2nd Wind, March 2001
My furs are not in storage
Or draped across my bed.
They're standing at the back door,
Waiting to be fed!
--Lynn HartsellChildren are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
At last, I am an honest woman. I weigh what my driver's license says I weigh. (Although I no longer drive, I still carry my license for I.D.) You show me a woman who gave her true weight on her driver's license application and I'm looking at a candidate for sainthood. What if St. Peter has us weigh in at the pearly gates and then compares the results to the driver's license we offer as I.D.? Now, that's a scary thought. "Five pounds over. Well, OK, you can go in." 10 pounds over. You're in, but on probation." "20 pounds over. Sorry, but here's a bag of marshmallows to take with you."
Beth remembers a TV program, probably a Candid Camera episode, where the interviewer asked the interviewee what she weighed. She, unknowing, was standing on a scale and the reading was projected on a large screen above her head. Oops!
Nyla is spending a month in Hawaii. Last year, she and another lady in her party graduated to wheelchair boarding of the airplane. This is no big deal in San Francisco, but Santa Barbara isn't on the cutting edge of the process. It was a very rainy day, so she was wheeled out to the aircraft carrying a large umbrella...Santa Barbara was prepared for that soggy eventuality...and gripping her suitcase between her knees. She felt her dignity compromised, but it was shattered when she found herself loaded onto a forklift and unceremoniously ascending. This year she made arrangements to be driven to San Francisco for boarding.
I often watch a program on public TV called California Gold. Recently they featured the early years of Petaluma when that town was the egg capitol of the world. When they showed antique equipment for candling eggs I remembered I'd been told about an even earlier method.
My friend Thordis Aarrestad was raised in Norway. Her mother was widowed when Thordis was eleven and decided to support her family by raising pure-bred chickens. All the eggs they sold for hatching had to be guaranteed fertile. Thordis had the special eye to separate the eggs. She said there was a knothole the size of an egg in the outhouse door. When the sun was right, from inside the closed and fragrant building, she would hold the eggs, one by one, up to the knothole to see through them...not first choice for a lifetime career.
We always had indoor plumbing as I was growing up, but George and I once rented a small house with one bedroom and a path. As I've told before in 2nd Wind, the discovery of black widow spider webs decorating the seat openings did more for hasty elimination then ExLax. Were you aware the black widow has a distinctive web? It is very sticky and resists breaking. And for the information of the younger generation, people did actually hang last year's Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck catalogue in the outhouse to be torn up for toilet paper. It didn't take a Rhodes scholar to learn to avoid the slick colored sheets.
Even my overseas correspondents are aware of the energy shortage in California. (I'm speaking of electricity and natural gas, not my personal energy shortage). As we are daily threatened with rolling blackouts we wonder how we could manage...no central heat, microwave, TV, computer, CD, washer, drier, electric light, dishwasher, refrigerator...not even the kitchen stove. But, wait a minute. We didn't have any of those things in my childhood, and we weren't poor. We weren't rich, either, just average.
I have warm memories of the wood range. There's no soup today like that in the soup pot on the back of the stove. But the cook, especially when baking, needed considerable expertise to gauge the heat of the oven and to stoke the fire correctly to maintain that heat. My memories of hauling wood are not as warm, especially if it was snowing. However, a wood stove, no matter how cheery it's presence, didn't do much for the other room. On top of that, I slept on a sleeping porch from age eleven on through college...even at the college dorm we slept on the porch, where on a frosty morning we'd wake with black circles around our nostrils from the smoke that filled the air when the farmers had to burn smudge pots in the orchards. Today I keep my thermostat at 68 in the daytime and 50 at night, which is pretty cool for these old bones. Somewhere inside all these sweaters and blankets is a person.
I remember the washboard- hand wringing- clothesline days well. My mother could wring a double bed sheet dry enough to hang without dripping. I never developed the strength to do it. She had been taken out of school every washday, from fourth grade on, to help her mother wash for a family which eventually reached thirteen children.
We always had electric lights, but the earliest ones consisted of a single naked bulb in the center of the room. You pulled a string to turn the switch on and off. However, at the time George and I were married, his folks were still too far from town to have electricity. We spent enough time there that I can relate to the kerosene lamp existence. This person, who was used to electricity, found it difficult to remember the light had to be carried with her from room to room. I still have one of those kerosene lamps. My only function in operating them 67 years ago was to clean the chimneys...a very necessary duty...so I'm not sure how good I'd be as a tender of the flame should the occasion arise to recommission my lamp. As to the dishwasher...I was it!
I was in college when we got our first refrigerator. Prior to that we had evaporative coolers. Some were mounted in the outside wall of the pantry. It looked much like any other cupboard from the inside, but the walls were covered with burlap and at least one side was open to the outdoors. A slow drip of water kept the burlap wet and the evaporation kept the cupboard cool, especially true when we lived at the foot of Mt. Shasta and the water was melted snow.
My experience with music, as I've mentioned before, has gone from the first cylinder and crank phonograph thru 78 r.p.m., 45's., 33 1/3rds, and CDs. The first TV I saw in a home was over 49 years ago and had a 6" black and white screen.
Instead of TV, we had the traveling tent show which would come to town for a full week with a different play each night. We could boo the villain and cheer for the hero. Almost everyone in town went to all the shows where we sat on wooden benches, drank root beer and munched popcorn. In between tent shows we planned parties and shows of our own. And there were always books. I can visualize a life deprived of all the things I've mentioned....because I've been there....but I can't imagine a life deprived of books.
I appreciate every one of the new things that have come along to make life easier, but occasionally I can also be a little nostalgic for the days when we ate meals together and we didn't have to depend on canned amusement.
Blessings, Darlys
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A lady came to the hospital to visit a friend. She had not been in a hospital for several years and felt very ignorant concerning all the new technology. A technician followed her to the elevator wheeling a large and intimidating machine replete with tubes, wires and dials. "Boy I'd hate to be hooked up to that thing," the visitor said. "So would I," said the technician. "It's the floor cleaning machine."
A man was invited to an old friend's house for dinner. The host preceded every request to his wife by calling her "'Sweetheart," "Honey," Darling," "my love," etc. The guest was quite impressed since the couple had been married almost seventy years. While the wife was in the kitchen, the guest remarked how nice it was the husband still called her these pet names. The old man said, "To tell you the truth, I forgot her name about ten years ago."
If you can't stand bad puns, skip this: There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant and the first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This goes to prove the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the squaws of the other two hides.
Finding one of her students making faces at others on the playground, Ms. Smith stopped to gently reprove the child. Smiling sweetly, the teacher said, "Bobby, when I was a child, I was told if I made an ugly face it might freeze and it would stay like that. Bobby looked at her intently and then thoughtfully replied, "Well, Ms. Smith, you can't say you weren't warned."
Three buddies are talking about death and dying. When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning you, what would you like to hear them say about you?
The first man says, "I would like to hear them say I was a great doctor and a great family man."
The second man says, "I would like to hear I was a wonderful husband and a schoolteacher who made a difference."
The last man says, "I'd like to hear, 'LOOK, HE'S MOVING."
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