Spring has sprung, the grass is ris; she wonders where the beaches is

With apologies to Annonymous.

I saw this on E-Bay.  I confess, I went looking.  As she said, Linda has not spent a penny outfitting Goose.  I called her and tried to describe Goose’s new outfit.  It would be her outfit—I made sure I would not be outbid.  But, I couldn’t describe it.  I was laughing so hard I had to hold the phone far away and attempt composure.  I started again:  visualize Maxine.  No luck.  I was, as they tweet, ROFLMAO.  Think I got that right.  Well, Goose’s box arrived Saturday, but I couldn’t go until today.

I met such a pristine and sparkly Goose in the drive.  Her feathers are crisp, white, and all in place.

We had to help her into the new, itsy, bitsy, teeny weeny.  She had to shimmy and shake like your sister Sue, and hop ever so delicately inside the swim tube, but was it worth it?  After the hat and sunglasses for protection, absolutely YES!

Goose proliferation

I met a concrete goose back in the 1990’s, at my friend Linda’s home in New York.  I’d seen a lot of them on front stoops, but never met one face to face.  These were geese of substance back then.  Concrete, as I’ve mentioned; they moved about on hand trucks.  They were part of a silly wave of decorating that involved lots of cutesy and even more fussy. 

Yard ornaments go tastefully back in history as statuary, but in the Midwest escalated to pink flamingos, yard jockeys and bath tub shrines.  I’ve lived next door to a yard jockey for more than twenty years.  Concrete statuary is a relatively inexpensive substitute for granite or marble, whimsical to garish and available along country roadsides.  I’ve lived up the road for more than twenty years to a family that pours concrete figures and has them for sale.  I’ve even shopped there with Ann for a tasteful bench and bird bath to memorialize one of their memorable dogs.   She’s still looking for the naked cherub filling the pond.  That may be one step up from concrete.

In a burst of American entrepreneurism, sales of concrete geese moved from back country roads to streets around art shows.  A secondary industry sprang up, making clothing for the concrete geese.  With little fanfare the geese waddled east and west, north and south, followed by the garment sewers.  Only in America could there be a market for a cottage industry sewing goose clothes. Then I met Linda’s Goose.  Goose clothes went on my radar and I could send Ann or Beth twenty blocks out, to the craft show, to bring home goose clothes.  And giant bubble makers for my grandchildren.  

I’ve told a couple amusing stories about Linda’s Goose, and she called me and told me the rest of the story.  Actually, there is another Goose.  Maybelle’s Goose.  Maybelle is Linda’s BFF.  Maybelle changed her name from Mabel so her mother, Mabel, wouldn’t open her mail.  Oh, what I know about Maybelle.  But it’s enough for you to know she must be Linda’s BFF.

Linda lived in central New York State between living in Ohio twice, not too far from Maybelle.  Linda and her husband were driving to a show and just before arriving, there were the geese.  Linda decided Maybelle needed one of those for the cottage at the lake.  So, they stopped and bought Maybelle a big concrete goose.  Because it was the lake, they added some rain gear.

The next weekend Linda was so envious of Maybelle’s goose, she stopped for another one for her back stoop in New York.  The impetus for this industry should now be obvious; it feeds on itself.  You can just hear the men in the back room:  Pour more geese, Jack.  We need to keep up with the demand.  And, when they go home at night:  Make more goose clothes, dear.  There’s quite a market.

When Maybelle’s son was married at the cottage at the lake, Maybelle’s goose wore a rose with her lace.

Little boys lost

Dad took us to Temple Square after supper one night, Christmas shopping.  Three kids, ages eight, six and three.  About three miles from home, Temple Square actually is a triangular section at the intersection of Cuyahoga Falls Avenue and Main Street, housing a flatiron building with no majesty as it is only two or three stories tall.  There must have been quite a few shops in the building; the two I remember are the dime store and the hardware store.

We went to the five and dime first, to buy Mom’s Christmas Present.  Then we would go to the hardware store.  My dad and my brother Walt, even at age six, were no strangers to hardware stores.  The smell of a hardware store made their eyes glassy.  At age three, Mel could see over enough counters and into enough glass cases to be mesmerized himself. 

At the counter, as I paid for the gift, Walt asked if he and Mel could start for the hardware store.  Dad said yes, and they went off, steps ahead of us.  Dad and I left the dime store and went next door to the hardware store.  Dad looked around briefly.  No boys.  He took my hand and we commenced an aisle by aisle search.  No boys.  Back to the dime store.  Ask all the clerks.  Other shoppers alerted. Up and down the sidewalks.   I was hustled into the car and dad went home for help.  Neighbors set out in cars to search.  Neighbors came to stay at the house.

A couple of hours later, two little boys came in the back door.  Very tired and very cold.  Especially the three year old.  As the searching neighbors checked in they were given the good news, and by midnight the cold, dark adventure was over.  To be recalled in later years as the night the boys walked home from Temple Square.

The next summer we spent a weekend in St. Louis.  Dad was at a convention there and mom drove the family down for the weekend and to bring dad home.  We stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel.  We went to the St. Louis Zoo.

You know what happened.  We walked for miles and looked at everything.  We were watching a sea lion performance when they went missing.  First parents scan the near horizon.  Then the far horizon.  They snatch the hand of the remaining child and go into full search mode.  Park authorities are notified.  Mothers cannot remember if they put red T shirts or blue ones on children that morning.  And, why has every mother in the park dressed her little boy in a colorful, striped T shirt!  We walked more miles, accompanied by a zoo ranger. 

Suddenly, in the sea of little boys, mom saw them!  Sitting on an amphitheater bench, watching an elephant performance.  They thanked the ranger and hauled me down the aisle.  The boys looked up, then back at the elephants.  We sat down behind them and waited for the show to end.  At least, Mom said, they didn’t walk home.

 1952.  Mom and Dad.  Me.  Walt and Mel, who walked home last Christmas, but not this summer.

You don’t say

The days are long past when I reviewed my kids’ essays, striking out extraneous apostrophes and adjectives. I also recall using mispronounced words correctly in a return sentence to see if they “got it.”  I wince internally when a perfectly lovely young person says “Me and Jane went there”.

Like the concentric circles of a stone tossed in a pond, my problem extends way beyond myself.  There are place names with either incorrect spelling or incorrect pronunciation.  But instead of saying “listen to yourself,” I mentally roll my eyes and suck it up.

There is a lovely town in southwestern Ohio, Bellfontaine.  Pronounced Bell-fountain.  They claim it’s “Americanized.”  That’s fifty percent accurate.  The spelling hasn’t been touched.  A Bellfonte, in Pennsylvania, completely disregards the e. 

Back in Ohio, again in the southwest, is a town called LaFeet.  One wonders how the citizens can write LaFayette as their return address. Over in Fort Lar-me,  Laramie goes in the return address.

Then in central Ohio, in Holmes county, we have Berlin, named both for Germany’s Berlin and for Berlin, Pennsylvania, the other former home of founding settlers.  If you ask directions to the Ber-LIN hardware store, you may be immediately corrected: BER-lin, or told BER-lin hardware is two blocks down.  To their credit, there is a local story given out the pronunciation changed during World War II.  Be that as it may, there are probably only 5,000 people responding BER-lin when a million visitors a year to Amish country say Ber-LIN.  When do you give it up?

It’s quite understandable that brand new local newscasters twist their tongues around some local names.  We know the next time they have to say Tuscarawas, someone will have set them straight.   I actually applaud the newbie who goes straight for the French in Portage.

And, speaking of those sadly mangled French and Indian names, I had the wonderful idea to look up my Harry Potter house in Versailles, Indiana on Google Earth and get a screen shot to show you.  A little house of turrets.  Maybe they made it of an old silo.

I was there only ten years ago.  And now it’s the Southeastern Indiana Regional Planning and Development Offices.  At least they built a reasonably non-governmental looking building.

Private ambulance

Mom said if kids got in accidents, the worst happened the first week of summer vacation, or the last.  That was mom psychology about the excitement of leaving school and the excitement of returning.  There were major kid accidents in my family, except for Jan.  She tells me that was because she watched and learned.  Being the last child saved her broken bones and stitches, according to her theory.  It did save her lickings. 

Walt was seven or eight when he broke his leg.  It got him a pair of crutches and a ride to and from school every day.  Walt fell from a neighbor’s tree; a reasonably acceptable excuse for breaking a leg. 

Mel broke his arm, which didn’t get him rides to school because it was summer.  It also cost him a two mile walk home holding his broken arm and then extra visits to the doctor to keep getting new casts as the swelling went down.  It swelled badly because he had been somewhere he shouldn’t, doing something he shouldn’t, and would only confess to a sore arm for a day or two, for which mom gave him a hot water bottle.

To anyone younger than sixty, this must sound rather primitive.  There was no 911 back then and I never remember seeing an ambulance anywhere as a child.  Parents took injured children to the doctor, to set broken bones, and to the emergency room for stitches.  I suppose to get an ambulance you dialed 0 for operator.

My two trips were for stitches.  I cleverly sliced an artery in the back of my hand doing supper dishes.  Blood spurted to the ceiling.  My dad came around the corner, took the dishtowel out of my brother’s hands, applied a tourniquet, wound it tight with a wooden spoon, called a neighbor to mind my brothers and took me to the emergency room.  The forty stitches in my leg (fell out of a tree) were equally low key.

My brother Mel should have received the award for childhood injuries.  As the doctor picked the shrapnel out of his left buttock he could only say he hadn’t seen an injury like that since World War II.  The details are fairly hazy as I don’t understand bombs.  Apparently all the neighborhood boys, my brothers included, pooled their caps, stuffed them into a length of pipe, did whatever is required to make it shoot straight ahead and gathered one afternoon to give it a go.  All the little heads bent over the cast iron pipe as it was ignited for its trip across two fields. It went nowhere, except around and around, shooting increasing numbers of sparks.

Run!  Everybody ran.  Mel ran the wrong way, not fast enough and the little device exploded, against his left buttock.  With the support of most of the crew he limped home, where he and Walt invented a fantastical tale of running and falling down that fell to pieces when he had to drop his drawers for a mother exam.  Leading to our wonderful old family doctor remarking on his luck and the extent of the injury as the poor kid lay on his belly and had shrapnel picked from his rear end.  Mel was eleven that summer.

The shrapnel incident closed the book on mom and dad as the ambulance, but only because all further escapades didn’t involve blood or bones.

Left to right:  crutches, stitches, ambulance driver, shrapnel

Foreground:  never had a licking