The other side of the mountain

Mom was a vacation improviser.  If there was a river across our route she scoured the map for a ferry crossing.   If it only took us a day out of our way, she navigated dad to the ferry.  If we were going west and she could finagle it, we took “the northern route” across the Straights of Mackinaw and the U P of Michigan.  I’m sure only natives spent more time driving the pine forests of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Mom’s other passion was “grey line roads.”   I was probably six or seven when mom convinced dad a grey line road would be the best way across a mountain in Pennsylvania.  To her credit, she did have experience with secondary roads thanks to her father’s great family excursions, and the family always came back intact.  But that secondary road across that Pennsylvania mountain tested her faith in map accuracy.  Or maybe it was a red line road on the other side of the fold.

I don’t remember our destination.  It may have been the year we went to Coalmont to revisit Dad’s grandparent’s house.  I was six or seven, Melvin was a toddler. About 1950.  Mom was watching the map and the road ahead for the road on the map.    She found it and dad turned onto it.  It was a typical secondary road.  Crushed stone, two lanes, graded.   A road through a forest.

Dad continued as the two lanes became one, and he was not pleased.  Little kids in the back seat knew that.   In the back seat we actually sat down and hung on. We heard what kind of a logging road he had got himself onto and the familiar “Now, John” as the 1948 Dodge rattled through the two ruts, climbing and climbing, cresting and starting the slow, tooth chattering descent.  We went down, down, down until we were back on a passable grey line road that ended as an alley between buildings in a little town.  Dad proceeded to the road ahead.

“Slow down, John.  Let me see where we are.”  Mom leaned out her window and called to a pedestrian “What town is this?” 

“Beaver Falls.”

“Beaver Falls!  John, your friend Pete’s parents live in Beaver Falls.  Don’t they have a grocery?  Let’s find it and buy some things for lunch.”  She quizzed a kid on the sidewalk and we were directed to a little Italian deli.  Mom went right in, introduced herself to the man behind the counter.  Such a commotion.  The man called his wife to come meet Pete’s friends.  We were taken right upstairs to a wonderful apartment over the store and mama put out a beautiful lunch for us.  The adults ate and talked, and Walt and I just ate.  It was too much to take in. 

When it was time to go we went back down the stairs and through the shop.  In the middle of the store Pete’s father stopped us, opened the silver lid of a big silver box and brought out silver wrapped objects he gave to Walt and Mel and me.  He showed us how to tear the foil and they were ice cream bars!  We’d never seen such a thing.  I’m sure we had to be reminded to say Thank You.  I don’t know where we went, but I do remember where we stopped after we went over the mountain.

Stand back from the car

Years ago, probably the late ‘80’s, when America’s love affair with the SUV was barely conceived, Jan and I were walking through a parking lot and saw one of the creatures parked near her truck.  It was a handsome vehicle and we detoured to take a better look.  About two feet from the SUV its lights flashed and it said “Stand back from the car.”

We retreated, looked about for some hidden trickster, then tried again.  Within about two feet we were again warned, “Stand back from the car.”  We climbed into her big grey Dodge Ram Charger and laughed all the way home at some pretentious Ford or Chevy vehicle telling us to stand back.

I was at the grocery store the other day, gathering myself together to leave.  Parcels parked, seat belt fastened, I started the car.  Immediately the car parked nose to nose to me flashed its lights and honked.  In warning?  I looked around and saw no one.  I put the car in reverse.  The car facing me blinked and honked again, and I could imagine it saying “Put it in reverse before you move.”  I went possibly an inch backward and the car blinked and honked again.  Consumed with curiosity, I put my car back in park and waited to see what that car would do next.

It blinked and honked again.  To my left at the end of the row I saw a woman approaching, arm held high, keys dangling, her thumb pumping up and down.  I’ll bet she had been unlocking that car from the time she walked out of the store, five hundred feet away.  I drive a highly overrated, retro PT Cruiser, unlocked with a retro key.  I haven’t electronically unlocked a door for several years, and that possibility did not cross my mind when the car began honking and blinking at me.  Besides, who tries to unlock their car from 1/10 of a mile away.

Back at home I told Jan about the blinking honker and then flashed on that SUV years ago.  “Do you remember that car in the parking lot that talked.  What did it say?”

“Stand back from the car!”

Bouncing baby boy

 
I have video!  In the end I realized I am techno-incompetent and took my movie DVD back to the fellow who DVD’d the VHS.  I downloaded some software to "rip" video's and got a ten minute free trial.  In ten minutes I couldn’t even figure out how to use it.

Here’s a little clip of visiting Uncle Ray in South Boardman, mid 1946.  The cast of characters in order of appearance are Mom, Grandma Rolf, Walt, Joanne, chickens, Uncle Ray on the tractor.  This is not the best clip of Walt bouncing, but I don’t remember what I titled the other clip.  So, stay tuned…..

The commentators are Jan, myself and Aunt Flo.  We did this probably in 98.  Aunt Flo was the last of my parent’s generation, and she survived Uncle Hank by ten or twelve years.  Aunt Flo was Uncle Hank's wife and grandma Rolf's daughter-in-law. We lost her this past November.  I made one clip of Aunt Flo having fun on a picnic, to post later.  And someday I’ll write about Aunt Flo at another picnic.  She was the eternal girl.

Over the top

When Jan came back from hauling the latest stack of charityquilts to the distribution committee of her guild she was upset.  Seventy five baby quilts have gone to Pregnancy Care, and she wanted to start the stream back up for Ronald McDonald House.  She found the Ronald McDonald coordinator and was told No, enough had already been done for them.  Jan was so angry she turned and left the meeting.  In the parking lot she met the Pregnancy Care coordinator, who, of course, was happy to take more quilts for little babies.  But Jan came home to do a re-think.

She put the question out to her large quilting network, do you know a volunteer agency that could use quilts?  You can guess the response.  She met with a quilt shop owner who coordinates a homeless outreach program in another county.  Jan showed some crib quilts, which were happily accepted.  But Jan pressed.  Couldn’t you really use larger quilts?  Twin size, for instance?    Of course, but it was so much to ask, and she had never had a guild commit to that size.  She found she hadn’t asked the sister whose sister is committed to scrap eradication. Whose sister is committed to giving back.

I stayed in my corner, sewing those squares, completely unaware of Jan’s new crusade to place quilts.  That’s what I do best, and the drawer of squares got further ahead of me over the holidays.  I was sewing, but our guests were hanging out in the studio cutting.  Sigh.  It never goes away.  And I’m up to 175 crib size tops!

When Jan outlined our new project I thought I could help by using more five inch squares in one top.  I gave that up quickly, for two good reasons.  It increased the number of five inch squares from 117 to 180.  That doesn’t sound so radical, but for me it was a quantum leap in coordinating odd colors.  More important, it isn’t Jan’s style of quilt.  Now, I like borderless quilts—the blocks just run out to the end.  She likes borders.  Can’t have too many.  Flying geese.  Half square triangles.  She has any number of pattern names she uses for borders.  My limit would be my favorite, scrappy, and I’ve done those.  But apparently she has even more scraps stashed in her corner and is compelled to turn them into complicated borders.

She told me she intended to take some of my “more interesting” little tops and add borders to bring them up to twin bed size.  The first two went by me so fast I missed taking pictures.  Here’s the one she just finished.  How cool is this.  I think some kid will like it.

No Peter Pan

Once I was at Beth’s house for lunch and she asked if I could mind the kids for twenty minutes while she went to the bank.  It must have been early on 2004; I’d been on my new hip for just a few months.  Francis was a busy, busy boy and Caroline was a solemn little new walker.  Sort of like her Grandma.  Beth left and Francis was upstairs in a shot.  Grandma took Caroline by the hand and we went up, one step at a time, to see what we could see.  We definitely could hear madly running water.

Achieving the top of the second landing and turning into the bathroom Caroline and I found Francis at the sink, on the stool, both taps roaring.  He was washing his bath tub toys.  Being the child of children of the Great Depression, I firmly but pleasantly said “Turn off the water, Francis.”

“NO!”

“Who’s the adult here!”
From the depths of a piercing, heart rending, screeching wail, “YOU ARE!”

Howling in misery and despair, Francis abandoned the stool, darted out the door and stormed downstairs.  Never a pause in the howl.  Caroline still clutching one hand, I turned off the taps, pushed the stool back into its corner, swabbed the floor with a towel and my foot.  The solemn little girl picked up the towel and gave it to me to hang over the bath tub, and then the two of us set out, hand in hand, into the maelstrom below.

The little ball of misery was bent over in a chair, wailing in great breaking sobs.  I ran my hand over his beautiful black hair and gave his back a little pat.  Redoubled sobs.  I tried some soothing words.  No effect.  Finally my practical self said “Think of it this way.  Some day you’ll be the adult and can tell a little boy to turn off the water.”

“I’ll never be the adult!”

“Francis, everyone grows up!”
“I can never grow up.  It takes too long!”