Welcome Back

The temperature is supposed to be 91 degrees all week long, and I sweated like a hooker in Sunday school when I ran at lunch yesterday. Glory Hallelujah brothers and sisters! Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty I’m free at last from winter’s grip! My old friend summer is back, and I couldn’t be happier. Of course, the first official day of summer is still a few weeks away, but in Kentucky we go right from winter to sticky, humid days. I can break out the flip flops and do the dance of humidity because hot weather is here to stay for the next few months. Can I get an “Amen” for the sunshine, someone?

Summer reminds me of that old lover who was exciting but couldn’t commit and was hard to let go of. You know, the kind that regularly disappears abruptly when things get too good and then slips back into your life a few months later, knowing you’ll take him back because you can’t resist. A charming, elusive lover.

I haven’t enjoyed winter since, oh 1967.

Forgive the poor quality of this photo, but it’s the last official record of me having a good time in snow. Winter could pass me by, and I wouldn’t miss it. The coats, the boots, the chilly winds and dreary days. Give me sun, sun, sun. I’m like a lizard, the hotter it is, the happier I am. I truly am a summer baby. I was born in the middle of July, leaving mama to sweat and swell like a fat man stuck in a Yugo. Every year on my birthday she talks about how miserable she was the day she pushed me into this world. And how she ate six ears of corn and two tomatoes before she went to the hospital. It was hot, really hot the summer I was born. Perhaps that why I like the heat. However, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that some of my best childhood memories revolve around summer.

Stepping outside and smelling freshly mown grass brings those memories rushing back. Memories of climbing off the bus on the last day of school and running into summer vacation with outstretched arms. Memories of riding my bicycle along country roads for hours with the crunch of gravel under my tires and the smell of hayfields in my nose. Of running from the neighbor’s ornery bull who stepped over fences like King Kong. Of bicycle wrecks and skinned up knees and elbows. Memories of sunbathing on a towel to the jangle of my little AM radio while slathering on baby oil and QT tanning lotion. Of picking peaches at the orchard and helping mama to can and freeze green beans and tomatoes. Of picking blackberries and clawing at chigger bites for days afterward. Of playing Batman with my brothers and riding in the back of daddy’s blue pick up truck. Memories of tagging along with daddy to the old feed store where they sold ring bologna sandwiches and Orange Crush and hosted some wicked card games. Memories of chasing lightning bugs after dark and waving sparklers under a July moon until they burned my fingers.

There were picnics at the park, mischief with my Indiana cousin, pink birthday cakes, homemade ice cream, fish fries and cherry popsicles. Cut-off shorts, pony tails and bare feet. Brown shoulders, burned cheeks and dusty feet. Tube tops, tank tops, pop tops and Pop Tarts. And mowing. Lots of mowing. Mowing grandma’s yard with the crank start push mower and mowing our yard with the riding mower with the handlebar that came off in daddy’s hands while chugging across the yard one day. There were also the hours spent trying on clothes to be put in lay away for the next school year.

I love those memories. They sweetly wrap around my mind like overgrown honeysuckle in full bloom. They follow me during the summer months and warm my heart while the sun warms my face. I am smiling today because it’s the time of year when I trade my winter coat for a jacket of sunny memories that I wear daily. It makes me feel good, reeeeaaaal good. Welcome back, lover. I’ve missed you.

Turkey Time

I love Thanksgiving. Great food, good times with family and no pressure about gifts. Ah, my kind of holiday. This week my mind is full of memories about past Thanksgivings. For years we ate the big meal at Grandma B.’s. Then we added too many grandkids, ran out of room and had to move the feast across the street to her sister’s house. I loved eating there. Great Aunt Tottie never had kids, so she always had nice, modern furniture, dishes that weren’t chipped and matching glasses and silverware. None of that jelly jar, fruit jar, glass from the laundry detergent stemware we used at my house. No sir, she had those nice, colored metal tumblers with the matching pitcher. Everything had a place at her house and everything was in its place. I wasn’t used to that coming from a family of three kids, a swing shift working dad and a mom who thought deep cleaning was a disease.* Neither were my cousins. I’m sure we were like the troops landing at Normandy when we showed up at Tottie’s house in noisy rounds of three and four kids at a time. She was probably exhausted when we all went home at the end of the day, and I’m sure she felt like her home had been invaded by enemy forces. No wonder Uncle Red was nicely numbed by Falstaff by the time we all got there. Or was it PBR? I forget. Help me out SuperCop.

For us kids, it meant a day of poking ourselves full of food, avoiding turnips and sweet potatoes, roughhousing with each other and watching 90% of the adults smoke themselves into a blue haze while yakking about old times. Mama is the only one of her siblings who doesn’t smoke. The rest of them keep Brown and Williamson in business. Aunt Tottie was a Pall Mall gal, and Grandpa B. smoked so much his fingertips were yellow. Yes sir, there was some puffin’ going on during dessert and coffee. It was a nice compliment to Aunt Brenda’s chocolate and coconut cream pies. She makes the best meringue in the world. Activities for the kids after the meal included fighting over Uncle Red’s miniature slot machine he bought in Las Vegas and sneaking peeks at his Hustler magazines stashed in the bottom of the magazine holder in the bathroom. I think it’s funny no adult ever questioned why it took us kids so long to pee. If the weather was nice enough, we played outside. That meant staying far enough away from Uncle Red’s dog, Jack, to keep from losing the seat of your pants. God bless that dog. I would have been edgy too, if I’d been tormented by a dozen rowdy kids. We were all usually wearing some kind of sock cap crocheted by Aunt Tottie and given to us the previous Christmas. She was a sock cap, scarf, afghan crocheting fool. Hang on folks……Oooh, I had to pause for just a moment while I laughed out loud at the gold caps she made everyone one year. Sorry SuperCop. I was picturing you in yours and laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. Never mind that I was wearing one too.………

As I grew older I gravitated more to the adult conversations held after dinner, listening to their stories about growing up together and learning about their lives before marriage and kids. We lost Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Red. We all grew up and had children of our own. We quit having the big meal and started having gatherings with our own parents and siblings. I love the meal we have now with Baby Ruth, Zeke and my brothers, but I kind of miss that big, noisy gathering. And I miss Aunt Tottie. Her last Thanksgiving was spent just a few years ago with us. Weighing in at 89 pounds, she ate enough pie to choke a horse. A sliver of this and a sliver of that she called it. She was still smoking too, although she pretended she wasn’t because she was losing a battle with emphysema. As I prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, I am grateful for my health and grateful for my family. Not just my parents, brothers, husband and child, but my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles and all those folks who enriched my early years with a wonderful blend of goofiness, red neckedness, history and laughter. I am one lucky girl.

*Clarification-mama didn’t keep a dirty house. She just didn’t worry about dust and clutter.

Anatomy of a Dance

6:50pm-"Hurry up, mom. We have to pick up S. before the game. It starts at 7:30pm."
"It's ten 'til 7. It takes five minutes to get to her house. If we leave now you'll be too early."
"Nooo. We have to go now."
"Okay." I'd rather drop them off early then listen to anxious whining by my child for the next half hour. I've been down this road before.

7pm-The drive to the game is filled with non stop chatter. Was I this loud at that age? Surely not. I'm sure I wasn't. Well, maybe a little. Hmm. Probably just as loud.

8:50pm-I drive back to the school to pick up the girls so they can change into their dresses. The parking lot is a maze of hazards like poorly parked cars and careless teenagers ambling around in search of each other. Whoo. This brings back a lot of memories. I had forgotten how big of a deal that first Homecoming dance was.

9pm-The drive back home is filled with loud rap on the radio and giggling...incessant giggling. Where does it all come from? Can it be bottled for use on a later, more depressing day?

9:15pm-I peruse the web, my ears are filled with the sounds of teenage girls giggling their way through preparations for their first high school dance. "Oh my God!" (insert Valley Girl voice-and if you don't know what that is then you're too young to be reading this) "Zip me up!" "What makeup are you wearing?" Close your eyes and imagine high pitched voices rattling like boiling tea kettles stopping only long enough for a dramatic pause or a scream of excitement. Picture flying hangers and shoes, scattered makeup containers and hair, hair hair. There is way too much energy in this house for this hour. Way too many voices and way, way too little bathroom. Lord help me, I don't have the strength for this tonight. It's been a long week. I think Hubby is going to have to pick them up later on. My energy..is...gone.

9:45pm-The drive back to the school is punctuated by "Shook Me All Night Long" on the radio. We bond over a little AC/DC, all of us singing loudly to a song that played during my first Homecoming. How ironic. Ah, the memories are rampant tonight.

9:48pm-The girls bound from the van in a hurry to get to the action. "Bye! Love you!" Followed by my "Be good. Have a good time." They hardly look back. Sigh. That phase has begun. You know, the moving forward, hardly looking back at mom and dad stage.

10:33pm-I set the alarm for 12:15am for Hubby so he won't sleep through his shuttle duty. I'm going to bed now. I'm sure I'll hear all about it in the morning. For now, I'm off to dream about a certain satin outfit, a little AC/DC and a little dance we liked to call The Hustle. And maybe a certain boy with braces. I smile because Teen Angel will be dreaming tonight, too.

In 1973

Hearing the James Blount song “In 1973” this morning prompted me to stop and think about what I was doing in 1973. I started fourth grade that year, and my memories of that year mostly involve fourth grade events. Mr. T. was our teacher. He was the first male teacher I had, and his reputation for strong discipline was legendary at Franklin Elementary. I was so scared of him for the first two months of school I was afraid to ask for permission to go pee. I didn’t get off to a great start with him, either. I lost my recess and had to write fifty sentences on the first day of school for failing to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t really my fault. I swear. Our desks were grouped together, and my pencil rolled onto Larry O.’s desk. I retrieved it, but he swore it was his, and we proceeded to argue about it for the better part of social studies class. It was a brand new pencil with a Frito Bandito eraser, and I was not about to lose it. Larry was as stubborn as I was, and somewhere between Columbus’ voyage to America and the first Thanksgiving, we lost recess. It was one of many lost recesses. My elementary school report card is filled with comments like “out of seat too much” and “talks too much”. It’s no surprise I ended up with a career in journalism.

I eventually grew to like Mr. T.. He was an excellent teacher and was probably a little ahead of his time in the methods he used. Fourth grade was the year of the multiplication tables, and he rigged up this homemade gizmo that set off a buzzer when you guessed the right answer to each math equation. We used it for individual practice, and I thought I’d wear out the buzzer before I learned all of my twelves. He brought his pet boa constrictor to class, and he was always challenging us with some kind of riddle or trick question. He kept us on our toes, pushed us to learn and rewarded us at the end of the year with a Moon Pie and RC Cola party. There was no goofing off in his class, though. He ruled with the confidence of Castro and the sword of fear. Whenever someone got in trouble you felt sorry for the accused because no matter how guilty he was, the punishment would be harsh and swift. Of course, you were also secretly relieved that if someone was going to get caught, it wasn’t you. I vividly remember the day he grabbed Billy Z. by the hair for some infraction and shook his head like a dirty rug. Billy was stunned, and the rest of us were terrified. You could have heard a pin drop for the rest of the afternoon. Billy showed up the next day with a buzzed head. I was scared for his life but impressed with his defiance. On another day Mr. T. tied Greg R. to his seat with a jump rope for failing to stay seated and posted Laurie L.’s sentences on the wall for all of us to admire when she tried to race through that punishment with tiny scribbles just above the lines. She got another 1000 sentences assigned to her since the first 250 were so pretty, he said. Mr. T. made fourth grade worth showing up for class.

It was a year of slumber parties, usually at Lisa M.’s house. We rode horses there. Lisa’s mom went to beauty school that year and practiced on her kids. It was not unusual for Lisa to get on the school bus each morning with a new perm or frosted bangs. She had a puffy wash and set hairdo for picture day, and I made her mad by laughing at it. My weekends were filled with Nancy Drew and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mood rings were popular and jean legs were bells, big bells with patchwork fabric sewn onto the bottom. My mother loved that trend because she could squeeze extra months of wear out of my pants. My best Christmas present that year was my first bra. It was a yellow elasticized number that was pretty but definitely unnecessary. All of us girls came back from Christmas vacation excited about our new bras. We talked about them endlessly and showed them to each other in the restroom. There was more flashing going on in that restroom than at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We talked non stop about boys, too. That was the first year we really started to notice them. It was the year we noticed them noticing us.

It was a year of many changes for us. It was a good year, a fun year. We were oblivious to all of the Watergate, Vietnam, Cold War fallout swirling around us as we practiced our multiplication tables in rural, small town America. 1973 was a good year if you were nine years old at Franklin Elementary. Thanks James for reminding me of that.