Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
May 29, 2014
The house was cold this morning at 63˚. I wanted to stay cozy and warm under the comforter, but Gracie got up and didn’t come back so I knew she wanted out. I groused, put on my sweatshirt and my slippers, the ones with the holes in the toes, and came downstairs. Gracie went out and I forgave her after my first sip of coffee.
When I was a kid, our back screen door was wooden. It was dark green around the outside edges. My mother constantly yelled at us not to slam the door on our way out. We never did. It just closed that way on its own. She didn’t buy it. “You could hold it and close it,” was her answer, a typical parent’s answer because no self-respecting kid was ever going to stop, hold the door and gently close it. We certainly never did and the door kept slamming and she kept yelling. I thought of it as a summer ritual.
I always checked the coin holder on every public telephone. Sometimes I’d find a dime, a wealth of money. I also used to pick up glass bottles and turn them in for pennies. Even pennies had value back then. I never hunted for the bottles, but if I saw one, I’d carry it to the store. The shopman would open the huge cash register, the one with the round metal keys and the ching sound, and get my pennies. I liked it when my pocket jingled. It made me feel wealthy.
The first phone I remember had finger holes for the dialing with numbers and letters. You turned the dial all the way until your finger stopped then you let go and the dial returned to the beginning and then you entered the second letter or another number. The dial made a great clicking sound on its return trip. Our phone number started with ST 6, and that was the start of every phone number in town. We had a party line and had to listen to the rings to figure out if the call was ours or Mrs. McGaffigan’s.
My local school district made the paper when it said that cursive writing would remain a part of the curriculum. It seems many schools no longer teach it. When I was a kid, I swear every classroom in America had the alphabet, those cards from A to Z, posted one after the other over the chalk board. Each card held one capital and one small letter in cursive. I always liked Z, both capital and small. X was another favorite which may yet become the most used letter in the alphabet. Sign your X next to the dotted line.
Categories: Musings
Tags: ching, cold night, cursive writing, finger holes, morning coffee, party lines, public telephone booth, rotary phones, screen doors, slamming doors, summer ritual, X
Comments: 15 Comments
May 27, 2014
Yesterday was a weird weather day. It was cloudy then sunny then rainy then cloudy and rainy again. We ate outside under the umbrella. I could hear the heavy drops over my head and loved the sound. The rain didn’t last long, but the clouds hung around the rest of the evening. Today is really warm and the sun is playing hide and seek: disappearing and then returning. The prediction is for rain and the cloudy skies make me believe it.
The Cape was filled this weekend and the line of cars waiting to leave over the Sagamore Bridge stretched for miles. The paper today was filled with glowing predictions for the summer based on this weekend. I groaned a little, but that’s the price to pay for living here. I knew it going in so any complaints are just from frustration, useless at best.
My world is turning green from pine pollen. My voice is already raspy and I cough. The windows are closed as I’m trying to keep the pollen at bay, but I am Sisyphus with a dust cloth instead of a rock.
I grew up in summer darkness. My mother kept the shades down all day so the house would stay cooler. We didn’t even have a fan to push the night’s hot air around, but most times we kids were so exhausted from playing all day sleep came easily despite the heat.
I have these wonderfully funny memories of being wakened up at night from the bed rocking and finding my father standing on my bed trying to keep his balance as he chased down mosquitos on the ceiling with a newspaper in his hand. My father was a bit obsessive sometimes and flies and mosquitoes were among his nemeses. He wielded the fly swatter with perfection. The fly would be stationary, and my father with swatter in position would sneak up on it, swat it and then throw away what was left of the fly. Sometimes he’d have to clean the ceiling or the lampshade or worst of all, the kitchen counter. He kept count of his triumphs, “Got it,” was his summer refrain.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bridge traffic, cloudy, cool house, flies, fly swatter, green, mosquitos, pine pollen, rainy, rolled up newsapaper, Sagamore, weird weather
Comments: 29 Comments
May 26, 2014
This is my annual Memorial Day tribute. I hope you remember those to whom we owe so much.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.” While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860′s tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.
Memorial Day
“Dulce et decorum est”
The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.
The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.
Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.
May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.
In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.
Joyce Kilmer
Categories: Musings
Tags: Memorial Day parade
Comments: 5 Comments
May 25, 2014
Yesterday was a delight. It was so lovely a day that, despite the tourists, I ventured out to do an errand or two. First was the hardware store for a new American flag, pole and holder. I found one and will put it up today. Next I checked a small antique shop where I am sometimes lucky in finding odd, small, neat and inexpensive stuff. Yesterday I wasn’t lucky. I stopped to get gas then I took a roundabout ride to Dennisport partly for the joy of the ride and partly to avoid the traffic. When I got to Dennisport, I was shocked. Usually I can just pick a parking spot as there are few cars, but yesterday I had to ride around twice before a car pulled out right in front of where I was headed. I smartly paralleled parked and went to get my sandwich and pastry.
Today is cloudy and chilly but the sun is trying to break through to bring a little light. The oak leaves are being tossed by the wind. The day is pretty quiet. I don’t hear any neighbors. I guess today is an inside day.
All the villages are having parades tomorrow. I love Memorial Day parades. They are the same in every small town in America. They were exactly the same when I was a little kid. The police cars with lights blinking start the parade and the fire engines ringing their bells end it. In between are color guards, the veterans from various wars, school bands, the brownies and girl and boy scouts. My town always has a WWII jeep, the same one each year, carrying a veteran too old to walk. The parade takes maybe fifteen minutes to pass by. The small crowd is enthusiastic and claps for everyone especially the veterans.
I remember marching in my first Memorial Day parade. I was a brownie and my whole troop marched. I was probably around seven and I took the event quite seriously. I was proud of being a part of that parade. My parents clapped when I walked by them. That was a highlight for me. When I got home, I was bubbly and so very happy as I relayed the whole story of the parade from the beginning to the end, from one street to the other. I proudly told my parents that everyone was out of step but me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: borwnies, cloudy and chilly, Dennisport, girl and boy scouts, Memorial Day parade, out os step, police cars, small town parades, sunny day, traffic
Comments: 8 Comments
May 24, 2014
It is really late, I know, but I slept in. It was a mirror under the nose to make sure I was still alive type morning. It was nearly eleven before I got out of bed. Excuses? I need none. I do have a few things I could do but nothing of any importance, and I am a bit afraid to go out as the traffic to get on the cape was backed up for miles so the roads will be heavy with cars. I’m going to practice all my traffic curses to get ready for the season.
When I was a kid, we never came to the cape. We went to local beaches in Gloucester or we went north to Maine or New Hampshire. I was in high school before I first came down here, and it wasn’t with the family. It was with the drill team to march in a parade in Hyannis. We parked on a side street at the northern end of Hyannis. It was right across from what would become my father’s office in a couple of years. I noticed it was the Hood plant, but it didn’t make a big impression. Had I been a soothsayer, I’d know that plant meant moving and leaving all the friends with whom I was spending the day. After we marched, we spent the rest of the day at a beach. I think it was Scusset Beach right on the canal. It was a fun day.
When I first moved down here, I hated it. It was my first time in a public school, I didn’t know a soul and the guidance counselor had persuaded me to take Latin 4. Even though I had spent all of my school years in a Catholic school my parents made me go to CCD at the church which happened to be across the street. My brother also had to go. The class met in the kitchen of the church hall as all the other spaces were taken. We convinced the priest teaching the class that my brother and I were twins so he’d only have to suffer through one year of CCD. It was an unruly group and the poor priest was at wits end. Eventually we took pity and quieted down. I have no idea what we learned, if anything.
My parents decided that my brother and I didn’t really like them all that much. When we first moved down here, I went to visit my friends at home at least one weekend a month and more if I could scrounge up the money, but over time I made friends and came to love the cape. When I was in the Peace Corps, my parents moved off cape back to the town where I’d grown up. They thought I’d probably join them, but when I finished my years in Ghana, I came home to Cape Cod.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cape cod, CCD, curses, Hood, Latin 4, parade, Peace Corps, Scusset Beach, sleeping in, traffic
Comments: 15 Comments
May 23, 2014
The house is far chillier than outside so I felt a bit silly wearing a sweatshirt in the morning warmth when I went to get the papers, but my house was only 65˚.
In the second grade I became a brownie. Lots of my friends became brownies too and we could wear our brownie uniforms to school instead of our regular uniforms if we had a troop meeting. I had the regular brownie dress and beanie, but I also had a brown purse which attached to the belt and had the brownie symbol on it. It had been a stocking stuffer one Christmas. I was proud to be a brownie but was thrilled on fly up day, the day I became a girl scout. We had prepared by learning scout songs, the pledge and everything girl scout. Our parents were invited to the ceremony. There were candles on the table and pins in rows. Candles always seem to make any ceremony a rite like in church. I remember our brownie leader made a speech and each of us was called in turn to the front where the girl scout pin was placed on our collars. After we all had received them, we stood as a group and said the girl scout pledge as scouts for the first time. Now our uniforms were green.
Jordan Marsh had a section where you could buy boy and girl scout clothes and paraphernalia. My mother and I went, and we bought my sash and my girl scout green tam. On the sash went the name of my town and our troop number as well as all the badges we earned. The Girl Scout Handbook listed what we had to do to earn those badges. I earned many. It wasn’t difficult.
Lots of us were scouts and most of us earned our ten-year pins. We were always proud to wear our uniforms. I remember wonderful overnights at the scout lodge in my town. It had a huge fireplace, and we slept on wooden cots which weren’t all that easy to put together. We ate hobo stew. We explored the woods on scavenger hunts for certain leaves and plants. We sang taps as the flag was lowered and folded.
I know a couple of scouts. I buy mint cookies from them every year. These scouts do so many different things than we had done, and they have a multitude of choices for uniforms, but they all still have sashes for their badges and they recite the Girl Scout Pledge. It seems we are connected.
Categories: Musings
Tags: badges, brownies, chilly house, girl scout cookies, girl scout pledge, girl scouts, overnights, pins, sashes, scavenger hunts
Comments: 11 Comments
May 22, 2014
Today has me smiling. No, it is not from the weather as it is cloudy and chilly. Nope, today feels like spring has a hold and summer is pushing. My irrigation guy came today and turned on the lawn irrigation system and the outside shower. Yesterday the front garden was mulched and looks beautiful. All the lilacs have bloomed and some white and purple flowers have also bloomed. I don’t know what they are but they are delicate flowers which seem to bow their heads to the sun. The lilies of the valley have flowered and have spread along the rough side of my driveway and into my backyard. They originally came from my mother’s house so every spring I am thankful for their arrival. I need to buy flower pots, my herbs and veggies, but I’ll wait until next week, until after the hubbub of the long weekend. Lots to do every spring.
Yesterday was a busy day. I bought food for man and beast: for one woman, two cats, a dog and birds. I also bought a new spawn buster feeder. My big spawn buster is missing a critical part, the round, green closer which also acts as a perch. I have checked the entire yard and didn’t find it. I suspect the red spawn stole it and has hidden it. I called the company this morning, and they are sending one right along, no charge. Later today I’ll fill the remaining feeders and put out the new one. I miss my birds.
The flamingo and gnome are still here in their winter quarters. They will be brought out when the deck is summer ready. I’ll play some music and we’ll have a small parade befitting the occasion. I’ll deck the flamingo in her Hawaiian outfit. It will be perfect. The gnome is wearing blue.
We always got out of school for the summer early in June, earlier than the public schools. I think the nuns were ready to get rid of us. The last day was always a half day. The days before it were for final tests and cleaning. We were a free workforce, and I remember we emptied our desks and washed them inside and out. The blackboard got washed. Bulletin boards were stripped and left empty. By the last day, nothing much was left to do. We got our report cards, and we were all promoted to the next grade. When that final bell went off, chaos ensued. There were no more lines of students walking two by two. The nuns stayed put in the rooms. No way were they going to take their chances with the screaming hoard of students running out the door and down the streets.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blooming flowers, cleaning the school room, flamingo, gnome, irrigation system, lilacs, lily of the valley, outside shower, promotion, report cards, squirrel buster feeder
Comments: 9 Comments
May 20, 2014
Today is another lovely day. It rained last night. I could hear it as I fell asleep. The night got chilly, but I left my window open any way. This morning I heard the birds and thought it a wonderful way to wake up.
The trees are getting so leafy my neighbors’ houses will soon disappear. My deck in summer always feels isolated like a small island in the middle of nowhere. In the winter I can see four houses down to my friends’ house, but in summer I see only a bit of the house closest to me. I like that sense of peace, that aloneness.
I talk out loud. No one is here to listen, but I do it anyway. Sometimes I ask myself where I left what I’m looking for like a book and now and then my glasses. The other night I opened the fridge door, stood looking and wondered what to have for dinner. I directed that question to Gracie but she just cocked her head and walked away. When I banged my hand a while back, I cursed out loud because I believe that unspoken curses have little or no effect and provide no outlet for emotion. An article in the paper sometimes has me mumbling or grousing. I make comments to the TV and often correct grammar. I scoff at action which seems too outrageous. Baseball games make me crazy, and I know a strike-out with men on base is cause for those curses I mentioned earlier. “What are you doing?” is another out loud comment usually said to the batter swinging at obvious balls. If I knew it was a ball, why the heck didn’t that batter?
I don’t remember when I started talking aloud. I have lived here alone since 1977, and I bet I’ve spoken aloud many, many times over the years. I’ve never been worried about it, but should I ever get an answer, some rethinking might be in order.
Categories: Musings
Tags: baseball games, cold nights, leaft trees, morning birds, talking out loud, talking to the dog, talking to the TV, yelling at the batter
Comments: 12 Comments
May 19, 2014
The mornings have a routine. I make coffee, get the papers, give the cats and the dog their treats, have a cup of coffee while I read each paper and then get dressed. The rest of the day is open. I like my mornings. The cats and the dog have their own routines. Fern and Gracie greet me when I wake up and then follow me downstairs where Maddie is waiting for attention. Gracie goes out, barks a bit and squats. Fern lies in the sun and Maddie stays beside me on the couch. Within a short time, all three of them are having morning naps. I suspect they like their mornings too.
The weather has been perfectly lovely with lots of sun, temperatures in the 60’s and chilly nights for cozy sleeping. The leaves are all open on the oak trees, the lilacs have flowers and the front garden is beginning to bloom. I’m itching to go flower shopping.
Monsters were big when I was a kid. We had the Mummy, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man and insects the size of a city building. Most were scary because I was young. My brother was even afraid of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. He hid under his seat at the movies. But as I got older, they stopped being scary. I had learned the difference between real and pretend. I admit I jumped when the head appeared in the hole in the sunken boat in Jaws. I also jumped when I saw Aliens and a creature leapt at the test tube. I think most people in the theater jumped. Afterwards, we all chuckled in a sort of reflex action.
I yell at the TV during some scary movies. When a character says, “I’ll go check it out,” I yell in warning. He will be next to go, no question about it. In one movie, there was blood up the stairs on the wall, and off he went to check it out. He never made it downstairs. As fort me, blood on the wall would have me running in the opposite direction.
Not much of late scares me. Movies have become blood and mayhem and the number of corpses runs into the double digits. Zombies are being replaced by the living dead, a wonderful oxymoron. I remember my first of them: The Night of the Living Dead. I thought it was gross. I like The Walking Dead, but it too is gross. I do have a conundrum with that show. After the walkers attack and eat a person, how come that person doesn’t become a walker? My guess is they also eat the head, but you never see that, only the dining on the disgusting innards.
I still like a movie which scares me.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Alien, blood and mayhem, classic monsters, coffee and papers, flowers, Jaws, leaves, lovely weather, monsters, mornings, real and pretend, routines, scary movie, The Walking Dead
Comments: 19 Comments
May 18, 2014
Today is cloudy and a bit chillier than yesterday. My bedroom window was open all night, and I was cold this morning, cold enough to grab my comforter. I burrowed down, got cozy and fell asleep for another hour. Gracie woke me up. She banged her paw on the bed right beside where I was sleeping. Even though I kept my eyes closed and my breathing even, she knew I was awake. I gave in and got up. Now she’s sleeping. Oh, the irony!
I loved visiting my grandparents because they lived in a city. The houses were close together separated only by walkways almost like alleys. Small bakeries sold square pieces of cold pizza and Italian ice from opened windows. We played stick ball in the street and baseball against the steps. It was a whole new world to me. I remember two streets up there was a park, and I remember there was a store on the corner of their street. It was tiny but every shelf and counter was filled with something to buy. We went there to spend the dime my grandfather used to give us.
Once my uncle took my brother and me to Logan Airport. We walked from my grandparents’ house in East Boston. My uncle is only two years older than I am so it was just three kids on an adventure. It was a long walk and seemingly longer going home. Logan in those days was a series of hanger type buildings, many made of wood. They were mostly one story. The roofs of some of them were for observation, for watching the planes. There were fences around the perimeters of those roofs, and I remember standing there a long time watching the planes taxi to the runways and fly off while others landed. There were still prop planes and no jetways. People walked from the plane to the terminal. We went through the interconnected terminals, and I took brochures as souvenirs. I remember that as a favorite day. My mother wasn’t so happy when she found out how far we had gone.
I have another memory of when my uncle took my brother and me to the MDC pool. To get to the pool, we had to take a bus and then the subway from my grandparent’s house. I remember standing on the subway platform by myself. I don’t remember exactly where my brother and uncle were standing. A man came up to me. I remember he wore a straw hat, had bad teeth and his coat was striped. He had a cane but it was on hooked on his arm. He spoke to me, and I said hello. He offered me gum and said if I followed him behind the stairs he’d give it to me. Never take candy from a stranger jumped into my head so I ran to find my uncle and brother who were together further down the platform. They wanted to know why I was running. I didn’t tell them what had happened. I broke the rule by saying hello so I kept the whole incident secret. I never told. This isn’t a favorite memory.
Categories: Musings
Tags: candy from strangers, city life, cool day, East Boston, Italian ice, Logan Airport, observation roofs, prop planes, square pizza, subway
Comments: 8 Comments
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