Keep the Coffee Comimg

Today is cloudy and damp. It is already warm, 75˚. Rain is a possibility, but a remote possibility. My house is clean, and I didn’t do any cleaning. Lee and Roseana did. Lee checked, as he always does, to see if I had anything he needed to do. I forgot to have him switch the storm doors for the screen doors. I’ll do it, but I won’t bring the storms down the cellar. They are awkward and heavy. I don’t do stairs while carrying awkward anymore.

The Cape is not a hotbed of exotic restaurants. Falmouth used to have a Caribbean restaurant, and I made the forty five minute trip a few times for goat and plantain. That restaurant is gone now. Wellfleet had a wonderful Mexican restaurant, and, again, I was happy for the ride. That too is gone. Asian restaurants are plentiful. I can eat Thai, Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese. I tried that last one only once so I probably should try it again. Down Cape is a South African restaurant. I have been there several times. The food is different than West African food, but I’ve happily made do with beef bobotie.

Once a week I order delivery, except this week when I ordered twice, but one order was lunch so it doesn’t count. A couple of days ago I had a Panera delivery of a Cuban sandwich. It was both lunch and dinner, half for one and half for the other. I’ve had fish and chips, a fish sandwich, seafood pasta, pizza, subs, cheeseburgers, beef with mashed potatoes and asparagus, a piece of peanut pie and some chocolate chip cookies. I figure I am helping my local restaurants stay afloat, and I’m salving my angst.

I didn’t go out yesterday, just because. I am going out today as I need a change of scenery. I have two stops. One is the nursery, and the other is the grocery store. I need bread and I need chocolate.

Everything is as it should be. The trash is gone. My shower has a new floor, the posts on the garden fence are back in place, all my deck flowers have been planted, the table, the grill and the lounge furniture were cleaned and the deck itself was power washed. I have a few decorative touches to add like small tables, prayer flags and candles, but that won’t take long. I’m ready for a summer of lolling on the deck.

The crossword puzzle in the globe had a great clue, one I knew right away. The clue wanted the country between Togo and Nigeria. It is Benin which was called Dahomey when I lived in Ghana. One of my trips was to go from Ghana, to Togo to Benin.

Today is cloudy and damp. The day is already hot, in the high 70’s. The house, though, is pleasantly cool.

I still need a few more flowers for the clay pots on the deck and some potting soil. I also need to put the furniture covers away. They were left out so they could dry. I need to get a new grill cover. That would be cover number 4.

Every night I light the small lamp in the living room, the over the sink light in the kitchen and the lamp here in the den. I still have white lights in the windows and a string of lights outside coming from the big lit star. I noticed a neighbor up the street also has a lit string of lights.

I remember summer nights when I was a kid. The living room was always dark, lit by a single lamp and the flickering light from our black and white TV. I sometimes sat outside on the back steps. I could hear the muted voices of our close neighbors. Their windows and back doors were open. I could hear the TV from next door. I used to sit there a while taking in the night.

Other than last year, I wound strings of lights around the deck rail. Some lights lasted a while while others went dead in a couple of nights. The spawns of Satan chewed the wires. I have three sets of lights I have been reluctant to put outside. The chewed lights were cheap, only $3 or $4 dollars a string, but the store where I bought the cheap lights was closed. The new lights I bought on line. I’m thinking I’ll take the risk. I love the lights at night.

The other night I saw my first firefly. It blinked by the window so I went out, found him and followed his light across the backyard. I remember the field below my house. During the day grasshoppers jumped in front of me as I walked, but at night, the field was glorious, lit by the fireflies which flew all over. I’d sit at the top of the hill and never tire of watching. I knew fairies were real.

The morning is cloudy. It is already getting hot. The forecast is sun and a high of 79˚. Yesterday I turned on the AC for most of the day. I was comfortable. Henry didn’t pant.

When I was a kid, we didn’t even have a fan. Upstairs was hot. Downstairs was always cooler because my mother kept the shades down and the curtains shut. She seldom used the oven because it heated the whole kitchen, a small kitchen. I don’t remember ever minding the heat even at night. My days were so full I was always tired and fell asleep easily. Last night, in the wonderfully cool house, I fell asleep just as easily.

The day of the deck has begun. Skip, my factotum, has been missing in action. I called and left messages, and I wrote to his friend Bobby on Facebook who is usually with him, but I got no answers. Don is outside starting work from a list. The first job is replacing the rotted wooden floor of the outside shower. He also has to remove three front fence posts which have rotted then replace them with new posts. That’s not so easy as flowers cover the fence. The herbs and flowers for the deck have to be potted, but I still need more flowers so I’ll go in a bit to Agway.

When it got really hot, pre-AC, I’d sleep downstairs on my pull out couch and leave the back door open to catch any air. After I bought a fan, I moved back upstairs and had the fan blowing right on me. Then I got an AC for the bedroom, and my room always got cold. My house redo included central air. It was the perfect choice. I love lolling in my cool house.

The heat will be around all week. The humidity will return tomorrow. Yesterday, the house got hot, 77˚, so the AC ran all afternoon into the evening. When I needed my sweatshirt, I knew the house was cold enough. Upstairs, though, stayed warm. I arranged my hand fan on the bed so my face got the breeze. I fell asleep.

The sun was shining when I woke up, but it has since disappeared behind clouds. The day is a bit darker, but no rain is predicted, just heat. There is an every now and then breeze but in-between the leaves are still. According to the forecast, the sun will be back. It will be another hot day. I’m keeping my sweatshirt handy.

I’m going to buy the rest of my deck flowers today. They’ll be planted tomorrow. After that will be the grand opening of the deck. I’ll play some John Philip Souza and wave flags.

When I was growing up, we all got measles and maybe chicken pox. If one kid got it, we all got it. I remember the itch of the chicken pox. I had the measles when I was about nine or ten. I didn’t get the mumps. Before we could go to school, we had to have a smallpox vaccine shot. Mine was on my upper leg but some of my friends got it on their upper arms. It made an ugly scar.

I was okay for the first couple of months, but I suspect if you now check the dictionary for the definition of bored you’ll see a picture of me yawning. My days really are boring. I clean a little, and I read a lot. I finished another book last night. I watch TV but not so much, mostly movies. I watch for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes then I get bored again. My Netflix roll of movies for Kathleen to continue watching is long.

I’ve already dust mopped the floor. I did it on my way back from the kitchen. I never do just one thing anymore. If I go upstairs, I clean the table on the way and then the stairs on the way down. I hate cleaning.

I am going out today!

This is my annual Father’s Day post. Many of you read it every year. It is about my amazing father, my funny and loving father. It brings back a rush of memories every time I read it. It makes me smile and long for my father. He was one of a kind in the best of all possible ways. This morning, as soon as I woke up, I wished him a Happy Father’s Day.

In my front garden are a couple of ground cover plants. They have been there for years. My father planted them for me. One weekend he and my mother came down to visit. My dad brought his lawn mower, a hand mower, garden tools and those few plants. While my mother and I shopped, my dad mowed the lawn in the front and the back. Both yards were fields no longer. He weeded the garden. I could see the flowers. The garden was lovely. I get to remember that weekend every time I go out the front gate and see my father’s plants. They touch my heart.

I have so many memories of growing up, of family trips and my dad trying to whack at us from the front seat and never succeeding, of playing whist in the kitchen, with the teams being my mom and me against my dad and brother, of Sunday rides, of going to the drive-in and the beach and of being loved by my dad. Memories of my dad are with me always, but today my memories are all of my dad, and my heart is filled to the brim with missing him. When I close my eyes, I see him so clearly.

On a warm day he’d be sitting on the front steps with his coffee cup beside him while reading the paper. He’d have on a white t-shirt and maybe his blue shorts. He’d wave at the neighbors going by in their cars. They all knew him and would honk back. He loved being retired, and we were glad he had a few years of just enjoying life.

He was the funniest guy, mostly on purpose but lots of times by happenstance. We used to have Dad stories, all those times when we roared and he had no idea why. He used to laugh along with us and ask, “What did I say? What did I say?” We were usually laughing too hard to tell him. He was a good sport about it.

I know you’ve heard this before, but it is one of my favorite Dad stories. He, my mom and I were in Portugal. I was driving. My dad was beside me. On the road, we had passed many piggyback tandem trucks, all hauling several truck loads behind them. On the back of the last truck was always the sign Vehiculo Longo. We came out of a gas station behind one of those. My father nonchalantly noted, “That guy Longo owns a lot of trucks.” I was laughing so hard I could barely drive and my mother, in the back seat, was doubled over in laughter.

My father wasn’t at all handy around the house. Putting up outside lights once, he gave himself a shock which knocked him off his step-ladder. He once sawed himself out of a tree by sitting on the wrong end of the limb. The bookcase he built in the cellar had two shelves, one on the floor and the other too high to use. He said it was lack of wood. When painting the house once, the ladder started to slide, but he stayed on his rung anyway with brush in hand. The stroke of the paint on the house followed the path of his fall. Lots of times he set his shoe or pant leg on fire when he was barbecuing. He was a big believer in lots of charcoal lighter fluid.

My father loved games, mostly cards. We played cribbage all the time, and I loved making fun of his loses, especially if I skunked him. When he won, it was superb playing. When I won, it was luck. I remember so many nights of all of us, including aunts and uncles, crowding around the kitchen table playing cards, especially hi-lo jack. He loved to win and we loved lording it over him when he lost.

My father always said he never snacked, and my mother would roll her eyes. He kept chocolate under the couch, hidden from everyone else, but, we, everyone else, knew. He loved Pilot Crackers covered with butter. Hydrox was his preferred cookie. His vanilla ice cream was always doused with Hershey’s syrup. That man did love his chocolate.

My father was a most successful businessman. He was hired to turn a company around and he did. He was personable and funny and remembered everyone’s names. Nobody turned him down.

My father always went out Sunday mornings for the paper and for donuts. He never remembered what kind of donut I like. His favorite was plain. He’d make Sunday breakfast when I visited: bacon, eggs and toast. I can still see him standing over the stove with a dish towel over his shoulders. He always put me in charge of the toast.

If I ever needed anything, I knew I could call my father. He was generous. When we went out to eat, he always wanted to pay and was indignant when we one upped him by setting it up ahead of time that one of us paid. One Christmas he gave us all $500.00, not as a gift but to buy gifts.

My father left us when he was far too young. It was sudden. He had a heart attack. I had spoken with him just the day before. It was pouring that day, and I told him how my dog Shauna was soaked. He loved that dog and told me to wipe his baby off. I still remember that whole conversation. I still miss my father every day. 

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

When I opened the front door, I was surprised to find the morning so hot, already in the high 70’s. My house had stayed comfortably cool all night and into the early morning (that would be 9 for me). I did run the AC for a while yesterday. The house was 78˚, too hot for me.

Dinner last night had me yumming the whole time. I had roast beef, creamy mashed potatoes and peas, just about my favorite dinner. On the day before I left for the Peace Corps and Ghana, it was my last dinner at home.

Starting Monday, restaurants can have indoor diners. Governor Baker is slowly opening up the state, but I’m still in the house. I only go out if I have to or need to. The need to go comes more often now. I get to a point where I have to take a ride to maintain my sanity (a bit of a hyperbole but only a bit).

I need more flowers and herbs. I’ll have to go early tomorrow when the morning is still cool. The heat will be hanging around all next week.

When I was a kid, my father only put flowers in the garden below the picture window. He always chose marigolds or pansies. This year I bought marigolds, the first time I can remember ever buying them. They aren’t the prettiest or the most colorful, but they bring back memories of my dad. They’re going into one of the deck boxes.

This morning, the air was sweet with the smell of cut grass. Saturday is when my grass is mowed, and my deck is blown clean. This week will be the grand opening of the deck for summer 2020 after the flowers are planted in the boxes, the furniture is uncovered and everything is cleaned. I do need a new cover for my barbecue. I think this will be cover 4. The spawns of Satan took one. It just disappeared. I never found a single piece of it. They stripped the underneath of another one, nest material I figured, by making holes. Number 3 is lying on the ground pockmarked with holes and ready to be trashed.

I did make a small list. I seem to need one to get myself moving. The plants will get watered. I now have my pass for the dump so I’ll go today or tomorrow. My car needs gas for the first time in three months. I guess that’s forward progress.

Today is hot, at least by Cape standards. It is 86˚. The low will be tonight when it drops to the 60’s. This room, my den, is dark and cool because the sun doesn’t hit it until the late afternoon, but I’m thinking the AC will probably be cranking before then. I’m already warm.

Stuck inside has me on a weird schedule. I’m up until 2 or 3 then I sleep in, usually until 10ish. When I woke up his morning, I noticed something white under my bureau. I touched it, and it was warm. I ran for paper towels to clean it up, but I didn’t have to. It was Jack’s paw. He was sleeping under the bureau. I felt silly.

It is time to dust mop the floors again. The fur is back. Yay, now I have a list. My dump sticker arrived yesterday so I can also go to the dump. Be still my heart!

My mashed potatoes and peas are still waiting. I had boring hot dogs for supper last night. But for lunch, I had the best sandwich of tomatoes, cheddar cheese and avocado topped with a horseradish cream sauce on pieces of Hawaiian bread. I think I’m still licking my chops.

When I woke up this morning, I heard the most beautiful bird song outside my bedroom window. Jack too heard it and jumped on the bureau to get at the window. He scared the bird.

My wild rose bush is in bloom. It is covered in dainty white flowers. The bush is on one side of the front flower bed. My landscaper keeps hoping I’ll let him at it, but I’m holding fast. Those bushes are all over the cape. I love riding down 6A this time of year and seeing the rose bushes blooming along the road side.

It is definitely coming on summer. The kids have finished their remote learning. More is opening up here. Some stores now allow inside shopping. I’m not so eager to go shopping, but I am eager to get out of the house if only for a little while. I almost feel like clicking my heels in the air on my way to the car.

The morning is lovely. It is warm without being hot. The sun is bright. A slight breeze is blowing. It will be the last cool day for a little while.

Yesterday, I went to Agway and bought flowers and herbs. I also picked up an order of cat and dog food and assorted treats, lots of treats. Forgetting treats would have been at my own peril. My trunk and back seat were filled. I may go out again today as I do need more herbs and flowers. I forgot about the deck pots. I think I’ll go to a different farm just to see what they have. Once I’m in the flower zone I’m almost unstoppable.

Some things never change. Take out boxes at my favorite Chinese restaurant look the same as they did when I was a kid, decorated in red on white with a pagoda, a thank you on two sides and a thin wire handle. Wooden chop sticks used to be included. I’d use mine to stab the food. It didn’t work well with rice.

Thongs, the ones for your feet, still have that piece between the toes which separates the big toe from the rest. They are called flip flops now because that’s what they do, a nice bit of onomatopoeia. I also think it is because thongs no longer refer to footwear. I have some thongs aka flip-flops, the traditional flat ones, which made such a slapping sound when you run. I have a couple of pairs of thick bottomed, good for walking thongs, but mostly I wear them around the house. I bring a pair when I travel.

I have taken chicken out of the freezer. It’s time for a real meal, not cereal and not eggs though I do love eggs. It’s just that I can’t even remember the last time I made a meal worthy of potatoes and peas and maybe even gravy. I’m starting to salivate.

Today is glorious. The high will be around 70˚. The humidity has disappeared. From my den window I can see the leaves in the oak tree are dappled by sunlight and gently blowing. I’m glad I have to go out today.

When I was a kid, we went to the dentist when we had a tooth ache and to the doctor if we had medical stuff. I remember going to the doctor’s office after I fell down the stairs when I was around 10 or 11. His office was right beside my school yard. It was in a huge old house and was on the first floor. We, my mother and I, sat on wooden chairs outside his office waiting for our turn. I remember his desk was in front of the windows. I also remember a skeleton beside his desk. I hoped it wasn’t real. The doctor was a huge man. Mostly I remember his belly. He washed my gash, the reason we went there. He wasn’t gentle. He said no stitches as it was already infected. I couldn’t have been happier.

I hated the dentist from open your mouth to the novocain to the drill. I only went if I had a tooth ache. Peace Corps changed that. I had to have any tooth issues solved before I left for Ghana. I found a dentist in Lawrence. My father verified he’d play the bill, and we were off. It took at least three appointments. At staging in Philadelphia, I had my dental check before we left. My guy had done a great job. My teeth passed. They would still pass now.

My town used to have a hospital, the New England Sanitarium and Hospital. It was on the Fells, the Middlesex Fells Reservation. It was where I was born. I remember nurses taking the bus I used to take to get to the skating rink. The bus stop was in front of the nursing houses which were beautiful and made out of stone. I remember the white porches in front of all the houses. The nurses were proper with white dresses and stiff white hats.

I drove by the hospital on one of memory rides. It was abandoned and covered in graffiti. I found out it had been empty and abandoned for over 20 years.

My memory rides always see what was, what used to be.

Today is cool, cloudy and breezy. I’m wearing my sweatshirt because I left the windows open last night, and the house is cold. I’m actually going out later. It feels somehow like a solemn occasion. Perhaps I should dress up and wear one of my fascinators, the one with feathers. I’m going to Agway. It is the perfect day for wandering the flower aisles.

My hometown had shoe factories, a box factory and chemical companies along side the tracks. The train ran when I was a kid. I used to keep pennies in my pocket just in case the train came. When it did, I’d put a couple of pennies on the track so they’d be flattened by the train. I used to walk the tracks as they were a bit of a shortcut home. I remember jumping over railroad ties with double O’s. If I stepped on one, it was like step on a crack and break your mother’s back. I did not want to be responsible for breaking my mother’s back.

The square back then had two or three pharmacies, a men’s clothing store owned by the brother of the Catholic undertaker, a children’s clothing store, the movie theater, a luncheonette, Stoneham Spa, Hank’s Bakery and best of all, a Woolworth’s. There was police box in the middle of Main Street. Down from the square was the diner. I loved that diner. My dad would sometimes take me there for breakfast. After drill practice, some of would go there for a brownie covered in chocolate sauce with a bit of whipped cream on the top.

It has been a long time since I last lived in my hometown. It is quite different now. One shoe factory was turned into luxury condos. It is down from the town square. The railroad tracks are gone as is the box factory. I remember seeing workers on cigarette breaks sitting outside the factory. All the local pharmacies are gone. Where O’Grady’s diner was is a hardware store. The armory where we had winter drill practice is also a hardware store. But some of the changes are welcome. Instead of one Chinese restaurant, there is an Italian restaurant where one of the pharmacies used to be, an Indian restaurant, two Thai restaurants and an Asian fusion restaurant. The movie theater has been transformed. It looks the same from the street, but it’s now a live theater. My sister and I go every year for the Christmas play. I get a chuckle seeing people in the balcony. It was off limits during Saturday matinees because of all the candy thrown from there.

When I visit my sister, I always do a memory ride. I start in the square, go pass my elementary school and then follow what was my walk home. Where we lived hasn’t changed much except for the tall trees.

I had the best childhood in that town. My sister still lives there as do some of my friends. I don’t visit often enough.