Keep the Coffee Comimg

We have sun. It has become a lovely day, but a fall day at 64°. My house is even a bit chillier. The nights have all been in the 50’s, not cold enough yet for the leaves to change. The weatherman is predicting a nor’easter at the end of the week. Those storms bring strong winds, heavy rain and a wild surf. We on the coast get hit the hardest with the strongest winds and a higher tide. Sand is carried by the wind and beaches erode. They are terrific storms.

I have always been mesmerized by storms. I remember the hurricanes when I was a kid. I’d watch out the window. The wind was so strong the trees and bushes bent. The wind was loud, frightening. The old wooden windows rattled. The rain pelted against the glass. I remember the giant elm which stood across the street went down in the 1954 hurricane, Hurricane Carol. I heard it fall. Branches from other trees littered the grass and the streets. Yards were a mess. I remember my father got to work right away cleaning the yard. We helped by piling the branches we could carry. The best part was the small bonfire when my father burned the debris. It filled the air with that wonderful smoky smell, and the firelight shined in the late afternoon.

I remember the start of the rainy season in Ghana. It hadn’t rained for months. The ground was sand. The fields were empty. We knew it was coming when the days started to get humid. The nights got warmer. I remember one day when the sky got dark with grey-black, angry looking clouds, which darkened the day. When the rain started, it was torrential. I saw a lightning bolt strike the ground in front of my house. It looked like a kid’s drawing of lightning with crooked lines of light. It was so unexpected I jumped a bit. I had been watching from my small porch in the front of the house. I decided to go inside prompted by the lightning bolt and the metal roof of the porch.

I didn’t write any lists or chores for today. I seem to ignore them anyway. I’ll end up doing something impromptu, something which catches my eye. I do have my uke practice tonight. That’s it for sure.

Yesterday with all its rain has made for an ugly today, a damp, dark day. It is only 61°. The breeze is at times a wind. Being inside in my comfy clothes is cozy and warm. The dogs are napping beside me. The coffee is great. I like my morning.

This week I am attending a special event, a drill team reunion, a reunion of St. Patrick’s Shamrocks. I joined the junior drill team when I was ten. We never competed. We just learned how to march. We did that at the armory on Main Street, a brick building with a pool table, a hall filled with unit flags, offices and a wide empty room upstairs. It is now a hardware store. When I was part of the senior drill team, we practiced upstairs. Every Tuesday we learned our maneuver for the summer competitions. We were all friends. We went to St. Pat’s together. We grew up together. We stayed friends though we didn’t see other often though I do keep in touch with my friend Maria. She is the one who took the lead to get us all together. She and I started in the junior drill together. We have some fun memories. The best one is when we were fooling around while someone was getting help in marching and no one was watching us. Maria hit the floor and made enough noise to get yelled at while I just stood and looked innocent. I do that well, the innocent thing. She still blames me. I deny it and will always deny it. This denial drives her crazy so I do it often.

When I was a kid, I never wanted to learn things like sewing, crocheting or cooking. My mother tried to teach me, but I just wasn’t interested. It was in Ghana when I first baked cookies and sewed anything. I had a wall of windows in my bedroom, louvered windows. I wanted more privacy so I bought some cloth in the market, measured the length of the windows and cut the cloth. I used string underneath a sort of top hem which I sewed by hand with giant stitches. I then strung the curtain by the string across all the windows and attached each end to a part of the window. I thought it looked great as long as you looked from the outside or not too closely inside. I remember the curtain cloth was brown with decorative sections on the top and bottom and a plain light tan middle.

I baked sugar cookies for my first Christmas away. I had to make a 200 mile round trip for gas so I could use my oven. I hauled my gas cylinder by bus. The cylinder was bulky and oh so heavy when filled. I had cookie cutters from home my mother had sent me. I used a beer bottle as a roller. It took me a while to make the cookies and bake them, but it was all worth it. They were delicious. They were the start of my love for cooking and baking; however, the curtain wasn’t enough for me to want to sew anything beyond buttons.

Today is chilly at 64°. It is supposed to rain most of the day, and the darkness of the day and the color of the clouds have me waiting for the first drops. I’ve decided to put the storm door on the back door as cold air comes in at night because I have to leave the door open for the dogs to go out. I can feel the chill all the way down the hall. Summer is truly gone.

My father used to spend a whole Saturday taking down the screens and putting on the storms which had been stored in the cellar. He needed a ladder. That, of course, scared us all. First he would climb the ladder and take the screens off the windows one by one. Next he’d carry a storm up the ladder. He had to hook it at the top of the window. That was the dangerous step because he needed both hands. The storms were heavy as the frames were wooden so we watched and waited. He never fell, so unlike my father. He moved from window to window then to both doors. Once the storms were on, we seldom opened a window as we had to hook it at the bottom so it would stay open just a bit. Besides, the inside windows were drafty even with the storms so we had air, cold air, and sometimes even frost on the inside window glass. I used to use my nails and write a message in the ice.

My dad was a football fan. Every week he watched the Giants, his favorite team as there were no Patriots back then. He was a screamer. If there was a fumble or an interception, he’d let the players know his dissatisfaction. He used to carry in dinner or snacks and eat while watching. His spot was on the side of the couch at the arm rest. It was beside a table on which he had a program guide, a holder for his glasses, an ashtray, a book he was reading and a filled candy dish, usually with Hershey’s miniatures. Sometimes he’d hide special candy under the couch. It was always right below where he sat so not so great a hiding spot. We all raided his candy. He’d eat his Hydrox cookies with milk. My father was a snacker.

I’m watching the Patriots mostly, but I’ll sneak looks at the Sox game. It is amazing that baseball’s regular season is coming to an end. I was standing on the deck the other day, and the air felt like autumn. No trees have changed yet, but that is coming. Summer is riding off into the sunset to mix a metaphor. Fall will soon hold sway.