Eternal Life on the Internet

I must confess that I love today’s social technology!  I text and email and send pictures, write this blog….and on and on.  When Pinterest (electronic hoarding) wasn’t working correctly recently it put a crimp in my evening entertainment! (I actually got some housework done)  I confess I would give up my TV, something I really don’t care about any more, before I would let anyone touch my computer.   I’m hooked.

Of all the things I enjoy I especially like Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with so many people I went to school with and other people I had lost touch with years ago.   I’ve also made some new friends and acquaintances and this social medium allows me to get to know more about their lives and their families.  I love looking for pictures and posts that I think will amuse or pique the interest of my “friends”, and I look forward to the interaction each day.   It’s an amazing and useful tool that I utilize every day.

All that enjoyment is not without its flip side, however.    Over the last couple of years I’ve lost some friends and a family member whose Facebook pages are still on line.   I have a tough time wrapping my head around the fact that their faces still smile at me from the computer…their albums are still available to view and, in some cases, updated by friends or family….but they no longer exist.  How can that be?

 A couple of these pages I’ve visited numerous times, especially on a birthday or holiday.  I never leave a message…and if I did for whom would it be intended?  At times it seems poignant…at time ghoulish.   This electronic “grave visit” can be confusing.  The customs of how we honor and remember our dead are changing with the technology.   I’ve signed a good number of electronic guest books the last few years, and I see more and more permanent memorial pages on web.  They strike me as an electronic tombstone with music.

Perhaps the days of the carved angel over the grave are coming to an end….replaced by a selection of Beatles songs and a slideshow presentation of the lost loved ones life.  Instead of visiting the graveyard will tomorrow’s mourner be vising the memorial site from the comfort of the recliner? 

I have pictures of loved ones that I cherish, but somehow a Facebook page seems to keep a person alive in a way that doesn’t actually make sense to me.   I guess it’s not a good thing or a bad thing…..it is what it is.   Like so many things in today’s world it confuses and fascinates me.

                                                        Life is Good (and death is different)

 

The Pelee Island Gang

The other evening we were sitting around with some other long-married couples talking about when we first started out.   I remember those days well, when there was too much month left at the end of the money. We would gather up our pop bottles and take them back to the grocery store to collect the deposit.   Were we really that young and that poor?   Of course we were.

We talked about vacations back in the day, and what constituted “roughing it”.  That brought back memories of a one week vacation on Pelee Island. 

We were a young family that summer, our children were probably nine, ten and eleven years old, and ready for an adventure.   We were heading to Canadian waters to camp on Pelee Island….we would live on the beach for a week.   Everyone was excited…we were five couples with a bakers dozen of kids under the age of twelve.  We all knew one another from work…we were the staff of WMAN radio…the WMAN ALL STARS.   We played softball together, rode elephants together, participated in water ball fights and sat around in each others homes eating pizza and talking about “the business”.   What could possibly go wrong?

From the outset I had a sneaking feeling this might not be as much fun as everyone else thought it would be….but then I tend to be a realist.  The other couples were experienced campers, and they owned things like tents and Colman stoves and other things for which I had no frame of reference.   So, when we decided we were going to take the kids and go along, we had to hit a sporting goods department before we set sail.

If you are reading this and preparing for your first experience in the “great outdoors” let me share with you some things I learned rather quickly.   First of all, when shopping for a tent DO NOT believe anything that is written on the box.   There were lies all OVER that thing.   For instance:   “Sleeps six”.   Maybe six three year olds, or maybe a midget wrestling team…….but not six of anything over five feet tall.   Here’s another lie:   “Easy assembly”.   That is an out and out whopper. 

Having believed everything written on the box and plunked down our money, we put the tent box safely into the van.   We did not try to assemble it…why would we when the box boasted “easy assembly”?  The first time we actually saw the tent was when we opened the carton on the beach; a large brown bag and four hundred aluminum tubes came tumbling out.   My entire attraction to this particular tent had been that I thought it was a nice color.  (I know)

Now here we stood, Larry, me and our three young children, who expected to have a place to sleep for the night.  After trying every configuration imaginable with the aluminum tubes we created a reasonable looking abode that listed only slightly to the right….so we put driftwood on the left corner and smiled at each other.  We pumped up the six air mattresses we planned to sleep on and discovered the tent would only accommodate four of them.  So much for “sleeps six”.

Our friends, the seasoned campers, helped for a while.   Then, realizing our tent raising had great entertainment value, they sat back and nursed a beer….then watched and laughed and drank some more.

Finally it was done, and as I unzipped the front of the tent I held over my head the “no pest” strip that my friend had instructed me to buy.  “Just hang it in the top of the tent and zip it closed.   When you go to bed there won’t be any mosquitoes or flies,” she chirped.   I did as I was told, and there were no flies in the tent at night.  I am also pretty sure that there must have been a class action law suit a few years later that dealt with breathing in no pest strip fumes….but that’s another article.

As a group we set up a kitchen where we would cook communal meals, and everyone dug in and put their gear away.  Cooking was punctuated with  a series of wild dance moves; we quickly learned anything we put down on a table was immediately covered in black flies.  A spoon discarded carelessly during cooking soon became a living, moving object.  Shooing away flies actually took more energy than cooking.

Being the city girl that I am, I would not come to the island without an in depth explanation of what the bathroom facilities would be. (None would have been the honest answer)   I was assured by my cohorts that we would have a tent dedicated to a porta-potty, and there would be privacy and convenience that would satisfy even a stickler for those details…like me.   I won't say my friends lied to me.  Let's just say they "embroidered" the truth.   By day two the porta potty was replaced by a large pit with a big log over it; an old quilt that hung in front of the pit for “privacy” stood straight out in the wind off the lake.  This new make-shift facility was designed and dug by Phil "Scoop" Linne.  When he was finished he had a look of male pride on his face; I had a look of absolute horror on mine.   It was a modest woman’s nightmare.

On the evening of the fourth day it started to rain.  Our waterproof tent…which the box said was designed to laugh at the elements…was soon saturated. The flimsy white roof produced a steady drip into my left ear as I lay on the hard packed sand floor, (the air mattresses flat since day two) stacked like cordwood with my husband and children.  The storm grew worse, the lightning flashes revealing the white ceiling of the tent.  There, crawling toward the no pest strip, were several “sand spiders”; creatures that looked like pop bottle caps with legs.  They inched toward certain death as the no pest strip waited to do its job.  I couldn't take my eyes off them as I came to the realization that they would soon die and rain down on me.  It was a very, very long night.    The next day I spent wrapping the tent in plastic and Saran Wrap in case the rain continued.  It was a waste of time and plastic, but it kept me occupied.

As is usually the case the women did the cooking for the whole crew.  We worked on a folding table and washed things in the lake.  I’m sure Indian women did all of these same things and more without the benefit of a potato peeler.   It seemed we were always preparing a meal, cleaning up after a meal, fixing snacks for the kids, cleaning up after snacks for the kids or talking about what we were going to cook next.  The only real break in that routine was doing laundry in the lake.  The other women in the group considered these things to be “relaxing”.  The days grew longer.

If you are going to go camping these people we were with have got to be some of the most “fun” people on the planet.  We were a close group of coworkers and their spouses; Larry and I have never found a group like them since.   I know they all had a great time, and most were sad when the week was over…..It was the only thing we did not agree on.

The morning we were to pack up and head to the ferry to return to Sandusky I was up before daylight, ripping my kids out of their sleeping bags and packing the car.   I was not going to take a chance that we might be late for the boat, maybe trapped for another week on this deity forsaken rock.   I was already considering my options if the ferry didn’t show up.   I briefly considered the ramifications of faking a heart attack or hijacking a fishing boat….fortunately it didn’t come to that.   We actually were short one space on the ferry to return, but our friend John Foster and his family stayed over till the next day with his sister who happened to live on the island.  A wise choice…because my third option was to find my potato peeler and take a hostage.

Sunburned and bug bitten, the Pelee Island Gang saddled up and rode back to civilization, following one another like a modern day wagon train.  I came home weary but wiser.  The rest of the group went back a time or two in the summers ahead, but Larry and I hung up our tent and never returned.   Been there…done that…bought the bug spray.

And so, as we recently sat talking about vacations and “roughing it”, I knew immediately what my limits were because they had been sorely tested.  We’ve come a long way from that pop-bottle-returning young couple, and I could write a book about the journey.   I’m not the least bit embarrassed to say that vacationing today in a place with one bathroom is as rough as I intend to get.  “To thine own self be true”……..

Thank you:   John and Geneva Foster, Chuck and Cindy Campbell, Tharen and Phil Linne, Nancy and Charlie Schmidt for a week on the beach we will always remember…..and friendships we still cherish.  A special thanks you to Tharen for posting these pictures on FaceBook and reminding me of this long ago week!!

Lighting the Way

It seems to me that no matter what the” powers that be” are trying to achieve they always create more problems by making new rules.  The latest addition to the traffic laws that I’m aware of is the “if your wipers are on your lights are on” rule.  That’s supposed to magically keep us safe at some level I don’t understand.   In truth is it has just magnified a problem that’s been bugging me for a long, long while.

 I think the majority of new cars have lights that come on automatically when you turn the key.  The lights are purple and piercing like laser beams, and what no one considers is they may have turned the car/truck off with the lights on high beams.   Once again this morning I had a big, manly truck right on my bumper with his bright lights gouging my eyes out of their sockets through my rearview mirrors.   I adjusted both side mirrors away from my line of sight….he obviously didn’t notice.      I turned my rearview mirror down….not something he paid any attention to.   Since he was six inches from my rear bumper you would think he might have seen me adjusting anything shiny to keep his death rays from cooking my retinas…..but no.    This, of course, is at eight o’clock in the morning.   Someone, somewhere did the math and decided that cars/trucks (the Pok-er) with their lights on at eight in the a.m. are less likely to crash than those who (the Pok-ee) are plodding along without lights.   Since I am the “pok-ee” I do not agree.   To make matters worse the authorities created the law that requires everyone to have lights on when it rains, immediately even the OLD cars are wandering around with their bright lights on in broad daylight.   I am all for safety on the roads, but given the fact that many of today’s cars are equipped with headlights that can be monitored from a satellite you can see what a problem it can become if you end up with a truly dedicated tailgater on your bumper.  Rain or shine it can be very uncomfortable. 

Another driving hazard we’ve created is the “two lanes turning” traffic pattern.   If you read signs, if you pay attention, if you have half a brain there is no problem.  Obviously the ones who can meet those standards  are not the people I am meeting at “First Street turning onto Diamond Street as two lanes turn left” in Mansfield each morning.   Two days last week two different drivers almost side swiped me as we had a four wheeled disagreement over which lane I was allowed to occupy.  Here’s the basic rule if you happen to be one of the people I am trying to avoid …..Pick a lane AND STAY THE HECK IN IT.  Two lanes turning are not meant to converge; you should never change lanes during a turn, and you are not welcome in my lane at any time!   One woman at least had the decency to waggle her fingers at me in a concillatory  gesture as she barely missed shearing my driver’s side door off.  I’m assuming it was concillatory ; she was, after all, using all her fingers. 

I confess to being an impatient driver.  The more I’m running late the greater the chances are that I’m going to end up behind some law and order freak doing the speed limit.  However, as I work on my unbelievably long list of things I need to improve upon I wish the “light brighters” and the “tail gaters” would work on their own lists before one of them blinds or runs over me. 

                          Please….dim your lights and watch where you’re going!!!!!! 

This has been a public service “suggestion” from the curmudgeon in the convertible that you nearly
took off the road last week.  In an effort to feel safe on the roadway again I have decided to trade my car in on an urban assault vehicle.  Green is my favorite color, after all, and the trade in value on these things is pretty good.  Oh, and just for the record... I will be using the right lane as we turn left. I suggest you remember that.

                                                
                                                    In spite of my traffic rant, LIFE IS GOOD. 

Life is a Contact Sport

It was probably in the neighborhood of fifteen years ago....I was managing WMAN Radio, a long time Ohio State Football affiliate, and we had the team bus scheduled to arrive at an empty storefront at Richland Mall to sign autographs and meet the public. My partner in crime and sales manager, Margie Tasseff, and I had cleaned up the empty store, brought in food for the players and we eagerly awaited the arrival of the bus. Assisted by our sales staff and the on air staff, now the fans were arriving to wait in line.   Hundreds of people were gathering to meet the players, coach John Cooper and former Heisman trophy winner, Archie Griffin.



Planning ahead I had purchased half a dozen footballs for everyone to sign, thinking we could use them as giveaways on the air during the upcoming season. That morning I had received a telephone call from a father whose little boy had broken a leg and was in the hospital recovering. The little guy had been looking forward to meeting Archie Griffin, and now he wasn’t going to be able to do that. Dad asked if I could possible get Archie to sign a poster for the little boy; I agreed that I would.



The day moved in fast forward, but everything was ready as our staff waited for the team to arrive. Finally we got word that the bus had pulled up, and soon a crowd of young men and their entourage filled the room.



In those days my friend Ed Douglas worked for WBNS, the OSU flag station in Columbus, and traveled with the team to these events.  As we stood and chatted the football players ate everything in sight and prepared to sign autographs and take pictures with the crowd that now lined the mall. Soon we were greeted by Archie Griffin, a very pleasant man who greeted the public and my staff graciously. I knew it would be a big success, and I was very happy with the direction in which things were proceeding.



I have to say here that I am the most ignorant human being on the face of the planet when it comes to sports. When something doesn’t interest me I have the ability to purge all that information on that particular subject from my mind….and that has always been the way I’ve dealt with any sports. I don’t care; I do not have the voyeuristic need to watch people play sports. When it came down to sports the arrangement with Margie, a true sports fan, we agreed that I would always smile, nod and let her answer any questions about sports. It worked pretty well for a lot of years.



Suffice it to say I hadn’t a clue who Archie Griffin was, although everyone else was really excited to meet him. As I stood and chatted with Archie and Ed I told Archie about the little boy in the hospital and how his Dad had delivered the poster to the radio station for me to have him sign for the child. Archie asked if the child was in a local hospital and I told him he was. That’s when he floored me with, “Well, we have time to go see him if it’s close. We can be back to sign autographs….let’s go!”



Impressed and really surprised I loaded Archie Griffin and Ed Douglas into my car and off we went to Med Central to see the little boy. At that time of night there was no problem finding a parking place, but as we walked into the hospital people looked, then looked again, and  I heard voices chiming….”Hey, Archie!” We were surrounded by half a dozen fans as we moved to the elevators.

Heading up to the room in the elevator I turned to Archie and said, “Didn’t you play with a helmet on? Everyone knows who you are,” which elicited a big laugh from the football icon.



Once on the floor we walked up to the child’s room and I entered first. A toe headed little boy of about six was flat on his back, his little leg suspended in the air in a heavy white cast. His Mom sat by his bed, and I think there were a couple of other people in the room with them. Walking up to the bed I explained to the little fellow that there was someone here who wanted to meet him; right on cue Archie Griffin walked in wearing a grin from ear to ear. I don’t think I’ve seen many children happier than that little boy was at that moment as his idol stood by his bed. We had brought one of the footballs with us, Archie signed that ball and I believe the child’s cast as well. Dad showed up about that time, having been to the mall to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the poster. It was one of those moments I won’t forget.



Back in my car I turned to Archie Griffin and said, “Mr. Griffin, I may not know anything about football…but I do know a thing or two about people. That was a very nice thing you just did.” Then I called home to tell my husband that I had Archie Griffin in my car and I wished he could be there. He just groaned that this was the final proof that there is absolutely no justice in this world.



I took Ed and Archie back to the mall, where he shook hands and signed footballs and did everything he could to make our radio station look good. What a rare individual; I’m not at all surprised he’s still so popular with Ohio State fans.



A few years after our caravan tour I was at an Ohio State Affiliates dinner at the Wigwam, owned by the Wolfe family, in Columbus. Archie Griffin was there, smiling and shaking hands as he served as the official OSU greeter. The line finally deposited me in front of him and I was certain he wouldn't remember me; I would never have said anything to remind him as the long line of people pressed in behind me. Archie took my hand, shook it and smiled as he met my eyes and said, "Still don't know anything about football, do ya?"



I've met some very interesting and gracious people throughout my career....I think Archie Griffin is at the top of the list.



                                                                      LIFE IS GOOD

The "Turtle-ing" of America

Our manic dependency upon our electronic devices was brought sharply home when my semi-hysterical granddaughter ran into the house to tell the group gathered in the family room that her cell phone was at the bottom of the pond.   This latest acquisition, just a week old, had all her contacts, her pictures on a chip, her messages , emails, and probably all her hopes and dreams in its slender case…..AAAAAAAHHHHRRRRRRRGGGGGH!!!!           Oh the humanity…..

As I sat watching the drama unfold it occurred to me that there has been a “turtle-ing” of our society.  I’ve created that word to point out that, like the lowly turtle that carries everything he owns in the shell on his back, we have come to do the same thing with our electronic devices.    Every phone number we’ve ever collected….pictures of special events, decorating changes, building progress and other odds and ends.   And let’s not forget our file cabinet of recipes, work information, medication lists and appointments and addresses…..on and on and on.

If you have your iPhone or iPad with you it seems you have your whole family in there too.   I know people who watch their grandchildren grow over SKYPE sessions……parents who keep an eye on their children who are home alone with face time.  One couple I know doesn’t let working in two distant cities prevent them from having lunch “together”.    They chat over their lunches while looking at each other over the internet.

When is the last time you went through a complete day without having someone display an “album” of photos they just happen to have with them?   As you swoosh through their smart phone pages the whole family is on display.  How convenient that  you no longer have to wait for someone to lure you to their home with the promise of a great spaghetti sauce where they just happen to have their vacation photos loaded into six carousels for the old projector when dinner is over.   Today those four thousand fascinating vacation photos just happen to be in his hip pocket as you stopped at the water cooler.

Security systems have advanced to the point that you can “walk” through your home from wherever you are just to check things out….and it’s a great way to keep an eye on Fido, too.   It’s also a smart check in with the babysitter, or grandma when she’s not feeling well.   Camera systems aren’t technically beyond us any longer because they’ve been made so simple to install and operate.   Just like the ancient reptile of the order Testudines, we are now technological turtles carrying our homes with us. 

 I’m just as guilty if not more of “turtle-ing”.   I always have my iPhone on me, and usually my iPad as well.   Every face I love beams at me from the backlit screen, and I can scroll through every phone number I ever used.     These things that mean so much to me could bore another adult human being into semi consciousness in less than fifteen minutes; I keep them to myself unless someone asks to see.   Even back in the low tech days I was not one of those parents who could pull a string of plastic windows filled with school pictures and birthday smiles out of my purse.    I think it’s inhumane to do that to some poor unsuspecting person who happens across your path.     I keep my turtle-ing to myself….but it’s refreshing to know that I can call up the memory and a picture of a wonderful kayak trip to a favorite spot whenever I want to.   I just happen to have forty or fifty of those shots with me at any given time if you’re interested……….

                                                                   LIFE IS GOOD

Looking Back at Love

Last summer I was in a board meeting at Malabar Farm where the big “Hollywood Returns” promotion for the summer of 2012 was in the early planning stages.   Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s son had been contacted to see if he would be willing to attend such an event, and in the process Russ Hill, a devoted Malabar Foundation board member who has spent a lot of his own money and a great deal of his life over the last year putting it all together, had found the name of Judge Shettler’s daughter.    The Judge married the movie star couple, and I was intrigued and asked for the name of the daughter so that I might contact her.

I wrote to Penny (Shettler) Benzing to ask if she would be willing to speak with me about her memories of that wedding day so many years ago.  She responded that she would be in Mansfield for a high school class reunion and she’d be happy to stop in the office with some things that had belonged to her late father.  

                       Front hall at Malabar where the wedding took place in 1945

Promptly on the appointed day Penny walked into the offices of Sun Graphics carrying a large suit box that had obviously been around for a while.  She explained that this box of memorabilia had been shoved under a bed, and she wasn’t quite sure any longer what was in it.  She handed it to me, we visited and chatted as I made notes, then she was off to do the half dozen things she had to do before her reunion that evening.

     Humphrey Bogart Commemorative Stamp

Heading upstairs with the box I could hardly wait to get it to a surface where I could open and go through the contents.  Pushing aside some papers on an empty desk I lifted the lid, then gently opened the tissue paper that wrapped some of the newspaper articles.  It was as if history opened up for me.  The song “Key Largo” began to drift through my mind and I was submerged in an afternoon of blissful exploration.  I had Bogey and Bacall at my fingertips.

                                    

Old newspaper articles from 1945, some Xeroxed magazine articles and other treasures competed for my attention.   The Christmas card the Bogarts sent out that first holiday as a married couple….with a handwritten note from Lauren Bacall inside.  The receipt for their marriage license….a handwritten letter from Humphrey Bogart to the judge thanking him for all he had done to make their wedding memorable.   There were other letters the judge had kept from friends who cheerfully chided him for his newly found fame as the “judge to the stars”.   Penny told me her father was in many of the popular magazines of the day, some of which she still had at home.

                                                                                                                             

Layered on the bottom of the stack was the original news script that was read on a WMAN news cast on the day of the wedding.   It was especially meaningful for me to hold these papers in my hands, along with a note from Mr. O’Hara, the first general manager at WMAN. The offices were perched above the Ohio Theatre (Renaissance Theatre) back in the day.   He was one of three men who managed the station before me, and I held the note he wrote to Judge Shettler along with those scripts with a feeling of awe.   I wasn’t even born when these scripts were typed by the news person, and here they were moving across all those years and into my hands.   In the time period this was written a woman might be found as a receptionist at the front desk, but certainly not on the air, or in the news room or sales office, and definitely not sitting behind the general manager’s desk.    I was lucky enough to be the first woman to do several of those jobs, and when I retired three years ago as Market Manager for the Clear Channel radio cluster, I left with an abiding affection for radio in general and WMAN in particular.

                                                            

I spent the entire afternoon with the box, breathing in its history and thinking about the article I wanted to write.  Penny had been a seven year old child when the Bogarts wed, and as she described her time observing from the stairs the article started to write itself in my head.   I scanned everything I wanted to use and put the precious items back into the box.

Penny Benzing came back to pick up the amazing box of memories she had shared with me.  She is intelligent, articulate and interesting and I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve spent with her.   We would meet again when she returned to Mansfield to visit friends and take a tour of the house she grew up in on Glendale Boulevard.   I asked her to have her picture snapped on those stairs, and she was kind enough to do that and to send that photo to me.

                                                Penny (left) presents Lauren Bacall with
                                        the picture of Bogey/Bacall and Judge Shettler

I still have a book Penny loaned me that I need to return to her.  I look forward to her emails and the times we speak on the phone.  Every article that I write seems to add at least one person to my list of friends; I like to think Penny Shettler Benzing is now on that list.

 Hollywood Returns is being held at Malabar Farm Friday, June 1, Saturday, June 2 and Sunday June 3.  Stephen Bogart and Tyrone Power, Jr. will be there, along with an antique car show that will feature some things most of us have never seen before; rumor has it a presidential limousine for one thing.     Tickets and information are available at www.malabarfarm.org   I’m really looking forward to the event, and my husband and I will be volunteering there for the whole weekend.    Come out and enjoy Malabar Farm State Park, all proceeds go to help with restoration of Louis Bromfield’s “Big House”.    I hope to see you there.

                                                         Christmas at Malabar-2011
                                                                   Life is Good

Esther Williams and the chicken house

Who do you want to be when you grow up?  Not what but “whom”.   If you had asked me that when I was a little girl I could have told you without even thinking…..Esther Williams.

Summers my parents and I went to my Grand Parent’s home for a couple of weeks every summer.  My very best friend was my cousin, Theresa, and we spent the long, hot summer days playing together.  Sometimes those summer days included a movie at the Dixie Theatre, and my favorites were the Esther Williams extravaganzas.

It never occurred to me as we sat gobbling popcorn in the dark theatre that there was anything odd about a story line that always ended up in the water.  There she was…underwater with a smile that bordered on a grimace, her bulging eyes looking straight into the camera.   She was the Hollywood mermaid, and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.    

After the movie we’d hustle back to Grandma’s house to play, and I can still see two little blonde girls running to the “chicken house” to play with the trunk of old curtains and linens kept there.   We’d call out, “I’m Esther Williams”....”No!  I called it first!”…..”Nu-uh!  I called it first!” as we charged off to play.  After deciding who got to be Esther we’d play the rest of the day, pretending to be bathing suited movie stars…performing water ballets and synchronized swim moves as we ran through the orchard with old lace curtains trailing behind us.  Theresa would tell you I always got my way, I was always Esther Williams.  That’s just not true, and since I’m writing this I get to tell it my way.

The outbuilding we used as a playhouse was always dubbed the “chicken house” because Grandma had kept chickens there at one time.  After giving up on the pesky creatures she wasn’t one to waste a perfectly good outbuilding.  The “chicken house” sat full of wonderful treasures for two little girls to enjoy.  Old tableware, mismatched dishes, a few old pieces of furniture and some lawn chairs.  Even the big cast iron, wood burning kitchen stove that had provided heat, hot water and great meals for so many years now lived there.   Those old curtains became our costumes, and tied around our heads they were long, flowing hair.  Covering old lawn chairs made them elegant furnishings; the wormy apples we scavenged from the orchard and the grapes that grew there were mashed and smashed into meals that we ate and forced on anyone who was unfortunate enough to check on us.  Ah yes….I remember the crampy bellys of summer quite well.

I don’t remember my Grand Mother raising chickens, but I do have memories of her preparing them for the food chain.   Those memories keep me from enjoying meat to this day.   I still cannot eat any meat in recognizable body parts.   Chicken legs or wings?   No, thank you.  I’m absolutely worthless at a hog roast, and my Thanksgiving turkey is usually a couple of turkey breasts that are anonymous enough for me to eat.  If it’s the whole turkey I indulge in the big selection of trimmings we always enjoy and forgo the main course.   There is a great health benefit from living close to the land, but there is no way to forget living close to the chain of protein that ends up on the dining room table.    I am marked for life.

Watching Esther Williams swim gracefully across the screen so long ago I decided I was going to be her when I grew up, and I think Theresa was of the same mind.   I eventually grew up to run radio stations and now edit Heart of Ohio Magazine…..Theresa is a realtor.   Neither of us ever learned how to swim a stroke; today we are still two career gals who don’t like to get their hair wet. 

I think it’s time for me to take a road trip to visit my cousin so we can sit on her deep, shady front porch.  We can relax in the swing that hangs from chains and go through our mental scrap books together…and laugh.   When we were little girls she always hated the fact that I was older. Now that we are “mature women” she loves to remind me that I am the elder by two years and eleven months.    I think she’s just jealous because I’m Esther Williams. 

                                             Yes….I definitely feel a visit coming on.

                                                                  Life is Good

A Walk on the Wild Side

I guess we all have weaknesses, things that we accumulate or collect that we don’t need or go completely overboard with.   For me…..it’s shoes.

I love shoes.  When I married my husband we had some help moving to our first apartment.  I remember one of the first things my new father-in-law said to me was “Why would ANYBODY have this many pairs of shoes?”  It was a legitimate question after making dozens of trips to the U-Haul with big boxes of shoe boxes. 

At times I’ve had more, and sometimes it’s less, but I probably have never had fewer than a hundred fifty pairs of shoes at any one time.   When I retired a few years ago I sold a bunch of clothes (I’m a clothes horse, too) and took literally dozens of pairs of shoes to a donation center.   I didn’t think I needed high heels any longer because I planned to adopt a blue jeans lifestyle from here on out.   The “best laid plans” and all that……

Today someone commented on a gal’s shoes when she came into the office.   They were high, high, high, and pointed to an armor piercing sharpness.  I don’t have any of those shoes left, but I’ve worn my share over the years.  I still admire high heels on women….just not this woman any longer. 

I realized I’m sort of “out of the fashion loop” these days, so I went to some websites to look at fashionable footwear in the year of 2012.  Evidently a lot has changed since I gave up high heels, and this is one fashion loop I’m glad to be out of.

The fashion websites and magazines are full of clunky, ugly, Frankenstein shoes!   When did this happen?  They look torturously uncomfortable, and I wonder what men think of these ugly things?   Prince Charming would NOT have gone door to door looking for the girl who wore one of these things….would he?

These shoes threaten to cripple a woman, and the videos are full of runway models teetering along on these ugly shoes, only to fall on stage like a tree felled in the forest.   What are we thinking, ladies?

It puts me in mind of the barbaric practice of foot binding in China. That little fashion trend began in the 10th century sometime during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and ended over a thousand years later.  This fashion sanctioned torture was practiced on young girls usually six years of age and younger. Feet were wrapped in tight bandages and broken so they couldn’t grow. Foot binding was generally practiced by wealthy families; it was a sign of beauty and wealth.

Eventually foot binding moved from wealthy city families to women in the countryside, where women realized they could marry into money by having these prized three inch feet. For centuries women suffered terrible pain in the hopes of having a better future by meeting this insane fashion standard.

You know gals, if we go along with this and plunk down our money we’re only encouraging the designers.   Besides, you want to be able to be barefoot and fashionable too, don’t you?   I say give up the ugly shoes and talk to your plastic surgeon………

                               Now ladies,  THAT’S fashion.

                                               Life is Good

A pause for the cause....

I’ve had a “bug” for a couple of days.  Thankfully it doesn’t happen often, and once is a great while is quite enough.   I’m a horrible patient….a patient without patience.  There are things I want to do, and when throwing up doesn’t allow me to get to those things I tend to get testy.

My bouts with the flu are always the same.  I am in total denial (I am NOT going to be sick)  until a growing nausea  inspires me (don't make me throw up!) to tear through cabinets in search of some magic potion that will stop my stomach from erupting like Old Faithful.  I know I can stop this (don't make me throw up!) if I find just the right medicine or if I can strike the right bargain with God. (please don't make me throw up!)  Next thing I know my exortations are silenced by a geyser of Alka Seltzer and anything else that I've ingested within the last 12 hours.   Ugh, it's official....I'm sick.   I would make a terrible bulimic. 

If there’s anything at all that’s good about a sick day it has to be the enforced bed rest that allows one to catch up on some reading.   It might be a novel I’ve been working on for a while, might be a stack of catalogs I’ve been saving for a quiet moment, even magazines still wrapped in plastic.   Actually it ended up being all three, and I spent Thursday evening and all day Friday cuddled in bed with a stack of reading material.

Halfway through the stack of unopened magazines I paused for a minute to reflect on how much I enjoy reading and then, as it always happens, the woman who presented me with this gift crossed my mind.

I can’t remember if it was second or third grade, but I remember the teacher well who inspired my love of reading.  Her name was Hilda Bowman, and I was in school at Mifflin Elementary.  I thought she was an “older” woman, but looking back at pictures I’ve saved from grade school there she is, smiling out from the 1950’s in that old school picture, hair tightly curled and wearing a dark flowered dress with a white collar.   Although it’s a head and shoulders shot I know it was a dark flowered “dress” because in those days teachers dressed like ladies, these were the days before pant suits or slacks. I bet she was somewhere between thirty and thirty five at the most.

I think she must have been a relatively new teacher, but I remember sitting at her feet as she read to the class.   She was animated and enthusiastic…and I remember wanting to have the power that she had.   At the time I thought her “power” was the ability to read, but much later I realized what I really wanted was the power to communicate.   Reading was a very important part, but it was her power to communicate what she read to us that fascinated me.    Her reading to us and telling us stories made me impatient to be able to read and learn things for myself.  I wish I had been old enough to understand that and tell her how I appreciate the unquenchable curiosity she woke in me.

I spent my youth lost in one book or another….trying on personalities and visiting foreign places, seeing things I never would have imagined.  Growing up with one black and white TV in the house it wasn’t hard to tear yourself away from the “boob tube” to do something else.   But today, with hundreds of channels from which to choose, it’s just as easy.   There are so few television shows on that I think are interesting.  The fascination behind “reality TV” completely escapes me, and movies no longer have endings that make any sense to me.   In truth I don’t recognize many of the faces in either; that seems to be an age thing. 

And so I constantly turn to my dearest friend, reading.    A stack of well-chosen books is as welcoming to me as a group of friends with whom I have a great deal in common.   On the other hand a book that challenges my thinking and makes me take a closer look at my own beliefs is something I enjoy as well.

I can’t think of anything anyone ever gave me that has lasted longer and meant so much to me as my love of reading.   Thank you, Hilda Bowman.   I don’t know if you’re still out there, but if I had the chance to meet you again, perhaps over a cup of coffee, after all these years I would say, “Thank you. Your dedication to your craft has given me a lifelong passion for reading and communication.  What you chose to do with your life made a great difference in my own.” 

“Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes.  And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book and we resume our lives.”  Neil Gaiman, American Gods

                                       LIFE IS GOOD