasant Sunday afternoons with her observations and recollections.    “I should be writing this down.”  Of course I didn’t.  I regret this.

Beth gave me a reason and an impetus, but how to start.  Still couldn’t bring myself to jump right in.  I got a blogger page opened, then I went to Pittsburgh with Carol, and this delightful kitten came into my life.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Today I even bought a new office chair, because, as you can see, he no longer fits on the old one.

I love blogs.  I’ve met people from all over the world, seen places I’ll never go, had conversations with people I’ll never meet.  I’m having a good time with the stories, and a good time with the cat who loves everything.  Last night I chased him up the steps.  Chin high, long white streamer between two front legs.  He’s much faster than I, and was around the corner and depositing his treasure in the girls’ room.  A paper towel.   The very first thing my three youngest granddaughters will do in June is crawl around under beds and dressers to get out all the forks, pine cones, spools, yarn, socks, toe people, and now paper towels he’s hidden away.

A year of Toby, who will be one on or about Mothers’ Day, USA:

I started this eight years ago

A long time ago, probably eight years ago, Ann and I were poking around shops in Wisconsin and I came upon a sale of a bag of batik fat quarters.  A vinyl bag, with the hues arranged in descending rows of shininess.   I don’t know a fat quarter from a thin dime, but bought the whole four or five pounds of shades of the rainbow.  They sat on a shelf for quite some time.

When I started the scrap clearance project a while back I did progress from sewing fabric to phone book pages, to making an actual paper pieced block called snowflake.  I made so many of those blocks I put together a quilt for Carol.  I thought about using the batik to make a New York Beauty, but found I can no longer get that degree of precision cutting from my hands.  The shiny bag went back on the shelf.

I bought a remnant bolt of muslin a couple of years ago and set about making more snowflake blocks from the batik.  I could make five five inch blocks from each fat quarter.  I made blocks until I ran out of muslin.  The charity quilt project happened about then, and the snowflake blocks went into a basket.  Last summer I had Laura and Emily lay out the blocks.  Those little girls are great with color; they spent an afternoon moving blocks from one position to another.  They stacked them up in order, numbered each row, and put the blocks back in the basket.

When I thought I ran out of charity quilt blocks a couple of weeks ago I decided I’d start back on putting together the snowflake quilt, which will be very nice for Caroline’s new bedroom.  Jan cut the setting strips for me during the week, and I thought what a great weekend project.  I’ll put that quilt together this weekend.

Now we’re down to the funny part.  There are one hundred eighty blocks.  Each with a frame and a corner stone.  I’ve been eight years making this quilt and just because all the blocks are done and all the setting strips cut, I’m going to finish in one more weekend.  When quilts fly.  But, I am half done.  The drawer and a half of charity quilt blocks that just keep coming in won’t spill over before I finish the quilt for Caroline’s new room, next weekend.

Half the quilt

J (Joanne) PS

I live in the catbird seat.  In eight hours or less, driving, I could be in Chicago, New York City, Louisville; Washington DC, Virginia, at a show.  I started before there were cell phones.  Although we did have a friend with an early monster that filled up her purse.  And I did own a cell phone the instant they were practical.  Concerning the amount of cash I might wind up carrying, our accountant asked me if I carried a gun.  “No, Bob, I carry a cell phone.”

My directional dysfunction does not even rise to joke worthy.  I’m pathetic.  “She means the other right,” is heard standardly in my car.  I have a compass, and can tell what direction I’m going, but need to squeeze my eyes shut and mentally orient the compass in order to turn and go a different direction.  Not good at stop lights.  In order to drive four or five hundred miles and arrive at a specific location in order to set up a show, I needed a system.  Mine was an envelope.  Business size.  To get to New Paltz, for example, the first line on my envelope said I80E to exit XX, I84N.  Second line said I84N to exit XX, route 208 north to New Paltz.  Third line told me to turn left at the light in New Paltz.  Fourth line to turn left on the fairground road.  Then I had several lines to get me to the motel.  I did not deviate, even if other people said “We could probably get there if we took that road.”  I could tuck my envelope in my steering wheel cover and follow my instructions line by line and get there.  I took good care of my envelopes, added notations, noted when exits changed, occasionally found a better way around towns.  I was my own GPS.

When real GPS systems came along, I didn’t fall for it.  I road with friends who were always fiddling with theirs, then trying some road or another, saying their TomTom needed recalibrated because the route number had changed, things like that.  When Carol and I went to Pittsburgh last summer, fortunately she knew where we were because her GPS didn’t have a clue, going or coming. 

GPS just frustrate me; they don't even sound like someone riding shotgun and saying turn right up there where the red car just turned.  The last time TomTom rode in the car with me we circled a new doctor's office for half an hour.  I finally pulled into some parking lot and called.  "Oh, yes" said the nice receptionist.  "GPS puts you on the wrong side of the over pass.  You can see us from where you are.  Come on over."

MapQuest and I get along famously.  They even write out the instructions just like I used to put them on the envelope.  I should be collecting a royalty.

Extreme circumstances…

A couple of days ago I mentioned my best friend, Carol.  We have been friends since the morning I found her in the lobby of the company I worked for, back in 1972.  We became best friends forever in short order.  We both were married, we  had small children.  We both had to divorce our husbands, and then figure out how to live on nothing.  We both went back to school to upgrade out skills.  We both did fine in the end, but it was a tough slog along the way.  Carol did remarry, and her husband once asked how we’d remained friends for all those years.  “We know too much about each other!”  And we do...the triumphs, the failures, that stuff that makes best friends best friends forever.  Carol was at the end of my bed when I woke up from the stroke.  ‘Nuff said.

Back when we were divorced and poor, the next hardest thing after putting food on the table and making the mortgage payment was child care.  I had two daughters and she had a son, younger than my two.  They went down in stepping stones, Beth 7, Shelly 5, Jimmy 3.  We became experts at finding summer camps, Y programs, after school programs, and getting our kids booked in before the available places were filled.

The year these three musketeers were 10, 8 and 6 we enrolled them in a swimming program at the Y.  It was an eight or ten week program and I have no idea what they were supposed to learn.  Carol or I would pick them up when the class was done and from the back seat the three would excitedly discuss the exhibition they were practicing for the parents at the end of the course.

On the appointed afternoon Carol and I were dutifully seated in the hot and steamy bleachers of the pool room, waiting for the show.  The tadpoles and minnows showed off their skills and then the advanced group came out.  In the line, walking toward the deep end of the pool, were Beth, Shelly and Jimmy.  Down the long end of the pool, turn the corner of the shorter end, stopping at the high diving board.

Carol and I were reasonably distraught.  Jimmy was only six.  What was he doing there??!!  All the children went up the ladder, made their dives.  Up went Jimmy, made his dive.  We watched with mingled terror and admiration as that little you know what went through the entire program with children up to twice his age, demonstrating diving and swimming.

The first thing we asked him, after the program:  how did you get in that group?  “I went with Beth and Shelly.”  Yep, when the instructor said everyone eight or older go there, everyone under eight go to the other end of the pool, Jimmy made the instant decision to stick with the only people he knew.  He said he was eight and Beth and Shelly vouched for him.  The rest was up to Jimmy, and he did it.

Jimmy’s a Marine.  Special Forces.  Underwater stuff.  He retires this year.

Beth, Jimmy and Shelly on vacation with Mom in 1976.  So, they would be 11, 9 and 7. 

Where’s Betty

I worked for a couple of years at a small manufacturing company.  I was secretary to a vice president for a while, then moved out to the front reception area where I typed invoices and answered all the phones, as well as the previous secretarial duties.  All that occurred because there was an ownership battle going on, but way down the line we just did our job and got our paycheck.

It was the job where I met my best friend, Carol.  She was a temp, so concerned about arriving on time that she arrived an hour early the first day.  She walked around the building, wound up at the shop door and the foreman brought her through to wait in the lobby, where I found her when I unlocked the front door.  The shop foreman was so impressed by Carol’s work ethic he went to the president (it was a small company and a long time ago) and said Carol was the kind of person the company needed; she should be hired.  And, she was.

Working in the reception area in the front lobby I got to know Betty the woman who handled personnel and was the purchasing agent. Her office opened onto the lobby. She was much older than I; a motherly kind of woman.  I always was up for fun at a job, and Betty was plenty of that.  One time all the men had gone out for lunch, the president driving.  They weren’t gone long when a bad storm threatened.  In those days most cars weren’t air conditioned, and all windows in the parking lot were down, against the hot summer day.

Betty came into the lobby hollering for those of us left to help her roll up car windows, which we did, moments before the big storm broke and poured cats and dogs.   When it passed Betty took us all out again to wind down the men’s windows.  When they returned from lunch and checked their car interiors, they were puzzled.  They asked.  We all denied closing their windows against the storm.  That was fun.  But it was Betty at her mildest.

One day one of the men came down the hall, whistling.  He had a hand full of papers and stuck his head in Betty’s door to tell her something.  Popped his head back out and asked me “Where’s Betty?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t see her leave.”

“Well, tell her I’m looking for her.”  He went back to his office.

Half an hour later, Betty called to me from her office to come in for something.  I went in and was curious; I hadn’t seen her return.  “Oh, I was here all along.  I didn’t want to talk to him so I hid under the desk.”

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