Posted tagged ‘Saturday chores’

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.”

October 11, 2014

It was a mirror under the nose morning as I slept until after ten. I always wonder if my neighbors will notice my paper still sits in the driveway so late and hope I’m okay or if they’ll just shake their heads and think that woman sleeps really late. I know they are up before seven every morning.

It’s raining. The house is dark, and I haven’t turned on any lights. The dog and cats are sleeping, the cats in here with me and the dog in her crate. She and I are going to the dump today because I figure the rain will keep people away, and tomorrow will be a madhouse as the dump is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Rainy Saturdays this time of year were the worst when I was a kid. It was too chilly to be outside playing in the rain, and there wasn’t a whole lot to do in the house. We could watch TV, play board games or read, and we’d try each until we were bored enough to move on to another. We often ended up fighting over the board game. It was always a he said-she said argument or accusations of cheating, and my mother would yell for us to put the game away. Most times I’d lie in bed and read. It was one of the few places where I could be by myself. I figure rainy Saturdays drove my mother crazy because she was stuck with the four of us, and we were stuck with each other. My father was usually off doing his Saturday stuff. When I think back, my mother was always around while my father worked until late every day and on Saturdays he was off doing his errands and then he’d worked outside in the yard. Sunday was the only day he was around the whole time except he went to an early mass where he was an usher. Once in a while we went with him, but it was really early.

My mother was the disciplinarian when my father wasn’t around. He was always the threat, “If you don’t stop what you’re doing, I’m telling your father.” That scared us. My mother was easy-going while my father wasn’t. We usually stopped. She never did tell.

“How strange it is to view a town you grew up in, not in wonderment through the eyes of youth, but with the eyes of a historian on the way things were.”

August 24, 2013

The morning is delightfully chilly. The sun, though, is warm and has drawn Fern and the dog to the mat by the front door. The deck is in shadows so I stayed inside to read the papers. My lawn got cut this morning. The noise scares Fern so she sits on the floor between my feet until the lawn is done. The deck cleaning is after the lawn and that noise is right by the window in here so Fern runs for cover. Now that everything is quiet she’s asleep in the warmth of the morning sun.

My mother did her grocery shopping on Friday evenings. She didn’t learn to drive until she was in her late 30’s so she had to be driven to the store by my dad. The weekend was always errand and chore time for my dad. Taking my mother was first on his list. We always liked   their going grocery shopping because cookies and treats were back in the house. Though they never lasted long, it was still nice having them for a while. Oreos were a staple, no fancy double stuffed or orange at Halloween, just your regular Oreos. My sisters were famous for eating just the middles and feeding the rest to Duke, our dog, a Boxer of course. He knew to stay close to my two sisters.

Saturdays my dad went uptown in the mornings to drop off his shirts at the Chinaman and to get a trim at the barber shop. It was a small shop with either two or three chairs. I can’t remember which. After an Italian deli opened up, my dad would stop there to buy cold cuts. The place was called Angelos.

I swear my dad knew at least half the town. He had lived there since high school, was an usher at church and was also a member of the Red Men; he was even Sachem once. It was an all male club which had meetings and did some charitable stuff but mostly I think it was a place for guys to get together and have a few drinks. The Red Men building was a nondescript gray square with only a door in the front. It was on a side street and had an unpaved parking lot beside it. You had to know what it was because the front gave no inkling. The downstairs was for drinking while the upstairs was for rent, and I remember going there many times. We even had my aunt the nun’s anniversary there. I think it was her 50th.

The Red Men building was razed as were several others including the Chinaman’s laundry when that part of uptown became the victim of beautification. The town built a park and a parking lot where those buildings used to stand. I was sorry to see them go. The ones on the Main Street were not the prettiest, and they needed some tender care, but they were old and had been a part of the town for decades. A bit of local color disappeared for the sake of beautification. I figure that’s the definition of irony.