Some Luck & a Memory

Every once in a while, I get lucky. My number is the random number so I win. What do I win you ask. I win books. If someone posts a give away related to books, I enter. If you don’t enter, you won’t win. I want to win the $5,000 a week for life that is sponsored by Publishers Clearing House, but I don’t enter so I know I won’t win. But . . . if I see a chance to win a book or gift card to a book, I am right there filling in my details. In May, I won a $50 gift card from Travis Jonker (100 Scope Notes) to Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Now you might think there is a logistic problem here. I cannot visit this store it is 660 miles away from me. The internet solved that problem for me, I can order my books on-line and they will ship them to me. Of course, that’s not nearly as fun as browsing the shelves myself, but we are living a pandemic, so that is not an option.

The next hurdle is what to order. I spent a couple weeks browsing through my notes of books I need. Finally, I made my decision and placed my order.

My luck continued when I pulled out one of the books.

See that sticker top right?

The book flap says:

A girl.

An elevator.

And a magic button.

This is the endsheet behind the cover.

Yes, it’s all that and more. This book stirred a memory from long, long ago.

There was a girl (me – 12 years old). An elevator in an old building. My family had just moved from Houston, Texas to Kansas City, Missouri. We needed to find a house, but in the meantime, we were in an extended stay kind of a place. I don’t think it was a hotel, but I don’t think it was an apartment either. It was a whole new experience for me to be in this building with an elevator.

I’m sure my family annoyed the long term residents. We were five kids who had never ridden an elevator before. We thought it was such fun to push the buttons and ride up (probably only had five floors) and down over and over. I think there were complaints, so we had to stop.

There was magic as we pretended we were on a spaceship or a pirate ship or whatever else kids dream up. Reading Lift reminded me of a piece of my life long ago.

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A Plain Walnut Box

Standing on a step stool, I reached for the long plastic box that held my shorts through the winter. I spotted the walnut jewelry box pushed up beside the wall, just out of my reach.

It was placed high up in the closet sixteen years ago when we moved into this house. At that time, I couldn’t part with this box or the treasures it held. It didn’t fit in with the decor of the room, so it was put on the top shelf in the closet. It has occupied that space for many years, because as the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” Every year as I swapped my turtleneck sweaters for shorts I saw the box, but didn’t touch it. The plain walnut box and the treasures within were safe.

My father enjoyed creating with wood. This was one of the many items he built in his lifetime. He probably made it for me when I was in high school, which was about fifty years ago.

Curiosity made me grab a hanger to pull the box toward me. I used a tissue from my pocket to wipe the thick layer of dust off the top. Slowly I pulled out the top drawer.

I study the objects in the tray. I have no idea what the key would open. Is that a shark’s tooth or an animal claw necklace? Where did that come from? I remember the scarab earring, but what happened to the other earring?

Under the tray are more mysteries. Why do I have an elephant figurine? I do remember the scarab bracelet, the glass snowflake, the engraved charm, and the gold cross necklace. The ring and Christmas tree pin don’t even tickle a memory.

Treasures in this drawer include a pearl (fake) necklace, a broken butterfly necklace, a telephone stickpin, a jade necklace, two buttons, a sorority Greek letter necklace, and a small white box. Only two of the items stirred any memory.

What’s in the white box, you ask? Five dollars in coins, but look closer, some are quite old. The quarters are from 1936-1964.

What are they doing in my plain walnut box? What will I do with them?

I think I will part with some of these “treasures,” but I may find new treasure to fill in the spaces to be discovered another day.

Audio Journey

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One week from today, I will be packing my bag to begin the journey toward northeast Indiana to spend several days learning from experts in reading and writing (and hanging out with blogger friends). The past few years I’ve had company on this road trip. Lots of conversation to pass the time as the miles slip by. However, this year I will be on my own as I travel east, so I thought perhaps a few audio books would fill the hours on my 500+ mile journey. I shared this plan of listening to books on CD with my husband, and he says, “You better enjoy this, because this will probably be the last car you have with a CD player. They aren’t putting them in cars anymore.”

My reaction to this news, “What?!” (What am I going to do (whenever we get a new car)? How will I listen to my CDs of Trans Siberian Orchestra when we drive across the country at Christmastime and my favorite other CDs? I found this news very disturbing. A way of listening would be ending. With that thought, I started thinking about my audio life.

It started in Chicago with a small transistor radio pressed next to my ear listening to WLS. The volume always went as high as possible when the first notes of  Lightnin’ Strikes by Lou Christie rang out. Not sure what it was about this song that I loved, I still sing along if I ever hear it.

The transistor radio led to getting a record player and lots of 45s and albums. I listened to them a lot. If I was in my room, I had something playing on the record player. Eventually I saved enough money to buy a small stereo system where I could load several records at a time to play. I can’t tell you how many Petula Clark albums I had (perhaps I still have them 🙂 ). When I found a singer I loved, I immersed myself in that person’s music. Here’s a link to Petula singing Downtown on Dean Martin’s show (if you watch it, you have to get through the intro with dancers before she comes out).

I never owned an 8 track player, I went straight to cassette tapes. Now my music could travel along with me in a portable player. (It’s hard to travel with a stereo system 🙂 ).

I was happy with the cassette system, but then CDs came along to make it even easier to listen to my personal choice in music. I think that’s where I’m stuck in the audio world. I never understood MP3 players and I am clueless to downloading music. Since I don’t get the download music, you know I don’t have music on my phone or iPad and I wouldn’t know what to do with an ipod.

So what’s going to be next in this audio world? It took me over fifty years to get to where I am now. I’m just not sure I’m up to the task of developing a whole new way of listening.

 

Day 17: Chance Encounter

“I think I know you,” said the elderly lady pushing the grocery cart. I stopped, checked to make sure she was addressing me, before I studied this woman.

Could it be her I wondered. I think it is. “Mrs. Rummel?” I questioned. A welcoming smile told me I was right. This was my high school home economics teacher.

I was in her class forty-six years ago. I have changed quite a bit from those high school days, particularly my hair color. She did not recognize me from those days. I met up with her about twenty years ago because her granddaughter was a fifth grader at the school I taught at and her daughter-in-law also taught there. She recognized me there and remembered my brother played basket ball with her son.

She quickly caught me up on her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. The granddaughter is a teacher too, and she has two children. Hard to believe so much time has passed!

Seeing her sent me back to my high school days and right in her class. I remembered on the first day of class, she asked, “What do you want to get from this class?”

My response, “I want to learn how to cook without a recipe, like my mother does.”

She said, “That only comes with lots of time in the kitchen.”

I can’t say I accomplished my goal in that class, but over time I do have a few items I can make without a recipe. I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen over the past forty years. However, a recipe is always nice to have at hand.

Flashback

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“You’ve got the job,” Mr. Reed said. “You start in February.”

My first teaching job! Fifth grade, my dream grade! I had just graduated in December and couldn’t believe my luck getting a job mid year. I would be finishing the year for a teacher who was having a baby and she did not want to return.

All the memories came flooding back as I walked into my first school a few weeks ago. I’m back working where my career started. This time I’m working with teachers, not students.

The building I taught in had been torn down. Additions sprouted from the original school. I recognized nothing in the school, but the street had not changed. I wandered down long halls looking for remnants of the previous building, but found nothing familiar. However, I did find something to make me smile as I explored.

Harold and his purple crayon

Tacky, the penguin

Charlotte, Wilbur, Templeton, and Olivia

The very hungry caterpillar and the cat and mice from Mouse Paint

What a delight to find these friends! The art teacher (who just retired) and his students were responsible for these perfect replications. Maybe he will come back and add some more.

Who says you can’t go home again? I’m right back where it all began for me.

Memory

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Can you ever go back to a previous time of your life and savor the experience? This photo sends me spiraling back in time to almost fifty-two years.

I am the fifth person on the front row. I think I was eight.

My family lived in a suburb of Chicago, but every summer we would travel from Chicago to Baldwin, Wisconsin. It was a grueling trip, five kids, two adults, no air conditioning. This trip took us all day, but in the end we landed at grandma and grandpa’s house.

Fun times were ready to begin. There were aunts, uncles, and cousins galore. Kids were shipped off to spend time with the cousins. Kids and parents met up once again at church on Sunday. After the service everyone headed to Grandma and Grandpa’s house where a feast was set up on picnic tables in the side yard.

At some point the cousins all had to gather in one place for the group photo on the side yard of grandma and grandpa’s house. Those where the best of times that live on in my memory.

Last fall I returned to Baldwin for the funeral of an aunt. I had my husband drive past my grandparent’s house. Decades ago they left this house (before they died), but it always remained firmly visualized in my mind. The house my eyes viewed, was not the house of my memory. This house was beaten down, there was no life spilling out onto the lawn. Weeds sprouted, screens were torn. It had not been loved in many years.

I think I will hold onto the memory of the home where twenty-nine grandchildren lined up to preserve a moment in time.

Creating a Story

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Working in fourth grade and developing a story with a climax allowed me to bring back a memory from many years ago. I share my story as a slice today.

The Splinter

I’d been looking forward to this day for several years. Our family was flying out to meet other family members in Colorado for a mini-skiing vacation. The car was pack with skis, ski boots, ski bibs, warm gloves, and plenty of sweaters. We were leaving an hour before school was out, so everything had to be ready and in place for a quick escape to make it to the airport on time. Even though I was excited and feeling impatient to get going, I still had to get through the day of teaching. I was teaching a math lesson in my fourth grade class one cold day in January.

We were busy studying and practicing multiplication facts. I looked up when the door opened. Many thoughts and questions flew through my mind when I saw who was standing at my door. I wonder what she needs? Does someone have medicine to take? I soon found out what the school nurse needed when she whispered to me, “David is in my office with a splinter in his stomach. I think you need to see this.”

“A splinter? Why don’t you just pull it out?” I said to her. Thinking to myself, What’s the big deal?

“I think you’d better see this first. It’s not that simple,” she replied to me.

I gathered my class together for a restroom break, so I could see this splinter. This splinter that is not so simple. I couldn’t believe she was making such a fuss about a splinter. When I saw the splinter, which was more like a dagger of wood, my stomach dropped and I wondered how this day would go.

I was staring at a triangular chunk of wood sticking out of my son’s stomach. My heart was racing, I stopped breathing, my knees were about to give away.

“What were you doing?” I managed to get out in a whisper.

“I was sliding down the staircase on my stomach on our way to art. Everyone does it all the time,” David replied in an unconcerned voice.

“I don’t know how deep this is,” said the nurse. “So I think you need to take him to a hospital to get this taken out.”

My heart sank with those words. I wondered if our trip would be cancelled. I worried David would need surgery. Someone came to take my class for the rest of the day, while my husband, my son, and I hurried to the nearest emergency room.

As soon as we arrived at the emergency room, we explained our situation to the nurses. Fortunately they were not too busy. An x-ray revealed that the splinter was not embedded in any organs. The doctor arrived and quickly pulled the splinter out. David was bandaged up and we were on our way to the airport. Colorado here we come!

When I got up that morning, I thought the excitement of the day would be once we were on our trip. I’ve learned that sometimes your day doesn’t turn out like you thought it would.

314

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Have you ever had a number jump out at you and take you back to a place from your past?

Last week as I headed for my home (away from home), I passed a gas station and noted that the price of gas had risen during the day. Seeing that price made me gnash my teeth, because I needed gas and it had jumped twenty-three cents from the morning. However, it wasn’t the actual price of gas that made me gasp, but the numbers 314 (yes, there was a decimal in there).

Immediately I was back in my French teacher’s classroom. This was his room number. I could clearly see the the windows that belonged to his room. I could see the staircase I climbed for four years to enter his room. I could hear his voice, “Bonjour, mademoiselle. Dites-moi que chose intéressant.” (Tell me something interesting.) This was the standard greeting every day. Of course, I had to have something ready to share (in French). Often I struggled to find something he would deem interesting. He was not a teacher I wanted to disappoint.

Ask me what room number was my English class. I have no clue. I can’t even recall what floor the class was on. The same is true for all classes. How odd that this one number has stayed with me over forty years and every time I see it, it takes me back to high school.

Perhaps it was because it was a room I visited every day for four years. Or could it be that I looked forward to this class (most of the time)? Mr. Bowman (I still can’t call him by any other name) required a book report by a French author every quarter. He let me fall in love with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo, but the best was Les Miserables. I have never read The Little Prince in English (I suppose I should). Le Petit Prince sent me on a journey to see a baobab tree (which I saw in awe in Singapore). I was immersed in all things French for fifty minutes a day. It became my goal to visit the Louvre, see the Arc d’Triomphe, and savor the impressionist paintings at the d’Orsay. Mr. Bowman made it sound magical. And it was. But I’m still ready to head back to France and discover more.

The number 314 means so much more to me than just a number. It has the power to take me back many (should I say many, many?) years.

Old Friends, Good Times #6

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A few weeks ago, my husband and I attended a surprise birthday party for a friend who just turned 60. When we got the invitation, I took a mental trip back down memory lane to when my husband and I met Leslie and John.

Mike and I were married in June and now it was August. It was time to get our classrooms set up in this new school where we both had jobs. I was at the rental house  unpacking boxes when Mike came in from his trip to check out his classroom.

“Met a guy named John. He and his wife teach here too. He wanted to know if we played games,” my husband said.

“What kind of games does he mean?” I replied, worried that he was talking about games I had no interest in (this was the 70’s, not that far removed from the sexual revolution of the 60’s).

“I’m not sure, but he wants us to come over to meet his wife, Leslie, tonight,” he said.

So with a bit of trepidation I went and found that the games he played were games we played. We spent many an evening playing cards and board games since we were too poor to do much of anything else.

The next year another couple joined us playing games. We spent twenty years together as best friends and co-workers. We went through a lot, as we added children to our group. These people know us in ways no one else does. These are friends for life.

Stacey hit the nail on the head when she said friendships recharge our spirit. Our spirit was recharged the night of the party as we reminisced with friends that we haven’t seen in a while. The Christmas card update letter can only do so much. Being there was important for the birthday girl, but also for my soul.

Red Dirt

The following was inspired by looking through my writer’s notebook, this is  from my page of Memories Inside Me.

“What happened to the dirt?” we wondered as we drove from Washington, D. C. to Houston, Texas.

The year was 1966, a major change was happening in our life. All my life I had lived in Chicago, but due to a job change our family (5 kids, 2 parents) was making a move away from everything we had known to an unknown world.

First, we moved to Washington, D. C. for a summer while my dad received  training for his new job. His first assignment (after training) was to be in Houston, Texas. What an adventure this was to be for us! The only world we had known was  Chicago and Baldwin, Wisconsin. Chicago was home, Baldwin was vacation, this was where we spent time visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a multitude of cousins.

The most shocking change to us was the ground we walked upon. Dirt is black, moist, rich soil. Dirt is not red, dry, powdery clay. What happened to the dirt? How do you grow plants in this stuff? This ground was so different from anything we’d ever seen. My mother scooped up a baggie of this red dirt and mailed it to my grandmother in Wisconsin. I can imagine my grandmother’s surprise when she opened up the small package of red dirt.

I think of this everytime we drive across New Mexico and Arizona. I marvel at the color of the land around me as I know this is much redder than the ground in Texas.

I suppose black dirt would be a novelty to those who were raised on red dirt.