1. rdbrewer - 10/8/2003 4:16:37 AM
People are constantly reminded of childhood events by stimuli encountered in every-day life. Usually these long-term memories are stored because the events that gave rise to them are in some way momentous. It might be interesting to record and share some of these recollections, whether funny, dull, frightening, informative or strange.
2. rdbrewer - 10/8/2003 4:49:07 AM
Learning a new word:
My cousin, Larry, and I were "roughhousing-it" in my neighbor's yard one afternoon. I was about 6 years old. My cousin was 4. I looked up to see my mother walking across the lawn with Larry's sister, and my cousin, Alisha. This was unusual, so I watched closely. My mother rang the doorbell and said hello to our neighbor, Mrs. Flippo. Then, with what seemed like an exaggerated waive of her hand, she introduced Alisha, "This is my niece, Alisha." I thought that was very, very interesting. After my mother went back home, I rang the doorbell and, with a flourish, told Mrs. Flippo, "I would like to introduce my niece, Larry." Mrs. Flippo was bent over with laughter. I couldn't understand why she thought that was so funny, but I knew it had something to do with my pretense. I became terribly embarrassed, especially because Larry was there watching. I salvaged what was left of my dignity and scampered home. Mom laughed too, a little more gently, and then explained to me with a big smile that my cousins were her nieces and nephews.
3. ScreamingSin - 10/8/2003 7:45:02 AM
As a child I was shaken, not stirred. The other night my neice got some paper dolls for her birthday and I wanted to play with them. There are hardly any more paper dolls around these days.
4. ScreamingSin - 10/8/2003 7:48:36 AM
My best friend's dad was a Marine and he used to bark orders.
She's a great traveling companion - takes 3 minute showers!
5. arkymalarky - 10/8/2003 8:35:27 AM
#2 reminds me of my brother (I don't think he lurks here any more. He's forgotten we exist, I'm almost positive). He used to make up words when he was around 3. His funniest to me, as a kid, was "Hush up Wydodie."
I don't know if I spelled Wydodie correctly.
6. Macnas - 10/8/2003 10:51:53 AM
My mother milking cows, in the early autumn with the leaves from the sycamores falling into the yard beyond, letting me taste the hot steaming milk from my hands.
Holding the rabbit my brother had snared, small warm nervous knot with a heart beating desperately against my cupped hands before we let it go.
Seeing a horse for the first time, huge and tall above me with enormous farm horse hooves clomping the cobbles beneath.
Blood from the black dogs shoulder streaming down and clotting on her paw, her eyes wild in panic as the other dogs fought around her.
Sorry if this sounds like something from "Under Milkwood",
but it is fun to remember.
7. ScreamingSin - 10/8/2003 11:31:58 AM
I wish the one brother would lurk here, he's the lurker type, but I think he's dead.
The other brother comes on to any random person and will always find some woman to look after him and clothe and feed him. I have quit worrying about him.
8. judithathome - 10/8/2003 2:17:21 PM
I remember my granddad bringing a newly born black sheep up to the house in a soft plaid wool blanket...he let me hold him without completely letting go because the little ball of curls was wriggling like an eel. I was 5 years old and had never seen a black sheep.
His skull was hard as a rock. Later my granddad told me I was like that little black sheep...hard headed and very special.
9. wonkers2 - 10/8/2003 2:27:11 PM
One of my earliest memories is taking an after-swim shower at around age 3 with a little friend named Patty and discovering the difference between girls and boys.
10. Neato - 10/8/2003 2:45:42 PM
My earliest memory is pushing a doll's pram my dad had made for me, it had a wooden frame and was covered with canvas painted pale blue, I pushed it on the back lawn, I loved it.
11. judithathome - 10/8/2003 3:00:38 PM
My earliest memory is of my dad carrying me on his shoulders...I felt I could see the entire world. And I could...my three year old world, at least.
12. alistairConnor - 10/8/2003 3:09:35 PM
My earliest memory is called "Independence". I've probably told it before around here.
Three years old. Independent witnesses tell me that it was in Abel Tasman National Park, on a family holiday. Walking off down a path through green grass. I had new corduroy trousers, just like Dad's, and I was enjoying the zip-zip sound they made as I walked, and walked. I think my family missed me eventually, but I was picked up by a park ranger in his land rover. I told him to look out for a red car with a white roof (our old VW combi, bursting with 8 of us). He repeated, "A wed car with a white woof". I knew he was making fun of me, but I didn't mind. It was a happy adventure.
13. judithathome - 10/8/2003 3:26:16 PM
Your memory reminds me of a not so happy event: in second grade, Miss Wilson (I will never forget that hag's name!) stood me in front of the class and made me hold my hands straight out in front of me, palms down. I had to say "Roy Rogers" and "Red Ryder" over and over until I said them correctly, without the "w" sound. For each time I mispronounced a word, I received a hard rap with a ruler across my knuckles.
By recess, I was saying them correctly but my knuckles were bruised and I was mortified.
14. Macnas - 10/8/2003 3:42:16 PM
And Neato has sparked off a bittersweet memory for me.
I was perhaps 10 or so, and was working with my father clearing out a shed so we could fill it with a few cords of firewood, which we would be cutting later on that month.
Of course there was any amount of stuff in there, and we were sorting it as we went, consigning that which was to be kept to one side and burning the remainder on a bonfire that Da (as we called him) had made.
I threw an old toy cot onto the fire, not realising it was a favourite toy from my mothers youth, handmade by her long dead grandfather. I forget how she found out, or how it was that I realised my error, but though she said it was an accident and not to worry, I vividly remember seeing a tear or two as she turned the charred remains over when the bonfire had died down.
I was utterly ashamed and never really forgot it. I did make up for it in a small way when I was a bit older, when, being a bit handy with wood, I recreated the cot myself, in time to give to my mother when she was fretting on what to get her granddaughter, my niece, for her 4th birthday. I saw a tear or two then as well, but I didn't mind this time.
15. rdbrewer - 10/8/2003 4:30:47 PM
One of my earliest memories is taking an after-swim shower at around age 3 with a little friend named Patty and discovering the difference between girls and boys.
Wonkers, was there a blank IQ test laying around with the towels or something? ;)
Macnas, I have a lot of snapshot memories of my grandfather's farm that are similar. The first one that comes to mind is my grandfather allowing me to find out on my own why I did not want to chew tobacco. We were driving down the highway. I was turning green with nausea. He thought it was funny. Then I covered the side of his truck with nausea. He stopped laughing at me at that point. He told me I had to clean it up, but I sneeked away before he could get the hose and a rag.
16. Macnas - 10/8/2003 4:52:05 PM
Ha Ha rdb, I had the same thing with a pipe, from my neighbor who had the horses. My eyes filled with water, my mouth filled with saliva, my stomach roiled, and yer man thought it was the funniest thing he'd seen for a long time.
Mind you, I'd smoke a pipe away now quite happily, but my wife would probably set me on fire with it.
17. wonkers2 - 10/8/2003 4:52:30 PM
Blank IQ test?? Not that I recall????
18. Magoseph - 10/8/2003 5:23:36 PM
I have two early memories. The first was about being taken inside naked away from little boys I supposedly enticed to disrobe. Three years old, they say I was. The other was when I related to my mother how this nice lady took me on her lap while my dad played with her breasts. Four years old, they say I was. The screaming in both these incidents was deafening, I can still hear it.
19. Macnas - 10/8/2003 5:31:42 PM
oh Mago, I know you can't see me, but I'm laughing.
20. PelleNilsson - 10/8/2003 6:56:14 PM
Macnas
Your latest is quite moving.
21. thoughtful - 10/8/2003 7:39:57 PM
Ewww....earliest memory being scared to death that I'd been abandoned in the hospital ward. I had my tonsils removed at 2 1/2 and had to stay overnight by myself. My parents kept telling me that they'd come to take me home tomorrow morning when the sun shines.
You see, the next morning, it was raining!
22. rdbrewer - 10/8/2003 9:50:50 PM
Childhood beliefs category:
For some reason, I came to believe that TV movies were played on the same day every year. This is probably because of seasonal shows like Charlie Brown's Christmas. Anyway, on May 3, 1968, one of the Sinbad movies was on. I believe it was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, one of my favorites. I resolved on that day that I would watch it again the following May 3, 1969. I kept forgetting to watch for it for several years. By the time I remembered to think about it on the third day of May, 28 years had gone by. Of course, by then, I knew the awful truth-- that I couldn't watch Sinbad every May 3rd.
Anyway, this effort of mine left me with vivid recollections of that entire day in 1968. We played outside. There was a warm spring rain that afternoon, and by 5 or 6 p.m., the sun had come out again. We watched Sinbad while it was raining.
23. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 9:58:19 PM
Isn't the 7th Voyage the one with the Cyclops and the Gypsy dancer with the tattoo of the eye in her palm? I loved that movie as a kid!
24. rdbrewer - 10/8/2003 10:07:53 PM
I'm not sure, Ms. No. I'm thinking of the one where the evil genie's heart is in a jewel case type thing, so the genie couldn't be killed --unless you killed the heart. The heart looked great. It looked like a thick, shiny, red valentine. And I also remember a tower where they encounter a giant forearm and fist. That was great! The forearm and fist would bang around, trying to crush the good guys.
25. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 10:09:07 PM
When I was 3 my mom went back to TCU in Ft. Worth to finish her degree. We lived with a college friend of hers and her daughter, Jennifer, who was about 9mos older than me while my father stayed behind in North Carolina to work.
We went to see Charlotte's Web and Jenny and I cried buckets. When we got home we were siezed by the idea to have a funeral for Charlotte. I sat behind our bedroom door and played the funeral procession on one of those plastic binder strips that holds papers into a clear vinyl cover. When you hum into the end of it right it sounds like a kazoo. The only sad song we knew -- and we thought it was the saddest in the world -- was Greensleeves.
We played it over and over again so many times that Jenny's mom still can't stand to hear it 30 years later.
26. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 10:11:06 PM
All I remember is the woman holding up her hand in the crowd to show the sign of the eye and being sacrificed to the Cyclops. Oh, and swordfights with skeletons on some stone stairway. (try saying that five times fast)
27. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 10:19:25 PM
It just occurred to me that we moved an awful lot when I was a child. Before my 7th birthday I can remember 10 of the eleven places we lived.
28. thoughtful - 10/8/2003 10:51:19 PM
I remember being a youngster, about 3, on a vacation in FL with my family on the beach. Dad was standing in waist deep water talking to someone and I went to go see him. I just walked straight into the water, complete oblivious to the water getting deeper, going over my head. Dad saw me and the next thing I knew he had reached under the water, grabbed me around the waist and swooshed me straight up into the air.
Family was terrified that I had drowned. I was laughing and thought it great fun and wanted to do it again!
29. thoughtful - 10/8/2003 10:54:01 PM
Another memory was when I was about 6, I was sucking on a life saver, choked and it went down my airway. Dad picked me up by my feet and mother rapped me in the back (long before heimlich). Finally it dislodged, bloody mess that it was.
That's when we figured out why they were called lifesavers...without that little hole in the middle, I wouldn't have been able to breathe at all.
30. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 10:56:59 PM
It's amazing the way we remember childhood brushes with certain death. I mean, I'd freak out over some of the stuff that happened to me if it happened to my nephew, but as a child I don't remember a lot of it as any big deal.
I'm sure my mother's gray hair will attest to the fact that my feelings on the matters were skewed. ;-)
31. thoughtful - 10/8/2003 10:59:09 PM
Then there are those sibling memories....like when my brother convinced me to hold the silver dollar between my fingers while he shot it out with his BB gun! Yikes!
I was very naive and trusting.
32. Ms. No - 10/8/2003 11:05:28 PM
Probably why ducks followed you home.
33. thoughtful - 10/8/2003 11:53:05 PM
Hahahahah
I'm tickled that you remember Ms No!
{{Smooch!}}
34. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 1:16:47 AM
On my grandfather teaching me about chewing tobacco:
Then I covered the side of his truck with nausea. He stopped laughing at me at that point.
It occurred to me that maybe my grandfather learned something that day too.
35. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 1:19:00 AM
When we got home we were siezed by the idea to have a funeral for Charlotte.. . . The only sad song we knew -- and we thought it was the saddest in the world -- was Greensleeves.
That's cute. I didn't know you could actually make a tune with those binder things.
36. arkymalarky - 10/9/2003 2:19:14 AM
What a wonderful thread, RD! Thanks so much for hosting it. I've laughed and cried, all in ten minutes.
Of course anyone I know irl lately would tell you that's no big deal.
Dang, Thoughtful, I'm amazed you're here to tell all that stuff. Your Lifesaver story reminds me of one my dad told about a cousin or something who choked on an ice cube, and they flung him in the car, racing for the hospital.
Of course you know the outcome. After a minute or two it melted enough to go down and that was that. Lucky they didn't have a wreck on the way, I guess.
37. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 2:36:24 AM
Is that Lifesaver hole story true, thoughtful? Arky? Or is that another case of urban myth? The thing is, it's plausible.
38. arkymalarky - 10/9/2003 3:19:16 AM
You mean why they're called Lifesavers?
Surely not, but it does fit.
39. Neato - 10/9/2003 5:37:24 AM
They're called lifesavers I think because they are like the tyre-like things on boats that are thrown to people who fall overboard.
40. judithathome - 10/9/2003 5:46:39 AM
When I was four, I was standing on the sidewalk waiting for the ice cream man with a nickel in my hand. I was holding it palm up and a kid came racing by on his tricycle and acted like he was going to grab it out of my hand...I snatched my hand back while yelling at him to stop it and the nickel popped down my throat.
My mom raced me to the doctor, who told her to take me home and feed me a bowl full of mashed potatoes and wait for the change.
41. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 10:55:49 AM
I was at about seven. It had snowed overnight but now it was a bitterly cold day. The men had slaughtered a calf in the yard. I hadn’t seen the slaughter itself – or maybe I had but I don’t remember it. Now as I looked out the window on the second floor the men had put the calf on a rough table and started to skin it. The muscles twitched as the skin came off. The calf was still warm and steam rose from it.
I remember this scene very vividly, not because I was afraid or disgusted, but because of its quality: the white snow, the red blood, the steaming carcass, the men moving around it in their big jackets. When I look back at it now, I see it as a painting by one of the old masters, perhaps Brueghels.
42. Macnas - 10/9/2003 11:13:13 AM
I sometimes wonder if my memory of vivid moments like that of Pelles are altered, maybe dramatised or underplayed as the case may be, and how much of my memory is actual recall as opposed to impression.
I know my mind took pictures, but did my mind edit these pictures retrospectively? Sometimes I think that is the case, but as you can never go back, you have to make do with what you have.
Now when I remember, back to before my teenage years at any rate, it is like a flash card sequence, with stand-out scenes of high emotional content and rich vivid visual imagery coming to the fore. In the background there are more vague half remembered things, of school and family day to day that fade a little every time I try to recall them.
43. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 12:19:37 PM
When I look back at my teenage years, in particular the early ones, it is like looking at one of those abstract expressionist paintings full of screaming colours. Weird emotions, unfulfilled desires, frustrations, the highest happiness turning to the deepest despair and, sometimes, back again. I wouldn't like to live through those years again.
44. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 12:22:26 PM
No doubt our memory plays tricks on us but it is the only one we have. We can sometimes check the factual circumstances of an event but not our impressions of it at the time.
45. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 12:36:30 PM
Anna and her bull
Anna was an ugly, sloppy-looking lady of 60+ with a thin beard. She lived in a clearing in the forest some 3 km from our place. Her house was a ramshackle, unpainted, gray affair, planks rotting at ground level, roof leaking. Even a small kid like me understood that it would collapse sooner rather than later. She had a cow and a few hens and someone used to give her a piglet in the spring which she fed on household scraps and potatoes gone bad. Yes, she had a potato land and a piece of garden with cabbages, carrots and stuff. A relative used to bring her some fish when the catch had been good. What little cash she managed to scrape together came from her bull. He was considered a good reliable bull and Anna didn’t charge a lot for his services. So when the small farmers didn’t plan to keep the calf they preferred Anna’s bull over the more expensive premium ones kept by the local farmer’s association.
So it came to pass that on a summer day when one of our cows came into heat and my stepfather had some other business at hand I was told to take the cow to Anna. Before I left my mother told me that under no circumstance was I to eat or drink anything that Anna offered because she never cleaned anything and I would become frightfully sick. So I trundled off with the cow. Under the circumstances she was a bit boisterous but with some ado I got her to her tryst with Anna’s bull. She and I watched him perform flawlessly and when I gave her the money she said “poor lad, it is a hot day, you have to have a glass of lemonade before you walk back.” I remembered what mother had said, but I couldn’t think of any good excuse so I took the greasy glass, closed my eyes and downed the contents in one sweep. When I walked back with the now docile cow I waited with trepidation for the signs of the frightful sickness, hoping that I would make it home before it struck.
46. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 12:38:39 PM
Footnote 1: I never got sick.
Footnote 2: Anna collapsed before the house did The ones who inherited it found that the timber core was still sound and it is now a nice little summer cottage.
Footnote 3: For those who have become alienated from rural life: A cow must have a calf every year to continue milking. The important thing for the farmer is that (a) the cow really becomes pregnant and (b) the are no complications during the pregnancy or at birth. The quality of the calf is secondary unless it is intended as a future milking cow.
47. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 12:39:19 PM
My God! I have become a jexter-like serial poster.
48. Macnas - 10/9/2003 1:02:48 PM
Cows crop up quite a bit in my early memories, which is no surprise as we were dairy farmers.
I had a memory of a purple cow, which I always discounted as the fancy of a child. It wasn't until many years later, when I was helping my in-laws drive cattle from the lower meadow to the yard that I saw an amazingly picturesque purple cow, thereby validating that particular once dubious memory.
I think its a fine colour for cattle, and wish it was more prevalent.
49. wonkers2 - 10/9/2003 3:10:59 PM
One of my most vivid early memories, which seems incredible today, is at age 7, being put on the train alone with a lump in my throat, by my parents in Baton Rouge for a two-day trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, to see my grandparents. The trip included changing trains in Kansas City and an overnight stay there with my mother's cousin. There, I fell briefly in love with a second-cousin whose face I can still remember although I have never seen her since. What an adventure.
50. judithathome - 10/9/2003 3:26:43 PM
I had a youthful solitary train trip, too...hard to believe children used to be safe enough to do that. Now, even adults aren't.
51. RickNelson - 10/9/2003 5:09:40 PM
Cool thread!
Pelle,
I relate very well to post 43. Far to exhillarating events, but the high-low of it explains those years.
I've picked up a saving someone memory while reading.
It was probably the summer of 1970 and that would make me 9. Mom was renting an apartment for herself and we three kids. We had the luxury of an outdoor pool. So, I went swimming, being quite good at an early age. One particularly beautiful day I was out with my younger brother, we enjoyed the bounce of the low diving board. Well after one my dives, where I liked to spear myself across the pools length from the board, I popped up near a little girl. She was about four feet from the edge. She had a very panniced look on her face and was trying to turn to get back to the edge. She was just starting to fight when I went over to her and helped her back to it and then pushed her up and out. She quickly ran to her mother who was oblivilously reading. The girl didn't say anything, and the moment of help was gone without expression. I still remember her struggling while I helped her back. She was so desperate to get out. I think she was about 5.
I remember when I was about 14, my cousin who was likely late 12 and I went hunting. He shot at a squirrel. He hit it, but my ear was about 4 inches from the end of the barrel. That f'n hurt, but the other thought has lingered, disfigurement or death were close that day.
52. RickNelson - 10/9/2003 5:10:35 PM
Far to few, dang, I was sure that the word "few" was included in that line?
Few I tell you, far to few!
53. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 5:58:40 PM
My mom raced me to the doctor, who told her to take me home and feed me a bowl full of mashed potatoes and wait for the change.
Ha!
54. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 6:16:18 PM
I'll think twice before I ask for change in the future.
55. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 6:42:24 PM
Side note:
I had this wonderful, funny, smart, perceptive cat. He was a big furry Himalayan. I got him on October 15, 1983. Anway, he went through the best and worst of times with me and died on October 10, 1993. I had to have him put to sleep because of cancer. On that day, I needed a box in which to bury him, and the only thing I could find was a wooden box that was made for holding two bottles of wine. I drank one bottle and dated the other one and put it away. I was going to drink the second bottle in memory of my cat in another 10 years. Well, today's the day. Not really a childhood memory, I know, but I was pretty young when I got him. Here's to Rockefeller.
56. Magoseph - 10/9/2003 6:47:08 PM
How old were you, rd, when you got the cat?
57. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 6:48:49 PM
It so happens I'm having a glass of wine right now. I raise it in memory of Rockefeller.
58. rdbrewer - 10/9/2003 7:08:19 PM
I was 21, APoshGem.
Thank you, Pelle. I'm sure "feller" would appreciate it too. I enjoyed your bull story. That general superstition-like fear of the neighborhood crazy reminds me of a dirty man that used to live down the street from my grandmother. As kids, we were required to walk on the other side of the street whenever we passed his house. This was fairly frequently too, because his house was on the way to the neighborhood store where they sold candy.
59. PelleNilsson - 10/9/2003 8:50:53 PM
Thanks rd, but Anna was not a neighbourhood crazy. She was just a dirt-poor woman, one of many in a Sweden that in 1950 was very different from today, much more so, I imagine than the US.
60. arkymalarky - 10/9/2003 11:19:45 PM
I know I have some childhood memories, but that prompted another one from my dad. During the Depression they were poor, but the people next door were dirt poor, and what Southerners call trash (nothing to do with poverty). There were always a passle of kids running around unsupervised and they never had haircuts. Boys and girls both had unwashed, unbrushed long hair.
I don't know how old Dad was, but he has always had a dream of being a barber (I do have some personal childhood stories of his failings in that, btw, but I won't go into them now--too gruesome).
Anyway, his parents were gone, so Dad went and got a comb and scissors and called one of the brood over and said, "Hey, can I give you a haircut?" The boy didn't care, of course, so Dad proceded to cut his hair.
He was halfway done when he saw his parents coming and he was afraid he'd get in trouble, so he shooed the kid away and cleaned everything off the porch.
After that the kid went around the neighborhood with a half a haircut until the other half finally grew out to match.
61. Al D - 10/10/2003 4:29:26 AM
Judith's rapped knuckels nade me think of Mrs. Bryant, my forth grade teacher, who seemed to take pleasure in rapping knuckles. But that is not the story. Every day Mrs. Bryant would sent me to the corner store to get her lunch, a hard roll and swiss cheese with the holes in it. Every day the grocer would tease me by saying, "Why with the holes? Do you want to pay for all those holes?"
I was shy and would just look down without answering. One day I said swiss cheese without the holes. That is what I got, and did I catch hell.
62. Al D - 10/10/2003 4:33:23 AM
The year was 1945, I think the month was March. I was 13. I was playing baseball at Sheridan Park in the Ocean View district of San Francisco. I came up to bat and saw my brother's best friend, Jim Olson, behind the screen. My brother was a paratrooper, stationed in Europe.
In those days adults didn't come to see kids play ball. I knew why Jim was there. My brother had been killed in Germany, just across the Rhine.
63. arkymalarky - 10/10/2003 5:09:45 AM
I'm sorry Al. So close to the end, too.
One of my best friends in 7th grade had a brother who was a helicopter in Vietnam and he got his orders for home. She was elated for days and days, and two weeks before he was due his helicopter was shot down. She didn't come to school for weeks after that. I realize more as an adult what it must have been like for a 13 year old to lose a brother old enough for her to have set him on a pedestal and admired him, especially after not having seen him in so long. She never spoke about it after she came back to school.
64. RickNelson - 10/10/2003 2:49:02 PM
I'm glad Jim Olson showed up. It makes a difference. The grieving never ends.
When my mother remarried, it was her third try, she told me I had to call my "Big Brother" (of that organization) and tell him we would have to stop our association. I was crushed, I know now it was alike when my grandfather died. I was almost 14.
I've never recovered the goodness of that relationship. It was father and son to me. He was everything I had always hoped could be. I miss him so much it's a hopeless, gut wrench. Never recovered.
65. RickNelson - 10/10/2003 2:49:22 PM
Mom got a divorce in about 4 months.
66. RickNelson - 10/10/2003 2:54:30 PM
Soon after I discoverd Monty Python. Crazy shit! A piano, with a big mouth, chasing the crew around a beach trying to eat them. Remember that weird Wimbaldon Blamange? (sp?)
"It's a dead parrot"
"No it isn't, it's just asleep"
"It's a bloomin' dead parrot, deceased, no more, pushin' up daisies..."
67. ScreamingSin - 10/11/2003 3:17:38 AM
47. PelleNilsson - 10/10/2003 11:39:19 AM
My God! I have become a jexter-like serial poster.
Become? Become?
Are you as comely as jexster?
I must be reliving childhood 14 yrs old, that really bothered me as some sort of slam, as I haven't seen any comraderie between PelleNilsson and jexster.
Meanwhile back at the ranch I am going to torture the child with more studying. The better half is better at the homework than I. I get out the red pen and have a good ole time while the child seethes.
I don't think my parents sat with me much over homework, so I've no idea why I'm posting it in the childhood memory topic. Other than it might have made us hate each other more, had they done that.
68. Al D - 10/12/2003 2:56:21 AM
I think I was around 9 or ten, 'cause it was before WW2. My Mom always encouraged my sister and me to visit shut ins, old people who couldn't get out hardly at all. It didn't take much proding on my part as I had a fondness for old people, not like most of you on the Mote.
So one day my Mom baked up a batch of cookies for us to take over to Grandma Parson's house. She wasn't really my grandma, we just called her that. I didn't have any grandmas.
Well, my twin sister, Evelyn, and her friend, Darlene started over to Grandma Parson's. We were fooling around as little kids do, mostly me I suppose, and, darn, if we didn't drop the cookies right in the gutter. Of course, we cleaned them up as good as we could, hoping Granma Parson wouldn't notice. When Grandma Parson opened the cookie box she exclaimed, "Oh, how nice, drop cookies." Evelyn and Darlene couldn't stop giggling.
Grandma Parson was a worker in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, so toward the end of our visit, she signed us up. It cost a dollar. Well, it really cost me three dollars, me being the man and all. I had that much money from my paper route, delivering the Call Bulletin.
69. RickNelson - 10/12/2003 4:31:20 AM
I remember our first year here in Minneapolis. I think I was 6. Mom rented the lower of a hi-low duplex. I still remember it. It had one of those claw-foot tubs. Bro and I shared a bunk-bed. We had a bw tv and I watched Casey Jones. I loved the NBC Peacock feathers opening.
I learned how to cook soup from a can there. I learned that the broiler, the old style drawer under the stove, melts plastic figurine toys. I learned that when I wont let go of the present I received for Christmas from a boys club and walked home without gloves in about 10f that my hands will freeze and hurt like the dickens. Warm water does not make it all better, I recall it was very unpleasant. However, the car I received as a present I recall truly liking. I did not like school lunch time. I did not like walking to school, those two ladies bleeding in their car from a collision with a garbage truck kinda made me a bit jumpy. I liked big ol' green caterpilars and its crysilis, but I didn't see it become a flyer.
I recall being sick twice. Ther first I remember taking a lot of aspirin. I had such a fever and a headache. I don't remember how I knew how many to take, but I do recall phone calls. Some other time I woke up and couldn't move my legs. I was totally cramped into a fetal position. I absolutely could not move. Mom took me to a neighbor instead of the home alone thang, and I recall I relaxed out of it much later in the day. I don't remember doctors, don't like 'em anyway, still don't.
Dang nice swing in the backyard. At least I know I swung on it.
Yuh ever explore basements as a kid? I liked to. Look for tools and stuff. I liked tools.(Ha, still do) I recall the ol' ball-peen I found that yr, when 6. I can't recall much about that basement, but I got down there at least once.
70. RickNelson - 10/12/2003 4:31:30 AM
Did any of your grandparents have a smallish, two wheel trailer. Large truck tires, so the frame was pretty high off the ground. I teeter-totered that ol' trailer for many a yr, before it was gone.
Teeter- and toter all day long
teeter and toter all day long
Sing it with me now...
71. Macnas - 10/12/2003 9:53:07 AM
Of all the things that drove me mad as a child, it was working with my father.
Da would work from light to night, in the manner of old world farmers everywhere, and expect you to do likewise. Indeed, he took great exception to the thought of skiving off to go fishing or hunting or reading or cycling, when there was work to be done.
The amount of work aside, which of course I exaggerate, there were seven children, and five of us boys so there were enough hands to make light, his strive for perfection bordered on the demented. When I look back on it now, well I know now what he was about, and always thank him for it when I complete my own tasks and am happy with the outcome.
72. thoughtful - 10/12/2003 11:40:42 PM
i remember being a little girl and walking out of church on xmas eve, which was very crowded, and reaching up and grabbing the side of my mother's fur coat when she suddenly stopped walking. I looked up into the face of a stranger! Wrong fur coat!
I remember being 3 years old and spending my summer days sitting atop a turned over bucket in the garden, reading stories to my future father-in-law while he gardened away. He was an educator and took pleasure in teaching me and encouraging me to read. By the time I started school, I was reading so well that the knderg. teachers used to have me read to the class.
I remember my favorite aunt coming to visit at our house....she always made sure she had chicklets in her purse for me.
73. wonkers2 - 10/13/2003 1:17:28 AM
Come on. Somebody must have had an evil uncle or aunt who taught them naughty tricks!
74. RickNelson - 10/13/2003 2:45:08 AM
Al,
I like your cookie story.
75. RickNelson - 10/13/2003 2:45:47 AM
Arky,
Half a haircut, what a hoot.
76. RickNelson - 10/13/2003 2:56:40 AM
Not me Wonkers.
Before we reached Minneapolis, or at least I think so, this particular time is blurry, I got a bike. It was red, rather large, without extras. My father's side grandparents gave it to me. I'm not sure about the time-line. I recall a large house, a longish driveway and a garage. The driveway was sloped on both sides. Bushes on either side too. One day a telephone man came out. Somehow, he drove over that bike. That's all I can recall, but it sure sucked. I don't know why they wouldn't buy me a new one, or own up to it at least. I don't know why I just didn't have a bike anymore.
Young innocent stupidity. Just don't know nothin'.
Kind of a cool house, it had those curved windows and a nice spiral, curving stairway. I don't remember that we had much in that place, but I think I liked it because it was big and open. That's about it for that house.
77. Magoseph - 10/13/2003 2:57:08 AM
I have two older brothers and two older sisters who tried their damnest to teach me dirty tricks, Wonkers. They never got anywhere with me because I was smarter than they were and most importantly, ran much faster than they did.
My childhood memories are about my father and mother and their unending soap opera relationship. I am getting ready to tell you all, one of these days, the one which I think of as The Roses of the Collector of Taxes.
78. Al D - 10/13/2003 7:47:22 AM
When I was around 13 my Mom baught be a three quater length coat and a hat. I thought I was quite the beau brummel. I took to walking the streets of Daly City at night, smoking my pipe, fully expecting an older women to pick me up, and you know, show me the ropes. At that age, she would have have a grand time.
79. Macnas - 10/13/2003 9:16:46 AM
Not to mention arrested!
80. RickNelson - 10/13/2003 5:02:50 PM
Nah, I doubt it Mac. I think Al's referring to a time like '49-55. If so, I think he coulda had a good time, with an experienced woman of wicked ways. Now, I admit I wouldn't during my time of the 70's have had the guts to look into a situation like Al's. I had enough trouble with liking girls in my class and playing king-O-the-hill on curb-side snow piles next to the school.
That reminds me of fifth grade. That year there was a lot of snow. I can remember a mountain of snow in a corner of the school parking lot. A lot of us liked to climb that mountain. We built something along the line of forts in the recess area. Most of the time the snow didn't pack because it was too cold. But, once in a while it would warm up and then we could pack it. I lost my wallet with about $12 in it that fall. It fell out while I was building one of those forts. Next spring looking for it, I found it. I was so happy. I dried everything and spent the money. I don't recall on what, but K-mart had come to town. I suppose I bought myself icee drinks and other kid stuff.
We had a five&dime near our apartment complex. I would walk there quite often for candy. I really could get something for a nickle and or dime. I think tootsie roll and suckers mostly. But, remember the chocolate "icecube"? That sweet, soft concoction usually sold at the register from a smallish container. They were a dime back then. Oh, I love those.
81. Macnas - 10/13/2003 5:14:05 PM
Childhood sweets, my favourites were things called Trigger bars. They came in sugar-bag blue waxed paper with a Roy Rogers type motif printed on the otherwise plain packaging, (no list of ingredients required back then).
They were a simple confection of semi hardened caramel coated with sweet milk chocolate, and cost something in the region of five pence or so. If I saw them today, I'd be sorely tempted, at least temporally, to lift my self imposed sugar prohibition.
82. judithathome - 10/13/2003 5:27:45 PM
My favorite candy bar was a Cherry Mash...they still make them but they are nowhere near the same. A ball of cherry nougat surrounded by chocolate with finely chopped nuts mixed in it. That and a fountain cherry coke at the matinee on Saturdays was my fave.
83. thoughtful - 10/13/2003 7:27:02 PM
you reminded me of another childhood memory of my girlfriend and i walking the 1 1/2 miles to Tom's pharmacy to spend our few cents on a package of gum with beatle cards and maybe some penny candy which really did cost a cent....bazooka bubble gum and fire balls. Once in awhile we'd spring for a jaw breaker...those things lasted forever!
84. judithathome - 10/13/2003 7:32:15 PM
Do you recall the little golden peanuts which were hard candy outside and when you bit into them, had soft crunchy peanut butter inside?
85. Magoseph - 10/13/2003 7:45:02 PM
When I came to this country, I was 17 and just couldn't take then to peanut butter. Little golden peanuts with soft crunchy peanut inside? You mean, they aren't around any more? Just too bad!
86. judithathome - 10/13/2003 7:49:35 PM
I haven't seen any but then, I haven't gone looking, either.
Most of the really delicious things from childhood, if they are still around, have a different taste, anyhow. Like Hydrox cookies...they are just like cheap Oreos now but they used to have a decidedly bitter taste that made them superior, I thought.
87. Magoseph - 10/13/2003 8:08:40 PM
I remember the first time I had a Coke in the Freedom country. It was vile, but that never stopped my crowd and me to drink it. Of course not, we all wanted to be Americans then. I mean, the kids at least.
88. thoughtful - 10/13/2003 8:14:19 PM
don't remember the peanut candies you speak of j@h, but i do remember the orange peanuts that were very sweet and sort of chewey...and then there was bit'o'honey...and then the ubiquitous candy corn for halloween. Also used to eat scooter pies like crazy and mom made me fluffernutters for lunch. Surprised I have any teeth left after my girlfriend introduced me to her favorite...frozen Charleston Chew bars.
Now i think of that stuff and cringe at how terribly sweet it tasted...but back then it seemed yummy.
Don't remember it at all, but mother told me that, when I was a wee one, she served oreos to a friend who said there was something wrong with the cookies. Seems I'd gotten into the package, ate out all the filling, put the cookes back together and stuck them back in the package!
89. robertjayb - 10/14/2003 12:40:03 AM
In wayback times when soft drinks came in small bottles (5 or 6 ounces) and cost a nickle, there was Grapette, a sweet, sweet grape drink in a smooth, tapered bottle. Loved 'em.
Just this summer I discovered that the Goya brand grape soda is very similar. Alas, like Macnas, I don't take sugar these days.
90. Al D - 10/14/2003 4:26:46 AM
Many of my memories are from WW2. I was 9 when the War started. My favorite store to by candy was Rolph's Corner grocery. Hardly any families bought food there, but it was great for candy. Candy was kept in big glass bottles, and for a penny you could get a hand full. A few days after Dec. 7 I went over to Rolph's for candy, but the store was closed, with a big sign, CLOSED FOR THE DURATION. I had no idea what DURATION meant
91. webfeet - 10/14/2003 3:15:44 PM
(Sung in unison)
And everything was beau-ti-ful at the bal-let..,raise your arms and someone's alwa-ays there...
This thread reminds me a little of that song from A Chorus Line though perhaps even more poignant.
92. judithathome - 10/14/2003 5:22:40 PM
What were your favorite toys when you were a child? Mine were Lincoln Logs and my chemistry set.
93. Wombat - 10/14/2003 5:29:54 PM
Lego; Kenner roads and beams; Tinkertoys; model airplanes and ships; miniature soldiers. Guess my gender!
94. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 6:18:33 PM
Wooden horse, romper-stompers, Barbies, jump-rope and any game that could be played with a blanket tied around my shoulders and a big stick in my hand.
95. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 6:38:46 PM
Just before my 3rd birthday I went on a trip with my parents to a fiddlers' convention. I don't remember if we had our van then or not, but I do remember sitting around the campfire and feeling very grown up because the adults were talking to me. I have no recollection of what I was discussing but at one point I repeated a turn of phrase that I'd heard my mother use "That just cracks me up"...only I was a child and I was showing off and I had to go one better and say "...like an egg." This sent the adults into great guffaws but somehow I got the idea that I'd said it wrong and was being laughed at a bit more than with.
96. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 6:40:53 PM
I have two more memories of that trip which probably only lasted a single weekend. My father wanted to go see some cloggers but my mom was tired so she went to bed and my dad and I tramped off through the mud to go see the dancing. I was wearing green rubber boots to keep my feet dry and they made for great stomping which appeared to be the main event of the day. I was too short to dance with the cloggers but I climbed up on the stage to stomp around next to the band. Funnily enough a news crew was there and caught me on film and broadcast it back to our town where my grandmother caught it on the evening newscast.
97. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 6:41:11 PM
The best part of the trip, however, was the aquisition of Pooh. There was a huge craft fair in a big barn or warehouse or something. All I really remember is that the ceiling was a billion feet over my head and I had to watch out and not bump my head on the corners of the display tables everywhere.
Anyway, we walked past a table of handmade stuffed animals and a Pooh-Bear called my name. He was the only one on the table----because everyone knows that there's only one Pooh however many other toys there may be up there. So I started chatting with him and then my mother told me we had to go.
I'm not sure how it happened, but I must've gone back to the table when she wasn't looking. My mom was frantic because she couldn't find me. She and my father went back to the table with the stuffed animals. No Pooh. No 2 year old daughter.
They were about to leave and look some more when they heard me talking. My father lifted up the drapery on the table and sure enough, there I was sitting on the floor talking to Pooh again. The jist of the conversation was that since we couldn't afford to take him (Pooh) home with us I was spending as much time with my friend as I could before we had to leave.
My father couldn't bring himself to interrupt our conversation permanently so he bought Pooh-Bear. And so goes the beginning of one of my strongest childhood friendships.
98. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 6:46:06 PM
It just occurred to me that the majority of my earliest memories take place at night. I don't really have any daylight memories until my brother was born about 3 months before my 4th birthday.
99. thoughtful - 10/14/2003 7:33:32 PM
I often wonder about all the effort that parents put into our lives when we're young, yet how little of it we really remember...and at that, some of its the not so good that we remember.
I also wonder how much of the memories I have are really my memories or if they've just been incorporated from the family pictures I've seen of those events...like the trip to DC, catskill game farm, niagara falls, etc. For some reason, I seem to recall most vividly that red shirt I wore to the game farm, though the pictures of it are only black & white.
They say though, if you want to trigger memories, the best way to do it is with smells. I came across my FIL's humidor a few weeks ago, took a whiff and was instantly transported back 40 years ago to when he smoked a pipe. I did love the fragrance of his tobacco...he used to make his own special blend.
100. thoughtful - 10/14/2003 7:34:37 PM
Love that pooh-bear tale, ms. no.
101. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 7:49:37 PM
He still sits on my bed when I remember to make it. This means that he's generally sitting on the keyboard waiting for me to make the bed. ;->
Ah, smells are the best. I have things that I keep for the smell alone. Little slivers of soap or an almost empty bottle of lotion. Boxes with scents left in them. For years I had a rabbit fur earring of my mothers. It was a bright yellow puffball that dangled on a faux-gold chain and the scent of it could instantly transport me back to an apartment we lived in when I was about 7.
Sometimes pieces of music will strike me almost as strongly, but they eventually lose their time signature for me because I overlay new memories on them. Smells never seem to do that -- or perhaps it's only certain smells that are hard to come by or reproduce. I don't have the opportunity to change their meaning.
Clove cigarettes and Aquanet always remind me of highschool.
102. thoughtful - 10/14/2003 7:59:04 PM
Grandparent's house always smelled of wintergreen...some kind of something they used to rub on their aching bones.
103. PelleNilsson - 10/14/2003 8:25:51 PM
Meccano was the thing when I was a kid.
104. PelleNilsson - 10/14/2003 8:28:42 PM
A dream project:
105. Ms. No - 10/14/2003 8:30:42 PM
The cabinet beneath the bedside table in my grandmother's bedroom still smells of the footpowder my grandfather used to combat his athelete's foot. He died almost 30 years ago, but that cabinet and the indside of his guitar case bring him back for me.
106. RickNelson - 10/15/2003 3:17:14 AM
Al,
I'm sorry your corner shop put up that sign. Did it stay closed for the duration? Did he go enlist? Maybe had sons do that?
thoughtful?,
I like the candy stories and I remember those orange crucnchy peanuts with soft peanuty insides. I can't imagine they're gone, but probably are.
Cool Pooh story Ms.No
Wombat, ha, you male you.
You and Pelle. Is that one you actually saved Pelle? It looks worth it, must be prized if it's a childhood creation.
I love errector sets. I liked Lincoln Logs, errector by that name, toy soldiers, Sgt Rock comics, chemistry sets, bikes, sleds and bb-guns.
I never owned an errector set nor Lincoln Logs. I found them at friends homes.
I did get a nice train set the christmas I was 12. My dad showed up, laden with gifts for his three kids. We couldn't have been more pleased to see dear-ol dad. He was making up for a few years absence.
I recall trying to keep that set for a long time. Bits breaking with each move or some such thing. Just couldn't keep it, lost it along the way.
I was a supreme model ship and airplane builder. I would take all the time needed. Strung them and painted what I could. That hobby lasted about two years, but it was productive. I think the three foot B53 bomber was my favorite, but the Constitution was surely second. I liked an aircraft carrier too, but it was wreaked like the Mary Celeste.
107. RickNelson - 10/15/2003 3:20:08 AM
Hmmmm... I know I corrected that 3 in B53 with a 2 for B52. Must be some funny memory schtick that funks up my fun.
yeah, it's just me it picks on I tell yah, just me.
heeheehee
108. rdbrewer - 10/15/2003 4:37:41 AM
When we would ride in the car, when I was a kid, my father used to always ask my mother, "Is it clear?" My mother would always look toward the passenger window and answer yes or no. This would always occur after stopping and waiting to make a left turn. He must have said that at least a thousand times, and I never could understand why. The window was almost always clear. Why couldn't he just look at the window himself and see that it was clear? Finally, one day I was riding in the front seat between them, and it was raining. There was rain on the passenger window. My father asked if it was clear, and, before my mother could answer, I blurted out, "No, it's dirty!" They thought that was very funny. After that, I was allowed to inform my father whether the window was clear or dirty any time we drove in the car. I proudly carried out my new duty.
109. rdbrewer - 10/15/2003 4:44:50 AM
Pelle, I desperately wanted Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs year after year. All my friends had them, and I loved going to their houses to play with them. Finally, I settled on Tinker Toys, and after begging for them for a couple of weeks, my dad went out and bought me an Erector Set. That was a neat toy, and I had fun with it. I built a lot of things, and it could probably do more than other toys, but I wanted the damned Tinker Toys. I would have been happier with them. The Erector Set got old for me after a couple of months.
110. arkymalarky - 10/15/2003 5:22:04 AM
I felt the way you did about Tinker Toys with Legos. I got hand-me-down Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, but no one ever handed down any Legos.
I always wanted a Lite-Brite too, and never got one, so when Mose was the right age I got her one and she never played with it, so I did for a while. It amazed me how quickly it got boring. After all those years--what a let-down.
111. arkymalarky - 10/15/2003 5:23:27 AM
That reminds me of Bob meeting a friend of his in line at the store once. The guy had a coloring book in his hand and Bob asked who it was for, since the guy didn't have coloring-aged kids, and he said it was for him. He just liked to color every once in a while.
112. Macnas - 10/15/2003 11:18:31 AM
Pelle and I share the favourite childhood toy, the Meccano sets.
I think these sets were the cause of a great number of us to go on and get involved in engineering in later life.
Lego was a firm favourite as well, and I still enjoy constructing pagodas, skyscrapers and villages with my kids.
Balsa wood models, Airfix and Revell plastic kits, toy soldiers, especially a rare set of very miniature French Foreign Legion troops, which still resides at home.
Card playing was very popular in my house, with whist, 21 & 45 and all the variations on that theme being the games of choice. We would play poker now and then, but Da would gleefully cheat us out of every hand, saying he'd stop only if we could tell him how he was actually cheating.
Never could.
113. alistairConnor - 10/15/2003 11:34:25 AM
I think these sets were the cause of a great number of us to go on and get involved in engineering in later life.
Other way round. You enjoyed Meccano because you were destined to become an engineer.
114. Neato - 10/15/2003 11:39:28 AM
The constructions my brother made from mechano he always called "wotanizors".
Cribbage was big with us. Played with matchsticks in the holes on a folded out wooden box. Often on Saturday nights with my grandmother, who took it very seriously. No fun.
115. Neato - 10/15/2003 11:44:43 AM
there are those chants that go with cribbage - two for his knob; fifteen 2 fifteen four and the rest don't score. That was fun.
116. wabbit - 10/15/2003 3:12:12 PM
Hey Neato, I found a decent computer cribbage game to play when human players are not available.
I had toy horses instead of dolls. I liked those Visible Whatever (Visible Man/Woman/Horse/Heart etc) model kits and all manner of science project things, chemistry set, microscope, dissection kit. But mostly, I drew or read. I always loved books. Such a boring child.
117. rdbrewer - 10/15/2003 5:49:46 PM
Pelle, Macnas, what you guys are calling "Meccano" we call an "Erector Set."
I built a lot of things that weren't in the instructions.
118. Ms. No - 10/15/2003 6:03:41 PM
Wabz,
I had a bunch of toy horses. Was it Breyers or something? I was going through my garage a couple months ago and found them and my friend asked if I was ready to give them away yet.
Nope. Still not.
119. judithathome - 10/15/2003 6:20:45 PM
Don't give them away unless it's to your nephew or someone similar...some of those Breyers are worth a fortune! The sell for big bucks at antique malls.
120. judithathome - 10/15/2003 6:22:51 PM
Here's some moderately priced ones....
121. PelleNilsson - 10/15/2003 6:48:15 PM
To me "Erector Set" suggests a do-it-yourself kit for penis enlargement.
122. wabbit - 10/15/2003 7:03:51 PM
My father had a hissy fit about 15 years ago and took all my carefully preserved horses to the dump. I am incapable of rational discussion regarding this.
123. judithathome - 10/15/2003 7:12:31 PM
I know the feeling...all that has survived my mother's rigorous purges is my Teddy. All the rest are dust in the wind.
124. RickNelson - 10/15/2003 10:13:50 PM
I remember the first zoo visit I had when eight or so years old. It was to St.Paul, Minnesota Como Zoo. It was very old style back then. Near the end of that tenure though. The large cats were exhibited within small stone walled enclosures with iron bar fronts and tops. They had a small door leading into the inside equivilant. That building housed the famous gaurilla and a tortise which gave tots rides.
They had a machine that dispensed wax liknesses of the animals kids most appreciated. There was and still is an outside stone building. It is the center of a wheel style exhibit of African range animals. Zebra and the like. They had some birds too, but so much has changed.
One part that has some originality to it is the conservatory. The plants are a welcome relief during the winter freeze.
125. rdbrewer - 10/16/2003 2:15:31 AM
Pelle, "Erector Set" is a funny name.
Remember the nightmare toy/weapon, Klackers? I beat myself black and blue with those things. Isn't there some ancient weapon that is made of two rocks tied togther?
126. rdbrewer - 10/16/2003 6:55:46 AM
Klackers:
127. rdbrewer - 10/16/2003 6:56:10 AM
When used for hunting, Klackers are called bolas.
The bola is a primitive weapon that was used by both the Eskimos and South American Indians. Bolas are still used today in South America.
Here are a couple in a museum.
128. Macnas - 10/16/2003 11:00:03 AM
Klackers? They look like knackers!
I can never remember there being a specific item for which the Meccano we owned was dedicated, perhaps the plans were lost along the way or some-such. It was basically free form, so you built what ever you could think up.
Such as a "Kwai" style bridge on which to blow up your Hornby steam engine in true Holden/Hawkins fashion.
129. Wombat - 10/16/2003 12:31:59 PM
I thought they were called Click-Clacks. They were banned from my school. Too dangerous. Yo-yos were allowed.
130. Neato - 10/16/2003 2:25:15 PM
Hey Wabbit - thanks for the cwibbage
131. wabbit - 10/16/2003 3:31:20 PM
No pwoblem, Neato.
I remember those Klackers, dangerous things. Weren't they recalled at some point after the balls came off the string and clocked a few kids in the head?
132. rdbrewer - 10/16/2003 4:31:51 PM
Wabbit, I heard about broken arms and smacked heads. The balls would also hit people in the eye, causing serious injury. Occasionally, they would shatter.
Wombat, they had other names:
Bonkers, Clackers, Clack Clacks, Crackers, K-Nokkers, Ker-Knockers, Klackers, Klick Klacks, Knockers, Mini Poppers, Moon Rocks, Popper Knockers, Rockers, Super Clackers, Quick Klacks, Quick Clacks, Quick Wacks, Wackers, Whackers, Whak Kos, Zonkers.
133. rdbrewer - 10/16/2003 11:05:58 PM
Macnas, my Erector Set came with plans for at least 10 items. Then, you could buy ad-ons to build larger and more complicated things.
134. wabbit - 10/17/2003 12:02:18 AM
All this talk of construction-type toys reminds me of how few of those kinds of toys we had as kids. We had Lincoln Logs and Legos, but just the basics. OTOH, we had a father who allowed us to help build the home stereo receiver and television. We sat around the kitchen table and built our television as a family project. Little fingers can be remarkably adept at setting diodes into circuit boards. I daresay I'm still good with a soldering iron, though my welding days are over (learned to weld later, not at nine). Then there were the trips to Radio Shack to test the tubes. And the trips to the town dump to see what the silly people were throwing away. We could salvage most anything mechanical. I still can't pass by a dumpster without having a peek.
135. rdbrewer - 10/17/2003 12:14:40 AM
Wabbit, I have a reply in the Mote Cafe.
136. rdbrewer - 10/17/2003 12:29:42 AM
I remember the late '60's. I remember the Saturday morning that the Beatles had an international concert on television. It was filmed live in some studio with a small audience. Most or all of the audience was sitting on the floor. It seemed informal, and the Beatles may have been sitting on the floor too. I remember that it was important for some reason. It was billed as the largest networked show ever produced at the time. I remember seeing Mick Jagger in the room, sittin cross-legged and jamming to the music. It seemed like it must have lasted for hours. I was bored by it. I wasn't old enough to appreciate what was going on. My older sisters were. They were excited to see Mick Jagger, and when the camera went back to him, they pointed him out to me. I only had a vague idea of who he was, but I knew it was odd to see him there. I watched it for a little while and went on to do more interesting things, like playing outdoors. My best friend, Brian Shelton, had older brothers who were watching the show. He was outside too. Then, I think we watched it at his house too with his brothers for a little while. We felt compelled to try to watch it because of the way our older brothers and sisters were acting.
137. rdbrewer - 10/17/2003 4:53:26 AM
June 25, 1967-The Beatles perform All You Need Is Love on the live television show Our World. About 400 million people around the world watched the show. It was the first time a program was ever broadcast live around the world.
Beatles timeline.
138. rdbrewer - 10/17/2003 4:59:15 AM
June 25 - The Our World program airs to over 30 countires and features The Beatles performing "All You Need Is Love", with guests Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Keith Moon, Eric Clapton, Pattie Harrison, Jane Asher, Graham Nash, Hunter Davies and others.
Wikipedia.
139. Macnas - 10/19/2003 9:50:59 AM
That was Spike Milligans event I think, that Our World thing.
140. rdbrewer - 10/22/2003 1:50:03 AM
Favorite candy: Corn candy. I also loved cinnamon sticks. I also had a thing for Pixie Sticks, big giant SweetTarts, grape bubble-gum (the individually wrapped ball-type with a shell of intense grape flavor), and those soft popsicles called Pink Things, I think.
Our ice cream man drove a bug, a painted-up, chartreuse VW, that would drive around the neighborhoods ringing a bell. In my grandmother's city, there were sno-cone stands all over the place. My favorite flavor was a coconunt and banana mix, which my aunt dubbed a "monkey sno-cone."
Favorite toy: Balsa wood gliders, the kind you snap together. I probably went through several hundred of those.
I also had little plastic monsters that you could put onto a hot-plate device and then put them while hot into a screwed-driven piston compactor device (attached to the hot plate thing) that would smash them into a little block. Then you could heat them up again and they would expand back into their previous shape.
141. rdbrewer - 10/22/2003 1:57:15 AM
Oh, yeah. We also had the original video game machine, an Odyssey. It had Pong and a few stupid games where you would have to stick a translucent plastic film with designs or pictures to the screen that would form the game "board." Then, the video game would light up dots here and there that you could see through the plastic film.
142. wonkers2 - 10/22/2003 3:44:03 AM
Anybody else remember "big little books" which were pornographic versions of popular comics like Popeye and Jiggs and Maggie? They were about an inch thick and inches wide by 5 inches high and contributed to my (Cap'n Dirty's) early sex education.
143. Macnas - 10/22/2003 10:54:12 AM
Ha! In my youth, pornography in Ireland was one of the highest forms of contraband, I knew fellows who were expelled from school for possessing it
144. thoughtful - 10/22/2003 8:06:07 PM
We used to play with frogs when I was a kid, seeing as we had a pond. Used to dangle a piece of fabric off a fishing hook in front of a frogs nose and they'd invariably go for it...great big bullfrogs.
We used to flip them upside down and rub their bellies which put them to sleep.
Bull frogs are gone now. Once in a great while I'll hear one but it's rare. I have started seeing the smaller frogs again though.
I remember one year the lawn around the pond was just full of black snakes. Used to tread lightly among them, but once they had babies there were so many it was hard to find a place to safely put your foot down.
145. RickNelson - 10/22/2003 10:10:32 PM
Man, I liked frogs and snakes. Just before my parents split we lived in Albert Lea, MN. There we lived at the top of a hill and the bottom went to marsh land. That land was a veritable smorgasbord of fun. I spent many an afternoon exploring and watching tadpoles, frogs and other things. There were other places later in youth, but that one was the closest to wilderness for me.
146. Ms. No - 10/22/2003 10:55:59 PM
Wonkers,
Yes! I remember those books. My dotty grandmother actually gave me money to buy one at a garage sale once because she didn't realize it wasn't just a comic book.
It disappeared less than three hours after I got it home. I was very disappointed and spent the rest of my youth on the lookout for them.
The same dotty grandmother nodded and smiled vacantly while I read Fritz the Cat and other R. Crumb offerings never imagining what was in them. If she'd only known. This grandmother was known to turn off Wonderful World of Disney if she thought it was too scary for us.
147. rdbrewer - 10/22/2003 11:23:42 PM
When I was a kid in the late 60's, there were frogs everywhere. At times they would swarm across our yard. We would play with them a short while almost every night. I tried to feed them bugs occasionally. My sisters were always afraid of getting warts from them. We don't see frogs very much anymore around here.
I remember many a warm summer evening at my grandmother's house watching fireflies across the hay fields gathering mostly at the edges in the tall weeds next to fences. We never could resist the urge to run after them. It always seemed like they scattered when we got close, but this was the un-compressing effect of changing perspective as we got closer.
Another animal we used to catch and release was the Horny Toad or Horned Lizard. That was a fascinating animal. When I was 4 or 5, I would see them almost daily. I haven't seen one in at least 30 years. Here's a picture of one: 
148. rdbrewer - 10/22/2003 11:40:35 PM
On chasing the fireflies, that compressing effect of perspective from a distance (that I didn't understand as a kid) always caused it to seem like there were more fireflies elsewhere -- anywhere but where we were. So we would run toward the largest groups over and over until we were sweaty and totally exhausted. We would always catch a few, however, and put them into small jars with a few sprigs of grass.
149. judithathome - 10/22/2003 11:47:35 PM
You don't see very many red ants anymore, either...that's why you don't see the Horny Toads. No food.
150. robertjayb - 10/22/2003 11:48:26 PM
I have an illustration of a Texas Horned Lizard on my "Keep Texas Wild" license plate. Their principal prey was harvester ants, "big red ants" to us country boys. Some say these ants were driven out by the spread of imported fire ants. Maybe, but I would factor in the idiotic statewide bombardment with pesticides aimed at the fire ants. Also the trend toward "improved" pastures where more-or-less native pastures of varied grasses and plants were replaced with hybrid bermuda grasses. I blame this example of monoculture and the ants for the decline in our quail populations as well.
Horney toads were much fun for kids. We harnessed them to match boxes for chariot races.
151. judithathome - 10/22/2003 11:48:58 PM
We have fireflies in our back and front yard all summer long...they have always been here, ever since I was a kid.
Not the same ones, of course.
152. rdbrewer - 10/22/2003 11:53:23 PM
Anyone remember Space Food? I loved those. It was hard to eat just one or two. Apparently, they still make them in Austrailia, although the packaging doesn't look the same. This is a black and white picture of what I remember.
153. Ms. No - 10/23/2003 12:58:51 AM
When we were little and my dad's middle brother was still mostly sane, he'd take us down to a creek with big buckets to catch tadpoles. Then we'd cart them back to the house and my Uncle Chris would watch over them in the garage for a few days until they started to get their legs. Just before their tails fell off we'd make another trek back to the creek and release all the tadpoles. I think we probably increased the frog population of Spartanburg, SC by 30%.
This same uncle also kept an alligator in a tin washtub in his bedroom. I have a feeling he probably fed it some of the tadpoles, but I never saw him do that. When the gator died he buried it behind the greenhouse at my grandmother's house. Years later the greenhouse fell down and was carted off but my brother and I used to wander around looking for the spot where the gator was buried.
154. judithathome - 10/23/2003 1:21:02 AM
One winter I went to spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle. My uncle took me to check out the garden and we found a tiny baby rabbit, about the size of my (current) thumb and I decided to try and save it. I made it a little bed in a kitchen match box...little mattress made of folded Kleenex and I laid him on his back (!) and covered him with a cotton hankerchief like a blanket, up to his little chin. And I put the box on top of the mantle.
It was winter and naturally he froze to death. What kind of idiot puts a new born rabbit in a matchbox on top of a mantle in the middle of winter? A kid idiot, that's who...
We buried him the next morning and my weekend was just ruined.
155. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 3:25:31 AM
I recall from '69-'73 that in Plymouth, MN I would find salamanders. They would be in window-wells to the basement of a house. I rarely found frogs then, there was a good marsh and a bit of forested park with a trail and a good bit of stream.
That stream would dry up on the summer. I used to go on an expadition to explore that stream. Look for gold and diamonds so I could be rich.
I liked to try and build forts up in trees in that bit of forest. It didn't work to well; there just weren't enough resources to build with. Later, I discovered that I could dig a tunnel like fort into the side of a steep hill next to the complex we lived in. There I could cover it with one board and shore up the sides a bit. It worked pretty well, but rains always ruined them.
I buried my first hamster at the apex of that large hill. I put it in a check-box, covered it with kleenex and put one of my small fishing lures in there. I closed it up and carefully buried it late so noone would notice me.
McGovern's poster was displayed larger than life in someones window. Later Nixon resigned and someone gave me a joint.
156. arkymalarky - 10/23/2003 3:36:50 AM
Oooh man, do horny toads and red ants take me back.
In AR they talked for several years about fire ants moving into the state from TX and I thought they were talking about big red ants, which are really wicked. When it turned out to be these little ants not much bigger than sugar ants I scoffed that they went on about them so much. They hurt a little and put a little blister on when they bite and their mounds are a real pain, but they're nothing like big red ants. Getting in one barefoot was fun--picking them off one at a time while they're biting and stinging the crap out of you as hard as they can.
157. arkymalarky - 10/23/2003 3:40:28 AM
I buried my first hamster at the apex of that large hill. I put it in a check-box, covered it with kleenex and put one of my small fishing lures in there. I closed it up and carefully buried it late so noone would notice me.
McGovern's poster was displayed larger than life in someones window. Later Nixon resigned and someone gave me a joint.
That's an interesting set of consecutive paragraphs.
158. arkymalarky - 10/23/2003 3:41:53 AM
My first found pet loss was a baby hummingbird that had fallen out of a nest and was injured. I was five. It seemed to be doing ok (as baby birds all do right before they croak), and it just fell off its perch.
My parents took me to see Mary Poppins, which I'd been dying to see, and I cried all the way through it.
159. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 3:42:44 AM
"Getting in one barefoot was fun--picking them off one at a time while they're biting and stinging the crap out of you as hard as they can."
I suppose, but I'm gettin' a kick out of the above. It just gives me a chuckle. Not that you or someone was suffering, but the glib remark about it is just offhand funny.
160. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 3:47:11 AM
For some reason your recollection of Mary Poppins reminded me of Pippy Long-stocking. That may have been Swedish? Eh, Pelle?
I think I thought of that little girl as some kind of hero, she was so resourceful and had money.
Well, gotta hit the hay. Ciao.
161. arkymalarky - 10/23/2003 3:50:01 AM
Stuff like ant bites is funny looking back on it. My brother was the smart one who sat on a red ant bed one time.
Nite Rick.
162. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 4:57:53 AM
Their principal prey was harvester ants, "big red ants" to us country boys. Some say these ants were driven out by the spread of imported fire ants.
Robt., I have a reply on the Mote Cafe.
Horney toads were much fun for kids. We harnessed them to match boxes for chariot races.
I never could figure out whether ours were dying easily or playing dead. We learned not to put them in a shoebox and keep them over night because invariably they would die. But I think now they were either playing dead or that they might have been too cold to move in the morning w/o direct sun.
163. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 5:05:39 AM
Ms. No, we would take buckets to a place below the dam on lake Overholser in Oklahoma City and catch "crawdeads." I thought they were scary looking and that they felt weird when you would grab them. It took me a while to learn how to catch them. My friends big brother was the one doing most of the catching. Then he would build a little terrarium type thing out of a tub. He would fill it about half full with mud, rocks, and water. After the mud settled, you could watch them.
164. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 5:10:04 AM
Judith, I had a friend who put her goldfish to bed one night, because she thought they were tired. She put them on a paper towel on a pillow and then folded another paper towl back like a sheet and tucked them in up to their chins.
165. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 5:19:34 AM
Arky, my cousins and I would dare one another to sit on a harvester ant hill occasionally.
When it turned out to be these little ants not much bigger than sugar ants I scoffed that they went on about them so much. They hurt a little and put a little blister on when they bite and their mounds are a real pain, but they're nothing like big red ants.
If I'm not mistaken, those little bastards hurt worse after the initial sting and then for a longer time since you get a pimple thingy.
166. arkymalarky - 10/23/2003 5:22:09 AM
They don't really bother me that bad. They really itch, though.
167. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 5:44:18 AM
The greatest challenge:
When I was 6-7, there was a girl down the street a couple of years older then me named Kim. She was a friend of my older sisters, but she was always a jerk toward me and my friends. She would pick on me whenever she could. Once I was sitting on the curb idly throwing sandy dirt-clods, and Kim walked past. An idea occurred to me. I challenged her to see who could eat a dirt-clod the fastest. I knew she couldn't resist a challenge from me. She would have to show me who was boss. The dirt-clods were about the size of a golf ball. I said, "One, two, three, go!" But I only balked my clod toward my mouth. I made the motion very quickly and really sold it. She put hers in her mouth. From her expression, it must have tasted pretty bad. While I sat there and laughed, she spat globs of mud. Then she went home with a sour, angry look on her face, still spitting. She didn't say a word.
168. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 5:47:08 AM
I think the harvester ants had a worse initial sting.
169. Neato - 10/23/2003 10:58:49 AM
We collected tadpoles from a lake in the huge garden of a big house on the edge of the valley in which I grew up - it was close to our very ordinary neighbourhood and all the local kids had a wonderful time in this garden, the solitary owner must have known we were running all over the place, but he never complained. We put the taddies in an old washbasin in our backyard. I have neat dreams about that place even today.
170. Wombat - 10/23/2003 2:59:20 PM
My first experience with dead pets was when I was six. Our kitten, Quentin, had been suffering from the sniffles, and was in his box in our bathroom, the warmest part of our apartment. I went in to check on him one evening, he looked like he was sleeping peacefully. When I stroked him, however, he felt cold, and was stiff. I ran to my mom, and she confirmed that he was dead. We were both crying.
My mom, who was writing a children's book about Vikings, said that Quentin would have a Viking funeral: he would go to kitty heaven with all his possessions with him. We gathered up all his toys, blankets, food and water dish, and pu them in the box which was his bed. Then my mom wrapped the box in contact cloth. Since we lived in Greenwich Village in New York City, there was no place to bury him, and floating the box in the Hudson River and setting it on fire was out of the question, we left the box in a trash can on the street. It was only after the garbage truck had "transported" Quentin to kitty heaven that I discovered my favorite bedtime buddy, "Little Bear" had been included among his possessions. I think I was more upset about losing Little Bear.
171. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 3:41:39 PM
Wow, I just remembered my first experience with a dead pet. Your not going to believe this, although I don't lie, I do add flavour, but I don't lie.
Without embelishment. This isn't a pleasant memeory.
Mom and we three kids came home from church. Dad was asleep at home. We pulled into the driveway and I saw a shape dangling from a cord, wrapped around the top branch of a low (3+ feet) bush. I saw that it was our dog. A small animal, and I don't remember its name. We hadn't had him long. I see why.
Dad hadn't heard anything. If it was yelping we never discovered. Somehow it had wrestled itself into a hanging position from a sturdy part of that bush. It's leash for outside had tangled and it obviously struggled itself into stranulation. I don't know what collar it may have had. Perhaps dad used a noose?
Dad and mom split very soon afterward. I was 5, almost 6.
It's just a memory. Nothing more.
172. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 3:52:30 PM
Jumping to my first kiss.
Seems weird, but I can't leave it at that last post.
Tommy Roe and the song Dizzy was cool, as were Credence.
Dizzy was my favorite song.
The girl across the hall, a slightly buck toothed, pretty girl, liked me. She kissed me one day. It was really good and I knew I liked it. She was a really nice girl to me. She moved sometime, I can't recall details.
My brother met one of his lifelong friend-acquaintences there. I was 7-8 he would have been 6-7. This guy was an incredible athlete. Did the iron-cross stuff later on. Unfortunately he broke his back at some point. He recovered well, but his exhertions were stemmed considerably. I think his name was Ricky. Kewl name.
The next thing I knew it was summer of '69 and a man was walking on the moon. Kewl beans!
Next stop that apartment complex in Plymouth. The swimming pool, the little forest and stream. King of the hill (hahahahaha, god that's funny), sweeties and a lost-found wallet.
Oh yeah, McGovern, Nixon and um- pot.
173. marjoribanks - 10/23/2003 4:27:52 PM
Good thread, brewer.
I find all these latest accounts of childhood trysts with nature quite interesting, and it reminds me how much my child (ren) will wind up missing if we continue to live in this urban area and don't make concerted efforts to make sure that we get the kids to experience the outdoors and understand the whole rythym-of-life thing.
I, of course, grew up in India and thus my own outdoors experiences are rather less bucolic than most of those recounted in this thread. For a few years, back when we lived in a totally undeveloped part of the Konkan coastline, I ran wild in an environment that contained actual mortal threats to my 5-6-7 year old life,in an environment that I'd now be quite unwilling to set my son loose.
But for me, it was quite natural to know that there were deadly snakes in the garden, and occasionally to spy the black head of a cobra whisking itself away from me into the roots of a banyan tree as I approached to swing from the hanging vines. When a leopard fell into the neighbor's well, 20 yards from my bedroom window, we congratulated ourselves on not having a dog (the usual prey) and didn't really consider that I was, well, pretty much dog-sized.
174. marjoribanks - 10/23/2003 4:28:15 PM
In my grandparent's garden, in the Western Ghats, I knew that I had to hold on to my sandwich tightly lest one of the band of rhesus macaque monkeys that lived there took fancy to it and came down to grab it from my hands. And all through my school years, even in urban Bombay, we had to pick schoolyard spots with good overhanging tree cover lest a kite (a small but fierce raptor) come screaming out of the skies to take our lunch right out of the tiffinbox.
But, don't get me wrong, there was also plenty of endless revelry with lesser entities from the animal kingdom, a lot of the fun had during the almost embarassingly fecund months of the monsoon where water runs everywhere, the tiniest spot of dirt on the ground (or roof, or parapet, or wherever) will sprout green, and snails and frogs and butterflies and the like proliferate madly.
175. thoughtful - 10/23/2003 5:08:13 PM
My hubby grew up in NYC but his grandmother had the place called "the farm" where he spent his summers. It was and always will be his home. He left NYC when he was 18 and never moved back.
He spent his summers working at a nearby dairy farm and learned about what it was to rely on oneself, what it was to work, what it was to have others rely on you, and what it took to get the job done.
Getting close to nature is a very good thing. We were over a coworker's house who just moved to a new place with a very small pond. They were worrying about their daughters and the pond. Hubby and I started chuckling and told them about the much larger ponds and brooks we grew up with including water mocassins, copperheads and snapping turtles. We survived quite nicely, thank you, and learned a terrible lot in the process.
You mustn't over worry for your children. You can wrap them in bubble pack and put them in the attic where they will be perfectly safe, but also perfectly unexposed to life's beauties and dangers, and perfectly unaware of the risks and rewards and responsibilities it takes to survive in this world, and perfectly dull. Better, IMHO, to broaden their experiences, have them learn by doing, and learn that actions have consequences in very real ways. The earlier that lesson is learned, the better.
176. wonkers2 - 10/23/2003 6:04:18 PM
The story of how RD tricked Kim into eating a clod confirms my impression is that he is a wily and treacherous character!
177. alistairConnor - 10/23/2003 6:04:45 PM
Later Nixon resigned and someone gave me a joint.
Hey, I remember that.
178. marjoribanks - 10/23/2003 6:47:59 PM
Better, IMHO, to broaden their experiences, have them learn by doing, and learn that actions have consequences in very real ways. The earlier that lesson is learned, the better.
True. However, it should be noted that an error of judgement, in the kind of environment my parents still foster in their "backyard", and my little fellow could lose half his face, or be raced on narrow roads to a faraway hospital for a dose of antivenin, or in fact die.
179. marjoribanks - 10/23/2003 6:59:38 PM
Your fireflies here, by the way, are different from the ones I grew up with.
Where we live on the Hudson, all through the early summer, you have thousands of bulky, slow-moving, lit-up insects. My son and I venture out most evenings to try and catch a bunch with our little net, and put them into little insect-viewing (ventilated) boxes.
The thing is, these damn things (which the locals call "lightning bugs") don't light up once they're put into the container, they just sit there un-lit, and we look at them for a few minutes and then let them go.
The fireflies I chased in India were quite different. They were smaller and swifter, and when you got a bunch and put them in a bottle they buzzed around still attractively lit. I used to cram dozens one of my dad's old empty beer bottles and stand it up in my bedroom window, and the bugs would keep it lit for hours.
These "lightning" bugs, by contrast, are sluggish dullards, without the gumption necessary to stay lit for even a second after capture.
180. thoughtful - 10/23/2003 7:23:20 PM
MB, I suspect there is rare few environs where a child's error in judgment couldn't lead to serious consequences, medical emergencies and even death. The creatures I mentioned that I grew up with could inflict serious harm including the need for antivenins. The simple error in judgment of chasing a ball across the street could lead to serious injury and/or death. Rural, urban or suburban, life imposes risks with potentially serious consequences and we can't mitigate them all...nor should we try.
The fact is you learned to survive in the environment in which you were raised and you grew stronger, more aware, and more responsible for it. I suspect your son would learn to do so as well...as we all must.
Of course just the thought of something awful happening is enough to make one sick with worry, but there is a balance that must be struck between freedom and protection. I am thankful every day that my parents never overworried me or where I was or what I was doing and allowed me the freedom to roam, to explore, to grow and learn and live in such an independent way. I think it's made me very responsible and self-reliant and more courageous than I would have otherwise been.
181. thoughtful - 10/23/2003 7:37:16 PM
I contrast my upbringing, which I survived quite nicely, with how I see parents bringing up children today, and I'm concerned. Children seem to be swamped with "supervised activities" be it sports or music or cheerleading, or scouting or whatever. I see children being given so little time alone to think and create and learn on their own. For me, there was an important serenity and ease and de-stressing that came when I was off in the woods by myself that was most essential to my mental and physical health. That does not come when a child is given no time for solitude.
I remember as a girl...i was a latchkey kid before there was a word for it...coming home after school to an empty house, except for the dogs and cats, and taking off with them up into the woods to hike and explore and enjoy nature's bounty. I remember that favorite patch of long, soft grass in the woods, laying down on it in the sunshine and breathing the air, smelling the woods and going to that place deep inside which said it was just great to be alive.
182. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2003 8:58:01 PM
I wouldn't like to see this thread morphing into a discussion of how to bring up your kids. The perspective here, is it not, is about your reminiscences about your childhood.
183. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2003 9:16:48 PM
Regarding those pious posts about catching tadpoles and releasing them back into the pond or wherever I don't believe a word. Everybody caught tadpoles and put them into some kind of glass canister. Everybody wanted to see them evolve into frogs, not merely into tadpoles with legs. The first year they all died. The second year everybody tried some enhancements, food for example. They all died. The third year more advanced techniques were used: blowing oxygen into the canister, changing the water regularly, etcetera. They all died. Nobody ever saw a frog bred in captivity.
The fourth year interest shifted in a provisional, tentaive way to girls. Would sucess with them be as elusive as with the tadpoles?
184. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 9:46:22 PM
Wombat, my first experience with death involved our family dog, Coco, a brown poodle who had been struck by a car. I was four years old. One of my parents had put him on the side of our house. They told me to stay away from him. I was afraid to go near him, but I wanted to see. I peered around the corner of the house at him and then went next door to my friend's house -- one vacant lot over. Jerry and his big brother had already seen Coco. They talked about him in excited, mysterious tones and kept looking his way. They said that he was dead, and that you could see it in his eyes. They convinced me it was okay to look. After Jerry and his brother went in, I sneeked up on Coco. I crept around to where I could see his face. There was no blood. He looked fine in all respects, but when I bent over to look in his eyes, they just stared blankly forward. I was afraid to get too close. I didn't fully understand, but I knew he was gone.
185. RickNelson - 10/23/2003 9:52:54 PM
Pelle of Pippy Long-stockings land,
I don't know about the tadpole deal, I liked the kiss I describe upthread, I didn't have any way to keep what I found girl or bug.
The same year as the girl, I was bit by a very large gartner snake. Harmless for the most part, but this one was big enough to draw blood from my young hand. It didn't seem right, but some kids got wind of my bite and killed it. They seemed to come out of nowhere really, I don't recall playing with them. The whipped it by its tail upon a chain link fence. Too bad.
I liked a little lake nearby. But mostly it was a dead lake. More a breeding area for dreaded mosquito.
Ahhh, I recall playing marble games during school that year (1969). I can remember that we really valued "steelies". Cats-eye were really great too. There were a variety of sizes too. I think some were an inch diameter.
Ahhh, I recall someone bringing an outrageous steelie to school. It must have been an industrial bearing, I think it was at least four inches diameter.
186. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 10:02:33 PM
Marjori, I can't imagine having to look out for such dangers as a kid. But we did have wasps, bees, automobiles to look out for and big, raving dogs.
Come to think of it, we called them "lightening bugs" too. I also noticed that they were reluctant to fire when put in a jar. But they would occasionally, especially when we shook the jar. Cute picture of your son, btw.
Rick, I remember where I was when Armstrong first walked on the moon. I was in my parent's bedroom. My dad was watching the coverage intently. I was inquisitive, and every so often he would ssssh me or tell me to be quiet. I remember he was on his greenish gold colored velour comforter with diamond patterns sewn in. I was alternately standing and sitting at the foot of his bed. I was bored because the pictures were so bad. I had expected good pictures like in the space movies.
187. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 10:13:48 PM
Wonkers, one time when I was six, I convinced my friend's little brother that my right hand was cut off. I had put my hand in a styrofoam cup and pushed the cup up the sleeve of my jacket. I had found a stiff piece of wire, something like the axle from a toy car, and shoved it through the cup and held onto it with my hidden hand. I told him that was what I had to use in place of my hand. While I told him about this, I played in the dirt with my "good hand" and made do with my wire hand. He stared at my wire hand for a long time and was very solemn. I didn't let him in on it for at least an hour.
188. judithathome - 10/23/2003 10:15:02 PM
We were leaving on vacation, to go see my grandpaernts in Missouri, as we did every single year, the day of the moon landing and my dad drove at breakneck speed to get my aunt and uncle's house in Oklahoma City so we could see the landing.
My aunt had dinner ready and we all woofed it down...roast beef and mashed potatoes and gingered carrots...so we would not miss a second of it.
189. judithathome - 10/23/2003 10:18:56 PM
Ooops...that was in 1969? I was 26! I guess my ex and I were going on vacation with my folks and my son, then. Hmmmmm.
190. robertjayb - 10/23/2003 10:27:36 PM
Cycles of schoolyard games/fads came and went as surely as the seasons and as mysteriously as the migration of animals.
Marbles of course. And yo-yos. Had to have a yo-yo. And spinning tops and water pistols. Pitching steel washers was always popular (you could keep score and make bets).
Another game that today would set off alarms and maybe even congressional hearings was mumble peg or mumblety-peg.
This involved jackknives (every boy carried one) and a cleared circle in the dirt. The object was to flip the open knife from increasingly difficult positions (the back of your hand, your elbow, your nose) so that it stuck within the circle. I don't remember scoring---probably the goal was to duplicate the previous feat.
191. judithathome - 10/23/2003 10:30:31 PM
Slingshots...really great tools. And the best ammo was dried chinaberrys.
192. Wombat - 10/23/2003 10:34:54 PM
We had a bit of a jacknife status thing going. Everyone wanted a genuine Swiss Army knife, with as many gadgets as possible.
Babysitting tale (true): I was babysitting for this kid, who must have been seven or so. I had noticed that he walked with a slight limp, but didn't think anything of it until bedtime. As he was getting undressed, he took off his leg (prosthetic--below the knee) and gave it to me to hold while he put his pajamas on. I managed not to faint, hurl, whatever, and gave it back to him when he ws done.
193. robertjayb - 10/23/2003 10:35:29 PM
Slingshots? Judith, you are so PC.
I preferred green chinaberry ammo. They were heavier and produced a greater sting.
194. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 10:49:07 PM
Robt, we played "the splits." It involved standing face to face. We took turns throwing our knives to one side or the other and your opponent had to align his foot to the spot where your knife stuck. If it didn't stick, you didn't have to move your foot. The first one to fall over lost.
We also had "Daniel Boone fights." This involved using fake knives or anything to represent a knife. You would have a "knife" in one hand that your friend gripped at the wrist with his open hand. Then, you would grasp his knife hand by the wrist with your open hand. The first person to touch the body or neck with the "knife" won. This resulted in endless rolling around on the floor, just like Daniel Boone.
We also had pea shooters, sling shots, little bows and arrows with suction cup ends, and, of course, balsa wood gliders, the best.
195. rdbrewer - 10/23/2003 10:51:08 PM
Of course, we didn't whack, shoot, bean, or purposely hit anything with the gliders, which don't really belong in the group. Oh, well.
196. Wombat - 10/23/2003 10:55:39 PM
Living in an 8th floor apartment, we were able to conduct many interesting gravity experiments. A superball will indeed bounce to the level from which it is dropped.
197. arkymalarky - 10/24/2003 12:02:53 AM
I loved superballs.
198. Neato - 10/24/2003 1:43:54 AM
re 183 "Regarding those pious posts about catching tadpoles and releasing them back into the pond or wherever I don't believe a word."
Pelle - I wish you had read my words - we put the taddies in a washbasin in the back yard. And we did see them turn into frogs. So there!
199. rdbrewer - 10/24/2003 2:27:33 AM
I remember the yo-yo craze came at about the same time as leather sandals with tire tread soles. The kind with brass rings on top. I walked around with my tire tread sandals and my "butterfly" yo-yo with which I could do a few tricks.
200. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:36:06 AM
I remember Medicine Lake in Plymouth ('69-74). I would ride bike or walk to the lake. Pole in hand some box of tackle and a stringer for any I might catch.
My initial forays took a lot of time hunting suitable spots to fish from shore. There were very few and I often sought to wade out into the shallows, hoping for a good experience. That was not to be. The good spot came later.
I think it was later in '70. I decided to walk back into the Mission. This is down the road from Armstrong Senior High and back then a place for old men to sober up. As I walked into the yard of a large house next to the lake, I noticed a large boulder set on the shore. This was great. I sat upon this boulder and fished.
I soon discoverd my favorite fishing spot was that boulder. I caught sunnies mostly, and the occasional crappie and I know I must have had at least one northern.
One day I was using a newly acquired lure named the "Lazy Ike". It swivled in the water, back and forth, mildly. During one cast, I slowly retrieved that lure and could see it clearly that day of light clouds and clear water. Suddenly a very large northern swooped a large arc toward that lure, snatched it unceremoniously, and swam away. I was very happy to see the fish, not happy to lose my newest lure.
I made a decision to buy another. I did so not long after, and returned to my spot. I never experienced that fish again, and I don't recall catching anything with it. I would however constistantly lose my new lures to the debris in the lake bed. I never tired of that spot.
201. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:36:20 AM
I recall one Spring that a very large quantity of northern were stuck within a culvert leading up that road I mentioned. Somehow they swam in there during the thaw and some heavy rains. Then they stayed and were stuck because the water rapidly receded. I saved many that day. I tried to make the ditch clear at the lake opening and scare all toward the freedom I was eager to give them. Most obliged my endeavor, yet some wary beasts took refuge within a metal culvert under a drive. They surely perished, or perhaps a later person took them. Maybe saved them?
202. arkymalarky - 10/24/2003 3:36:51 AM
I had those. I wore them all the time.
203. arkymalarky - 10/24/2003 3:37:33 AM
Tiretread sandals, that is.
204. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:44:14 AM
rdb,
That fake prosthetic trick is kinda wild. I think I would have been one to believe you at first. I think my ideas were usually to believe unless some trick was realized, a deceit discovered, or perhaps someone malicious lieing.
Damn I was downright gullible.
That is I think a nice bit of innocense, allowance that good prevails, that we exhibit tolerant acceptance of things is my flawed ideal. Too bad.
205. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:45:48 AM
hmmm,
I think I owned a pair in '76. Were those sandles a hit then? Or was I way behind the times?
206. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:53:25 AM
Star Wars came out in '77, right. I recall I had gotten my liscence and drove to Champaign-Urbana, IL to see it. That same time frame I saw Jaws. Good movies, eh?
dant, dant- , dant, dant- , dantdant, dantdant, dantdantdant dantdantdant, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
The fabulous Fury Freak Brothers, Whow was that a trip or what?!
207. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:54:22 AM
One or two of yah may recall that I lived in Mahomet, IL for a short time.
208. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 3:58:41 AM
Kung Fu, with David Caradine. Good stuff, eh?
Boston's first album '75. Also in '75 Nazarath's first, Deep Purple Machine Head in '73, and another from '75 Styx; "Crystal Ball". Oh man that Styx was good! Playing Styx, then Boston, then Nazarath was like, yah know so damn awsome. It was way cool, man!
209. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 4:02:35 AM
What the hell happened in 1974-75. It's a blurry time for me. I know that somebodies brother came back with thai-stick. He wanted $25 a stick. I never sampled that. He did however have some cheap purple microdot. For some reason, obviously stupidity and ignorance, I bought two, took both on the bus ride home and tripped my ass off. It was a good thing my best friend took one too and his parents weren't home. Needless to say, we tripped for some time. Sheesh that was a one wild evening.
I saw a doorway, were none would be. And his paisly wallpaper, man oh man!
210. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 4:04:51 AM
Sooooooooo, noone did anything stupid, eh?
Maybe not as young as I, but soon, oh I think quite soon.
211. ScreamingSin - 10/24/2003 9:28:11 AM
Pass the bong.
212. alistairConnor - 10/24/2003 11:31:20 AM
thai-stick. He wanted $25 a stick
Robbery. At that period, they were worth $10 NZ. Shorter supply lines I suppose. Locally known as buddha stix.
Heavy shit. They were rumoured to have been dipped in heroin. Sometimes induced hallucinations.
I never did acid, and I don't regret it.
213. alistairConnor - 10/24/2003 12:42:04 PM
Tyre sandals. Ho Chi Minh sandals.
I made my own, in my leatherwork phase. They were damn good.
I also made a pair for my best friend, and forced him to wear them, even though I had made them too small for him.
214. rdbrewer - 10/24/2003 3:54:01 PM
Rick, my first fishing memories are like snapshots, a big catfish in the bottom of our small aluminum boat, someone telling me not to touch the fins, the small motor on the back with the scratched up, dented metallic green finish, my father wrapping the starter rope around the top before each starting attempt, my dad's frustration with that motor, the smell of gas, my little fishing pole with the metallic copper colored housingmy dad's friend putting the catfish onto the dock and hammering a screwdriver into its head to kill it before cleaning it,
215. rdbrewer - 10/24/2003 3:54:40 PM
whoops. Someone hit post before I was done.
216. rdbrewer - 10/24/2003 4:18:13 PM
And the one thing about that trip I remember like video tape is that we got stuck in red mud on the way out. My dad had an gray-white Chevy El-Camino. We were towing the boat. There were no roads and in the area we put in, and there was no grass. I think the lake must have been low, and we were driving on exposed lake bed.
First, my dad's friend got out to push while my dad drove. That didn't work. Then my dad got out too and left the driver's door open. He told me to press the sacred, verboten accelerator with my foot while he pushed as well in the area of the driver's door. This was a real treat for me. I was about four, and I had to slide off the seat a little to reach the pedal. I repeatedly pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor which covered the legs of my dad's friend with mud. Each time the motor started roaring, my dad told me to stop. He tried to get me to push it just a little, but I couldn't hold a position for long. Eventually, the vehicle began rolling, and dad jumped in, almost on top of me, and we got out of there. After that, I claimed repeatedly to anyone who would listen that I had driven a car.
I think my parents have a picture of me holding that catfish by a stringer.
217. rdbrewer - 10/24/2003 4:22:23 PM
Administrative:
Rick, let's try to keep this thread from turning into a discussion of pure nostalgia. (I'm guilty of it too.) Let's try to link the nostalgia to specific memories.
218. PelleNilsson - 10/24/2003 8:55:57 PM
Fishing ...
I must have been about six when I and my friend Lasse on the neighbouring farm (much bigger than ours) were allowed to join Anders, the retired farm hand, on his fishing expeditions. In fact Anders needed us. He was frail and could no longer operate his old rowing boat on his own. But he had fished those waters all his life and he was full of fishing lore.
We mostly fished for whiting of which there was abundance if you knew where to look but we also hooked some cod and now and then a plaice.
Anders grew older and frailer and two years later he gave us the freedom of his boat to use whenever we wanted. I admire our mothers who let the two eight-year olds roam the sea in a Anders's leaky old boat.
219. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 9:12:49 PM
Holy crap Pelle! You were rowing around in fjord like seas at 8 yrs old?
You ol' pip you! You get it, pip, Pippy, you a pip, nudge nudge, wink wink.
220. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 9:14:29 PM
I think 16 qualifies as childhood? No?
That's how old I was in 1977. So, technically, it may be considered both childhood and nostalgic, yes?
But, if you want me to clean up a bit, shake off the ol' rebel in me. Will do... yup, U'betcha
221. RickNelson - 10/24/2003 9:21:53 PM
That's a cool story rdb. I thought the El Camino was pretty cool. You're adventure seems back country-like.
I remember an old outboard motor, not like yours, it had an enclosed rope pull. Like so many do, but it was definitely that old metal looking green and that old rounder like look.
My times from '70-'74 with a Big-Brother (of that organization) were often spent up north at his cabin. He would let me steer that boat around the lake and shortly let me take it out alone. I would get up with the mist still on the lake, the sun just turning the sky from dark gray to hazy grey-blue. Then, I would motor out slowly, listening to the Loon calls. Oh, man that was the greatest.
222. arkymalarky - 10/24/2003 10:39:41 PM
Lakes for real recreation were something alien to me when we moved from Lubbock to AR, and my first best friend's parents had a nice ski boat. I went on many fun lake outings with them, and they taught me to ski. I thought I'd never learn, I was such a scrawny and wimpy kid.
There is really something unmatched for serene environments being out on a quiet glassy lake at the end of the day (or the beginning, but I'm not a morning person).
223. arkymalarky - 10/24/2003 10:44:26 PM
Fishing is a big deal here, especially for bass. When we first moved here Dad and Bro were determined to do the whole Arky rural thing (maybe one reason Bro's a Banjomon now, I guess), and they got a "huntin" beagle who was as spoiled as the worst foo-foo lapdog you ever saw, a pup-tent, camping equipment, fishing gear, and a flat-bottomed boat. They fished and floated the rivers and lakes and tromped the woods all the time. They never got into deer hunting though, which is very odd for around here.
Arkansas' Outdoors never was a controlled enough environment to me. I was the one with the allergies that the bugs loved and it was never the right temperature--in short I was lazy and spoiled to the creature comforts of the Great Indoors.
224. patsy rolph - 10/25/2003 8:32:56 AM
Oh my, I am feeling very very old. Well,actually, I am very very old. I clearly remember the Hoover Roosevelt election.
I was staying with my grandparents in a small New Mexico town where there were few shops but one shop had a picture of the two candidates. Hoover was shown as a round face and FDR had a long thin face. My grandparents had one of the few radios in town and many folk came to their house to listen to the elecction .
225. RickNelson - 10/25/2003 1:32:50 PM
Hi Patsy,
I recall my grandparents house too, on my mothers side. It was the 60's, but for some reason, I cannot recall a radio. They had no t.v. either. Or maybe didn't have one that worked? But either way we never listened to either. We did listen to g'pa play his slide guitar. He was good, he and my uncle could really make some good sound from their little amps. G'ma or an aunt, or maybe ma, would play along on a big upright. I think this wonderful memory only occured about 3-4 times. But, that little back room is really a part of me.
226. seadate - 10/27/2003 6:25:18 AM
Discovery of kitchen matches while spending 2 weeks with my grandparents in West Texas. They goofed up and left to run an errand. I couldn't resist the matches, so I took the box and lit match after match dropping them in the toilet when they burned to the bitter end. It didn't occur to me to flush.
227. Macnas - 10/28/2003 11:19:36 AM
I have bad childhood memories of fire.
Indeed, I've been rather unfortunate with regards to fire as an adult as well, but it's the scars from when I was 4 that are the worst.
So here's a cautionary memory for all of you who have little children of their own or otherwise. I was, as I said, 4, and was in the kitchen with my Grandmother. She was very busy preparing dinner, as my mother and father were both working at that hour.
Da was drawing milk churns to the creamery and Mam was over the road with the cattle. Gran would have things done by the time they got back. Now, in our kitchen of old, the fireplace was a large open hearth design, big enough that you could sit into it at either side. I was wandering around the floor while Gran busied herself with this and that, and before she knew it had tripped over me.
She fell onto the floor, I fell into the fire. Before she could pull me out of it, I was burned down my left side from head to toe. The burns to my head were superficial, but some of the other bits were bad. This was in the days before plastic surgery of any kind, so you can imagine the resulting scars. I've had the misfortune to have myself on fire as an adult (don't even ask how) but the early scars are the worst still.
So, even if it is trite, I'll belabour the point, mind those children, put away the matches, guard the fire if you have one.
228. seadate - 10/28/2003 2:39:38 PM
Mac, that's terrible.
229. Macnas - 10/28/2003 3:20:24 PM
Yes, it's an unpleasant black spot in my otherwise fun filled youth.
Still, it didn't last long, I remember very little of the pain, and I suffer no ill effects other than having to be wary of too much direct sunlight on the "burnt bits".
230. alistairconnor - 10/28/2003 4:48:20 PM
I must have been about six, we were all sitting up waiting for mum to serve dinner, and a pot full of boiling oil burst into flame on the stove.
She did exactly the wrong thing : picked up the pot and tried to carry it outside, she was afraid the house would catch fire. She came running out of the kitchen with the flames licking up her arms, and dropped the pot.
Her arms were quite badly burnt, she spent two weeks in hospital. We were dispatched to stay with various friends.
231. rdbrewer - 10/29/2003 12:59:37 AM
Re: #226
Seadate, my first experience with matches was when I was four or five. I took my little sister over to the side of the house to show her how you could light a pile of leaves with a match. (This was my theory.) I looked up, and my mother was looking at us from the side door to the garage. Oops. I got in big trouble.
232. arkymalarky - 10/29/2003 3:04:26 AM
My brother set the neighbor's yard on fire.
I almost burned my eye with a magnifying glass trying to burn ants.
Fire and water are scary things for parents of small children.
233. rdbrewer - 11/1/2003 8:15:39 PM
Re: Message # 23
Ms. No, I found out the name of that Sindbad movie I was talking about. It was Captain Sindbad. I ordered a copy of it. Here are a few reviews on Amazon.
234. ScreamingSin - 11/3/2003 9:08:01 AM
You're all drug-addled.
And here, I thought once upon a time, I wanted to be a hippie.
235. Ms. No - 11/3/2003 5:45:22 PM
Ah, different Sinbad movie than the one I was thinking of, but congratulations to you for finding it! Now you can take a trip down memory lane whenever you like!
236. ScreamingSin - 11/6/2003 6:50:51 AM
Well, I remember really wanting to be a hippie.
Then my cousin told me that half the time, guys fed girls massive amounts of speed so they would fuck like rabbits, and it put me off that hippie notion.
But I really did like seeing the pictures of women with flowers in their hair. I would have been around nine. It looked like elegance beyond bounds.
237. Macnas - 11/6/2003 9:22:38 AM
But there's that whole not washing thing, when you discover that the flowers are actually growing on them.
I never wanted to be a hippie, they didn't exist for us, in our rural isolation down grassy lined lanes where no rainbow coloured VW vans ever wandered.
238. rdbrewer - 11/6/2003 11:08:23 PM
I was just a kid at the time, but I remember that dirty seemed to be the "in thing" for a while there. Very dirty.
We started traveling to Aspen, Colorado, in the early '60s for the camping and fishing. We would go during the late summer -- probably 5-6 different years. At the time, Aspen was just a little truck stop on the way to the next larger city, and land was dirt cheap. We always camped on Snomass Creek. All those times we went camping there, we never saw another soul, unless a forest ranger wondered by. That kind of perfectly isolated camping is still my favorite.
The last time we went was in 1969. We camped at our usual spot. One morning we woke up, and there was a VW bus and a couple of tents about 20 yards away. (Why would anyone want to go camping right next to someone else?) They came into our campsite wanting to chitchat. We were polite, but it kind of ruined our getaway. They were almost completely ill equipped, and we gave many supplies, including food, a lantern, and an ice chest.
The party was over. We never went back. The hippies were moving to the mountains in droves, especially the Aspen area, and, at the time, hippie culture was threatening to my parents who were trying to raise four kids.
But there's a happy ending. That cheap land made the hippies into ultra-rich, conservative landowners bitching about taxes.
239. arkymalarky - 11/7/2003 3:39:00 AM
Hahaha. I remember those days. My grandparents bought a cabin outside Boulder in the 1950s and I grew up watching the hippie movement grow out there until it grew into a drug culture with the crime and baggage that go with it, and then changed just as you describe.
As for camping, there are spots you'd enjoy around here certain times of year, but lots of people seem to have that group-camp mentality. I don't get it either, though I'm not a big fan of camping. I'd love to like it, but I just don't really. I'm sure Oklahoma is the same way, though. But you and your family ought to look into vacationing in AR some, considering the proximity and the many beautiful and interesting places we have here--to say nothing of the price compared to lots of other vacation spots.
240. robertjayb - 11/7/2003 4:44:14 AM
We went daytripping to Aspen in the mid-sixties, also Breckenridge, and Vail (rarely). At Aspen the badass mountain (highlands?) scared me but I loved Buttermilk (so it's a kiddie hill, I liked it).
As rdb indicates, this was way before the hollywood and eurotrash invasion and rates were reasonable. Best were the high bowls at Vail. Even a flatland doofus fueled on ginger brandy and coors could have a grand time up there.
241. robertjayb - 11/7/2003 4:52:51 AM
Coors? Did I say Coors? Any of you sprouts remember the Coors craze or was that silliness limited to Texas? We used to haul trunkloads of the stuff home thinking it was some grand brew. Hell, I even took Coors to Wisconsin.
Now it's available all over and I can't stand the stuff. And of course the Coors family are famously rightwing.
What was I thinking?
242. arkymalarky - 11/7/2003 4:53:28 AM
One of the coolest (and sort of creepy in a fascinating way) towns around there is Leadville.
243. arkymalarky - 11/7/2003 4:54:03 AM
Not a ski-tourist-vacation spot, exactly, but I'd love to go back there for a day or two.
244. arkymalarky - 11/7/2003 4:56:31 AM
Same in AR, Robert. It had to do with the distribution laws. It was like getting the thrill of smuggling drugs but it was only beer--bad beer, at that. When people brought Coors to a party it had the same impact on innocent law-abiding (except for being under age and driving and all that) country college beer guzzlers that pulling out a joint would have.
245. arkymalarky - 11/7/2003 4:57:22 AM
That is, it impressed them no end and made that person the center of attention immediately.
246. rdbrewer - 11/7/2003 5:07:06 AM
The same thing happened with Molsen when I was in college.
247. rdbrewer - 11/7/2003 5:08:02 AM
"Molson," that is.
248. rdbrewer - 11/7/2003 5:12:19 AM
My first beer was a Coors. (Sniff.) Brings a tear to the eye.
249. Macnas - 11/9/2003 9:46:48 AM
I can't remember what my first beer was, probably porter from a bottle, or maybe stout.
Nor do I remember my first alcohol, but, according to my family folklore, I was nearly 5 years old. For some reason my mother was giving me a spoon of sherry, I think it might have been to help me sleep as I was recovering from the burn incident I mentioned before.
No child friendly painkillers back then, and apparently I screamed the house down when the dressings had to be changed.
Anyway, that was grand, and I was getting my spoonful of sherry, when someone came to the door. Distracted, my mother left me with the open bottle of sherry while she spoke with a neighbour. When she turned round (she hadn't left the room, just gone to the door), I had a good part of it drank.
I was drunk for the night, very ill the next day, and though I cannot remember a bit of that time, I have abhorred sherry ever since.
250. arkymalarky - 11/9/2003 3:03:42 PM
Oh my! Your mother must have been mortified.
Bob has a hilarious high school story about a bootlegger and two six-packs of hot Schlitz tallboys. Maybe I'll persuade him to dictate it to me one day soon.
251. rdbrewer - 11/10/2003 1:26:16 AM
Macnas, your story reminds me that I drank a small bottle of wine when I was 11 years old. We were on a family trip to Lisbon in March of 1973. They drink wine there like we drink Coke in America, at every meal and in between. Each of our hotel rooms at the Estoreal Sol came with a complementary bottle of wine, about 12 oz. I had my own room. Since that was my bottle of wine, I reasoned that it was okay for me to drink. My sisters and I thought it was funny. I remember being dizzy walking through the hotel lobby, and my sisters laughing. This is one of those photographic memories. I was wearing white jeans type pants and a red windbreaker with a broad white stripe. (Not bad, for the early '70s.) My parents weren't angry, but they told my sisters not to drink their bottle of wine.
252. alistairConnor - 11/10/2003 1:37:32 AM
Photographic memory eh? OK, so describe the wine.
253. rdbrewer - 11/10/2003 4:20:47 AM
The bottle was in the shape of a flat circle, 4-5 inches across, set on edge with a short, 1.5-2 inch neck. I think the glass was translucent brown. The label was round and orange in color. The wine was red. Surprisingly, it wasn't a port. It seemed dry to the point of sharp bitterness, but I'm sure my reaction was biased according to a child's taste preferences.
254. rdbrewer - 11/10/2003 4:24:37 AM
BTW, there were times on that trip in different restaurants where my sisters and I had to drink wine with our meals--in small quantities. There was nothing else to drink.
255. PelleNilsson - 11/10/2003 7:50:03 PM
Me and my Canadian friend:
Most people here have seen this picture, I think. I post it for the benefit of Macnas who like me suffers from a bit of farming nostalgia.
256. PelleNilsson - 11/10/2003 8:04:05 PM
More nostalgia.
"He who invented that (the self-binder) must have gone mad afterwards" was a comment I often heard as a boy.
257. wonkers2 - 11/10/2003 8:19:04 PM
Wonkers & Cap'n Dirty also have farming (or ranching) nostalgia from 8 summers putting up hay, building fences, digging wells, etc. on my grandparents' ranch in Cherry County, Nebraska, the v up and down. I drove an International Harvester with a 3-rake hitch and for several years a 4-horse team on the same rake in the hills which were too steep for the small tractor. I never worked so hard before or since. From about age 12 on my uncle included me in the morning and evening snort of whiskey straight out of the bottle down at the barn. I learned a lot of practical lessons during those summers.
258. wonkers2 - 11/10/2003 8:22:59 PM
The Cap'n was influenced by my uncle's less stellar qualities and wonkers2 by his sterling ones! He had a number of both. One of my memories was my uncle taking me into the tent show at the county fair and rodeo, at about age 13 or 14, where I saw my first completely naked woman. They neglected to take my ticket and I went back in for a second time. That could have marked the origin of Cap'n Dirty.
259. Macnas - 11/11/2003 10:49:40 AM
Pelle, that first picture reminds me of a little Ford Ferguson owned by a neighbour.
Not much bigger than a ride-on lawn mower by today’s standards, it was kept as a general yard and garden vehicle and was his pride and joy.
The original factory mid grey deep lustre paint was polished and shone, which of course branded him a complete lunatic in a community where tractors were driven until they fell apart.
260. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 11:59:08 AM
I think I was a little older than on the picture, but not much, when I was allowed to drive it. The joy when one on rare occasions had an errand on the public road and could put it into 5th gear! Around the farm it usually slogged on in 1st-3rd. It worked on gasoline and kerosene. One started on gasoline and switched to kerosene when the engine was warm. Kerosene was untaxed, you see.
261. alistairConnor - 11/11/2003 12:14:32 PM
Pelle, the pictures in 256 don't show.
I have neighbours who still use tractors of that size and vintage... Technically they are retired, though.
I tend to get angry when I see neighbours' sons, primary school kids, driving tractors. That's because it's quite steep hill country around my place, and accidents are not rare.
262. alistairConnor - 11/11/2003 12:22:21 PM
Oh well. In a few years, when they have phased out the agricultural subsidies, I guess that problem will belong to the past. Along with the tractors, old and new.
263. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 12:31:29 PM
Sometimes they show, sometimes they don't. Later today I'll put them on my site and link from there.
The gasoline/kerosene switch, by the way, was to the left and below the steering wheel. Childhood memories, indeed.
264. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 5:51:38 PM
Here are the nostalgia pics which sometimes didn't show:
265. RickNelson - 11/12/2003 1:55:25 AM
Those tractor pictures are good. I can remember a few Rice County Fair tractor exhibits. Rice County is in south central Minnesota. My mom's folks would take us to the fair when we were younguns. We could sit up on some old belt driven combines and steel seat tractors. Some of the old ones looked mighty strange. I wouldn't know names if I saw them.
I recall winning a necklace of a cross. I'm not sure if it was from target shooting or what, I know that old 22 rifle had the sight skewed. I took a shot to sight it right. I think the thing fired to the left a bit. Anyway, those days always seemed sunny and fine.
266. Macnas - 11/12/2003 12:52:07 PM
I love those illustrations, very fine draughtsmanship.
We used a binder/mower very like the one illustrated above, but I've never seen the self-binding version.
267. rdbrewer - 11/12/2003 3:24:12 PM
Call for more Motie child pics:
Pelle, I like the tractor picture. It looks somewhat dangerous for a kid, however. (Those big wheels.) I think it would be nice to see a lot more pictures of Moties as kids.
Does anyone know the best way to get old family photos on disk? IOW, if I'm going to start scanning and uploading, I want to do it one time only for each picture. I plan to provide copies for my whole family. What kind of resolution is needed or what kind of equipment is required to do it right the first time?
268. rdbrewer - 11/12/2003 3:25:08 PM
Let's see those child pics!
269. Ms. No - 11/12/2003 5:20:17 PM
In the recent move I found a lot of pictures that I thought were lost or at the very least wandering around by themselves somewhere.
Of course, since they're old they're not conveniently on disk and I'd have to scan them in order to post them anywhere. I'll try and do that sometime this next week. The oldest pic I have on my hard drive is my senior high school portrait and I'm still not old enough yet to look back and call that my childhood. ;->
270. Macnas - 11/12/2003 5:40:54 PM
I don't have any really, my mother might have some but if she does they're at the bottom of some old biscuit tin in the attic.
Just imagine me considerably smaller than I am now and you'll have it.
Job oxo.
271. Ms. No - 11/12/2003 5:54:16 PM
I don't think I've ever seen a picture of you at all, Mac.
Actually, curious as I am about people, I also kind of like not knowing what they look like. If they don't match the images in my head after all these years I don't know what I'd do. ;-)
272. PelleNilsson - 11/12/2003 6:20:56 PM
Small enough for you, rd?
273. Ms. No - 11/12/2003 6:29:51 PM
I can't really see the face well enough to tell, but the aura is alllll you, Pelle.
274. Macnas - 11/12/2003 6:40:27 PM
Such chic perambulation.
275. robertjayb - 11/12/2003 7:14:57 PM
Pelle's taste for weird headgear developed early.
276. wonkers2 - 11/13/2003 1:10:58 AM
What is the process for posting pics? Do you first have to scan them and put them on a website and then post them to the Mote? I have lots of pictures and a scanner but no website.
277. rdbrewer - 11/13/2003 1:42:36 AM
Wonkers, you can put them on Shutterfly and then link to them.
278. rdbrewer - 11/13/2003 1:44:02 AM
Pelle, cute picture. Where was it taken?
279. PelleNilsson - 11/13/2003 8:25:18 AM
In Gothenburg where I was born. The time must be the end of the war. The street today:
The pic was taken at the far end, right-hand side.
280. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:24:44 AM
281. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:26:49 AM
I'm on the end, keeping my brother under control The others are my cousins.
282. Macnas - 11/13/2003 11:31:12 AM
Where was your brother off too with his suitcase?
Looks like he's heading away on business.
283. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:34:11 AM
He was never without that suitcase for a few weeks
284. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:35:15 AM
285. Macnas - 11/13/2003 11:46:52 AM
Those pictures remind me of a lot of the type that populate the bottom of the biscuit tin in my mother’s attic.
Taken with a "brownie" type camera, some of them have a pleasing ethereal quality about them, with sunshine tending to wash out in places making borders/edges indistinct. Those taken of people and animals in motion have a Cocteau quality to them.
Thanks Neato.
286. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:57:12 AM
I'm glad you liked them. Dad was a mad keen photographer, he took hundreds of us in the 1950's, and developed and printed them in a rickety old shed converted into a darkroom.I hope you post some of your biscuit-tin population.
287. Macnas - 11/13/2003 12:17:21 PM
I would have to mount a major expedition into my mother's attic interior, and then I would basically have to steal them away, as Mam works on the equation of "the longer it has been idle/stored, the more precious it seems".
288. PelleNilsson - 11/13/2003 1:49:17 PM
These are nice pictures, Neato. Mine are a decade or so older.
The intrepid skiier:
Exercising my divine powers:
289. PelleNilsson - 11/13/2003 1:55:55 PM
This is in order for Macnas and Wonkers to feel a pang of nostalgia for those happy days of childhood:
290. Macnas - 11/13/2003 2:22:12 PM
Engineer, economist, and now water divination.
Is there no end to your talents Nilsson?
That last picture does indeed set in motion a series of childhood images, to many to recount, most of them happy.
It's sad though, to think that nobody will be making a living out of small farms in the next 10 to 15 years.
291. rdbrewer - 11/13/2003 5:02:44 PM
That picture of Gothenburg reminds me of Copenhagen, Pelle. Must be the bright light and clear air.
And I see that you owned a variety of strange headgear over the years.
Do you recall anything that was going on at the time of these pictures (other than the obvious skiing, hayride, etc.)?
292. rdbrewer - 11/13/2003 5:09:41 PM
Neato, you were a cute little thing. That photo at Message # 284 is gorgeous. It's a work of art. Who snapped it?
293. Neato - 11/13/2003 11:32:32 PM
Thanks RD. still am!
My Dad took it (see 286). I love Pelle's photos -more please!
294. alistairConnor - 11/14/2003 12:16:25 AM
This would appear to be my eldest brother's birthday party.
That's me heckling from the back row.
295. alistairConnor - 11/14/2003 12:18:15 AM
The pile of rubble outside the kitchen door is very evocative. One way or another, Dad managed to keep us living in a building site for about 30 years. A great house though.
296. alistairConnor - 11/14/2003 12:20:41 AM
Mum talking to my elder sister. Me and another brother digging into the biscuit box. I confess I don't remember that car.
297. Neato - 11/14/2003 2:50:17 AM
298. rdbrewer - 11/14/2003 6:42:49 AM
Neato, I'm guessing the dog got up on that box to get away from something. It doesn't appear to be completely satisfied with baby's interest. Where were these pictures taken (and the other ones)?
Alistair, I see you were a whine connoisseur from early on.
299. Neato - 11/14/2003 7:49:08 AM
Yes, poor dog, you can see it's fending me off in the last pic.
The pictures were taken in NZ, as were Alistair's I reckon.
300. marjoribanks - 11/14/2003 6:18:59 PM
These black-and-whites are just wonderful, all real treasures. Thank you all for posting them.
BTW, Connor looks recognizeably the same (and equally impish) today.
301. Neato - 11/16/2003 12:17:01 PM
302. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 9:46:46 PM
303. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 9:49:48 PM
304. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 9:51:09 PM
Wonkers, the address appears to be fine. You have to enter it correctly into the "img src" instruction.
Is that you? What a great picture.
305. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 9:52:44 PM
Try it yourself:
*img src="http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3cf37b3127cce827d22f934b60000005610" width="400"*
Replace the stars with greater than less than signs.
306. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 9:54:36 PM
Oh, yeah. There's a single space between "img" and "src," and there's a space between the second quotation mark and "width".
307. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 9:59:04 PM
308. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 10:02:55 PM
Wonk, have you looked at the html hints on pictures?
309. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 10:07:49 PM
Wonkers2 Brownlee, Nebraska c.1949
310. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 10:12:21 PM
Wonkers, those are great pics. I'm going to go ahead and place them here:
311. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 10:13:26 PM
Cap'n Dirty self-portrait c.2001
312. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 10:18:23 PM
RD, thanks for your help. I'll try the img src next time. And I'll check the HTML hints. I'm amazed that I got this far. You can't imagine how hard this is for an old coot like Cap'n Dirty!
313. wonkers2 - 11/16/2003 10:21:14 PM
[Now my fellow motiers may be willing to believe in Cap'n Dirty. And the ladies need not fear his fierce countenance. He's a gentle soul.]
314. rdbrewer - 11/16/2003 10:22:33 PM
Ha! You did all that w/o looking at the instructions? Not bad, for that.
315. ScreamingSin - 11/17/2003 8:21:05 AM
wonkers2. Those are some fierce nostrils!
316. Macnas - 11/17/2003 10:44:20 AM
Seem's myself, the Cap'n and Pelle are fellow beardy weirdies.
317. wonkers2 - 11/17/2003 1:33:02 PM
SS, the nostrils belong to Cap'n Dirty, not wonkers2. Wonkers can be found by clicking on the "open my pictures folder" icon that appears in the upper left-hand corner of the pic of the Cap'n. How it got there I have no idea!
318. marjoribanks - 11/18/2003 7:24:06 PM
Nice photos, Wonkers, especially the black-and-whites.
Cap'n Dirty looks (potentially) considerably more civilized than I'd imagined.
319. wonkers2 - 11/19/2003 12:25:05 AM
The Cap'n says thanks! But he really isn't very civilized. He bathes infrequently, and he farts, spits, scratches his ass and picks his nose all day long when he's ashore.
320. ScreamingSin - 11/19/2003 9:30:57 AM
Saw the Cher 'last concert' or 'last tribute'...farewell tour, perhaps. Whatever. Sonny & Cher singing, 'I Got You Babe'.
I really likd their variety show. She used to get up on a grand piano and kinda crawl around, I'm sure Madonna got her moves from Cher.
So anyway, I belted out 'Gypsies Tramps and Theives' along with Cher during the TV show, and better half stared at me with his jaw open.
This is a bad sign. Jaws flagging, we are old.
321. ScreamingSin - 11/19/2003 9:46:38 AM
On December 4th 2003 at noon, I am going to be standing by the Faraday Frankenstein thingy at the Boston Science Museum. Stop by and say hello if you are in the area. I will have the mote logo pasted on my palm and you should, too.
We can stare at each other and then run away. Or get a coffee, I forget what they have there.
322. Neato - 11/19/2003 10:05:12 AM
Have you got any Childhood photos, Screaming? Preferably in b&w - or are you too young (for b&w)
323. ScreamingSin - 11/19/2003 10:07:31 AM
Loads of photos, no knowledge of scanning them in.
I've really enjoyed the ones I've seen here.
324. RickNelson - 11/19/2003 2:17:07 PM
SS you crack me up.
run-away, run-away
325. judithathome - 11/19/2003 3:37:49 PM
Wonkers, I tried going to your folder but it froze my computer!
Now that I'm back, I want to know if that was your horse in the picture? That's a fine looking animal!
I had horses, too...I had a pinto named Sandy and he was fantastic; many long afternoons riding the fields around our house (now suburbia) and grooming him and just generally loving the fact I had a horse. One day I came home from school and went to the stable to feed him and he was laying in the field, dying from a rifle shot. Dumb ass boys had been shooting out in the field and hit him by accident. He died with his head in my lap.
My next horse was too much horse for me...Star, a big Arab, solid black with a white star on his forehead. He was hard to handle and finally my dad got me a smaller, chunky horse which he bought from a traveling circus. Shorty had a spot on his body you could touch with your heel and he would rise up on his back legs and dance. This was a surprising, if fun, event and one I loved to pull on friends went riding with me.
I realize now how lucky I was to have horses...it taught me responsibility at a young age and the joy I had at being able master the skills needed to ride and care for them is something I'll never forget.
326. Macnas - 11/19/2003 4:27:37 PM
Horses, I'd bet they are quite a common denominator among many of us, in terms of our childhood at least.
My own children have had very limited exposure/experience of horses, which is a bit of a pity really. The sturdy farm and draught horses of my youth have all but gone other than where someone will keep them for fancy.
327. wonkers2 - 11/19/2003 5:10:33 PM
Draught horses have pretty much disappeared from the U.S. except for the Budweiser team. I drove a 4-horse team pulling a hay rake for several summers. I never had a problem, but I remember hearing about bad accidents involving runaway teams.
The horse in the picture belonged to my older cousin, but she was assigned to me for several summers. As I recall she was part Quarter-horse and maybe part Morgan. I named her Coke (after the cola). Much of the time I rode bareback. Later, I got to do a little calf roping.
Judith, just as well. I didn't intend to post a picture of my current self!
328. PelleNilsson - 11/20/2003 2:50:16 PM
Little Prince Charming
And what he became 13 years later
329. ScreamingSin - 11/21/2003 5:12:37 AM
We're not going to Boston. I've angered the husband.
No ponies here.
PelleNilsson, I used to have a haircut like the top one in your 328.
330. alistairConnor - 11/21/2003 1:28:19 PM
On points duty.
Funny hat. Embarassing pants.
331. PelleNilsson - 11/21/2003 9:08:01 PM
Looks like the nether half of a ballerina outfit.
332. wonkers2 - 11/22/2003 12:30:34 AM
Looks to me like plastic waterproof pants with which many begin and end their lives.
333. wonkers2 - 11/22/2003 12:34:56 AM
I could come close to duplicating the brush cut and glasses in the second picture of Pelle in #329, but probably a few years earlier. I wasn't aware that brush cuts ever jumped the Atlantic to Europe. By the time the picture was taken, Pelle had lost his child's innocence and acquired his teenage skeptical demeanor.
334. PelleNilsson - 11/22/2003 9:11:05 AM
That pic is from 1959 and Elvis was my idol. I have a jacket and tie because it is school graduation day. Otherwise, we young toughs (as we liked to think ourselves) wore leather imitation jackets.
335. wonkers2 - 11/22/2003 2:43:37 PM
If I could find it, I could post a very similar picture from 1953 or 1954--haircut, glasses and expression.
336. Macnas - 11/23/2003 1:24:46 PM
Son :"Parents of mine, now that I have come of age and am no longer a child, I know more than you and whatever you know is wrong. I'll be using the words bourgeois and redundant quite a bit from now on, and will regard you with a tepid mix of contempt and pity.
What say you Mater et Pater?"
Parents :"Take a look at this picture sonny, just look at those plastic pants and that hat eh?"
337. PelleNilsson - 11/23/2003 4:13:38 PM
Hahaha!
338. judithathome - 11/23/2003 4:48:22 PM
Wonkers, did your girlfriend have a poodle skirt and penny loafers?
339. rdbrewer - 11/23/2003 7:18:03 PM
Nice wet pants, AC. Is that a Shriner hat?
Screaming, I had a hair cut like Pelle's too. It's the proto-Vulcan look.
340. Wombat - 11/23/2003 7:22:46 PM
An imitation jacket, eh? But the leather was real? I am grateful that I am not old enough to have been caught up in Elvis, and Davey Crockett styles. On the other hand, my mom liked to dress me in grey flannel shorts, blazer, eton collar shirt and wool knee socks. The worst part of that ensemble was a disgusting tweed beanie-like cap.
341. wonkers2 - 11/23/2003 10:37:03 PM
JUDITH,penny loafers,yes. I wouldn't know a poodle skirt if I saw one. They were all below the knee, as I recall.
342. judithathome - 11/23/2003 10:47:15 PM
Yes, below the knee and many were worn with crinolines (or can-cans, as they were called in my neck of the woods) making each girl look like they had balloons under their skirts.
A poodle skirt was a full skirt with an appliqued French poodle on it, usually with a leash which was appliqued across the skirt, too. They were black with pink poodles and you wore a white shirt with lace on the collar and down the front like a tuxedo shirt with it. It was really THE thing to have...
343. arkymalarky - 11/23/2003 11:38:51 PM
Wombat, if you're not old enough for Davey Crockett and Elvis styles, what did you graduate from after the flannel shorts and beanie, lime-green wide-lapel doubleknit (with flared leg, of course)?
Just trying to place your fashion era. ;-)
Since I was a "poor kid" by virtue of my dad being a graduate student a good chunk of my childhood, my get-up was generally whatever my cousin wore the year before (thankfully her parents were more tasteful than mine would have been). When he graduated and became a college professor and I was old enough to simply refuse to wear anything I didn't like, I went to jeans and a shirt and have been there ever since.
344. wonkers2 - 11/24/2003 12:20:48 AM
RDB, here's what I typed to link my picture from shutterfly (except I added < > at the beginning and end:
img src="http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv47b3cf37b3127cce82fcc0b93db60000001610" width="400"
Is it possible that shutterfly timed out?
345. rdbrewer - 11/24/2003 12:29:38 AM
Never heard of it timing out.
346. alistairConnor - 11/24/2003 12:32:37 AM
RDB : that's a policeman's helmet. I'm directing traffic.
347. rdbrewer - 11/24/2003 12:36:51 AM
A failed traffic cop. :)
Wonkers, check Fine and Popular. I found an error.
348. Magoseph - 11/24/2003 12:44:33 AM
When I first came to this country, I was decked in mini-dresses and mini-skirts, attire as yet unknown here. I was so young that when I realized everyone was looking at me wherever I went, I thought they could see at a glance that I was a foreigner. It didn't take long before I bought nice knee-length clothes and I blended in quite well until I opened my mouth.
349. rdbrewer - 11/24/2003 12:59:22 AM
Mini-skirts. 8)
350. Magoseph - 11/24/2003 1:03:28 AM
Mini-skirts. 8)
What does the above mean, dear rdb?
351. rdbrewer - 11/24/2003 1:17:31 AM
:9
352. judithathome - 11/24/2003 1:25:08 AM
It's a smile...he likes the thought of you in a miniskirt.
353. Wombat - 11/24/2003 1:33:22 PM
Arky:
Early 60s, New York City. Normal attire: Wide-wale courderoy pants, straight-legged jeans, chinos. Didn't really do long hair until the 70s. Never owned a leisure suit, lime green or otherwise (but had family members in New Jersey who did!). Had striped bell-bottoms, though.
354. arkymalarky - 11/25/2003 3:14:07 AM
Well, I'll confess to platforms and big-legged pants for a season when I was in the 9th grade. When I was a junior and senior I loved long casual dresses with bare legs in summer and tights in winter. Still do, though I rarely wear them any more.
355. PelleNilsson - 11/25/2003 7:26:43 PM
This is not a childhood memory but in any case a youthful one. Of the present Mote cohort it is perhaps only Macnas and I who remember how we used to go around with this thing in our breastpockets to distinguish ourselves from the beancounters, the administrators and the other useless folks. There is a brand name on the leather holster, but it is hard to see. It is, of course 'Faber-Castell'.
356. Edmund Dantes - 11/25/2003 7:28:45 PM
My chemistry teacher tried to get us to learn how to use a slide rule rather than the calculator, arguing that a slide rule would work even if you ran over it with a car.
357. arkymalarky - 11/25/2003 7:30:54 PM
Bob has a huge one a friend gave him, and a little bitty one. The big one has got to be over 3 feet long.
358. PelleNilsson - 11/25/2003 7:33:53 PM
I still use mine sometimes. It's quicker than a calculator for division and multiplication.
359. PelleNilsson - 11/25/2003 7:43:26 PM
By the way, Edmund, welcome back to the Mote. I seldom agree with you but diversity of opinion is what we need.
360. alistairConnor - 11/25/2003 9:53:44 PM
My elder brothers had them, but they were obsolete by the time I got to high school.
361. judithathome - 11/25/2003 10:19:47 PM
Pelle, I have made so much money off those things! If I see one at an estate sale, I buy it because I have yet to fail at reselling it in my business. Guys just love the memories those things recall...
I also do well with old drafting tools.
362. Magoseph - 11/26/2003 12:25:05 AM
It's a smile...he likes the thought of you in a miniskirt.
Then, I'm going to find one picture of that time and put it just for him.
By the way, Edmund, welcome back to the Mote. I seldom agree with you but diversity of opinion is what we need.
I too am delighted that Dantes is with us, especially frequenting other threads than war and politic ones. He has taken to call me 'love' and 'dear', definitely a discerning man of taste.
363. rdbrewer - 11/26/2003 2:06:29 AM
I remember a mild weather Thanksgiving in the late 60's. The back of our house where the family room was faced south, and I remember lots of low-angle afternoon sunlight coming in through several windows and the back door. My parents were having a football party. Back then, the Oklahoma Sooners and Nebraska Cornhuskers faced off every Thanksgiving day.
This was the time when fondu was all the rage. Everyone had a fondu, and we had two. One was electric and the other was sterno powered. We had both fondus going, and people were frying shrimp, meat, hushpuppies, cheese--anything you could stab with the long narrow pitchforks. Each pitchfork was marked with a different color of plastic so that you could identify your frying morsel. We had segmented orange painted metal plates for this ceremony with one large area and two smaller areas--so that you could keep your food separated, I guess.
I remember the sunlight stabbing into the room and onto the fondu table whenever someone opened the back door. I watched little of the game that day. I was more interested in the sterno fondu and that little blue flame. And fondu was fun. Out of the several tidbits I fried, I enjoyed huspuppies the most.
I remember spending the rest of the afternoon in the bright sun in the backyard with the other kids. The light was made the more intense because our house was white, and it was two stories tall.
364. arkymalarky - 11/26/2003 3:53:12 AM
Cool and vivid images, RD. Details are so intense when you're a kid that adults don't even notice.
My grandparents on Dad's side had a pink asbestos siding house, which I thought was beautiful. They had a huge backyard with a picnic table and two old red and white painted wagon wheels. I had lots of cousins on that side and we played a lot.
We never lived in Dallas, so the trip was always part of the holiday visit excitement, though it was usually marred by two territorial personalities in my brother and me, trying to co-exist for 5 hours in the backseat of a Volkswagon Beetle. Luckily my dad was always driving and pointing out cows and my mother was short with short arms, so only on very rare occasions did things get to the point of Dad having to pull over so that we got within reach of one of them. I'd love a quarter for every threat we heard of it, though.
365. Macnas - 11/26/2003 3:26:55 PM
My old rule was a Jakar, whose instruments I was very fond of.
Not that I needed it in particular, slide rules were on the outs when I was stumbling through the education system.
One thing that always makes me think of school is inkwells, those small enamelled white pots that sat in the brass escutcheon with the sliding lid.
366. rdbrewer - 11/27/2003 7:09:21 AM
Thanks, Arky. I just realized that I didn't mention the turkey. There was turkey somewhere in the house. I don't remember where. For me, as a kid, the fondu was the main course and held all of my interest.
I had grandparents who lived in a house with pink asbestos siding shingles too.
367. rdbrewer - 11/27/2003 7:53:34 PM
I found a picture of our fondue. (Turns out it is spelled with an "e.")
This was our exact sterno fondue model, but ours was burnt orange. Each pitchfork has a little color coded end cap, so that you can identify your tidbit.
This article tells a little about the history of fundue. It looks like we have the Swiss to thank.
368. robertjayb - 11/27/2003 8:43:53 PM
Burnt orange, eh? A good color choice.
I thought the fondue fad was a pain---too time-consuming...interfered with my drinking.
369. PelleNilsson - 11/27/2003 9:05:27 PM
What is sterno?
We have a fondue kettle exactly like that although ours is made of brass and now serves as a decoration rather than something that is actually used.
When we did use it, it was for frying cubes of beef filet which were then dipped in various (then) exotic sauces like garlic mayonnaise, sweet chili, curry-yoghurt and so on. The fondue was served with french fries. Home-made french fries. None of those ghastly, frozen, reconstituted slug-like things.
Of course one doesn't need a fondue kettle to make fondue. In Algeria, which is unusual among Arab contries because they sell horse meat (in special shops), we got hold of a nice horse filet and arranged a fondue party by simply placing a kettle with hot oil on the stove. We manufactured the forks out of pieces of steel wire which we soldered together and coded with paper strips.
I have had cheese fondue in Switzerland. It is very, very filling but you don't discover that until afterwards.
370. rdbrewer - 11/27/2003 9:38:31 PM
Burnt orange, eh? A good color choice.
Ha! They were all out of crimson and cream.
I thought the fondue fad was a pain---too time-consuming...interfered with my drinking
I think the ceremony was part of the attraction. After all, it was just fried food.
371. rdbrewer - 11/27/2003 9:43:28 PM
Pelle, Sterno:
It was jelled alcohol, I think. You pop the little lid and put a match to it. I thought the name was generic, so I haven't been capitalizing the word.
What were you doing in Algeria?
372. rdbrewer - 11/27/2003 9:44:22 PM
It IS jelled . . . .
373. Macnas - 11/30/2003 9:25:48 AM
So that is what sterno looks like.
I used to have a pot of it, not sterno brand but some generic product. It was part of my kit along with a flint rod and a bar of magnesium something or other.
You could set anything alight with that set-up.
374. alistairconnor - 11/30/2003 10:24:11 AM
This was our exact sterno fondue model, but ours was burnt orange
Orange enamel! Attention : cadmium poisoning. Stays in your system for life. Get a checkup.
You could set anything alight with that set-up.
Do we have a key to the Macnas personality here?
375. Macnas - 11/30/2003 10:46:30 AM
If you have, you might let me know about it.
376. alistairconnor - 11/30/2003 11:48:33 AM
Ahh fondue. Correctly Savoyard, not Swiss. Just like Frankfurters are really from Strasbourg, and bull-fighting is properly French.
Back in the seventies, we used to buy pre-packaged cheese fondue, an emulsion of wine and cheese I suppose. An abomination, but, er, convenient.
I tried it out on my kids the other day. A nice fruity Comté cheese, a bottle of Chardonnay I happened to have in my hand at the time (really should be an Apremont or something, perhaps even a Seyssel)
To my intense and bitter disappointment, the kids hated it. I made them cheese on toast.
377. Macnas - 11/30/2003 12:01:30 PM
Does anyone remember the fondue scene from "Asterix In Switzerland"??
378. alistairconnor - 11/30/2003 12:11:07 PM
Aha! First time you lose your bread, five strokes of the cane.
Second time, twenty strokes of the whip.
Third time, tied hand and foot and thrown in the lake.
379. Macnas - 11/30/2003 12:56:50 PM
Oh dear, I seem to have lost my bread again....
380. Magoseph - 11/30/2003 2:09:28 PM
...and bull-fighting is properly French.
Alistair, it must have started here in Provence. The Nîmes arena, along with the Maison Carrée, and the Pont du Gard were the first Roman architectures I saw as a child. Nîmes was a family's favorite destination for the Monday after Easter. We went there every year until I was eight, many of us with pique-nique baskets. My older siblings are often remembering these times fondly.
381. PelleNilsson - 11/30/2003 2:09:28 PM
About sterno. Here the stuff came in tablets, called for some reason Metatablets. You could use them to drive toy steam engines and boats.
I had one of those. I never understood how it worked but now I do thanks to this site.
382. PelleNilsson - 11/30/2003 2:09:58 PM
rd -- I'm a telecom consultant.
383. marjoribanks - 11/30/2003 4:33:38 PM
Asterix in Helvetia was one of my absolute favorites.
--
Also, the hipster marjoribanks household updated fondue and created a certain rage in our set maybe five years ago. We had parties where the only things served were martinis in old-fashioned glasses and fundues where the gruyere (and fontina) was laced with jalapeno and the edible dipping instruments included cornichons and olives.
I still get calls from half-known attendees who want to know how to make that fondue.
384. Wombat - 11/30/2003 7:56:33 PM
I remember a fondue place in Paris that served wine in baby bottles (1970s).
385. Magoseph - 12/1/2003 4:43:33 PM
As we all know by now, the French are so perverse, Wombat, that it defies understanding, I swear!
386. rdbrewer - 12/1/2003 7:16:46 PM
Pelle, that's a fascinating site or two on those putput boats. I had never seen one.
I note that in the description of one of the boats pictured (the cool looking one) it said something about a bilge: "functioning condenser/solid state bilge pump." I'd like to know how that works, because I don't see it working with only the motor in question.
387. rdbrewer - 12/1/2003 7:19:06 PM
We had parties where the only things served were martinis in old-fashioned glasses and fundues where the gruyere (and fontina) was laced with jalapeno and the edible dipping instruments included cornichons and olives.
That sounds good. I'm starting to wonder if we still have that fondue pot. I might like to dust it off sometime and fire it up.
388. Ms. No - 12/1/2003 10:49:21 PM
We had a red fondue pot that was most often used as the Rotelle pot ----Velveeta cheese with a can of Rotelle tomatoes makes for a yummy dip. It was the staple appetizer dip around our house. I have fond memories of being bundled into the car for cold-weather parties and it being my job to stablize the pot of Rotelle between my feet so it didn't tip over on the drive.
389. judithathome - 12/1/2003 10:50:58 PM
Is that where you got your childhood nickname of Cheezy Feet? ;-)
390. Ms. No - 12/2/2003 12:34:38 AM
Hot Foot, dear, it was Hot Foot. ;->
Actually I never had a nickname as a child with anyone but my father. He's the only person who ever called me Chris, but I imagine it's because his younger brother was Chris -- we were both named for my grandmother's family Kristofak.
I got Chris, Chrisket, Fris (what his youngest brother called the middle brother) and Frisket. My brother was alternately Del-Bonzo and Bombs Alonzo and my grandmother was Boots.
It wasn't until I was in college that I got a real nickname that stuck. I had a roommate and classmate who was also Kristin so everyone called me 'C' and her 'K'. Our roommate Chuck gave us our joint nickname because he'd take messages and never knew which one for so they'd always be labeled "for c or k" and for the longest time I tried to figure out who the hell "cork" was.
Sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake.
At any rate 10 years later we're still C and K to everyone and occasionally "Cork" when we're embarking on joint adventures. K's scrapbook of our trip last April is titled "Cork Goes to Scotland".
391. marjoribanks - 12/8/2003 3:42:29 AM
Well, I hooked up and fired up the new scanner.
Marjoribanks, circa 1968
392. RickNelson - 12/8/2003 5:04:42 AM
Excellent pic Marj.
Good looks run in your line.
393. rdbrewer - 12/8/2003 5:31:03 AM
You were a cute kid, MB.
394. Macnas - 12/8/2003 11:22:34 AM
Your young fellow is the head off you.
395. marjoribanks - 12/8/2003 3:15:01 PM
Thank you, guys.
We used to have a thick album of photos from '68 -'72, all black-and-white, all very evocative and nice. It's one of my only real regrets in life that I never took charge of that album when I became adult.
Because, on one of my parents' longer moves, possibly from NY to Bombay, it fucking got lost. Now, instead of sheafs and sheafs of great black-and-whites to shore up my baby-type memories, I have like 6-7 photographs, out-takes and the like.
However, I do have this one, a photo I had taken with me up to college.
396. Magoseph - 12/8/2003 3:16:47 PM
Pretty lady!
397. iiibbb - 12/8/2003 3:20:41 PM
buh'fly
398. marjoribanks - 12/8/2003 3:33:34 PM
That's my mother, age 26.
399. Neato - 12/12/2003 10:23:40 AM
Marj, those are great, please post the others?
400. ScreamingSin - 12/14/2003 8:55:52 AM
That 395 is absolutely gorgeuos, touching.
The mom-thing is a godess, and you are with her.
401. alistairconnor - 12/14/2003 9:05:26 AM
395 : instinctively we now understand how Marj acquired his unshakeable, insufferable smugness.
402. ScreamingSin - 12/14/2003 9:16:22 AM
Because his dad wasn't in the picture?
I hate myself as I type this, but there's a football team out there somewhere that can fumble.
403. ScreamingSin - 12/14/2003 9:25:45 AM
I hated my dad, that we had to wait on him when he deemed it fit.
Coffee! He'd call on some mornings, and woe to the sucker that had to deliver it, and if they spilled it, there was punishment.
I remember one time, one time. I kept my eyes on the coffee, I was about 9 and getting the grip and balance of things.
I don't believe I got thanked for delivering the coffee, but I didn't get berated for spilling it.
When I yell at my kid when he spills something I hate myself. That was one of my promises I made to myself.
Broken, broken, but I'm gaining.
404. ScreamingSin - 12/14/2003 9:36:50 AM
I've got such lovely photos of me and my mom also, and there's all this detritus regarding my dad, floating about.
405. ScreamingSin - 12/14/2003 10:21:13 AM
Lower the curtain
I think about the loveless fascination
Under the Milky Way tonight
406. Neato - 12/14/2003 10:59:41 AM
I've just spent 2 weeks in NZ in the town I grew up in, in the same house, with my Mum, in Upper Hutt as in the Front Lawn (Dan McGlashan) song, Alistair, (about the girl from the Hutt Vallee)it was very wierd, (it always is)there are still lots of kids playing on the road in the evenings (but it bikes and touch football, not marbles)it's become such a sanitized town, not much of the old is left. The river and hills are still beautiful. I went to the local school concert in the same hall that I was Rabbit in, in the Pooh Bear play in 1957 or so. But I got some neat slides that my father had piled away in dim wardrobes.
407. alistairconnor - 12/14/2003 11:36:40 AM
She loves Wellington, she was born there, she grew up out in the Hutt valley...
That Front Lawn business (this is not childhood but who cares) was a huge psychic shock for me. I was in the middle of a period of strong rejection of all links with my land of origin, and this cassette arrived...
I like the way it arrived. We were visiting friends in Zürich, a mixed Swiss/NZ couple, and they gave us a copy. How did they get it? Well, some time previously, a guy had turned up on their doorstep, having heard that there was a New Zealander living there, and gave it to them... he was the father of the chick who plays the mandolin.
A three degrees of separation kind of thing.
408. alistairconnor - 12/14/2003 11:38:26 AM
I'm going back for my trip, ten days from now... my subconscious is starting to go into overdrive.
Seven weeks we'll be there, it's going to pass in a flash I fear.
409. Neato - 12/14/2003 11:45:35 AM
(Hello, how you doin', hant seen you for .. Hello how you doin ...)
It's great that you have an enterprise going there now. It must be nice to have something going on - sort of future looking rather than wierd backward things.
410. Neato - 12/14/2003 12:03:05 PM
1961, 12th birthday, Fanta and sponge cakes
411. alistairconnor - 12/14/2003 12:20:58 PM
sort of future looking rather than wierd backward things.
Steady on : Those weird backward things you're talking about are our compatriots... Family members, most of 'em...
Great photo. Those Fanta bottles. Must be cult objects now I suppose.
Colour photography! Very advanced.
412. rdbrewer - 12/22/2003 1:59:07 AM
Why are all you Kiwis brunettes? Are you all Scots or something? I met a gorgeous Kiwi veterenarian a while back. She had sable colored hair and gray eyes. Everyone have gray eyes too?
413. rdbrewer - 12/22/2003 2:35:30 AM
I remember our Christmas tree when I was four. It was a natural tree, and we had multi colored lights, the large bulbs. I think this was before everyone started using tiny bulbs.
I remember laying on my back with my head just under the tree for what seemed like hours at a time. I loved the way the tree smelled. I loved the way the pine needles and branches were lit in little areas of different colors, and I would imagine being small enough to live on the branches and walk from one pool of light to another where friends were waiting. My favorite colors were orange and yellow, and I lived in a yellow section.
And, of course, I singled out one wrapped gift that I had to open immediately. Something about the shape and the way it sounded when shaken drove me crazy with anticipation. I would start little holes in the paper which I would then "accidently" open further each day (each hour?). "Don't open those gift's son," mom would say. "I'm just feeling them," or "I'm just shaking them" would be my typical reply.
When I finally got to open up that package, I found a brightly colored toy phone. It had a red dial and a red plastic handset on a red curled string, and I think it had a horn button in the middle of the dial. The base of the phone was white. The bells would ring with a spin of the dial. I can't remember, though, whether the bells were on the outside of the phone or on the inside.
I always had to know how things worked. It wasn't enough to get the toy. I had to see what was inside. Many times after I lost interest in a toy, I would pry it open to see the innards. I remember doing this most frequently with the metal wind-up toys that were held together with folded-over metal tabs. I became a master at straightening these tabs and getting to the wind-up mechanism. I got in trouble for this on a regular basis. My dad would angrily ask me why I did that. It was irresistible curiosity.
414. ScreamingSin - 12/22/2003 7:14:40 AM
I used to talk to trees, it was lovely. The most special ones had names.
415. rdbrewer - 12/23/2003 2:54:26 AM
Did they talk back?
416. arkymalarky - 12/23/2003 5:52:53 AM
I loved the metallic round ornaments and the lights. Christmas trees are mesmerizing, even now. I like to de-stress in front of the Christmas tree with only the tree lights on and Christmas music (the good kind, not the annoying if-I-hear-that-one-more-time-I'm-going-to-puke kind) playing, with eggnog or hot chocolate. Curled on the sofa. That's what I'm going to do tomorrow night.
417. ScreamingSin - 12/24/2003 10:06:57 AM
Yes, rdbrewer, those trees did talk back when I was child. It was low humming noises of comfort down below at the trunk, and the upper swishies of the branches.
A person has to climb a tree to know the tree.
418. ScreamingSin - 12/24/2003 10:32:02 AM
The trees don't talk back near as clearly, lately.
arkymalarky, you're funny, I bet we hate different songs.
annoying if-I-hear-that-one-more-time-I'm-going-to-puke kind
To each their own.
419. arkymalarky - 12/24/2003 1:26:30 PM
I dunno. If you like The Little Drummer Boy, then I agree, we're probably worlds apart Christmas songwise.
420. RickNelson - 12/24/2003 2:49:39 PM
There is a tree unfaded by memory,
cuddled tenderly for childhood reverie.
The branches are arms all bangled to shine,
to present colored paper boxes, some surely mine.
There is tinsel of silver shimmering,
and bright colored lights glimmering.
We all have our favorite ornamantal glass ball,
there hung so carefully, no, it wont fall.
It's this tree, which joy plays- "will Santa arrive"?
Amazing little boy, happy, joyous and only five.
Rickster 12/25/2003
421. rdbrewer - 12/27/2003 11:19:55 PM
I saw William Shatner perform Elton John's Rocketman on some variety show, like Sonny and Cher or something. This was in the early to mid seventies, and I was around 12 or so. It seemed like he was sitting in a chair on the stage and leaning forward, like he was trying to be as conversational as possible.
I thought it was great.
I assumed my mother liked it from the way she was grinning. It never crossed my mind that it was awful, and that she might have been laughing about it.
But it turns out I was right after all. It is so bad that it goes beyond bad and all the way back to good. It broke the bounds of badness. It's inadvertently entertaining, although not in a way intended by Shatner.
422. alistairConnor - 12/27/2003 11:22:48 PM
Just checking in from my mother's place. It's next door to the house I grew up in, which now belongs to my elder sister.
I enjoy seeing my kids mix with hers in that holy place.
I'm enjoying being the prodigal. The key is a light touch : don't stay too long, don't come back too often.
423. rdbrewer - 12/27/2003 11:40:08 PM
I like your poem, Rick.
How was the flight, AC? I imagine seeing your kids play in the same places you did sparks memories.
424. rdbrewer - 12/28/2003 8:44:14 PM
My first credit transaction:
My first attempt to obtain credit was when I was four or five. I had seen endless department store commercials where the announcer always said at the end, "Just say, 'Charge it!'" Finally, I asked my older sisters what that meant. "That means you can get it today and pay for it tomorrow," my oldest sister explained. Ka-ching. I loved that concept, and I rolled it around in my head. It made perfect sense to me. My second oldest sister seemed impressed by it too.
A few days later, we went to the local five and dime. My sisters were watching me while my mother shopped. I went to my usual stops, the toy department and the candy department. I picked out a balsa glider and some candy. I went to the check out line, and the woman gave me my total. I said, "Charge it." She looked perplexed and said, "What do you mean?" I was confident and stood my ground. I said, "I'll pay for it tomorrow."
My second oldest sister snickered but admired me for my boldness. She was afraid to charge something. The cashier started looking around for help. She didn't know whether I could do that. She told another cashier I wanted to charge my purchase. By then, my oldest sister had arrived in line. She started laughing. The other cashier was laughing. Other people were laughing. Finally, a little embarrassed for all the attention we were getting, she told me I couldn't do that, and that she would pay for it. "But I thought I could charge it," I complained, knowing full well I was being lied to by someone.
425. marjoribanks - 12/28/2003 10:57:40 PM
Here's another of my small stash of surviving childhood photographs.
This one, particularly, evokes small-town India of the time very strongly.
You see me astride a Bajaj scooter, owned by the young business executive (later CEO of a giant company) you see there in the background. At the time (probably early 1970) cars were still relatively rare - we had one and its license plate registered it as only the 168th in the whole state. So, even promising executives rode around on scooters.
The woman bending down is my ayah, the maid in charge of me. I remember this one very well, she taught me some Hindi movie songs which I still remember well, and she also gave me a lasting affection for the scent of mogra blossoms, which she daily wound into her thick plaits.
At the time of this photo, I was a very lucky child. My parents had had me young, by the standards of their peers, and my father had even married young (at 24). So his colleagues were mostly unmarried, and all were childless. Thus, I was doted on, and spoiled thoroughly, by a whole mess of young men and women in the smallish "company town" that we lived in at that point.
T'was my heyday, cruelly blighted by the arrival of my brother a couple of years later. It took me at least 4-5 years to forgive him for sullying my idyll by the fact of being born.
426. judithathome - 12/28/2003 11:17:18 PM
Same thing happened to me when my sister was born 20 days after my 10th birthday...you get used to having things your way for so long and then wham, you have to share the spotlight with some whiney little bundle who can't even sit up or talk!
427. alistairConnor - 1/1/2004 12:27:57 PM
Six forty-something siblings back at the Old House. 
It's been extensively remodelled since we all lived there (but featured in architecture magasines when it was built in the late 50s)
The ladies are looking at the photos I have just taken.
Magic moment : sitting in the small room, I am struck by the fact that the door is exactly as it was, same handle, same lock, they have even repainted it in the original colour. I am transported back forty years to toilet training.
428. marjoribanks - 1/1/2004 4:30:17 PM
Wonderful, AC.
The house (that space at least) is great, the photos are great. You look a lot like the brother in the middle-front with his legs crossed.
429. PelleNilsson - 1/1/2004 6:37:36 PM
Yes, but Alistair looks so frighteningly intense. A lot of mental energy there to wear one down with.
430. Magoseph - 1/1/2004 6:56:50 PM
Ali, you look no more than 17 in that picture, so cute.
431. marjoribanks - 1/1/2004 7:03:42 PM
Yeah, I don't see anything frightening about the waifish, sprightly, Connor visage.
Pinchable cheeks, yes. Intense, nah.
432. marjoribanks - 1/1/2004 7:04:43 PM
But what really impresses me is that house, or more precisely that wonderful sun-awash, wood-toned, room. What a great place to raise a passel of kids.
433. angel-five - 1/2/2004 6:40:22 AM
a portrait of the artist
There's an ancient wicker chair that is still in the house in which I was raised. In the time of my first memories that chair, a basket rocker, was in my bedroom. The wicker would creak when my mother held me, sitting in it, rocking back and forth as I drifted off. I never remember being put into my crib when she was done. It is strange what you do remember.
What I remember is the light in the room, spilling in from the hallway and up across the paneled ceiling in a widening fan. It was a wooden crib with lathed rails in which she would lay me and I remember looking up at the fan of light, which was comforting because I could see the shadows in it as my parents would check on me. I don't know that I knew what I was looking at, but in the night when I would cry, the light would come on and I would then see the shadows moving across it as they came to check on me. I do remember, although this may just be a trick of the mind, that if I cried long enough the light always came on. I couldn't see their faces, just the silhouettes as they came to look down into the crib.
Looking back at those moments from my first year of college I found it very interesting that I was most comforted by shadows and light, and footsteps in the hallway. I tried explaining it once to a professor. She was alternately bemused by my philosophy, only as dazzlingly immature yet self-sure as can be had by a first-year student, and unsure about memories that detailed from that early of a time. After a while, I understood. But I can still see that light across the ceiling, sometimes.
*************************************
Pictures from my first birthday party, which I never saw until I was much older and thus did not understand the memory. I was in a high chair; someone was trying to feed me bits of cake. It was all over my face.
434. angel-five - 1/2/2004 6:41:02 AM
But I remember being in that chair, with them all looking at me and smiling and laughing. I remember the cake almost as an afterthought, but what made the memory stick with me was that I realized they were looking at me, that the party (although I didn't understand what one of those really was) was something to do with me. Codification of the self, layered through the smiles of two dozen people sharing my DNA. It is a fragmented thing, this memory, but I remember being taken over by the realization of what was happening.
When I would swim as a child in the lake near our house, later in life, when I'd get tired of actual swimming I would wade out until the water was up around my shoulders sometimes and sort of hop slowly around in the water, feeling it around me like a buoyant spring, never really rising up too much -- just settling down in the water, my knees bent, until my feet touched the sandy bottom, then kick-pushing off, coiling and uncoiling back and forth. It was very comforting, very atavistic, but I did not know why. My brother was the same way, would do the same thing. We'd even remark upon it to each other, but at that age it was pretty much enough for either one of us that it was enjoyable and relaxing.
When I was older my mother made a chance remark about a harness toy both my brother and I played in. It was a sort of spring-hung swingset that one attached to a doorframe, springs dependent downward to a little swing seat that one could be fastened into. The entire effect was sort of like a bungee jump -- the seat and springs were adjusted until ones toes barely touched the ground, then you could kick off from the ground, rise up through the air with gaining speed, peak, come back down then the spring tension slowed you. Like alighting on the earth, from a flight. Then kick back off, a spring-loaded yo-yo, a paddleball on a string.
435. angel-five - 1/2/2004 6:43:18 AM
But I didn't remember just by looking at it. There was just something about it which struck my mind.
I asked her if we spent much time in the harness and she said 'oh, yes. We couldn't get you out of it half the time, you loved it so much, your brother and you." And that night she showed me a home movie, slowly bouncing in the seat, kicking up and coming down, back and forth and smiling and laughing. And it was no longer a mystery why I enjoyed playing in the water as I did, although from that day onward it seemed much more childish to me.
Apparently I also loved turning cartwheels, or trying to, in the mud puddles in the driveway. It seems that it was not a proper somersault unless I actually planted my head in the mud, which explains a bit why my mother was happy enough to put me in the bungee chair instead.
*******************************************
Some children make forts from tables and cushions, blankets and furniture. My brother and I made the Maginot Line.
The entire front room would be consumed by it, much to the exasperation of my father. Some days it was the Mines of Moria, others a world war fortress. Other days a castle, or a rabbit warren, whatever caught our fancy. There was a long-legged green high chair, wooden and painted. If you laid it on its back and curled up in it, feet down and hands on the armrests, it made a perfect ball turret -- needless to say it was usually the centerpiece of the defenses of the fort, should they become necessary. But the fort was made differently every time and we would often raid other rooms for furniture. The house was a century old and could be drafty, so, locating key parts of the fort over the hot air ducts was a skill we got very good at. It was also how I discovered that hot air rises.
436. angel-five - 1/2/2004 6:56:46 AM
Memory, they say, is one of those things that people take for granted. We stick with our childhood memories even though they are often very false. People who have to deal with other peoples' memories on a daily basis, like a detective, or a psychologist, will tell you that they're one of the most inaccurate things around, human memories. And it's true, a bit. We assemble memories from bits we remember, concretizing them, filling in blanks, and the memory is real to us, realer than anything else, even though it never happened at all. So it is at once both a bane and comfort to me.
I didn't speak until after I was two. I'm told I made the average baby noises and started putting sounds together, a little faster than average, but one day I just stopped altogether. No one knows why, or will admit to knowing why. I know I do not. But it scared my parents pretty badly, they thought that something was very wrong with me. According to them I barely even cried, once I stopped trying to talk.
My bedroom was on the second floor and at night when it was time to put me to bed my mother would carry me up the stairs. There were fifteen of them; four, then a landing with some stained glass and curtains, then one step to the next landing as the stairs did a 180 turn, then ten steps more. And my mother counted them to me every night as she walked up the stairs, and I remember that very clearly even now, the sound of her voice. 'Six... seven... eight...'
437. angel-five - 1/2/2004 6:57:00 AM
It's touching to me now, thinking of it. It must have been like a ritual to her, one more piece of the continuing effort to fill in whatever it was I was missing, but also empty and tired and perhaps a bit touched with fear, worried about what was wrong with me. Doctors could find nothing wrong, no one could, I just didn't make sounds anymore.
But one night she was very tired, she said, and she stopped counting at the twelfth step. And then the little boy on her shoulder said, in perfect and clear English, 'Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' She claims that she almost dropped me when I said 'thirteen'. She also claims that after that, I never shut up again. Who could have guessed.
438. judithathome - 1/2/2004 2:19:17 PM
Excellent! Thanks, A5!
439. wabbit - 1/2/2004 3:52:09 PM
What a treat to read you again, A5. When are you publishing something?
440. PelleNilsson - 1/2/2004 3:57:37 PM
What wabbit said, and with feeling. But I cannot resist:
She also claims that after that, I never shut up again
And then he learned to write ....
441. judithathome - 1/2/2004 4:01:56 PM
Our gain, I'd say....
442. rdbrewer - 1/2/2004 5:54:43 PM
What I remember is the light in the room, spilling in from the hallway and up across the paneled ceiling in a widening fan.
I have similar memories. I also remember the hallway light shining right into my crib, and that when I cried, the light would flare and tendrils of it would stretch toward me and move around. I enjoyed watching this light show.
443. rdbrewer - 1/2/2004 6:00:22 PM
One time I ate yellow snow. I was four. I thought it looked like a banana snowcone.
444. rdbrewer - 1/2/2004 6:10:27 PM
Some children make forts from tables and cushions, blankets and furniture. My brother and I made the Maginot Line.
I did this too. I think all kids enjoy building forts out of cushions, blankets, or, if you're outside, branches and holes in the ground. One time my best friend, Jerry, and I made a fort out of a hole left by a large tree that had fallen over. With a little dirt mortar to smooth them out, broken root stubs became shelves for our dirt clod ammunition. A particularly interestingly shaped clump of roots became our radio. We used a piece of wood for a table microphone, and we had several antennae stuck in the ground at the highest point of the fort wall, just above the radio.
I was thinking about kids' fascination with tree houses and forts and the like, and the thought occurred to me that these behaviors are instinctive. In cave man days, children probably had to have an instinctive attraction to little sheltered places and an instinctive desire to build them in order to survive.
I remember how comfortable I felt when I would build a box shaped fort out of couch cushions and then crawl inside. I felt safe.
445. judithathome - 1/2/2004 6:16:37 PM
We made a sort of cave dug into the side of a creek bed when I was about 5...I know it was before I started school...my friends and I used pails to dig into the soft dirt which had been somewhat hollowed out by the creek flooding months before.
We had quite the little clubhouse for awhile. I think I might have mentioned it before but it's a wonder we weren't all buried alive, never to be found. We'd stay there for hours at a time.
446. judithathome - 1/2/2004 6:18:12 PM
When I was older, we'd make forts out of cardboard appliance boxes. Once my mom let me stay out in my "fort" all night with my best friend. We were "camping"...ha!
447. rdbrewer - 1/2/2004 6:26:42 PM
Once when I was six, we build a particularly nice fort out of the branches of a tree that had fallen over in our yard. At one point about halfway along its length, there was a natural grotto of limbs, branches and leaves that had an open section a chest high wall made of a medium sized limb.
My father was having our house painted, and we were pretending the painter's assistant was the enemy. We gave a running dialogue of his activities in the form of reports delivered to other soldiers on the stick walkie- talkie. "Now he's moving toward the house," for example, in loud whispers. "Wait! He's coming back!" When he would look at us, we would duck behind the wall. "Ooh, that was a close one!"
This was apparently driving the assistant crazy. Finally, he cracked. He came over with a saw and cut a large section out of our wall. We were angry in our dismayed kid kind of way. We knew he didn't have to ruin our fort.
It wasn't fun anymore. Our perfect fort was ruined. We no longer had any cover in the direction of the enemy. I'm sure that was the enemy's point.
448. rdbrewer - 1/2/2004 6:50:42 PM
AC, was that picture of your brothers and sisters a reconstruction of a picture taken when you were kids?
449. angel-five - 1/3/2004 4:51:05 AM
>What a treat to read you again, A5. When are you publishing something?
That depends upon how much unadulterated praise you people heap on me in the future.
450. wonkers2 - 1/3/2004 5:25:18 AM
We dug a swimming pool in my friend Sonny's back yard. It didn't go over well with his parents.
451. angel-five - 1/3/2004 5:44:55 AM
Yes, it's amazing what doesn't go down well with parents.
I cut my own hair the morning of my kindergarten pictures. In the pic it is, well, very plain that I did so. I couldn't figure out how my mother knew the instant I walked downstairs.
Also my mother's salmon casserole was the sort of stuff that if you fed it to people in Camp X-Ray, Amnesty International would have an apopleptic fit. And I don't like salmon anyway, vile stuff. And when I was young I wasn't allowed to leave the table until my plate was clean, at least, I wasn't allowed to leave the table until my plate was clean whenever I made a stink about my food. So this one time I was sitting there, had been there for what seemed like eternity, no one else was in the room when fateful Inspiration struck.
And I dumped the salmon casserole down a grate in the floor.
And the next day when I got home my mother was waiting at the door and she was furious. And once again I was astonished that she knew. Absolutely floored.
I didn't know what a cold air return was, but I found out that day that the grate in the floor was, indeed, a cold air return. It was the middle of winter, too, so of course the furnace was running all day.
452. arkymalarky - 1/3/2004 6:03:42 AM
Ugh.
Cutting your own hair reminds me of a funny story a guy who used to be my principal told about his sisters playing "beauty shop." For curlers they used cuckleburrs. Needless to say, they both ended up with haircuts. Short ones.
453. arkymalarky - 1/3/2004 6:05:48 AM
When I was a kid I think I really would've looked better had I cut my own hair rather than what Dad used to accomplish with home haircuts. Haircut Day was a traumatic one for Bro and me.
454. arkymalarky - 1/3/2004 6:07:05 AM
Except Bro could always end up with a burr cut and he was happy. Unfortunately for me, that was a bit before Sinead O'Connor days, and I was hardly a trend-setter anyway.
455. RickNelson - 1/5/2004 5:02:23 AM
I'm enjoying everyone's posts. Thank you all.
456. Wombat - 1/5/2004 7:41:12 PM
I cut my own hair when I was five, as well. However, I used two auto-barbers: Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear. Mr. Rabbit used small, delicate snips with the blunt-ended children's scissors; Mr. Bear cut out large hunks of hair. When I showed my (their) handiwork to my mother, she screamed, told me never ever to do that again, and rushed me off to the barber for the closest thing to a crew cut that I ever had.
457. rdbrewer - 1/17/2004 1:02:51 AM
I recall the public outcry over deep sea mining of manganese nodules when I was in early grade school. Environmentalist groups were up in arms about how ocean life would be negatively affected. I recall the controversy even making its way into cartoons.
(Sidebar: A lot of left-wing bullshit made it into cartoons back then. There was a big PTA movement at the time about violence in cartoons. It was assumed that kids, who play fight outside any time the sun is out, couldn't tell the difference between dramatic violence and real violence. This stupidity ruined great, exciting dramatic cartoons like Johnny Quest and gave us pure crap like Josie and the Pussycats. Quest and early Superman cartoons were deemed "too violent," as if kids were going outside and hitting each other with giant hammers after watching The Roadrunner. But left-wing agitprop balogna was fine, and it suddenly appeared everywhere on Saturday morning.)
Anyway.
Idiots assumed, naturally, that coral reefs would be targeted and torn to pieces. One of the cartoons I watched (some undersea adventure cartoon) demonstrated to me how the heartless, evil corporation was using giant undersea vaccuum cleaners to suck up manganese nodules. (And it looked just like your standard Hoover.) And in their overarching corporate greed, they were driving this dastardly machine over the precious, delicate coral reefs--as if deep sea manganese nodules can be found in shallow atoll and reef waters.
All of this ado was the result of Howard Hughes' very public efforts to mine the ocean floor in his ship, the Glomar Explorer--and it was all, laughably, total bullshit. The mining of manganese was just a cover story for CIA efforts to steal a sunken Russian submarine. The Glomar Explorer was built for this one purpose.
A CIA cover story that makes it into your Weekly Reader and your Saturday morning cartoons is one heck of a cover story.
458. judithathome - 1/17/2004 1:11:51 AM
You have some really bizarre memories of your youth, RD.
Myself, I only recall things like "Reefer Madness" and the hunt for communists under every bed.
Liberal bullshit wasn't the only ridiculous suff being thrown around when we were kids.
459. rdbrewer - 1/17/2004 1:19:11 AM
Judith! Feeling okay? You're starting to sound like yourself again.
What's bizarre?
460. judithathome - 1/17/2004 1:32:46 AM
That you recall some obscure dredging operation and connect it to liberals. It just struck me as bizarre that you remember something like that...and that you equate a concern for the coaral reefs as something sinister. Coral reefs are some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world and being concerned that they might be harmed isn't exactly flakey...
461. rdbrewer - 1/17/2004 1:40:19 AM
It was the liberals who made me aware of the high profile dredging operation by making it an example of corporate greed for children in the classroom and at home.
I have a pornographic memory.
I don't equate concern with coral reef health with anything sinister. Concern is fine. Misplaced concern based on lies or stupidity is not.
462. Magoseph - 1/21/2004 4:45:54 PM
I have a pornographic memory.
rdb, sweetheart, can I call you at night?
One more thing, can I put a picture of me when I was 17? Even though I considered myself a sophisticate then, little did I know what a kid I was.
463. rdbrewer - 1/21/2004 11:20:22 PM
Of course you can, Mago. We eagerly await.
464. judithathome - 1/21/2004 11:33:11 PM
Misplaced concern based on lies or stupidity is not.
Funny, but I agree with you on this, 100%.
465. Magoseph - 1/22/2004 4:20:59 PM
Of course you can, Mago. We eagerly await.
It may take a while because I'm installing Home Networking right now. I intend to post a baby picture, a teen-age one, and a current one, that is if I get enough courage to do so. I just wanted to know if I could do it, thanks, rdb!
466. wonkers2 - 1/22/2004 4:54:07 PM
Cap'n Dirty sez, "Mago, only if you were fully unclothed."
467. rdbrewer - 1/22/2004 5:00:51 PM
And you can call me, naked.
468. Magoseph - 1/22/2004 5:00:51 PM
Mago, only if you were fully unclothed
Cap'n, the baby picture will be.
469. rdbrewer - 1/22/2004 5:01:31 PM
Whoa, look at the time there, right down to the seconds.
470. Neato - 1/23/2004 5:54:56 AM
Dad, me and my brother looking over a sandhill - 1954
471. Neato - 1/23/2004 6:16:09 AM
Dad and my brother - about 1960
472. Neato - 1/23/2004 6:20:24 AM
1958
473. wabbit - 1/23/2004 6:28:04 AM
Neato, I'm not seeing any photos.
474. wabbit - 1/23/2004 6:29:52 AM
Nevermind, it was on my end, I see them now. That first one is a gem.
475. Neato - 1/23/2004 6:31:22 AM
Do you know why?
476. Neato - 1/23/2004 6:32:51 AM
475 was a cross post, not in response to 474!
477. wabbit - 1/23/2004 6:33:45 AM
Yes, I use a variety of browsers and the one I had open (MyIE2) doesn't seem to read shutterfly links by default. If I dig around a bit I'll probably find a setting that can be adjusted. IE sees the photos just fine.
478. Macnas - 1/25/2004 4:24:53 PM
I know Neato's great pictures are from NZ, but there is something Irish about them, all in my own mind of course, I really like them anyway.
I was thinking over the weekend (which I do from time to time) about childhood memories, this thread and stories I'd read here. I then tried to think of other instances where somebody had related stories from childhood to me, other than say, reading a biography or somesuch.
The one person who came to mind was my Grandmother. Then my aunt, still alive and still living alone in England as a seriously eccentric (read half-mad) spinster. All the others are from a particular generation and back, and all are country people. Which means either my Fathers side of the family had better memories, or my Mothers side just never felt disposed to discuss their childhood.
Whatever the case may be, There are times when the recollections of ones elders makes for interesting listening/reading, particularly their childhood. If it isn’t too much of a stretch from the true subject matter of this thread I might revisit some of those recollections of other childhood’s from times different to my own.
479. PelleNilsson - 1/25/2004 5:02:49 PM
Please do that macnas.
480. Neato - 1/26/2004 12:19:02 AM
Yes please Macnas, I would like that too.
481. ScreamingSin - 1/26/2004 9:26:45 AM
Dodging a slap, let's move forward from angel-five's glad tidings
'Other days a castle, or a rabbit warren, whatever caught our fancy'
Fucking fairy tale. This angers me, makes me jealous, and now I'm going to barf.
482. ScreamingSin - 1/26/2004 9:27:50 AM
Plow on ahead Macnas.
483. Macnas - 1/26/2004 11:12:44 AM
I suppose that my Grandmothers tales are those I remember most vividly, being as they were a mixture of time before the Wars, British rule and the struggle to gain our independence.
While many tales were very involved, concerning local people and events that would not relate well to distant others, there are bits a pieces from the early part of the last century that are remarkable by the fact that they are so different from today.
Children going to school were beaten as punishment as a matter of course. It was not considered excessive to draw blood from a child in the course of administering a beating.
Those boys and girls who were ill behaved on a regular basis (of which my Grandmother was one of course) had to wear a tally stick tied to a string around their waist. Each time they broke a rule or otherwise gained the ill attention of the schoolmaster, a notch would then be cut in the stick. When the number of notches went over the quota (I cannot remember what it was), they were then beaten soundly with the same tally stick.
Other punishments were being made to stand outside for an hour. And back when Winter really was Winter, being made to stand stock still in bitterly cold weather without a coat and without being able to move to warm yourself was indeed a vicious punishment.
484. Macnas - 1/26/2004 11:12:56 AM
But Gran’s school days were not all drudge and punishment. She remembered her school days in two quite distinct time periods. The earlier time, when the schoolmaster was an enlightened man who enjoyed his work and cared that the children in his care enjoy their work too. He was a famous IRA intelligence officer, who one day was arrested in school, and in front of the children riflebutted to the ground until he was unrecognisable, then taken away. He was shot shortly afterwards.
The other period then began with the arrival of a new schoolmaster. A vicious man who cared little for the children and treated them with such brutality he is still remembered for it to this day. Like many evil men he lived for a long time, so that even I can remember him. The bastard must have been over 90 years old before he finally died. None of the people he taught would go to his funeral, and his family had to bury him more or less on their own.
485. Macnas - 1/26/2004 11:26:10 AM
I'll write some more later on, I hate it when work gets in the way.
486. Magoseph - 1/26/2004 12:19:34 PM
These days, I'm so busy, I wouldn't have time for a job, Mac.
487. angel-five - 1/27/2004 6:22:46 AM
There's really nothing to be jealous about. Go push some furniture together, throw some blankets over it, and sit inside. The power is in your hands.
488. Macnas - 1/27/2004 11:55:39 AM
It seems as if my grandmother’s memories from childhood are dominated by violent happenings, but she always seemed to me to be a happy woman. Maybe if happiness is the norm, then incidents of the opposite tend to loom large in memory.
In another recollection of hers, British soldiers came looking for my great grandfather. He was out with a pair of horses doing some harrowing about a quarter mile or so from the road. The soldiers found him eventually, beat him, then tied his hands in the reins and ran the horses back to the road.
Only pure blind luck in the form of a policeman from a nearby station who recognised him while he was in the army barrack being processed saved him from being hauled off and shot. It was a case of mistaken identity, but the sight of her father being brutalised turned her against all things British forever after.
Her best stories though, were those of her daughter, my aunt. She was just wild, and would run off in the early part of the day and not return until near dark, having gallivanted the countryside about. Different times then of course.
She would remove the chain from her fathers bicycle, and he would set off down the hill and not work the pedals until he was nearly half a mile away, such was the slope that allowed him to coast along before he came to the next rise in the road. With the bicycle less its chain, he was going nowhere, and had to push it back home, where she would be doubled up laughing at him.
When other men came to chat with her father, they would, if weather was fair, sit against an earth bank out beyond the garden and smoke a pipe in the sunshine. She would try and sneak up on them so she could pour a bucket of water on them from above.
She headed off to London when she was young, and ended up working in a foreign embassy where she was a senior staff member up until she retired. She still lives there now, old and as odd as can be, but still my favourite aunt.
489. judithathome - 1/27/2004 4:41:11 PM
I'll bet she's still having fun, too!
Great stories, Macnas...very vivid.
490. Neato - 1/28/2004 10:15:08 AM
Yes, good stories, thanks Macnas. Have you raided that biscuit tim yet - might you find some photos of these characters?
491. Macnas - 1/28/2004 11:04:44 AM
Some chance of that! Asking the mother for photographs is like asking a policeman to lend you a gun. I'd never get the opportunity to take them away and scan them in such that I could post anything here.
But you never know, she might soften one of these days.
But I doubt it.
492. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:18:03 AM
When you are very young, your parents transcend authority. The very young do not think in these complex terms, but parents are just a rung or two down from God. They are forces of nature, more than breathing flesh like our own. The understanding that your parents are, not just mortal and fallible, but no better than you are, prey to the same human nature you're only beginning to understand as something larger than yourself, this understanding is the death knell of childhood, provided it hasn't already been done in.
So when I was very young it didn't strike me as strange at my mother's family was very much a part of my own -- there were a lot of them, a varied enough and jovial lot, that I knew what a second cousin once removed was before I knew that most people don't get to know their second cousins once removed very well -- while my father's family was not. That was just the way things were.
My mother's family was, and remains, large and sprawling and very old Massachusetts Yankee stock of the first stripe, extending down through the years in widening branches of intermingling like tree roots growing through glacial till, two or three extending off into the unknown, two looping so far around that they rejoined, through ellipses, another branch later on.
I am writing this with the scent of my great grandmother's study in my mind, rich and dusty and redolent of age, for that's where the geneaologies were kept. The rasp of old paper underneath the fingertip as you trace down a line, eastern summer sunlight through old rippled glass. There were inkwells there, filled with long-since-dried ink, brown-black and crumbled dry. Boredom and interest, things I didn't understand, old leather bindings that no longer had any scent but time, I remember all these things because it was among them that it first occurred to me that my father's family was different somehow.
493. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:22:45 AM
It had not yet occurred to me that my mother's was as well, it was the normal standard to which I was suddenly comparing my father's jagged line. It was an odd comparison, because I knew next to nothing about my father's lineage.
I knew my grandmother, and my aunt and her daughter my cousin, and I knew them well and spent plenty of time with them (all of them were blond haired and blue eyed, as was I, as my father and mother and brother were not, and I felt quite at home among them). But I actually knew more about the Doberman my father had as a child than I knew about his father, and aside from that I knew next to nothing at all. My mother's family tended to live in clumps, transplanting across America like grape ivy taking hold of a garden, but my father's other relatives would have had to drive hundreds of miles to reach each other, and it seemed that was the way they liked it. Squabbles over wills, bitter fights, -- when I asked my father why his family was not so close, he did not want to talk about it at all, but finally came up with these reasons. 'We just don't get along well with each other,' he said, and then had me mow the lawn.
He would expand upon this later, but not much. I learned to read between the lines, noticed that (in what must be a fairly common pattern) there was tension between my mother and my father's family, and in the years of my adolescence I naturally sided against my mother. Children are faced with unknowns and they fill them in with whatever seems most appealing to children. I invented any number of reasons why my father's family roiled with obvious tension.
I was twelve when I learned that my paternal grandfather was a raging and violent alcoholic, thirteen when I learned that he, like his father before him, was a well-placed, well dressed brutal criminal, and that while he had tried to get his own family away from and out of it, he carried the seeds with him nonetheless.
494. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:23:43 AM
I believe I was sixteen when I learned that he used to beat my grandmother and that they had been divorced for several years (my grandmother was made of forbidding Germanic iron and the idea that someone could ever have raised a hand to her without being instantly annihilated was hard for me to understand).
I was twenty one years old, standing next to her deathbead, when I learned that the reason my grandfather had left for so long was not, as my father had said, that 'they didn't get along'. The reason, she told me as she slipped in and out of the drugs with her hand parchment thin on mine, her eyes yellowing and her mouth going dry, was also the reason he never hit her again. The reason was that my father walked into the room as my grandmother was on the floor, slammed the butt of his loaded twelve gauge into the back of his father's head, knocked him to the ground, jammed the shotgun against his father's skull and told him to get out or he would pull the trigger.
Fourteen. My grandfather got up with blood trickling down his neck, and left the house without saying goodbye and was gone for several years. He eventually came home and remarried my grandmother, but he and his son circled each other like stalking wolves. I was twenty one when I learned what was probably the most important thing there was to know about my father, imagine the hate he must have felt, what it was like to raise himself, wondering if he had done the right thing. It took me years longer to finally realize the last piece of the puzzle -- that my father did not hate his father at all, that he idolized him in some broken and abandoned way, like a shrine to his own defects that my father maintained within his soul, of which he never spoke. My grandfather died before any real rapprochement had been achieved, a massive heart attack the year we landed on the moon, four years before I was born, and part of my father died that day as well.
495. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:28:07 AM
My father is the last of his direct line of descent now, as my grandmother and my aunt are dead of cancer, twin tales there that will have to wait, for they do not fit easily into this one. Other branches of the family died in Germany or were scattered to the winds of inheritance, never to return. He hangs there like the last autumn leaf on a tree which has already given up its seeds, looking down at the waiting forest floor. His hair has gone white, falling back along his scalp and every time I see him, he looks a little more worn thin. He has no family but for us, and I can feel the loss of that in him whenever we talk, which is not often for even now he does not like to talk about it. He is unhomed, his two children are both utterly unlike him and share very few of his interests. My mother is his life, completely and wholly his life, and she is dying of metastatic cancer, the same disease which took his sister and his mother. I look at him and wonder how he can stand upright, why the world hasn't ground him flat by now. And he isn't even bitter about it, just -- sad, in a way I can't even bear to think about. Is this what the world does to us? I see pictures of my father when he was very young, his hair was blonde then like mine is now. His grin shines in them like a beacon. Is this what happens, for no other reason than an accident of birth?
496. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:29:04 AM
One day all too soon there will be a stone graven with his name planted in the earth, and I will stand down beneath the tree under which it will lie -- you see, we know where it will be, he chose it, he wants to be buried with my mother's family and not his own. Anyway it's a pleasant enough spot, bucolic and well maintained, far from the city, and that's where he wants his ashes to be interred. I will look down, but I don't think I'll get any answers there. There won't be any in the endless boxes of stuff my father has kept and not thrown away, a packrat like his packrat before him, none in his workshop with the tools that became his when his father died, none in the garage. I will have to make my own answers, as he did.
It strikes me now that the only reason my answers have any hope of being better than his is that his life has been a sacrifice, made that mine might be better than his.
Thesis and antithesis. The most important things in our lives happened half a lifetime before we were born, and we will never know them. Old men die like libraries burning to the ground, and their sons go on to write new ones upon the fine tinder of paper and binding glue.
It is a miracle, once you think about it, that any of us ever moved forward at all, and when I get too down on the human condition it is this that I focus upon -- there is something in us that lets us move forward despite the world in which we live. If you ask me what in this world is worth protecting above all else, it must be that.
497. angel-five - 1/29/2004 5:31:46 AM
There is something I forgot to mention. I have a niece, which means of course that my father has a granddaughter to dandle on his knee -- not nearly often enough for him, but quite often nonetheless despite the fact that she (and her parents) live two hundred miles away. She has the smile my father at six in those faded sepia photographs, and sometimes when he holds her, so does he.
They say infinity is made up of finite parts. I know it to be true.
498. rdbrewer - 1/29/2004 7:05:07 AM
A-5, your father had to re-parent himself, and it sounds like he was successful in part. Part of his mind looks back and wants to feel the warmth of a loving, admiring father, one who put his family above himself and his real or perceived shorcomings. It's more of a general feeling, though, since he has no personal experience upon which to build a hard concept of growing up secure in a loving family. It's an amorphous feeling of loss, like a hole or a blind spot in his life. Most of the time he feels the sense of loss without an awareness of the cause.
But his re-parenting led him to accept that he must be a man and a father and to perform the role of father regardless of his pain. He dealt with his loss the best way he could. He faced it, grappled with it, accepted it, and tried his best to move on.
The kind of father who does not re-parent successfully turns his children and wife into surrogate parents in order to harvest from them what he didn't receive as a child. They didn't get the unconditional love and admiration at the proper times that all parents are supposed to give. So they become stuck. They never accept the loss. They never deal with it. They gloss over it by constantly draining the people around them of loving supply. Since they never get over their wound, their families become mere resources to be tapped. The hole must be filled. Children are the most wonderful resource of all, totally unconditional love--until they reach age 12 or 13, at which point this kind of father rejects them for not automatically giving him his perceived due. At this point, he moves on to seek out newer and newer resources, leaving the family emotionally to fend for themselves. For this kind of father, it's always about them. They are totally deaf to the emotional needs of their family. All of their energy is focused on themselves, on constantly trying to rebuild their wounded selves, on constantly filling the hole.
499. rdbrewer - 1/29/2004 7:05:21 AM
. . .
A father like yours knew when he had children that his life was about the children. The other kind of father never figures that out.
And so it goes. That father's children likewise "never get the unconditional love and admiration at the proper times that all parents are supposed to give." If they're lucky and they strive very hard, like your father, they learn to re-parent themselves. They learn to grapple with the loss, accept it, and to move on the best way they can.
Your father is wounded, but he is luckier than most in that same situation--if a person can be said to be lucky they have the guts to do a thing. The other kind of father constantly diminishes into a pitiful, selfish nothing of a person, smaller and smaller, until the gift of death.
500. Macnas - 1/29/2004 12:25:58 PM
"re-parent themselves"
That is interesting. When you consider that for every vicious circle of family/spousal violence, passed on from one generation to the next, there are other situations where someone calls a halt to it, it must be true to some degree.
A5's posts above made me think of regrets, as in things I wished had happened or wished I'd said before it was too late. As it works out I don't have very many at all, only I wish my father had known my children, they would have made great friends.
502. Magoseph - 1/29/2004 12:38:40 PM
rdb, please delete the above post.
503. wabbit - 1/29/2004 3:52:07 PM
I'm enjoying these family tellings, even the difficult bits. A5, I'm sorry to hear about your mom. My own mother has so far managed to beat her cancer, but my father (as close-mouthed as yours) was a walking shell for a year while she went through the various treatments.
504. marjoribanks - 1/29/2004 7:39:43 PM
Lovely elegy, A5, really beautifully written.
--
Brewer, I gained some insights from your posts about re-parenting. Thanks.
505. judithathome - 1/29/2004 11:27:48 PM
These last posts were wonderful. I, too, gained some insight from them.
506. ScreamingSin - 1/30/2004 9:58:07 AM
angel-five, I clicked back here prepared to hate and despise whatever you'd written....and found a cozy message. I took your rotten advice. Thank you.
Sorry you are having a difficult time with your parents frailing.
A hidey-hole under the basement steps for my son to play in, that's a project. The house where I grew up had all sorts of places to scrunch into and get lost.
507. ScreamingSin - 1/30/2004 10:02:24 AM
There was a loose floorboard in my closet, when I dug those treasures up just before the house was sold, there was a puffy feeling in my chest.
508. ScreamingSin - 2/2/2004 7:43:53 AM
And then, I exploded.
509. Macnas - 2/2/2004 9:23:28 AM
You can't see me, but I'm laughing.
510. Magoseph - 2/2/2004 9:59:42 AM
Ssin can do that to us and much more actually, Mac, lovable teasing little imp that she is.
511. HCaulfield - 2/4/2004 10:44:55 AM
When I was about six years old, the neighbor boy (about 13) poked the ground, and told me, "If you dig right here, you will go to China." Then he left. So I started digging, and about three inches down, I found a piece of paper. It had writing, which was in Chinese, or cursive. I ran to my mother, and she told me its message: "You are on the China road." I ran back, and dug about three inches more, then decided the neighbor boy was a liar. After that, he told me big stories, and I said, "OK," but I didn't dig any more.
512. ScreamingSin - 2/4/2004 10:58:25 AM
Good lord. All those western hemisphere kids out there, trying to dig to China. HCaulfield, that's a good story.
513. Magoseph - 2/22/2004 5:22:00 PM
When, if ever, is our rdbrewer coming back? Didn't he say six weeks or so when he would be in Brazil? I miss him.
514. Neato - 2/23/2004 8:02:44 AM
Mago, when are you going to post your (somewhat touted)photos - I came to this thread right now with great expectations ...
515. alistairconnor - 2/23/2004 9:55:18 AM
About RDB : if he's having a proper holiday, he's either
a) in some place that makes an internet connection either physically impossible or way too much trouble
b) occasionally getting back to his air-conditioned hotel and laptop, but having too much fun to bother with us
c) been robbed and stripped naked, and is now wandering around some shanty town begging for bus fare to the nearest US consulate.
516. alistairconnor - 2/23/2004 9:56:53 AM
I am also impatient for the Magophoto session...
Fernandel? Pagnol? Brassens?
517. Magoseph - 2/23/2004 4:17:33 PM
Neato,
I never was much interested in keeping family photos up to date. I recently gave boxes and boxes of pictures to my sons. I kept a few which I'll post as promised as soon as I find the time for that. Thanks for your interest in seeing them.
518. judithathome - 2/23/2004 5:11:58 PM
I vote C. for RDB...not that I wish it but that sounds the most likely.
519. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2004 5:45:26 PM
There is also the d) option. That he has holed up with that female taxi driver cum guide he mentioned in his last post.
520. judithathome - 2/23/2004 5:54:02 PM
OOoooohhh...I like that one, too!
521. Magoseph - 2/23/2004 6:04:00 PM
He was fine yesterday.
522. judithathome - 2/23/2004 6:11:42 PM
I think we were talking about him not being in this thread...where did he post yesterday?
Or have you been in more personal contact recently. Aha! Is that it, Magos?
523. Magoseph - 2/23/2004 6:21:59 PM
I won't tell, Juds. I'm not "l'enfant terrible" anymore.
524. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2004 6:47:32 PM
So that's where he holed up?!
525. wonkers2 - 2/24/2004 11:30:27 PM
Cap'n Dirty sez "There's no shortage of opportunities for "holing up" in Brazil. Or, as they say, mebbe Brewer's got something treed."
526. rdbrewer - 2/27/2004 3:00:18 AM
When I got back from Brazil I took another vacation--from posting. I've only posted a few times in the past few weeks on TPW and once or twice at RI.
E) Took a vacation from his vacation.
527. wabbit - 2/27/2004 3:33:46 AM
So, let's hear your vacation stories!
528. anomieme - 2/27/2004 3:49:49 AM
Hey all,
I've enjoyed all the stories here. I like this thread. It's a great idea.
I'll contribute my pizza story: Four-year-old boy riding his broomstick horsey on the patio outside his parents basement apartment rented from an Italian family who lives upstairs. He rounds a corner and eyes his first pizza pie - a thin crust cheese, sausage (lumpy, mis-shapened sausage), green peppers, and olives.
Problem is, this little boy has never seen a pizza before in his life. He's also never seen Italian sausage lumps, sliced olives or green peppers.
The only thing this little boy had ever seen that even slightly resembled pizza was....puke. (sorry).
Little boy starts to cry and run away..."They're eating puke! They're eating puke!)
I love pizza these days.
529. anomie - 3/5/2004 5:44:51 AM
I'm the one in the sensible shoes.
530. anomie - 3/5/2004 5:48:04 AM
I'm in the middle. This was just before we left the sharecropping farm and moved to Chicago...
531. wonkers2 - 3/5/2004 6:47:35 AM
Great pictures, reminiscent of Walker Evans. I love the old black and whites with white borders.
532. neato - 3/5/2004 7:12:27 AM
Yes, terrific pictures, thanks
533. anomie - 3/5/2004 3:22:28 PM
Wonkers...Another name for me to google? You name-dropper you. Thanks.
And thanks again to Neato. Your pic-posting fix seems to get consistent results. I may drive people mad with photos now.
534. judithathome - 3/5/2004 4:11:23 PM
Please do...they are a joy to behold!
I collect old photos of kids being kids...if I ever get a scanner, I will share them. I have some unusual ones. Wish I had made copies of all the great ones I've sold....
535. wonkers2 - 3/5/2004 5:27:03 PM
Walker Evans is one of the greatest American photographers. Here are some of his pictures.
536. anomie - 3/6/2004 12:02:33 AM
Thanks, Wonkers2. I'll have a look here in a minute.
537. anomie - 3/6/2004 12:04:27 AM
I don't know what's going on here in this pic, (notice the kid looking out from under my legs). I did not continue down the Mr. Universe path.
538. anomie - 3/6/2004 12:07:50 AM
Wonks..Nice site. Thanks.
It's interesting how sometimes the most interesting thing in a pic is the background. An old shed, a house, etc. Not the intended subject but it adds so much to the pic.
Judith: Hope you get a scanner soon!
539. anomie - 3/6/2004 12:11:52 AM
I wouldn't have any of these pics if it weren't for a guess-the-baby contest at work where they showed baby or childhood pics of everyone. The sponsor kept after me but I didn't have any pics.
So after that I set out on a mission and contacted everyone I could to get copies, emails and what not. I found a treasure trove in the possesion of a cousin who didn't have a computer. Guess who's got all thise pics now? Ha!
540. Neato - 3/6/2004 2:27:37 AM
Talkin of sheds - I got a kick out of this old slide when I re-discovered it. Especially the chook. My Mum is horrified 40 years later by the state of the back yard as it was then ...
541. Neato - 3/6/2004 2:34:21 AM
Tidier part of same backyard early 1960's.
542. anomie - 3/6/2004 3:27:04 AM
Is that your pretty self with the bike?
543. Neato - 3/6/2004 8:08:54 AM
That's my brother. There are some of me earlier in the thread.
544. anomie - 3/6/2004 8:14:05 AM
I shall scour the thread...
545. Neato - 3/6/2004 8:44:01 AM
Here's a fetching one- I'm on the right - it was in the HTML practice thread, but it's rightful place is here.
546. anomie - 3/6/2004 6:16:29 PM
What a sexy girl you are! Cute.
547. wabbit - 3/6/2004 6:36:02 PM
I think I've posted this before, but in honor of the Iditarod:
548. anomie - 3/6/2004 6:43:03 PM
Wabbit,
Gotta be a story with that pic. I'm curious.
549. judithathome - 3/6/2004 6:43:24 PM
Cool...literally!!
550. wabbit - 3/6/2004 6:53:33 PM
Not much of a story. I'm about 16 months old in this photo. We were living in Fairbanks and my mother was (still is, actually) a big believer in children getting as much fresh air as possible. She took me to a local sled dog race and a local news crew spotted me in my winter suit.
The news people talked the owner of this group of Spitz (now known as American Eskimo Dogs) into putting me on the sled and I'm told I was on the evening news. That's my mother preventing me from grabbing the reins and entering the race.
You can't tell in this photo, but I'm wearing my sealskin mukluks, made for me by an ancient Inuit woman who lived outside of town.
551. anomie - 3/6/2004 6:58:40 PM
Wabbit,
How cool. Not many people could have such a story. Thanks!
552. webfeet - 3/17/2004 5:33:20 PM
unbelievably adorable, wabbit.
553. judithathome - 3/18/2004 9:07:14 PM
All the fruit trees are in bloom and it reminds me of a game we used to play when I was a kid...we'd get under the trees and some brave soul would crawl up in the branches and jump up and down on them and we'd all pretend it was snowing.
Didn't get much snow otherwise. Of course, it was a miracle the climbers didn't break limbs...both the tree's and their own.
554. Linnea - 3/18/2004 10:58:47 PM
It is the summer of 1970. I am 11 years old. My brothers, aged 16 and 18, have just pulled into the driveway with a few of their friends. They have long hair, blue jeans, paisley shirts, sandals or leather moccasins. I want to be cool like them, more than anything else in the world.
In a cloud of testosterone, cigarette smoke, and incense (or is that some other kind of smoke?), they float through the living room, bearing newly-purchased record albums from the local head shop. They head for their bedroom, where the record player is. I follow. "Go away, you little punk," they tell me, and close the door. (It would be a decade and a half before "punk" became a label that teenagers might actively aspire to.)
Blinking back tears, I go into my bedroom and sit on the end of the bed with the door cracked open, straining to hear the transcendent music issuing from across the hall.
Well, the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore, 'cause when life looks like Easy Street,
there is danger at your door. . .
I take it as a message of comfort in the midst of rejection, a paradoxical promise of the wonders that await me when I am grown up. The singer is speaking directly to me: Let me know your mind. Will you come with me? I beg you call the tune.
And then comes the clincher, that tells me that this song is meant for me:
Come hear Uncle John's Band
by the riverside
Come with me or go alone
He's come to take his children home . . .
555. Linnea - 3/18/2004 11:00:07 PM
http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDead/AGDL/uncle.html
556. Linnea - 3/18/2004 11:00:55 PM
(So how do I post a functional link here?)
557. rdbrewer - 3/18/2004 11:04:43 PM
Go to HTML hints on the front page, Linnea. And a late welcome to the Mote.
558. judithathome - 3/18/2004 11:05:02 PM
Linnea, there is a thread for practice and HTML hints at the bottom of the page.
Welcome over, by the way!
559. Linnea - 3/18/2004 11:10:12 PM
Thanks, RD and Judith.
Full lyrics to the song quoted above
560. arkymalarky - 3/19/2004 1:42:03 AM
That's one of my favorite GD songs. I never heard that much from them, but a friend of my dad's gave me Workingman's Dead when I was about 14 or so.
Your story kind of gets me from the other side of the door, how I used to do my younger bro (only two years younger), that I still regret. And he's a musician with the enviable record collection now.
561. anomie - 3/19/2004 6:56:46 PM
Arky,
I know how you feel. I didn't even realise it affected my younger sister that I ignored her - she was a kid and I was a cool teenager -until years later when we were grown up. She really got on my case about it!
562. arkymalarky - 3/19/2004 7:26:32 PM
Marj needs to post about him and his brother. One of the times I got choked up reading a Mote post.
I try to tell Mose (who's an only child) to remember how she idolized her older cousins and how they were always wonderful to her. She only has one young cousin who feels the same about her, and I want her to always treat her like the important growing person she is.
563. jayackroyd - 3/19/2004 7:30:08 PM
So Linnea, where were you when you'd heard Jerry died?
564. Linnea - 3/19/2004 7:50:19 PM
You know, I honestly can't remember - going by the date, I was probably heard it on the radio while lying down trying not to puke. I was three months pregnant at the time.
565. labwabbit - 4/4/2004 7:21:29 PM
wabbit! Hello!
I had no idea you spent time in my neck of the woods. Are you still in or visit AK?
566. wabbit - 4/4/2004 7:33:09 PM
No, haven't made it back since it became a state, though I'd love to take a month or so and wander around. I've heard people say that if you travel the world looking for natural beauty, you should see Alaska last, because it will spoil you for everywhere else. My father would move back in a heartbeat.
567. labwabbit - 4/4/2004 7:41:14 PM
"I've heard people say that if you travel the world looking for natural beauty, you should see Alaska last, because it will spoil you for everywhere else."
I don't think it's possible for me to ever tire of this place. It indeed is a paradise...my paradise...and having spent a great deal of time in the past one-and-a-half years travelling the coast I can honestly say my jaw barely makes it off the deck on any given day.
568. wabbit - 4/4/2004 7:54:31 PM
Got any photos you could post? I'm sure marjoribanks would love to see them in the Escapes thread.
569. labwabbit - 4/4/2004 8:03:29 PM
Naw...don't need to bring a cam here..hahaha. I have thousands I think, but they are only pictures to someone else. Not unlike what is seen in National Geographic, or tourism pamphlets as such. For example, I suspect you may believe that I'm not too young and I've seen a few sunsets all over the world. I have taken many pics. However, most of the sunsets I have seen, no experienced, here cannot be captured on film. You gt 360 degree, awe-inducing, light shows that can hardly be taken in by one brain, much less a photo.
570. rdbrewer - 4/5/2004 12:50:03 AM
Hey, labwabbit! I still owe you five bucks on a bet from the Clinton era.
571. The Summer Woman - 4/5/2004 2:46:06 PM
My Beautiful Cath.
There was never a time when Cath wasn’t there. She was older than me by two years and nine months. But in the arithmetic of childhood, this meant that sometimes she was two years older, and sometimes she was three years older. We thought this was magical.
When we were very small, I called her “Kicky”. She didn’t like me toddling after her and would kick at me to get away from her. I toddled after her once when she ran off down the road. She was trying to pick up a piece of chewing gum off the hot pavement. Two old women sitting in a porch swing saw her and told her that if she put the gum in her mouth, it would bite her tongue. I think she did it anyway, but I don't remember.
For a time, when there was no one else to play with, we would be friends. We would gallop around the yard on our broomstick horses. I was a pony and she a beautiful thoroughbred, with her dark brown hair and tawny skin. We shared a room, and we would each sit on our spindle bed naked and rock backwards so the other could see our butt, and laugh and scream with glee. We would put Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto on the monaural record player and pretend to be dancers, Cath the stronger, bigger boy and I the girl, so we could do the lifts as the music soared.
But most of the time, she was “somewhere else”. If I attempted to follow her, she threatened me until I gave up, or she inflicted some punishment on me, like telling our mother that I had cut off the tops of all Mrs. LeMaster’s dahlia’s, when I had only been there watching her do it. She proudly dragged me to school with her on “little brother and sister day” – a kind of human show and tell – and then joined in with the other children when they laughed at me as I twirled in my dress, revealing my holey underwear.
(continued)
572. The Summer Woman - 4/5/2004 2:50:12 PM
On one occasion I managed to successfully ferret out where she was going. I knew that a bunch of the older kids were planning to meet in a garage, and something mysterious was going to happen there. It had something to do with a boy named Timmy – really a young man – who everyone adored and wanted to play with. I sat outside the garage and tried to figure out what was going on inside. I could here giggling, and laughter, and Timmy’s voice directing the game. I tried to look in a window. All I could see was Cath, standing in the middle of a group of nervously giggling children, and Timmy’s voice saying, “Now you touch her there.”
I only saw Timmy one more time. My mother and father were on the back porch with my sister, and I wasn’t allowed in, so when Timmy came to the door to ask if Cath could come out to play, it was me who yelled out to my sister that Timmy was looking for her. But it was my father who went to the door, and he said to Timmy, “If you ever come near my daughter again, I’ll kill you.”
Cath became more beautiful and elusive the older she got. She was physically fearless, and would climb to the top of the 16 foot tall swing-set at the WPA park, climb across the top bar, straddle it, and, holding on with both hands, fling herself up and over it. She had the kind of physical and musical gifts that made teachers say to our parents, “I want to work with her.” She was almost an idiot savant when it came to languages, mimicking accents in a most astonishing way. She played the piano ferociously, and at a very young age developed a mature soprano voice. People would weep when she sang a Schubert Mass, an opera aria. Our mother became obsessive about her talent and her developing “strangeness”. Cath had neither time nor aptitude for friends, as her peers also felt an uncomfortable “difference” about her.
(continued)
573. The Summer Woman - 4/5/2004 2:54:07 PM
By the time she was shipped off to a conservatory, we lived parallel lives with no intersections save for out parents. She was the topic of endless conferences between my parents and she became the subject upon which I was most often consulted – the adult child caring for the parents lost in the wilderness of their other, increasingly troubled daughter. As we aged as a family, she became the single thread in a tortuously stretched spider web, holding us together – but only just.
The singing stopped. There were entanglements with equally troubled boys, obsessions with Catholicism and mysticism. Drugs and suicides. Madness and hospitals. Eventually, she joined a cult to whom she gave all her possessions – most of them given to her by our parents. She is still with this group, and in a way, it has saved her from worse fates. Much of her day is spent meditating, laboriously trying to stave off every evil in her environment. She takes her own food everywhere she goes – in a bowl for a short trip, a suitcase for a much longer one. Vines that cleanse the air cover the entrance to her apartment – you have to climb through them to enter. There are all sorts of devices to stave off unseen electromagnetic waves. The world is an irritant that requires her to produce successive layers of shell to protect herself, like an oyster.
(continued)
574. The Summer Woman - 4/5/2004 2:55:55 PM
Throughout the days, weeks and years, I see her at some physical and emotional distance, as an acquaintance one sees across the street but does not stop to talk to or even acknowledge. Our mother despairs of the absence in our lives of any sense of connection. She warns that when one of us dies, the other will weep at her grave for the loss of a life not shared.
There are very few photos of us together as children, but I have one. My sister and I are standing in front of our house with our mother. We are wearing coats that are too long and have woolen scarves wrapped around our heads. We look like refugees. I stand in front of my mother, my sister slightly behind her and off to the side. She has beautiful dark eyes, hair and skin. My Beautiful Cath.
575. wonkers2 - 4/5/2004 4:16:47 PM
Cath reminds me in some ways of my bright and beautiful niece. High school class valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, she came under the influence of her high school latin teacher who was an adherent of an extreme Catholic sect. Went to Princeton. Converted to Catholicism. Transferred to a convent-like Catholic college in Los Angeles. Became distant from her parents and sister. Graduated and entered a small cloister in California where she spends her day praying for sinners and little else. She is forbidden to leave and her parents can see her only once (or twice?) a year.
576. Magoseph - 4/5/2004 4:25:00 PM
Thank you for this lovely and very well told childhood remembrance, Summer Woman.
577. RickNelson - 4/5/2004 4:39:13 PM
I like your story Summer Woman!
578. anomie - 4/17/2004 1:59:37 AM
Keeping in practice. My sister is 48 now. This is a million-dollar smile from many years ago.
579. anomie - 4/17/2004 2:00:31 AM
Hey, it worked!
580. neato - 4/17/2004 2:48:09 AM
Yes! Keep going, this is neat.
581. anomie - 4/17/2004 3:48:38 AM
I do love old pics. I wish we'd get more here.
582. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:21:45 AM
Who are these people? Family of mine it seems...
583. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:25:53 AM
584. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:28:18 AM
All out muster.
586. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:34:14 AM
An aunt and uncle...
587. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:36:54 AM
And from whence I came...I think.
588. neato - 4/17/2004 4:37:01 AM
Those are terrific. The bloke in 583 looks ready for a fight
589. anomie - 4/17/2004 4:40:23 AM
Okay, Neato. I love you. Have your way with me now!
Ha! Thank you for showing me how to post photos.
Do me, baby!
590. neato - 4/17/2004 4:40:50 AM
Where are the photos taken?
591. wonkers2 - 4/17/2004 5:05:56 AM
Great family pics, anomie! And, yes, where were they taken? I could produce contemporary ones of my farmer relatives in Nebraska and Missouri.
592. wabbit - 4/17/2004 6:18:24 AM
Love the photos, anomie. Who are the folks in #587?
593. neato - 4/17/2004 6:27:31 AM
I think I can see the man in 587 in the middle row of the muster
594. anomie - 4/17/2004 10:54:06 PM
Neato, Wonks,
The photos are from Tennessee. I was born there where most in my family were sharecroppers. We migrated North to the factories when I was 1-year-old.
595. anomie - 4/17/2004 10:56:45 PM
Wabbit,
I think that id my grandmother on her fathers knee.
She is older in post 584.
All of these pics, and more, came through a cousin when my grandmother died. I don't know who many of the people are.
596. neato - 4/24/2004 9:58:03 AM
My father aged 2 in 1919
597. neato - 4/24/2004 10:00:05 AM
And he is on the right - 1937
598. neato - 4/24/2004 10:04:02 AM
Just a few years later - 2nd World War, Tel Aviv
599. Neato - 4/24/2004 10:39:32 AM
This is my Grandfather's shoe shop in Fielding, NZ, 1925. That's him on the right. The woman on the left might be the proprietress of the Cosy Nook next door.
600. PelleNilsson - 4/24/2004 12:11:09 PM
The picture of your father in uniform reminds me that today is ANZAC Day. I hope you had a good one.
601. neato - 4/24/2004 12:16:05 PM
Yes. Thankyou. It's a wierd day. I have very mixed feelings abut it.
602. anomie - 4/24/2004 2:26:31 PM
Neato, 599 is an exceptionally good photo. The wide view makes it interesting. Wonder why the subjects are standing so far apart?
603. judithathome - 4/24/2004 8:47:37 PM
Neato, your dad in his uniform looks a bit like Bryan Brown, the Aussie actor.
Loved your photos; thanks for sharing!
604. neato - 4/25/2004 6:08:38 AM
Thanks Judith and Ano
Ano, I have a vision of a photographer that day in 1925 taking photos of all the shopkeepers standing outside their shops in this little town, and posing them all near their doorways so it's all neatly spaced out.
605. anomie - 4/25/2004 2:20:44 PM
Well, hit me with a brick. Now it makes perfect sense, Neato. I'm sure I would have figured it out if I stared long enough. ha!
606. The Summer Woman - 4/25/2004 5:33:44 PM
What wonderful pictures, anomie.
607. anomie - 4/25/2004 5:43:25 PM
Well thank you, Summer Women. Your season is just around the corner.
608. The Summer Woman - 4/25/2004 5:52:29 PM
I suspect that there are summer women everywhere. Lone women who show up in places where they are not indigenous. They come with the very last days of spring, and disppear just before the last days of summer.
609. anomie - 4/25/2004 6:02:27 PM
You could show up here...supposed to have record-breaking heat...92, or so. Not the best thing for a packing day with air conditioner. You like iced tea? Of course it's not technically summer yet.
610. marjoribanks - 4/25/2004 6:07:17 PM
I absolutely love these photos too.
Neato's remind me, very strongly, of the photos of Australia in the 40's and 50's taken by the photographer David Moore. And there are also some reminders of the fine little novel 'Pobby and Dingan' by Ben Rice (about two kids growing up in the Outback).
Anomie's small horde contains absolute treasures. Wonkers labelled them exactly, they're very strongly reminiscent of the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans and other photographers sponsored by the admirably far-seeing Works Projects Administration.
--
I have recently scanned in and preserved a bunch of photos from the 30's/40's/50's from my grandparents collections. Eventually, I'll get around to posting some.
611. marjoribanks - 4/25/2004 6:11:25 PM
Well, okay, here is one relevant to the thread title.
Taken in Karachi, Sind, in 1913.
--
And as counterpoint, here's one of my brother and me, taken in Poona, early 1973.
612. anomie - 4/25/2004 10:53:44 PM
Love the big hair on the middle child. And weren't you the cool dude! You're the older boy, I presume.
613. The Summer Woman - 4/26/2004 8:05:32 AM
anomie - I think it is against the rules to show up anywhere that one has actually been invited. But if a Summer Woman should show up, she would be most grateful for the iced tea, and then she would be on her way again.
614. alistairConnor - 4/26/2004 9:06:24 AM
well, roll on summer.
615. Magoseph - 4/26/2004 11:33:33 AM
Stop by the Mote Cafe, summer woman, and tell us something about yourself.
616. marjoribanks - 5/10/2004 6:38:27 PM
This thread has seen Walker Evans referenced a couple of times, mainly in the context of wonderful black-and-white family photos posted by anomie.
Turns out that the sponsoring depression-era WPA also paid for very early Kodachrome photographs on the same subjects. The NYTimes carried a bunch of these in the Sunday magazine last weekend, and they're very interesting.
They seem unreal, actually, because our vision of these times are so, um, colored by the iconic monochrome photos. It's weird that the mind refuses to believe more realistic color images, preferring to revert to default black-and-white.
Anyway, here are some of the photos within the thread theme.
This one is particularly good -
617. neato - 5/11/2004 1:23:04 PM
What period are those, Marj?
618. judithathome - 5/11/2004 4:26:21 PM
They seem unreal, actually, because our vision of these times are so, um, colored by the iconic monochrome photos
This jogs my memory of landing in Korea in October and being amazed at the glorious autumn colors in the countryside...I was expecting dull greys and black and white like the war movies!
619. judithathome - 5/11/2004 4:27:07 PM
Neato, they are Depression shots...1930s.
620. marjoribanks - 5/11/2004 4:49:36 PM
Yes.
They are photos taken between 1939 and 1943, you can find more at the slideshow on this page.
621. Ulgine Barrows - 5/12/2004 8:20:53 AM
I find it nigh on impossible to write about my actual childhood with any of the tone I find here. So excuse me, while I write about my child's childhood through my eyes.
Today, my son decided he was going to ride his bike. It's been gathering dust in the garage for the past 2 years - he fell off with the training wheels on, and got scared.
But lately, all the rage has been bikes. One neighbor kid got a motor scooter and most of the neighborhood children & their friends have been taking it for a spin. Son's no dullard, he recognizes he must master the pedal before the throttle.
Today, asks me if he can take his old bike out for a spin. No problem. He's grown many inches, seat needs adjusting, I go down to the garage to find the tool. I know the training wheels have also got to go, if he's to accomplish what he wants.
We focus on raising the seat. Son's friend comments that his mom doesn't know how to raise a seat or work a wrench and gives me accolades. Do most moms worry about breaking their nails and have no idea of the difference between 5/8 and 13mm?
I ran around behind my son trying to get him going.
No success.
Fodder for another day. More later ~
622. Ulgine Barrows - 5/12/2004 8:34:28 AM
What is so pathetic, I wanted my son to think I was cool because I found the right tool.
He thought nothing of a wrench-weilding mom.
I really must teach him to scrub a floor.
623. alistairConnor - 5/12/2004 9:44:56 AM
Yes, liberate him while there's still time.
624. Ulgine Barrows - 5/12/2004 10:00:28 AM
Go ahead and laugh, they are selling product to scrub a toilet.
Some sort of bleach brush thingy.
Far as I can tell, it removes the necessity of moving the wrist sideways.
And for this glad tiding, we have the makings of plastic parts and the assorted waste, batteries to run it, some sort of plastic thingy that collects the dirt to discard, and of course the refills for it.
I am not ashamed of American ingenuity.
I am ashamed of the short-sightedness.
625. Macnas - 5/12/2004 12:12:13 PM
Do any kids think think of Ma and Da as cool?
I don't think so. I respected my parents, but never thought of them as cool. Then again, I never even heard the word until I was at least 10, and have yet to find out what it really means..
630. wabbit - 5/15/2004 12:46:53 AM
626-629 deleted per wonkers2 request.
637. neato - 5/15/2004 3:41:08 PM
I love these.Beautiful photos.
638. judithathome - 5/15/2004 3:45:42 PM
Those kiddos have amazing eyes!
Wonk, is that you? You have the look of what we used to call "a handful"...a smart kid who questioned authority a lot!
639. wonkers2 - 5/15/2004 4:11:44 PM
No, it's my oldest son, now 33. You got his personality right! The bottom one is all three children. I titled it "Ghost Story." The top one is my Uncle Paul and my son around age 11. I titled that one "Tough Hombres." And my uncle was one tough hombre. They used to say "He could freeze a dog." [Meaing he could withstand a cold day in Nebraska better than could a dog.]
640. judithathome - 5/15/2004 4:48:51 PM
You have beautiful kids!
641. wonkers2 - 5/15/2004 5:14:15 PM
Thank you! (And they're all self supporting!)
642. wabbit - 5/17/2004 12:58:53 PM
631-36 deleted per wonkers2 request.
I'm working on detailed instructions for using Shutterfly. Will post asap.
643. neato - 5/17/2004 1:39:39 PM
The photos were nice while they lasted.
644. judithathome - 5/17/2004 2:16:54 PM
So was childhood.
645. wabbit - 5/17/2004 2:45:53 PM
Ok, let's try this...
646. wabbit - 5/17/2004 2:46:17 PM
647. wabbit - 5/17/2004 2:46:38 PM
Are the wonkers2 photos visible to everyone?
648. Magoseph - 5/17/2004 2:50:05 PM
To me, yes, wabbit.
649. marjoribanks - 5/17/2004 2:52:21 PM
Lovely photos,
Wonk is an excellent photographer.
650. wabbit - 5/17/2004 3:00:36 PM
Ok, now could someone please vet the following:
Instructions for using Shutterfly
I'm sure it needs tweaking, but it's better to have someone with a fresh eye take a look.
wonkers2, I hope you don't mind that I've used your photos in the example.
651. neato - 5/17/2004 3:18:21 PM
Wabbit, those are very good instructions. I would just add one word - straight under the heading "Display images online" you might say to "Go to the SHUTTERFLY album ..."
652. wabbit - 5/17/2004 3:25:36 PM
Done, thanks neato!
653. alistairConnor - 5/17/2004 3:44:18 PM
Most excellent photos Wonk, in subject and in technique. Congratulations.
655. The Summer Woman - 5/17/2004 4:58:36 PM
marjoribanks - The color photos of Evans are more jarring, perhaps, because they make the people in them seem "closer" to ourselves than the BW's, which created a sense of distance?
656. Macnas - 5/17/2004 5:34:20 PM
I might go to my Mam tomorrow, and persuade her to let me borrow the biscuit tin of photographs.
I could scan some of them in, the black and whites are of the box brownie type and are quite good.
But she fails to see the difference between a scanner and a shredder, so I may have no luck.
657. PelleNilsson - 5/17/2004 5:39:55 PM
Give her my regards, Macnas. She will trust me, your Swedish on-line buddy.
658. Macnas - 5/17/2004 5:47:28 PM
She will consider you much as my wife does of all people I know online, that is, those weirdos on the computer.
659. wonkers2 - 5/18/2004 12:18:59 AM
Thanks, wabbit. You're a wizard. And thanks for the compliments, alistair, neato, judith. And I especially value marjori's because he's the best all around photographer in the mote.
660. neato - 5/18/2004 2:52:03 AM
Wonkers, I think those photos are more cropped than the previous time you posted them? There was an arm on the other side of Cap'n Dirty in the second pic.
661. wonkers2 - 5/18/2004 5:28:19 AM
There still is on my screen. You must have a glitch. What makes you think that's Cap'n Dirty? It's my Uncle Paul, one of the toughest hombres ever, my mother's twin brother. A real life Cherry County, Nebraska, cowboy.
662. alistairConnor - 5/18/2004 12:38:37 PM
A Macintosh, some home movies and family photos, a budget of $218.32... and you too can have a hit movie at Cannes
Tarnation was created by 31-year-old jobbing actor Jonathan Caouette, using the Apple Macintosh package iMovie. It is a touching and often disturbing family history pieced together via photographs, home movie images from the 1970s and 80s, and interviews by Caouette with his mother and grandparents.
663. marjoribanks - 5/19/2004 4:52:20 PM
The color photos of Evans are more jarring, perhaps, because they make the people in them seem "closer" to ourselves than the BW's, which created a sense of distance?
Summer Woman,
Yes. There's no doubt that the photos are a bit uncomfortable because they bring us starkly into a recognizeable universe. They're quite different from what the mind's eye has cultivated as an image of the Depression era.
664. guiltcheese - 5/21/2004 7:08:42 AM
Childhood memories - grew up in Colonial Williamsburg, did little colonial gigs in costume,
and since we were sorta near Washington, DC if 2 hours is close, we went to the zoo and nearby attractions from time to time.
.
I was just too cool for words. 
But I growed up, sorta. 
665. Macnas - 5/23/2004 9:29:38 AM
Good pics GC,
I was allowed access to the family photographs the other day, but have yet to persuade my Mam that scanning will not destroy them.
666. neato - 5/23/2004 11:21:47 AM
Well, that's great news Macnas. What a shame you told her what you were going to do with them. Or are you spinning this out to keep up our excitement and anticipation ....
667. Macnas - 5/23/2004 11:32:10 AM
Ha! I'm sorry if I appear to be spinning this out neato, they're just some family snaps after all, if I remark on it at all it is mainly due to my Mam's reluctance to trust any technology developed beyond 1970.
668. neato - 5/23/2004 11:48:24 AM
Macnas, I am enjoying the whole saga. I like the sound of your Mam.
669. Macnas - 5/23/2004 12:22:19 PM
She's sound so she is.
670. Ulgine Barrows - 5/25/2004 8:58:35 AM
wonkers2, those are really cool photos. Whoever took them had the eye. Excellent!
Spin on, Macnas, we're in your thrall.
wanting a scanner so badly
671. Ulgine Barrows - 5/25/2004 9:01:36 AM
Donna guiltcheese, I admire yours, also.
672. wonkers2 - 5/25/2004 9:27:40 PM
Thanks, Ulgine. I took 'em 30 or so years ago and printed them in my own darkroom. They are some of my best ones out of hundreds.
673. neato - 5/26/2004 12:33:06 PM
674. neato - 5/26/2004 12:34:46 PM
675. neato - 5/26/2004 12:35:50 PM
676. neato - 5/26/2004 12:38:31 PM
677. neato - 5/26/2004 12:40:11 PM
678. neato - 5/26/2004 12:44:34 PM
679. alistairConnor - 5/26/2004 12:48:10 PM
trying to tell us something dear?
680. neato - 5/26/2004 12:48:32 PM
Jacques-Henri Lartigue b1894. He started taking photos of his family and friends and servants from the age of six.
681. alistairConnor - 5/26/2004 12:50:06 PM
Wow! I saw a string of empty posts... then the pictures loaded.
(I thought you might have been gunning for a millenial... long haul...)
Fantastic!! Commentaries please...
682. neato - 5/26/2004 12:59:01 PM
Ummm...I think he was part of a nutty family with a lot of money and a lot of holidays. Flying, leap frogging ...
683. neato - 5/26/2004 1:00:26 PM
684. neato - 5/26/2004 1:01:43 PM
saute-mouton
685. neato - 5/26/2004 1:26:04 PM
673, the first one, is of Lartigue in 1904. I think he took the rest himself. HIs cousin is flying down the steps in 1905 - he would have been 11 or 12 when he took that.
686. Magoseph - 5/26/2004 2:24:03 PM
Thanks for posting these pictures, Neato. They're so great.
687. neato - 5/26/2004 2:31:52 PM
That's Ok! I saw a huge exhibition of his work at Beaubourg last year, I loved it.
688. marjoribanks - 5/26/2004 4:53:00 PM
Lovely, surreal-seeming, pics.
Thanks, neato.
689. PelleNilsson - 5/26/2004 5:17:39 PM
Fantastic pictures, neato!
690. guiltcheese - 5/27/2004 2:42:39 PM
Neato - Great pictures. Are you related to these folks?
691. neato - 5/27/2004 2:45:42 PM
Hey, you're all more than welcome.
Guiltcheese - I wish!
692. Magoseph - 5/27/2004 2:51:43 PM
Here's part of Lartigue's bio, GC.
Jacques Henri Lartigue
(1894-1986)
Jacques Lartigue was born in Courbevoie, France on June 13, 1894. He took his first photographs at the age of six, using his father’s camera, and started keeping what would become a lifelong diary. In 1904 he began making photographs and drawings of family games and childhood experiences, also capturing the beginnings of aviation and cars and the smart women of the Bois de Boulogne as well as society and sporting events. An unfailingly curious amateur, he tried out all the available techniques, tirelessly recording the fleeting moments and meticulously arranging his several thousand images in large albums. However, it would seem that photography was not his true vocation. In 1915 he attended the Académie Jullian: painting was to remain his professional activity and from 1922 onwards he exhibited in the salons of Paris and southern France.
Although Lartigue occasionally sold his pictures to the press and exhibited at the Galerie d’Orsay alongside Brassaï, Man Ray and Doisneau, his reputation as a photographer was not truly established until he was 69, with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the publication of a portfolio in Life. He now added his father’s first name to his own surname, becoming Jacques Henri Lartigue. Worldwide fame came three years later with his first book, The Family Album, followed in 1970, by Diary of a Century, conceived by Richard Avedon. In 1975 he had his first French retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. For the rest of his life, Lartigue was busy answering commissions from fashion and decoration magazines.
He also produced the official photograph of the new French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
He died in Nice, France on September 12, 1986.
693. KuligintheHooligan - 7/3/2004 2:33:06 AM
Here's another thread with an interesting topic, but little participation unfortunately. I'd submit some memories, but all mine got wiped out by my pot smoking college days.
694. Ulgine Barrows - 7/9/2004 9:55:56 AM
Really? You smoked pot in college? And it wiped your memory?
How bizarre.
I think lots of people are on summer holiday.
Which reminds me of one in my childhood. I was 16, we were at resort and playing mini golf. For some reason, my elder bother decide to pitch a fit and got mad at the golf ball.
He threw it straight in the ground, he was so angry at it, and it bounced right back up and gave him a black eye.
Family lore.
695. arkymalarky - 7/14/2004 2:28:23 AM
I'll never forget (not a childhood memory, but still) how excited I was to get out of school for the summer (back when I had summers between school years) the first year I was on the Fray. I thought I'd have a summer of Fraying while it was too hot and humid to do anything else. It was a tomb until I went back to work.
I still think it was some sort of conspiracy.
And I would make a joke about Kuligin being a poster child for why people shouldn't smoke pot when they're young, but that would be mean, so I won't. ;-)
696. Ulgine Barrows - 7/23/2004 10:09:27 AM
It's bizarre he'd think pot smoking wipes out memories. Heavy drinking during the frshman year perhaps, but pot smoking? It should all come back, slo-mo.
Anyway. Sorry to repeat a previous discussion, but where are you all putting your pictures? I just got an all-in-one.
697. Ulgine Barrows - 7/23/2004 10:22:13 AM
It's bizarre he'd think pot smoking wipes out memories. Heavy drinking during the frshman year perhaps, but pot smoking? It should all come back, slo-mo.
Anyway. Sorry to repeat a previous discussion, but where are you all putting your pictures? I just got an all-in-one.
698. Ulgine Barrows - 7/23/2004 10:26:24 AM
How unupsetting, I wrote that twice.
The shutterfly stuff is upsetting me, though.
Perhaps it will co-operate later.
Evil software! That I cannot work it on the first try! Evil!
699. Ulgine Barrows - 7/23/2004 11:15:26 AM
wabbit, sweetheart, you're an angel to suggest the shutterfly site.
I am hating its directions at the moment, not you.
Also I am dealing with a new PC, it's processor is supposedly light speeds faster, but the 'improved' software is slowing things down considerably. Can't seem to play a music CD from pre-90s without a large smack upside.
My son and I had great time hooking up the printer, though.
700. Ulgine Barrows - 8/1/2004 8:46:19 AM
rdbrewer2@cox.net, I'm gratified you think us emotional retards.
I was worried her for a moment, wondering if you thought us detergent balls.
701. Ulgine Barrows - 8/1/2004 8:47:41 AM
Whatever you do, thanks. Do you respect yourself?
702. neato - 8/3/2004 11:31:04 AM
Here are 3 photos of my Mum and her sister, this first one taken in probably 1946 or 1947, by my father I think.
703. neato - 8/3/2004 11:36:02 AM
This one is of them in the early 1970's - Mum is on the right in this one (she was on the left in the previous one)
704. neato - 8/3/2004 11:38:51 AM
And still going strong and enjoying each other's company in 2002
705. neato - 8/3/2004 11:54:31 AM
Where's rdbrewer?
706. Macnas - 8/3/2004 12:25:48 PM
Nice photo's neato, thanks.
Here's a bit of a topic, how do you get on with your siblings?
I come from a biggish family, I have 4 brothers and 2 sisters. One brother is living in America, I have another brother and one sister living in Dublin, and up to a few months ago had a brother living in Holland, now returned home. The remaining brother also lives at home, and the remaining sister lives nearby.
We are all pretty much alike, in that we are easy-going by nature, some more than others of course. But put us together for any extended period of time and we tend to get on each others nerves.
The guy in the 'States, the cabinetmaker, is most like me, same preference to work with his hands ('though he has been more successful at this than I'll ever be), same preference to be out of doors, and so on. Yet we can bring out the worse in each other, is it because we're too alike?
The brother in Dublin is working in the IT contracting game, he's one of these guys who has done most everything, qualified to do nothing, and still manages to make a good hand at whatever he does. I only see him but rarely, and when we do meet we generally end up drunk as lords. Many years ago I had my worse ever fistfight with him, and that is saying something. We were bleeding profusely afterwards, and we rightly battered each other, but got on grand forever after.
The brother home from Holland is a zoologist of some kind, not sure what exactly, ha has a PhD anyway. Long hair, long beard, interesting guy to chat with, especially when out and about, as he can name and inform on most everything that grows, swims, crawls or flies.
cont..
707. Macnas - 8/3/2004 12:26:13 PM
The brother who lives at home is a biologist (I think, I know I'm hopeless) and is a very nice fellow, very laid back even though he is teetotal and has never smoked in his life. Not that drinking and smoking are requirements for being laid back, but abstinence can indicate a certain uptightness that he does not posses.
My sisters are really different people, look different, act different, and after 20 years or more living in Dublin for one of them, sound different. The Dublin sister is a bit new age, alternative this that and the other, frankly annoys the hair off my head and never returns the books she borrows. She's a senior blood tech., but you wouldn't guess it.
The sister living nearby is quiet, a bit distant and has the most brains. She's an industrial chemist, PhD and all that. Nice though, I get on fine with her.
That's the lot. We are best company to each other in small doses, and the rare times we all get together are fine, but nobody sticks around for long.
708. neato - 8/3/2004 1:13:31 PM
Macnas, that was good. Fisticuffs!
I have only one sibling and we get on OK. Different temperaments but same political views.
I am interested in the way some siblings have the same upbringing, yet very different views of it. An aunt (not the one in the photos, but a sister) regarded her childhood as deprived, unloving and unfair. She wrote semi autobiographical novels about it that got quite a lot of exposure in NZ, and her memories of the same times and events are quite different from those of her siblings. She was really bitter about her harsh childhood, the childhood that her sisters shared, and remember as loving and nurturing for all the family.
709. neato - 8/3/2004 1:26:50 PM
Though as teenagers and young women, during ww2, things weren't so great between the sisters, and a lot of the disagreements in later life between my aunts, especially Mum and the sister in the photo were about what happened in the war years. A time of upheaval, and sorrow, and ... sexual freedom!
710. Macnas - 8/3/2004 1:57:48 PM
Yes neato, fisticuffs galore. In our youth, for want of a better phrase, all of us boys, the 3 oldest of us more so, were brawlers, and that would include with each other. Eventually we all got enough bad humour knocked out and good sense knocked into us so we could co-exist with the rest of normal humanity.
711. neato - 8/3/2004 2:02:34 PM
I do wish you could get hold of those photos from the biscuit tin, Macnas
712. Macnas - 8/3/2004 2:07:35 PM
Me and all neato!
713. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 3:24:54 PM
I could write volumes about these folks.
I was somewhat scared of them all, most of the time (especially my little sister) but they are all now among my best friends.
714. Macnas - 8/3/2004 3:34:38 PM
What do they do?
715. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 3:46:26 PM
Eldest (middle front) : builder, when he can be bothered. Has bad knees, bad thumbs, bad back, all those things. He's a superb tradesman, and at times he's had half a dozen guys working for him. He should be running the business and keeping out of the way of the heavy lifting, but he's not very motivated. Been on Prozac or the equivalent for the last 25 years.
716. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 3:52:16 PM
Second (back left) : marine resource specialist, just finished his Ph.D at last... used to get severely beaten by elder brother when they were kids, nobody else knew about it, nobody wanted to recognise it probably... intense sibling rivalry, who's Dad's favourite, who's Mum's favourite, and to this day they have trouble being in the same room.
717. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 4:00:21 PM
Third (second from right at front) : A builder by trade too, of rather less drive and organisational ability than the eldest, but also a fine craftsman, and one of the gentlest people on earth. At the beginning of this year, he had phased out working, currently a houseboy, looking after his young children (second round). Happier than I've ever seen him, has the drinking under control.
718. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 4:03:56 PM
Fourth (right) : Easily the most accomplished of us. A doctor, public health expert and epidemiologist, she recently resigned her research job, and was being headhunted by various people, but doesn't want to live in Geneva, London, New York or wherever. At least, not until the kids are a bit older, and/or our mum dies.
719. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 4:10:05 PM
6th (left) : Runs people's small businesses for them. Mostly creative types who would be in debtors' prison if she wasn't there to do the books, tax returns and whatnot. Is phasing out the voluntary work (pre-school support organisation) in which she has been very effective. Being the youngest, she has developed strong interpersonal skills : i.e. can get her way against overwhelming odds. Doesn't get her anywhere with me, we nearly came to blows on the last visit.
720. Macnas - 8/3/2004 5:04:05 PM
Very similar to my family, with regard to the numbers and makeup, and the mix of trades and professions.
721. Ms. No - 8/3/2004 5:07:18 PM
I've got one brother nearly 4 years younger and we're quite close. I think it's partly to do with the fact that our parents split up when we were so young. School months were spent with mom, summer break with father or, quite often, our paternal grandmother. No matter where we went, the two of us were a constant so even though we fought pretty heatedly as children, we were also one another's usual playmate and when it came to any outside challenge we had each other's backs.
We could pick on each other but nobody else had better.
When our father started seeing our stepmother that took a lot of the fight out of our relationship as well ---- all of a sudden we had two stepsisters who were much younger than us and they were extremely spoiled. Our dad didn't want to cause friction with his wife by disciplining them so they were pretty much allowed to do whatever they wished and my brother and I got the chores and the blame for whatever ills happened to go down.
I left after highschool and my brother and I were separated by the entire country for a couple of years and even after that by nearly half the length of California --- about 500 miles, but there was never any awkwardness when we met up again.
Now he and his family live about 40 minutes away and we see each other two or three times a month and talk on the phone a lot. We're not just siblings but good friends and nobody cracks us up like we do.
722. Ms. No - 8/3/2004 5:08:55 PM
Macnas,
It's interesting how many of you ended up in scientific fields. What did your parents do?
723. Macnas - 8/3/2004 5:21:17 PM
My Father was a farmer, creamery truck driver, and insurance agent all at the same time, but gave up the truck driving some time in the 70's. He, like many others of his generation, left school at 14 but had high regard for learning and kept a good library.
Mam also farmed, kept the house, and was always involved in education, 'though not in the teaching side. When we started going to secondary school (high school?) she went on the parents advisory board, and from there went on to regional and national involvement in various education committees and parent representative organisations for many years, even though all her children had finished school.
I do not recall that anyone was pushed or encouraged to study any one particular subject, they did leave it very much up to ourselves what we wanted to do.
724. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 5:26:45 PM
Yeah well that's the key for sure.
Parents interested and involved in their kids' education.
725. marjoribanks - 8/3/2004 5:37:07 PM
Not quite childhood, but here's a memory that is flooding my brain today.
I was assigned a grand double room right off Fitzroy Square when I went to college in London. The digs were pretty much unrecognizeable as UK student accomodation, I mean it had a little kitchen and private bathroom and thirty feet of windows and was well insulated. Nice, in the top .1 percent of student accomdations.
Best thing was that the guy assigned to share it with me had his financing fall through and so he stayed in Singapore and I had the whole place to myself. I had grand parties, I had people stay with me from the US, it was a very good few months.
And then, one night, a key sounded in the door and two Italians walked in. Curses, the housing administrator had assigned one of them to my room, he was joining his course late because his dad had just been transferred to London to be the military attache for the Italian consulate.
My initial response was to cold-shoulder the interloper. But two days into sharing the room, and Massimo Ficuciello had totally won me over. The first time we really talked, he simply looked at me eating a bad London sandwich and gestured me over to the little table in the kitchen. In an astonishing feat, one I still marvel aboutt, he pulled out a knife and went at a sausage and some bread and some tomatoes. A pot boiled on the stove, olive oil and garlic sizzled in a pan, and in an amazingly short time we had platefuls of spectacularly tasty food in front of us. It was like magic, I learned 99% of what I do in the kitchen from this guy.
726. marjoribanks - 8/3/2004 5:37:17 PM
So, eating together led to drinking together to studying together to partying, travelling, reading, doing everything together. For the next two years, Massimo was my brother and comrade and someone I kissed on both cheeks when we separated for vacations, and when we graduated and went our separate ways it was with a real wrench of regret. He came and stayed with me in the US, I went and stayed with him in Italy, we travelled together in Morrocco but then - as these things happen - we drifted somewhat out of touch.
I thought of him today, because I played a very old tape that I had put together long ago. On it was a cheesy but catchy Italian reggae song, and immediately my thoughts were of my buddy Ficuciello.
So, this is the world we live in now, I immediately thought to Google. And bingo, of course, Massimo Ficuciello brings up several hits - this is a young and connected man and my heart raced a bit because I'm going to e-mail my old room-mate and tell him how I suddenly thought of him because of the song.
But the link led to an unexpected place. Massimo Ficuciello, my partner in so many adventures , was killed in Nasiriya by a truck bomb that exploded at the Italian military headquarters. The photo doesn't lie, that's the gallant and stylish fellow I know so well. Gone, at 35 years, what a fucking waste.
727. Macnas - 8/3/2004 5:39:30 PM
Well, my Mam always reckoned that education was too serious to be left entirely up to teachers. No disrespect to Arky of course.
728. Macnas - 8/3/2004 5:41:41 PM
Jaysus but I'm sorry to hear that Marj.
729. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/3/2004 5:44:17 PM
Sincere condolences, marj.
730. marjoribanks - 8/3/2004 5:53:14 PM
It's really just a total waste of a brilliant young life. What a goddamed meaningless thing.
But thanks for the sentiments, guys.
731. alistairConnor - 8/3/2004 5:54:29 PM
What a heartbreaker, Marj.
732. marjoribanks - 8/3/2004 5:56:09 PM
Always a dashing fucker, look at that style and panache.
733. Macnas - 8/3/2004 6:06:34 PM
I was like that too, but without the dash,style and panache.
734. arkymalarky - 8/3/2004 7:52:07 PM
Oh Marj, I'm so sorry. After having such a grand visit (4th annual) with our old friends from thirty years ago--this time involving over 40 people from six states--that has now become a yearly event and the highlight of our year, I was all primed to hear you were meeting up or had already.
Once you make that move and decide to connect, it's magic, and you feel it before you ever email or call. It is, as you say, such a waste, when the end result of your Google search should have been so different.
735. judithathome - 8/4/2004 12:36:55 AM
I was an only child and an only grandchild for 10 years and then, my little sister was born. My mother was not the sort to explain much before the fact and she just went to the hopspital one day and came back three days later with a squalling little baby who soaked up all the time and attention formally lavished on me and me alone.
My parents told me if I didn't like her, they would return her. I guess they over-estimated how much magic a little baby could weave over a spoiled ten year old because within a week, I had slipped a note into my daddy's lunch box which said "I don't like her take her back". Of course, they didn't.
I spent about 3 years tormenting the little tyke and finally warmed up to her. We're great friends now but that's because I've since apologized for making her life such hell in those first three years.
736. sakonige - 8/4/2004 3:36:52 AM
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, marjoribanks. I hope you can find some comfort in having had such a fine friend for a time.
Your friend's death was meaningless, but your story of knowing him is full of meaning. Thank you for sharing it.
737. neato - 8/22/2004 1:44:27 PM
To bring this thread to the top for a while, and in response to Anomie ...
A few images from slides - early 1962 probably
Me looking for a nice spot to read that book
738. neato - 8/22/2004 1:46:35 PM
Just keeping the book dry ...
739. neato - 8/22/2004 1:48:42 PM
Looks like I found that spot - far right
740. neato - 8/22/2004 1:50:25 PM
Brother and boat
741. The Summer Woman - 8/22/2004 3:27:27 PM
Those a great family pics, neato. Do you remember the book you were reading?
742. neato - 8/22/2004 3:36:51 PM
It might have been the summer of Georgette Heyer. I do know the next summer it was Agatha Christie.
743. PelleNilsson - 8/22/2004 5:42:44 PM
Marvellous pictures, neato. A technical question. These are slides you say. How do you transfer them to Shutterfly?
744. anomie - 8/22/2004 11:12:47 PM
And is that a cold stream you're sitting in?
I was 11 in 1962. So I suppose we're pretty close in age. Nice to see the slides retained some color after so many years. Your suit WAS yellow or orange?
....nice legs, there, Neato. Ha!
745. neato - 8/23/2004 12:42:13 AM
Pelle, I have a scanner that does slides. Actually it does take a bit of the colour out of them, for some reason.
Anomie, we were at the sea, the suit was yellow, and a bit too big for me. You can probably guess from the slides that were were an unathletic family. No cavorting with beachballs.
I turned 12 at the end of 1961.
746. anomie - 8/23/2004 1:26:50 AM
The color stayed pretty true, then.
You were adorable. I'm sure you still are!
747. RickNelson - 8/23/2004 2:59:43 AM
Marj,
Late, but heartfelt. Your story of friendship is moving. It's a sad time.
748. neato - 8/24/2004 1:53:07 PM
Hey Anomie - Eat your heart out!
749. anomie - 8/24/2004 11:13:29 PM
Okay. I knew you'd be gorgeous. But no fair posting 20-year-old pics of yourself!
I want to get on an airplane. Ha!
750. Macnas - 8/25/2004 10:37:45 AM
Oh, red hair, I'm sold.
751. rdbrewer - 8/25/2004 4:29:16 PM
Does anyone know the best way to transfer family photos to CD? This is in the interest of preserving all my family's photos for posterity. I have a 7 year old Hewlett Packard scanner that I have used about three times. It was hi-tech at the time, but I don't know if it would be the thing to use. What should I look for, it's resolution or something? I'd guess the resolution is fine. Also, if I have hundreds or thousands of photos, loading the old HP scanner one at a time might be a slow way to get the job done.
--I don't want pictures stuck inside and accessable only through "my photos" or some other standard Windows cumbersomeware.
--The CD or DVD must be accessable by all family members, some who are not computer savvy.
--It would be nice if it could play on a standard CD/DVD player. Is there a program that is for setting up a family album specifically that can be run television with a CD or DVD player?
--Jen, don't forget to post pictures of yourself.
752. rdbrewer - 8/25/2004 4:34:15 PM
Television AND computer, that is.
Neato, how does your scanner do slides? And if the color is wrong, it seems a good program would allow you to quickly adjust color saturation, yellowing, etc., without having to go to Photoshop. BTW, the light source in your scanning device has a lot to do with the outcome. It may change in frequency over time, f/x.
753. marjoribanks - 8/25/2004 4:46:20 PM
Brewer, you slacker,
There is only one good way to guarantee what you want is easily reproducible, available in multiple formats, etc.
Go to the local imaging store, tell them your needs, pay the 25-70 cents (max) per photo that they charge for the service.
Emerge with CD-ROMS and DVD's in hand.
---
Be sure to post photos from Brazil in the Escapes thread, now hear.
754. marjoribanks - 8/25/2004 4:46:49 PM
P.S. - your scanner is useless.
755. anomie - 8/26/2004 12:13:23 AM
rdbrewer,
Scanners are cheap and good these days. For $100 - $150, just about any scanner would be good, and may even have a slide/neg attachment. At this price, the slide/neg quality will be marginal, (but better than I expected).
I wish I knew where I could get scans for 50 cents a pic, but I don't. I paid a friend's kid to scan in about 1000 pics and paid her $300, and I let her keep the $79 scanner I bought for the job. I thought that was a bargain.
Print resolution should be about 300 DPI. Also important is the file type. Save it to a TIFF or other non-lossy file, or to a high quality JPG file - set at about 90 percent. Scanner software can do some correction, but you really want to buy Adobe Photo Elements. It's as good as Photoshop for us amateurs.
Once the files are on a hard drive, you can make as many CDs as you want, in slide show format...with music...whatever. Most new DVD players will play these cds on TV.
756. neato - 8/26/2004 1:31:32 AM
RDB, I asked at the shop for "a scanner that does slides" - it's about 3 years old now, a Canoscan660U. It's a normal scanner as well. There would be much better scanners around now that do slides, I'm sure.
That was interesting about the light source changing over time. I am sure the first slides I scanned were better.
I agree about paying someone to do a vast quantity of photos for you. It's bloody slow to do it yourself, one at a (devastatingly slow) time! I had great expectations about doing it in bulk, soon dashed.
Anomie, that was good information about the files, and Adobe, thanks
757. neato - 8/26/2004 1:33:45 AM
I bought a wonderful second hand 1950's (perhaps) slide projector a couple of weeks ago, $25, it works perfectly, once we had cleaned all the lenses. Instructions intact. Had a great slide evening with visiting family.
758. anomie - 8/26/2004 2:37:42 AM
I love slides, but I no longer have a projector. I still take some occasionally, but I scan them in. You need a very high DPI, like 1200, and so the file size is very large. The results are good, though. Always better than prints if you can avoid dust. I'll sometimes scan a negative if I want to try for a better print.
759. anomie - 8/26/2004 2:41:38 AM
How does this happen? My last post just loaded a link at the word "print". I had no intention of doing this. Something took control. I don't like this.
760. anomie - 8/26/2004 2:42:25 AM
Neato, was your link intentional?
761. neato - 8/26/2004 5:35:55 AM
No, and I can't see a link.
762. Macnas - 8/26/2004 8:40:22 AM
Anomie, maybe a scan and reset to a previous date, if your system allows it, is in order. That sounds like some kind of hijack.
763. anomie - 8/26/2004 10:55:58 AM
Neato, your post 757 contains a link at the words, "slide projector".
764. neato - 8/26/2004 11:09:35 AM
Well, bugger me!
You're hallucinating.
765. PelleNilsson - 8/26/2004 11:14:32 AM
I checked the source. There is no link. You must have caught something, anomie? Is the link always there?
766. anomie - 8/26/2004 11:33:37 AM
Pelle, so it's just me? Yes the link is still there. In fact it transferred to my last post at the words, "slide projector". What's more, whenever I go to the Mote page, my browser immediately slows down.
I'll wipe and reload this laptop this weekend I guess.
767. anomie - 8/26/2004 11:35:48 AM
I first noticed this type of link on Concern's post about making a bet -in another thread. The link is highlighted by a yellow line. This is not to blame Concerned, but just FYI in case anyone else is affected.
768. neato - 8/26/2004 11:47:13 AM
Anomie, maybe Macnas has the solution in 762 - restore to a previous date.
769. neato - 8/26/2004 11:49:35 AM
If you post the problem in Technical Issues, Wabbit is sure to help.
770. Macnas - 8/26/2004 12:35:54 PM
This works well.
771. Ulgine Barrows - 8/28/2004 9:06:03 AM
723. Macnas....kept a good library.
Hanh? What does that mean, kept a good library?
772. PelleNilsson - 8/28/2004 9:21:32 AM
Had a good number of good books.
773. Ulgine Barrows - 8/28/2004 10:07:59 AM
I bow before your 'Good Library' defintion.
We read to the kid most nights.
But I still want to see what Macnas says.
What do you do with the bad books?
774. Macnas - 8/29/2004 11:30:04 AM
Ulgine
Just as Pelle says, a good number of good books. I know I utter the odd turn of phrase or two now and then.
Bad books? you know I can't remember any bad books as such. There were many story books as we were a big family without a television set for most of our youth, a set of encyclopaedia, a lot of the classics, in particular an almost full set of Dickens. Also Shakespeare’s collected works in what we now realise is an antique book worth maybe 400 or so. There were more, history and such, lots of stuff on animals of every stripe, all good to my eyes.
Da would read anything, something which most of us inherited as a trait. "I'll give anything a turn" he used to say, as I do now. He would, almost without fail, attend the mart/fair day of any town he happened to be in.
There he would buy secondhand books and magazines and comics. Comics! sometimes he would return with bundles of them tied up with twine, and for the rest of the day the house would be more or less silent as us kids undertook the serious business of reading them.
I still love comicbook art, and if I could afford to buy illustrated novels (which the French are nuts on) regularly I would. Books with pictures eh? still good in my book.
775. alistairconnor - 8/29/2004 12:07:09 PM
I intended to buy stacks of books in England -- ended up with a dozen damp paperbacks, selected almost at random under Waterloo Bridge while we waited for our spin on the Big Wheel.
Including Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which caused a brief stir of excitement for the girls, they thought it was about the actor Orlando Bloom.
776. alistairconnor - 8/29/2004 12:18:15 PM
(bastard son of Molly?)
I hasten to add that the children read a huge amount, and come to think of it, that's one regret from this trip : not spending time in a second-hand bookshop buying stuff for them. I want them to read more in English.
777. Macnas - 8/29/2004 12:27:01 PM
You know you can buy second hand books on Amazon? very good prices sometimes.
778. wabbit - 8/29/2004 1:57:32 PM
anomie, that sounds like a browser "feature" to me. What browser are you using - and we should move this to Technical Issues.
779. arkymalarky - 8/30/2004 3:40:21 AM
Blast it, I forget the poster's name who used to frequent the Fray/Mote and has a website on old comics. He used to put his url at the bottom of every post. I emailed him quite a while back to see how he was doing and he was doing fine.
If I think of the url I'll post it here or in the Lit thread.
780. arkymalarky - 8/30/2004 11:51:22 PM
Here it is! Doesn't anyone else remember that url?
781. wabbit - 8/31/2004 4:52:14 AM
That's it!
782. Macnas - 8/31/2004 9:47:27 AM
Comics, cool beans.
783. SnowOwl - 8/31/2004 10:46:07 AM
One of my (adult) sons is a comic fanatic. He recently left NZ for London and we're now surrounded by boxes and boxes of the damn things. I'm tempted to chuck the lot out, or at least to advertise them on eBay, but I'm afraid of the reaction if he ever comes home and finds them gone.
784. Macnas - 8/31/2004 11:35:56 AM
Send him a bill for storage.
785. arkymalarky - 8/31/2004 11:51:52 PM
Sending the kids a bill. That really works. I'm 45 and mine to my parents is still outstanding.
786. Macnas - 9/1/2004 1:48:08 PM
Yesterday was my sons first day at school. He was mad for it from about mid-summer on, when he realised he was going to be going to “big school” now instead of play school. I think the reality was not as rosy a picture as he had painted in his own mind, as he could not fathom why the teacher wanted him to sit down in one place all the time, and why he couldn’t get stuck into that tasty looking lunch he had brought to school with him straight away.
In an effort to find some empathy with him (sounds terrible doesn’t it) I tried to recall my first day at school, but found that I could not, not really.
So, in an effort to capture those days before my brain cells wither on the vine (like the Mote eh?) I think I’ll recount some of Macnas’s school days.
Our country school was so small even arky would have to laugh. It had two rooms, one taking infants through to 2nd class, and the other room taking 3rd through to 6th class.
The younger classes were taught by a female teacher, handily enough titled “the Teacher”, and the older classes were taught by a male, known as “the Master”.
The classes were generally very small, with the biggest being made up of about 10 pupils. There were 4 of us in my class.
Continued…
787. Macnas - 9/1/2004 1:49:01 PM
Although corporeal punishment was on the outs while I was in primary school, we were cursed by having one of the last of the “heavy hitters” as “master”. Violence, or the threat of it, was the bigger part of the system for maintaining discipline. One stand-out memory for me (and I won’t forget this) is when I was dragged by the hair from my desk and beaten, and not metaphorically either, from one side of the room to the other, until I was screaming that I would never do whatever the hell it was I had done ever again. As far as the “master” was concerned, I suppose it was mission accomplished. Acts of violence that would today make for outright arrest, never mind lawsuits, were accepted as the norm by us cattle like students and our parents.
Ha! I’ve just remembered that he used to smoke all the time, Players No.7 I think it was. It wasn’t remarkable back then.
As it was a country school, we were actually taught the basics of agriculture, to the extent that we would spend about an hour each day, weather permitting, outside working on our allocated plots of ground. There we would grow potatoes, carrots, parsnips, anything really that the pigeons wouldn’t decimate. This work applied to senior students, from 4th to 6th class only. The master himself, every year that I can recall, tried to grow a few drills of strawberries, but never had very much to show for it. This was mainly due to the fact that anything ripe for picking was taken by the kids who lived nearby before he could get a chance.
The rest of my recollections are a jumble of images, good and bad that I could not even attempt to put together.
What about you?
788. neato - 9/1/2004 2:22:09 PM
Great stuff, Mac, love the bucolic violence. What year were you born? Just trying to get a handle on the period ...
789. Macnas - 9/1/2004 2:32:25 PM
You should try and guess neato, but I'm not as old as some might think.
790. arkymalarky - 9/2/2004 12:14:02 AM
Love it, Mac.
I actually taught in a school that size, almost all African-American, for two years, then the state shut it down. Bob graduated from there in 1969, when there was "voluntary" integration and two tiny schools still existed. He was first in a huge class of 16 and his sister was first in a class of 4. White flight hit in the '70s and the one school left after total integration that I taught in was about the same size. Our last senior class was 16 and our smallest class was 4.
I dearly loved that job.
On age, I figured you were between 35 and 40.
791. Macnas - 9/2/2004 10:57:23 AM
Clever Arky.
792. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 11:16:01 AM
I'll do you when you're 90.
793. neato - 9/2/2004 11:18:18 AM
I had figured that, given Mac's young family, but ... the 1970's in Ireland were like the 1950's in NZ??
794. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 11:20:13 AM
X
Something's going wrong around here
Catch you later
795. alistairconnor - 9/2/2004 11:41:23 AM
Neato, did they teach you to milk cows and plant potatoes at school?
Were you a cabbage-patch kid?
796. Macnas - 9/2/2004 12:37:51 PM
Neato
That sounds about right, we lived in a time warp a few decades behind the rest of the world.
alistair, I would have thought, what you being so new age and all, that you would be envious of such an education.
797. alistairconnor - 9/2/2004 12:46:42 PM
New age my arse. Verging on old age.
Well yes I rather envy my wife's education, rather like yours but without the beatings. There were nine kids in her primary school, in a tiny village in southern Burgundy. She used to milk goats after school for pocket money.
I went to a desperately bourgeois suburban primary school with 300 others.
798. Macnas - 9/2/2004 1:18:05 PM
I didn't mean my recollection to sound dickensien, it was hardly that. But such things do stand out in memory don't they?
300 other pupils, yikes. I still know and see many people who were in primary school 'round about the same time I was.
799. neato - 9/2/2004 2:10:16 PM
Yes, Mac, no-one forgets a beating.
You painted a lurid picture. I am still thinking about it.
We weren't that rural, Alistair. It was small town, (Upper Hutt, as in the front lawn song) verging on suburban. Kids came by bus from the wop wops.
There were quite a lot of beatings. "the strap" in front of the class when I was a primary school in the 1950's - only the boys of course.
A secondary school it was the cane on the backside - "6 of the best". Kids had notches on their belts for each beating.
800. alistairconnor - 9/2/2004 2:16:03 PM
Yep, they still had the strap in the 60s -- I'm ashamed to say I never got it...
My brothers got caned at high school too, in the late 60s and early seventies.
801. neato - 9/2/2004 2:16:22 PM
Next month I am going to my high school's jubilee. I have had emails from people I haven't seen or thought about for nearly 40 years.
802. Macnas - 9/2/2004 3:24:06 PM
Are you telling us alistair, that you never got so much as a clip 'round the ear when you were at school? I don't see that, I have an image of you as a right activist from the get go...
803. Macnas - 9/2/2004 3:25:31 PM
neato
Lurid? Oh dear I didn't mean it to be, vivid would have done nicely!
804. PelleNilsson - 9/2/2004 3:28:56 PM
Walter Mitty
805. Macnas - 9/2/2004 3:31:53 PM
Never knew him.
806. PelleNilsson - 9/2/2004 3:33:07 PM
Too young.
807. Macnas - 9/2/2004 3:37:31 PM
Do you think, perhaps, that I'm making things up for some reason?
I'd say you were battered about quite a bit with those stone axes they used to carry when you were in school.
808. PelleNilsson - 9/2/2004 3:42:29 PM
Do we have some misunderstanding brewing here? The Walter Mitty thing was in response to your post about alistair, suggesting (jokingly) that maybe he just talks a good game (I hadn't seen your #803 when I posted).
I was never beaten in school. Hair pulling and ear twisting, yes, but no beatings.
809. Macnas - 9/2/2004 4:00:37 PM
No misunderstanding Pelle, sometimes what I think is funny just doesnt work.
Hair pulling? They pulled your hair? Are you sure it wasn't because it was easier than having to tote a stone axe around the classroom?
810. arkymalarky - 9/3/2004 2:18:32 AM
I was thumped on the head once in preschool and that was it. We still use corporal punishment. Suburban people think it's barbaric, I'm sure, but the kids don't.
I went to a college town school and my class was around 200. I didn't like it. I wouldn't teach there, though I've had a chance to on more than one occasion and would make several thousand dollars more a year if I did. It's not worth it.
811. wonkers2 - 9/3/2004 3:18:26 PM
I can't recall an instance of corporal punishment to me or anyone in any school I attended in Aruba, Nebraska or Louisiana in the forties and fifties. The worst threat or action I can recall was to be sent to the principal's office. He was a fearsome looking but gentle man.
812. judithathome - 9/3/2004 5:12:23 PM
In the second grade, Mrs. Wilson, a brutish chunky woman given to wearing black rayon dresses, stood me in front of the class and made me say Woy Wogers over and over until I finally mastered my "r"s correctly. For each time I missed, she would rap the knuckles of my out-stretched hands with a wooden ruler.
I've told this before on the Mote but it is still vivid in my mind and I have never said an "r" as a "w" to this day.
Maybe I'd be better off if Mrs. Wilson had taught typing.
813. arkymalarky - 9/3/2004 5:56:55 PM
I don't have a real opposition to corporal punishment the way I've seen it applied (in private, with a witness, in a strictly regulated way), but intentional humiliation of a student in front of the class ought to result in dismissal of the teacher, imo.
814. judithathome - 9/3/2004 6:05:21 PM
I thought so, too...ha!
815. Absensia - 9/3/2004 6:19:21 PM
I don't think schools have any business using corporal punishment. But then, I think parents should be completely responsibile for the behavior of their children. I don't believe in corporal punishment at all, as a matter of fact. Never used it. My kid turned out fine. I came up with all sorts of "time outs." A couple of times, though, he said, "Couldn't you just spank me like other kids' parents do?"
816. neato - 9/4/2004 1:32:15 AM
Arky, tell us, here or in another thread, about how corporal punishment is administered in your school, and why it's OK. I am against it too, but haven't given it a lot of thought.
817. arkymalarky - 9/4/2004 1:45:36 AM
Punishments--corporal or otherwise--are regulated by state law. I teach high school in a very old-school, traditional rural area. It's not administered often. We usually use "in-school suspension" or ISS, which students hate. They used to be able to choose "a paddling" in place of it, but I don't think that's allowed any more. Our principal is a 5' tall female who administers most of the corporal punishment (teacher's option), and even big senior boys don't want it from her. The kids all love her to death, and just the reputation of being good with a paddle makes its use fairly rare.
If I were in elementary school it would bother me, though it's covered in the law k-12.
818. wonkers2 - 9/4/2004 2:08:00 AM
I find that incredible! I thought corporal punishment in public schools had gone the way of the passenger pigeon years ago.
819. Bill Russell - 9/4/2004 3:40:10 PM
I was one of seven children raised during the great depression and Kansas dust storms .... 1930's.
A matinee movie cost 5 cents, and my parents didn't have the 5 cents to give us, so we went along the country roads gathering 'pop' bottles. We could turn those in for a penny a bottle, and could then have enough pennies to pay for a movie.
Kansas had a good recycling program even then. Today Hawaii is still debating wheteher to have one or not.
Hawaii has been a solid Democrat state for more than 40 years.
820. anomie - 9/4/2004 9:37:48 PM
Arky, I'm shocked spankings are still allowed. Even if not used often. AND, there's something kinky about about a small older female spanking a big young high-schooler. I may have seen that movie somewhere!
I grew up in and near Chicago. It would have been unheard of to get a spanking in school. Unfortunately my grandmother was an old fashioned belt whipper from Tennessee.
821. Bill Russell - 9/4/2004 9:42:56 PM
" It would have been unheard of to get a spanking in school. "
Spankings are permitted in Maryland Public Schools, but only by the principal. My wife taught first grade in Md. for 33 years.
822. arkymalarky - 9/4/2004 10:49:36 PM
AND, there's something kinky about about a small older female spanking a big young high-schooler.
That's what suburban living does to your mind! ;-)
Congrats to your wife, Bill. I don't think I will hang in there that long, unless things change dramatically at the state level.
823. Macnas - 9/5/2004 9:38:00 AM
Spanking, what an unfortunate term.
It was always the hands or the head with us. I remember that if many of us had been unruly or whatever, you'd line up and get 3 of the best across the palm of your hand, administered with what I think you might term a "switch".
I never saw anyone spanked thankfully, that would have been too embarrassing. For all my blathering on about violence in school, I do think that a limited amount of corporal punishment is useful.
It would be nice if students could regulate themselves through pure reason, but hell, I'm laughing even as I type.
824. neato - 9/5/2004 10:41:13 AM
I wonder what it's like to be spanked thankfully?
825. anomie - 9/5/2004 10:56:29 AM
Neato! Now your talking!
Where's Cap'n Dirty when ya need him?
826. Macnas - 9/5/2004 11:00:36 AM
I'll just have to, be, more, captain Kirk with my,punctuation.
827. alistairconnor - 9/5/2004 11:34:07 AM
What is a paddle exactly, and how is it administered?
Innocent question. Enquiring minds want to know.
Is it a sport for boys only?
828. neato - 9/5/2004 11:43:32 AM
I, too, wonder what a paddle exactly is.
829. alistairconnor - 9/5/2004 11:43:37 AM
No Walter Mitty I, not in that respect. I had the luck (good or bad?) to be a rebel without an authority to rebel against. My high school was a brand-new progressive one. As third formers we had no big kids to push us around and punish us for being little. Many of the teachers were indulgent or even encouraging towards signs of rebellion.
We had no school uniform, which was considered radical in those days. But we were forbidden to wear long pants, which I suppose, made us feel like the little boys and girls we in fact were.
A friend organised a petition to correct this iniquity. I told her : Petitions are no use, we'll do a survey. So we typed and Gestetnered hundreds of questionnaires (Herr Gestetner, godfather of sixties agit-prop!) and distributed it to all of the students and their parents (with, horrors! the school's blessing).
And the school changed the rule : we were thereafter allowed to wear long pants (but not jeans : many considered this a defeat).
Far from being beaten for rebellion, we received accolades. Tough to be a rebel.
830. neato - 9/5/2004 11:46:55 AM
What school exactly was that?
831. alistairconnor - 9/5/2004 11:56:34 AM
Green Bay High School, GBHS
Also known as Greivous Bodily Charm School.
Western suburbs of Auckland.
832. Macnas - 9/5/2004 11:58:04 AM
No wonder you always need a haircut.
833. anomie - 9/5/2004 12:08:04 PM
I was expelled for having long hair. 1968. Long hair - Ha! It was but a little over my ears. It's laughable to think what the percieved threat was back then. It was an early lesson in narrowmindedness.
834. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 12:14:41 PM
We wore uniforms. Black gym frocks, white blouses, tie, beret and gloves in the winter. Hideous blue pinafore dresses, white blouses, panama hats and still the dreaded gloves in the summer.
Prefects used to be stationed on the gates to ensure that uniforms were worn correctly. Boys caught folding their caps so they perched jauntily on the head were whisked off to be caned.
I loathed secondary school.
835. neato - 9/5/2004 12:23:52 PM
Grey, it was all grey for us. Grey pleated gym frocks (how does that grab you, Anomie)
You must have been posher than us, SnowOwl - we weren't tormented by gloves.
We had to kneel so prefects could ensure our gym frocks weren't more than 2 inches above the knee.
No cardigans on the street.
836. anomie - 9/5/2004 12:29:58 PM
2 inches above the knee is about right. And I love the kneeling bit. Ha!
I think sometimes I've lived a charmed life. My first true love was a Catholic high school girl - uniform, knee socks and all. I used to pick her up early and drive her to school. (I was only 16 myself). Needless to say we detoured quite a bit.
837. Macnas - 9/5/2004 12:30:32 PM
It's a wonder any of us turned out halfway sane.
Right?
838. anomie - 9/5/2004 12:31:43 PM
Sanity. I'm working on it, Macnas.
839. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 12:36:13 PM
There wasn't much posh about Mt Roskill Grammar School, neato, althogh I do think the principal had delusions of grandeur. It was an awful school.
840. neato - 9/5/2004 12:36:19 PM
Too right!
841. neato - 9/5/2004 12:37:15 PM
840 is re 837
842. neato - 9/5/2004 12:40:02 PM
I belive they kept us quiet by needling us about the minor things, so we wouldn't get rebellious about more major stuff.
843. PelleNilsson - 9/5/2004 12:52:42 PM
It's awful to be the subject of repressive tolerance.
844. PelleNilsson - 9/5/2004 12:54:20 PM
That was to alistair's #829.
845. alistairconnor - 9/5/2004 12:55:04 PM
The uniform is not only the external symbol of conformity : it is its very essence. It is the clear signal that originality, creativity and self-expression or any sort are, if not completely forbidden, at best channeled into well-defined categories.
Generally it works pretty well. The rebels become outcasts, there is no middle ground.
846. anomie - 9/5/2004 1:19:27 PM
I think uniforms eliminate class and fashion consciousness too. I think I would have preferred them since I was never able to be fashionable or classy.
847. neato - 9/5/2004 1:36:59 PM
SnowOwl, I too was neither of those things, so wore the uniform acceptingly, just with the tiny touches of rebellion that were de rigueur.
These days it's different I think - fashionable clothes are cheap and kids look the same even without a "uniform".
I sewed a lot of my own clothes as a teenager.
We were hard up until my mother started working. She made pleated skirts for me out of my Dad's old trousers. They were attached to a white cotton bodice - hidden by a hand knitted jersey.
My grandmother knitted socks for us.
848. Macnas - 9/5/2004 2:20:40 PM
The uniform I wore in secondary school was so mundane I had to think hard (thanks again Bill!) before I could remember it. Grey and navy, with civic guard blue shirt.
If you wanted to express yourself differently, or to be part of a clique that was expressing itself differently in exactly the same manner, it was in the coat/jacket and shoes you wore.
Anoraks and doc martens, trainers and denim, bomber jackets and roundtoe brogues, puma white-stripes and fishtail parkas, heavy black cromby overcoats and high-polished black hartz with enough steel segs you could tap-dance in them.
Haircuts too, to a degree. Near-skin, smoothhead, suedehead, buzzcut, convict crop and just far too long to get away with for any length of time.
849. arkymalarky - 9/5/2004 9:49:28 PM
Love these posts about schools!
A paddle is just a wooden board applied no more than three "swats" to the rearend. There's no gender bias in the rules, though there may be in the application. I don't know. It's something students the age I teach have pretty much outgrown. I think it's mostly a "junior high" thing. I rarely have a discipline problem and I don't paddle students--not because I'm morally opposed but because it would be ineffective. My ways work much better. Bob is the same. He paddled a couple of senior boys not long after he began teaching (in another district from the one he's in now), and that was effective and within the regulations, since he was getting no help at the administrative level.
I could fill a whole thread with funny and not-so-funny discipline stories, mine, Bob's, and the ones we've heard or seen over the years. It's still what drives most teachers out of the profession--that and excessive work loads.
My high school was lenient to a fault and things got pretty out of control after I left. Then came the drug scandals and the double-murder (not on campus, thankfully) and they reined it in. It's where Mose went to school and it was a pretty good school for kids on the advanced track, though still too lenient imo.
850. arkymalarky - 9/5/2004 9:56:58 PM
On fashions, teens seem more laid back than ever. I don't notice expensive clothes like I used to. In fact, a student was telling me just the other day that he didn't like wearing labels any more and when he was younger it used to be all he would wear. They'll get clothes from anywhere if they're cheap and comfortable. Mose is more the same way and she was always persnickety about clothes.
851. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 10:06:16 PM
We were hard up until my mother started working. She made pleated skirts for me out of my Dad's old trousers. They were attached to a white cotton bodice - hidden by a hand knitted jersey.
Are you me? My mother did the same! I remember the skirts on bodices very well. I was working before I ever had any clothes that weren't home made.
852. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 10:11:46 PM
A paddle is just a wooden board applied no more than three "swats" to the rearend.
The paddle isn't used down here. Recalcitrant kids were given "six of the best" with the strap - a broad leather strap applied vigorously to the outstretched palm.
My favourite teacher at primary school was much given to hurling his blackboard duster at kids who were playing up.
He was also quite quick at nipping down the aisle to give anyone talking out of turn a clip around the ear. I imagine that these days he'd be charged with child abuse, but we all adored him.
853. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 10:11:47 PM
A paddle is just a wooden board applied no more than three "swats" to the rearend.
The paddle isn't used down here. Recalcitrant kids were given "six of the best" with the strap - a broad leather strap applied vigorously to the outstretched palm.
My favourite teacher at primary school was much given to hurling his blackboard duster at kids who were playing up.
He was also quite quick at nipping down the aisle to give anyone talking out of turn a clip around the ear. I imagine that these days he'd be charged with child abuse, but we all adored him.
854. SnowOwl - 9/5/2004 10:11:51 PM
A paddle is just a wooden board applied no more than three "swats" to the rearend.
The paddle isn't used down here. Recalcitrant kids were given "six of the best" with the strap - a broad leather strap applied vigorously to the outstretched palm.
My favourite teacher at primary school was much given to hurling his blackboard duster at kids who were playing up.
He was also quite quick at nipping down the aisle to give anyone talking out of turn a clip around the ear. I imagine that these days he'd be charged with child abuse, but we all adored him.
855. arkymalarky - 9/5/2004 10:31:22 PM
It's funny, corporal punishment is still legal, but it's so regulated that anything like you described would probably result in a lawsuit here, even if it were less physical. Whatever the punishment, physical or otherwise, it works if it's unpleasant and if students can be assured it's coming. They like teachers who are consistent, too. The most tolerant teachers are generally the least popular with students.
856. anomie - 9/5/2004 11:39:57 PM
All this talk about paddles, spanking, short pleated skirts and adorable teachers...
Calm down, Neato.
857. anomie - 9/5/2004 11:41:49 PM
Arky,
I bet even when the kids dress down, they have to do it just so, or they're not cool.
Probably cheaper though.
858. arkymalarky - 9/6/2004 1:39:56 AM
Well, I teach in a very rural district, so it's hard to tell. We've had one or two kids with tongue studs and a male earring or two--if there are tattoos they're discretely hidden. So I don't think I'm getting an accurate view of teen fashion. But I do know Mose is in a large university and her favorite store in the world is Wal-Mart.
Where have I gone wrong?
859. arkymalarky - 9/6/2004 1:46:25 AM
Skimpiness and sagging are the two problems schools continually have and they're getting stricter. I try to point out to the students that if they keep pushing the limits they'll go to uniforms. It was brought up this last legislative session. I don't want that because I'm very informal and it would make me less comfortable to teach in such a structured environment.
860. arkymalarky - 9/6/2004 1:46:52 AM
schools are getting stricter dress codes, that is
861. anomie - 9/6/2004 2:24:17 AM
I'm probably as liberal and informal a person you'll ever meet, but I like the idea of school uniforms.
I was influenced by an Ed-Psych teacher many years ago. He also convinced me that homework ought not be allowed.
862. SnowOwl - 9/6/2004 2:30:46 AM
I like school uniforms. When all of my kids were at school it made it very easy to get their clothes ready.
Uniforms are much more attractive now than when I was at school. Down here they invariably consist of kilt, blouse and blazer for the girls, trousers and blazer for the boys. Thankfully, hats and gloves have been discarded.
Most kids don't go into uniform until they're at Intermediate School (similar to Junior High), although Catholic schools have their kids in uniform from the first day.
863. arkymalarky - 9/6/2004 5:03:18 AM
Mose was so clothing conscious I never really thought about it much as a parent because she did. I have a thing about being told what to wear, even now, to the point I don't like rules disallowing blue jeans. If they want to pay for my clothes and to have them cleaned and pressed, I'd consider it. I was that way in high school too. If they'd had a "Weirdest Dressed" category I would have won, hands down. Not that the clothes were that odd, just not what other kids were wearing.
A friend of mine and his wife once taught at a school with a strict dress code for teachers which included no denim. His wife once wore a lovely denim dress--very dressy--to school and literally got sent home.
The science teacher regularly wore worn out double-knit slacks, a worn out "Free Calley" t-shirt, and ratty sneakers. Nary a word was ever said to him.
864. arkymalarky - 9/6/2004 5:04:27 AM
And Anomie, don't even get me started on Ed-Psych teachers. ;-)
865. neato - 9/6/2004 11:30:05 AM
1957 or 1958 - SnowOwl, here's an example of the skirt and bodice with smart jumper/cardy.
866. neato - 9/6/2004 11:33:17 AM
Same day, probably.
867. SnowOwl - 9/6/2004 11:38:44 AM
Apart from the fact that I didn't have plaits that could easily be me. I never saw my mother sitting without the knitting needles flying, or occasionally a piece of embroidery on the go.
That's a really nice photo.
868. neato - 9/6/2004 12:01:28 PM
Could you post some photos of your childhood, SnowOwl?
869. Macnas - 9/6/2004 12:02:37 PM
Did your Da really wear tartan trousers?
Only codding!
870. neato - 9/6/2004 12:10:15 PM
Ha!
I'll try to find a slide of the Khaki skirts, he was in the army in the 1950's.
871. SnowOwl - 9/6/2004 1:20:22 PM
I'll see if I can dig some out, neato. I'm not very good with keeping photos and I have no idea where most of them are.
When I see pictures like yours I wish I'd been a bit better about keeping mine in some sort of order.
872. neato - 9/6/2004 2:44:56 PM
873. Macnas - 9/6/2004 3:11:12 PM
Aw shucks.
874. wonkers2 - 9/6/2004 3:25:59 PM
Cap'n Dirty sez "What a cutie! Neato's welcome for a moonlight cruise aboard the Tomater Sloop any time, assumin' she's over 18!."
875. Wombat - 9/6/2004 6:39:27 PM
School uniforms:
Ratty blazer with school coat of arms, dried snot on the cuffs, enough "McGovern for President" buttons on inside lining to jingle as I walked; worn with wide flourescent tie, bell-bottom trousers, Frye boots, and work shirt. Hair down to shoulders, moderate acne, dirty glasses.
876. PelleNilsson - 9/6/2004 8:16:58 PM
Photo!
Photo!!!!
877. Wombat - 9/6/2004 9:57:01 PM
My "word picture" is not enough?
878. PelleNilsson - 9/6/2004 10:04:17 PM
Not for us lovers of the macabre, but it is very good. I can visualize you.
879. alistairConnor - 9/6/2004 10:54:32 PM
Skimpiness and sagging are the two problems schools continually have and they're getting stricter.
... they make them wear bras?
But seriously. A 17 year old friend was around here the other day, his sister lifted up his shirt to demonstrate that the waist of his jeans was below the bottom of his underpants.
Gross.
880. arkymalarky - 9/7/2004 2:16:22 AM
Well, their t-shirts come to their knees, so it's not that bad. I always wonder why they don't just fall down and send the kids tumbling down in the hall. Once or twice of that would cure the sagging problem.
Why do I find Wombat's description completely irresistable? When I was in high school I would have been very vulnerable to a guy like that.
881. Macnas - 9/7/2004 9:12:40 AM
The sagging trouser business is usually shortlived, it's too awkward and it doesn't take long for young fellows to come to terms with the fact that they live in a rural community, and are not fooling anyone that they actually come from L.A. SouthCentral.
882. Wombat - 9/7/2004 4:54:27 PM
Arky:
I left out dubious personal hygeine and an almost complete inability to converse with girls. Still attracted?
883. arkymalarky - 9/7/2004 11:48:50 PM
Moreso. We had a lot in common. ;-)
Mac,
In the rural community they have their own sagging problem that's been around for generations--the plumber syndrome.
884. wonkers2 - 9/8/2004 12:26:52 AM
Cap'n Dirty sez, "Wonkers has the same sagging pants problem!"
885. Macnas - 9/8/2004 9:19:34 AM
Ah yes, as we call it here, builders arse.
886. PelleNilsson - 9/8/2004 9:44:52 AM
Here it is called the Gällivare arse, named for a place in the far north, but I don't know why.
887. arkymalarky - 9/9/2004 12:15:32 AM
How funny! Who knew other countries have a name for that.
888. anomie - 9/10/2004 8:59:00 PM
I think of Dan Akcroyed and his SNL skit about the refer repair man showing the butt crack as he bent over.
30 years later, it's fashion.
889. jexster - 9/14/2004 3:49:58 AM
Fond memories!
I remember Betsy in 1965...a more westerly track than Ivan and only 110 MPH when it got up where I lived...but FUN!.
In the middle of the night she came...sounded like a freight train right outside the bedroom...in the morning trees everywhere and strange prehistoric looking swamp birds blown up from the marshes over 100 miles away...
But I didn't get Carla...a frat brother did...25 foot tide swept his family's summer home away...his sisters clung to his waist as he held onto an oak tree for hours for dear life...
Ah..pfft an earthquake..they're over pretty much before your adrenalin can kick in...
Not hurricanes tho..they RULE
890. Macnas - 9/24/2004 8:12:59 AM
Maybe not the right place for this, but it'll do.
Pelle suggested I write about the struggle for Irish independence, which, when I think about it, takes up about 300 years of Irish history. You might say that for all intents and purposes, Irish history is all about the struggle, and little enough else!
At home, old medals, old rifles, photographs, the 1916 proclamation of independence framed on the wall, my Fathers involvement in Sinn Fein, the socialist background of my Mother, and all this before I even went to school.
At school, the OTT description of British brutality, saintly portrayals of Irish martyrs, glorification of battles, assassinations and all the things that shaped Ireland as a nation. It wasn’t until much later on that I learned to look distinguish between fact and hyperbole, and was able to come up with a more reasoned view of Irish history, particularly the struggle for independence.
The struggle, in contemporary terms, really begins in the 1860’a, when the Fenian movement grew here and in America. Ex-American civil war veterans swelled the ranks of that organisation that wanted to go beyond the localised issues of rent and home rule. Ireland had been recently devastated by the Famine, and discontent was rife at that time particularly. There were Fenian uprisings both here and in America, where abortive attempts were made to strike at Britain through Canada.
891. Macnas - 9/24/2004 8:13:25 AM
It was doomed to failure, both here and of course in the ‘states, but it gave rise to an organisation called the IRB, or Irish Republican Brotherhood. This secret society would eventually create the IRA, or Irish Republican Army, and in Easter 1916 it instigated an uprising, mainly in Dublin, where certain buildings were stormed and defended against the Crown forces. The rising failed, and large parts of Dublin were destroyed by artillery and subsequent fires. The rising was generally unpopular, especially among dubliners, and most were glad to see it crushed.
However, the leaders of the rising and many others involved were all executed, including the father of Irish socialism, James Connelly, who, because of wounds, could not stand up to be shot, but instead had to be shot while tied, sat on a chair. There was a reversal in public opinion, and from then on, escalating in 1919, the IRA mounted a guerrilla campaign throughout the country. Policemen, then the RIC, or Royal Irish Constabulary, British army, and hundreds of civilians lost their lives.
Pelle asked for some anecdotal bits, but there are so many that I’ll include just this one. After one particular ambush, where the IRA defeated a considerable number of British soldiers, a group of “Black and Tans” came looking for my great grandfather. He had no direct involvement with that ambush, but he shared the name of a man who did. He was a quarter of a mile away, doing to harrowing with a pair of horses for a neighbour. The ‘Tans found him, tied his hands to the traces and ran the horses back to the road. He was detained in barracks and was going to be shot when the neighbour for whom he had been working intervened on his behalf, convincing the commanding officer that he had the wrong man. Lucky for me eh?
Eventually the British called a truce, a treaty was beat out, and with the exception of 6 counties in Ulster, they withdrew all forces and government.
892. Macnas - 9/24/2004 8:13:57 AM
‘Though supposedly part of the commonwealth, Ireland operated as a totally independent nation from 1921 on. A vicious civil war raged for until 1923, with those opposed to the partition treaty fighting against those for. This war, perhaps more than the struggle for independence itself, was where modern Ireland was born. Animosity from this era still exists today, and the main political parties have their roots in the pro and anti treaty camps.
There you go, that’s as simple as I can make it.
893. alistairConnor - 9/24/2004 10:14:15 AM
Far too simple, far too short.
Go on, make a novel of it.
894. Wombat - 9/24/2004 10:19:04 AM
Macnas:
Put it in the Terrorism thread.
895. Jenerator - 9/24/2004 10:36:17 AM
My mom (Marshame) and I were discussing my early childhood the other day and some near death experiences/dangerous situations I have been in.
When I was three, I wandered off and made my way about a half a mile from home. I vaguely remember looking around at all of the pretty houses and flowers and enjoying the adventure. I distinctly recall stopping in front of a home that had a terraced yard that was lower than the sidewalk. (The driveway drive down to the house - so you couldn't even see the place from the street.)
I had been gone for at least 15 minutes when I stopped at this home and admired it - it was neat looking with it's shingled roof and cobbled path that led to the side. A man was working in the yard and came up to me. I told him that I liked his house and that it was pretty. He said that he would show it to me. I started making my way down the cobbled path and another man came out of the garage. Out of nowhere came my mother who swooped down on me like a vulture. She was yelling at them and at me, and I felt embarassed that she was being mean to these nice guys who were going to show me their home.
I had never seen her that angry and as she was yelling at me, her eyes were teary and the vein in her forehead stuck out. I didn't understand how she had probably saved my life that day, until I was older.
896. alistairConnor - 9/24/2004 11:43:58 AM
Was that a dangerous neighbourhood you lived in?
Do you really think your life was in danger?
897. PelleNilsson - 9/24/2004 11:44:35 AM
Yes, too short Macnas. You say that
This war, perhaps more than the struggle for independence itself, was where modern Ireland was born.
Please tell us more.
898. Jenerator - 9/24/2004 11:53:33 AM
Well, Alistair, we'll never really know. We lived in a good neighborhood, but think about how the situation looked. Two grown men were inviting in a three year old girl who was alone.
899. judithathome - 9/24/2004 12:25:12 PM
Jeez, Jen, they were probably gay pedophiles!!! My god, you could have been murdered!!
Or they might have been two men concerned for the safety of a three year old toddler who had been allowed to wander off from the protective arms of her mother and they simply didn't want to risk letting the wayward kid wander into the street and they were on their way inside to call the police to come retrieve her.
I can't imagine why you'd immediately think they were "two men living together" and up to no good. Maybe one was the owner and the other guy was his yard man. Maybe it was father and son. Maybe things weren't as bad as you and your mom seemed to think they were.
900. judithathome - 9/24/2004 12:26:26 PM
Sorry, "two grown men"...you didn't say they were living together.
901. Jenerator - 9/24/2004 2:49:42 PM
Judith,
As I said, when I was there, I was having a good time - the guy was going to let me come into his home. My mother, though, said that she got me just in time and that she believed she saved me from a potentially horrible situation.
If Dylan wandered off and I found him being led into the home of a suspicious looking person's home, I'd freak out. Especially if the man didn't say anything about how worried he was for the baby, or if he seemed more annoyed that I was reclaiming him.
The two men said nothing about concern to my mom - I do remember that.
I just thought I'd share a situation that I had been in that thankfully turned out alright.
902. arkymalarky - 9/24/2004 5:13:27 PM
This isn't my childhood, but it's about children. Is that close enough?
Bob and Mose were driving through the tiny town that his mother lives just the other side of and saw two little girls--no more than two and three years old--walking in the middle of the road, which is actually a state highway, though not a very busy one. Bob stopped to try to figure out what was up and they jumped into the back of the car. He and Mose were stunned and couldn't get any info out of the girls about where they lived or anything.
They started driving slowly down the street looking for people in their yards to ask about the girls (this is a town of just over 100 people). They stopped to talk to an old man on a riding mower and Mose and Bob got out of the car. The old man didn't recognize the girls and they were talking about where they could possibly belong, when all of a sudden Bob and Mose heard the radio blaring and the car start up. They made a mad dash for the car and the older of the two was behind the wheel. They got back into the car and went back to the home of someone Bob knew and knocked on the door, and it turned out the kids belonged to her grandson, who had been in the shower when they just walked out the front door.
903. anomie - 9/24/2004 5:36:36 PM
I have a memory similar to Jen's without the element of danger except for being lost.
I was three, at a local carnival - I remember the ferris wheel and the crowd, and a vague sense of being unsupervised. I remember riding on a policeman's three-wheeled motorcycle, (if you remember those, you're probably 50), and then a mild sense of relief while getting off the back of it and getting a hug.
904. anomie - 9/24/2004 5:38:30 PM
Arky,
Lucky, those girls were. Although I like to think most people are okay, ya just never know.
905. arkymalarky - 9/24/2004 5:42:01 PM
They're really lucky they didn't get run over, at the least. Strangers are rare in that town, but anything can happen on a highway.
906. anomie - 9/24/2004 5:53:16 PM
That too.
Why are our dirty minds always on molestation. News. Too much TV, I think.
907. judithathome - 9/24/2004 8:46:16 PM
Our minds may be on it but in comparison to the things that don't happen and to the instances that are genuinely helpful, the things like that which DO happen are fairly rare.
908. Macnas - 9/27/2004 1:26:19 AM
Alistair
A novel? Even if I was able, it's been done and done well many times before.
Pelle, you did ask for a short history. With regard to the civil war, well I might be able to knock something together about that. However, as Wombat pointed out this is not the place for it. We don't have a thread for this kind of thing (just what do you call this kind of thing?) as such, and I do not see the Terrorism thread as the right place either.
909. Macnas - 9/27/2004 1:41:18 AM
Judith
I understand your point, but I also understand Jen's feelings and particularly her Mothers. If it were me, well I'd be fit to be tied and would think the worst as well. Fact is, nobody should be asking strange children into their house, and that has always been true.
Think about it. Your 3 year old has vanished, you've looked all over the house, there’s no sign of her and now you are really worried. You head down the road looking for her, and then you see her with a stranger, maybe you hear him asking her to come in and see his house. If it were me, I wouldn’t stop to ponder the rosier alternative explanations for this. I'd be angry with myself for letting her wander off and in no mood to be understanding.
910. alistairconnor - 9/27/2004 3:20:13 AM
Absolutely. And it's true that the man's first instinct should have been to say sure, I'll show you my house, but let's check it out with your parents first.
The fact that that he didn't, doesn't prove he had bad intentions. Most likely he was just thoughtless, as men often are.
Your mother's reaction was perfectly normal, and the danger was real. After all, maybe if she hadn't shown up, you would now be a belly dancer in a Saudi harem.
911. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2004 8:55:53 AM
Hows about the Slow Thread, Macnas?
912. jayackroyd - 9/27/2004 9:17:59 AM
Or we could make Mac a thread.
913. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2004 9:28:30 AM
Sure we could.
914. Macnas - 9/27/2004 9:55:39 AM
One is plenty thanks all the same....
915. PelleNilsson - 10/3/2004 3:18:48 AM
Here are some pictures from an album I had almost forgotten.
916. PelleNilsson - 10/3/2004 3:25:47 AM
The little girl who appears here is my cousin Anna-Stina. The first shot is with her parents.
917. PelleNilsson - 10/3/2004 3:34:52 AM
Here were are with my aunt Vera who died recently. The funeral is on Thursday which is why I remembered this album and scanned the pics to give to Anna-Stina.
With my father.
918. PelleNilsson - 10/3/2004 3:46:56 AM
This last picture is from a New Year dinner at the home of my paternal grand parents. All their children are there and grandchildren are there (except the four yet unborn). The year must be 1944 when I was 17 months old.
The boy at the far end is my cousin Ingvar. He was also a cousin of my mother's. The explanation for this curious factor is the woman to the left of my mother and me. She was Ingvar's mother but she was also the younger sister of my maternal grandmother.
It is a sobering thought that of all the people present in that room on that day, including my father's youngest brother who is behind the camera, only I am still alive.
919. neato - 10/3/2004 3:48:42 AM
Aaaah! Pelle! Thanks so much! Truly wonderful.
920. neato - 10/3/2004 3:52:44 AM
Anna-Stina looks a character.
921. Magoseph - 10/3/2004 4:51:53 AM
Aaaah! Pelle! Thanks so much! Truly wonderful.
Neato, you always have a wonderful way of expressing exactly what I feel. Thank you, Pelle.
922. neato - 10/14/2004 6:32:18 AM
923. neato - 10/14/2004 6:41:51 AM
That was my family with a family that had a big impact on ours.
This was 1959 or 1960. My Dad mowed lawns and was a sort of weekend handyman for a rich bloke who rented his place in our small town to a Vietnamese family. They were with an embassy - which one? French? Was there a Vietnamese embassy in Wellington? Dad helped them with practical things - Which milk tokens to put out with the empty milk bottles, which tradesman to use etc. They were so egalitarian, we visited them alot, and had terrific posh meals (I remember being very impressed with a whole fish on the table). Mum was a school teacher and taught one of their kids. We loved them, they were so stylish, so interesting.
Left to right: Mum, Jacques et Georges with dad's sister, Dad (he took the photo too), Mr Daville, My bro, Dad's mother, Collette, Simone (the maid!), Mme Daville.
924. neato - 10/14/2004 6:43:10 AM
Forgot -That's me between Georges and Dad.
925. neato - 11/25/2004 2:46:13 AM
I must have killed it.
926. Magoseph - 11/25/2004 2:52:57 AM
Neato, you helped the thread a great deal. How about trying to save it in hosting it?
927. Magoseph - 11/25/2004 2:55:09 AM
You could ask the moderators in Mote Matters. Neato, please try.
928. neato - 11/25/2004 3:00:00 AM
Thanks, Mago.
But what has happened to RDB?
929. Magoseph - 11/25/2004 3:11:48 AM
RDB was in the forum a while ago in one of the politic threads, but it looks like he didn't come here. I guess he has lost interest in his thread.
930. neato - 11/25/2004 3:21:44 AM
It's probably done it's dash.
931. Magoseph - 11/25/2004 3:30:03 AM
Well, "The Good Life" thread is ideal for posting pictures, Neato--of course, so is The Mote Cafe.
932. Ulgine Barrows - 12/3/2004 4:47:53 AM
Hey! I found the link to the perfect place!
The post below, I found offensive.
rdbrewer -- Wednesday, April 28, 2004 -- 04:46:25 AM -- 655 of 938
-generic tagline-
MB is there every day. He's the Escapes (vacations) host.
There are a lot of great people still there. They've allowed a few assholes to take over, however, and make it an unpleasant place to discuss issues. The emotional retards need to be dealt with.
(Postmark | Highlight | Mark Unread)
Tra la la, Tra la la
I'm not posting in your dirty sand, rdbrewer.
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