Category: Elder Folk
Was just looking through the posts in this board, and realized that many of them have to do with things in our past that affected us in some way.
I, myself, have a lot of time on my hands and find that I have all these memories of past events that I'd like to describe to someone, and noone wants to listen (don't blame them).
Don't know if this will work, but if not, then so be it.
So, here's the place to put those memories down.
Bob
I'm thinking of my grandfather's dining room table. It was hand crafted, twelve feet long, capable of seating all the important people of my family.
This started out to be a reflection of family get togethers, family politics and good food. Instead, it is a discussion of change.
My grandparents had four kids who all lived within fifty miles of each other. My parents and my father's siblings would get together at least once a week (usually Sundays) for the noon meal, which we called dinner because it was the biggest meal of the day.
Each of the four families would bring several dishes, which provided enough food to feed the troops in Iraq, and, perhaps, Afghanistan.
My earliest memories are of three of my cousins and my sister and I eating in the kitchen. Kids weren't allowed in the dining room for any reason. (More about that later.)
I remember hearing the adults talk of weather, crop crises, the price of cattle, and other boring stuff. (My family was all involved in farming, and cattle raising). I didn't realize that they were talking about survival. Grown-ups were just boring most of the time.
My cousins and my sister would talk of school, teachers and other important stuff. Since I went to a school for the blind a hundred miles away, and had my own memories of different teachers and fellow students, I was always outside these conversations. But I always had a place of honor because of my differences, and never felt left out.
Occasionally, my three cousins would gang up on my sister and I and blood would eventually flow. I, as the older brother, was expected to uphold the family honor physically; this meant that I had to take on both the boy cousins. I remember slamming my older cousin's face into a cherry pie. I also remember the pain of my father's hand on the seat of my pants, and the humiliation of having it happen in front of the entire family.
Eventually, things changed, as they are wont to do. My father's younger brother and sister got married and had kids. This meant that there were little babies around to consider. No more rough housing in the kitchen. Actually, we were growing up too, so we didn't want to rough house as much. My sister and girl cousin enjoyed taking care of the little ones, and my boy cousins and I found ourselves talking of girls and a new music called rock 'n roll incessantly.
One Sunday, my eldest cousin, who was a year older than I, didn't sit with us kids in the kitchen. He was told (no adult in my family asked a kid anything) to sit in the dining room with the adults to make room for the younger kids in the kitchen. I was so jealous. But about six months later I was told to sit in the dining room too. Then I realized it was a rite of passage in our family. I was no longer a kid, nor was I an adult, but the adolescent changes that I thought I was keeping secret were more obvious than I thought. I had graduated to the dining room. After all, it's hard to hide a squeaky voice and very light whiskers.
Let's skip ahead about fifteen years. My grandmother has lost her battle with cancer. My grandfather is blind, almost deaf, and gets around with a cane. The family now gets together about once a month, for my grandfather's sake, and there is usually one or two segments of the family missing for other activities.
My cousins, my sister and I are all rather prolific and produce kids like our parents produced crops. So now, the kitchen won't hold all the little ones. They get to sit in front of the tv in the din. But the dining room is still sacred. I remember when my own son graduated to the dining room. Boy was I proud.
...
We had another family get together about six weeks ago, perhaps the last one--God I sure hope so. It took place in my aunt's dining room following the funeral of my oldest cousin. We had Church's fried chicken and instant ice tea. There were six of us there. Some folks couldn't make it because of earlier commitments, and many, too many, couldn't make it because they were deceased. We six stallwarts sat at one end of my Grandfather's dining table and tried to pretend that nothing had changed--but it sure had, and I wish it hadn't.
Bob
mister president, this is the kind of thing i love reading. I'd hazzard a guess that a lot of others do too. So great idea, and keep 'em coming! So much of this gets lost because it never gets said.
Bob, great idea for you to forge a place to share your memories! I actually enjoy hearing about how the older generations frew up as it seem to be a simpler time where people actually cared about morals and personal values. I look forward to reading the memories posted on this board. Even though I'm not that old, I still relish the days of my youth. My how the years change right before our eyes. Anyways, keep the memories coming!
Well said, crazy_cat.
Hi Bob. What a great idea
!
I know I have a lot of memories, and will post here often when the mood hits. One of my fondest memories is of me and my kids. I guess they were about four or five, maybe a little younger.
That Christmas, I got this hair-brained idea to dress up like Santta Claus. My husband was having problems, and couldn't do it, so Mom to the rescue.
Well, my sister and I went to a little store and bought cotton balls, a red marker, and went back home. We didn't have much money, so we couldn't afford a regular costume.
Now, this is the picture:
we drew a Santta Claus face on a paper sack, with a nose like a cherry, stuck the cotton balls on each side for a beard, and made eyes out of something, I can't remember.
That would have been great, but let me digress. I had bought those little bells you put on babie's shoes, and I told the kids Santta Claus was on his way, faked a headake, and went in the bedroom. I put on a red pant suit, and adorned my mask, then placed a little Santta Claus hat on my head. Then I started ringing those little bells.
Finally, I went out of the bedroom dressed as Santta, saying "Ho ho ho, is there two little boys named Stanley and Steven?" I could have pulled it off, but there were several reasons I couldn't:
I didn't come down the chimney, my beard was falling off, I was to short, and I wasn't fat, just pleasingly plump. Also, there were obvious reasons I was a girl, and my voice just wasn't cut out to be Santta's. Nevertheless, I still tried to fake it, but my youngest wouldn't buy it. I had this trash sack full of toys, and he said, "You're not Santta Claus, you're my mommy."
I said in a somewhat squeaky gruff voice, "Little boy, have you been good?"
My oldest son was jumping up and down screaming, "Ain't she cute, ain't she cute
!" and Steven my youngest, was screaming, "You're not Santta, you're my mama
!" (He always said mama when he was mad). Anyway, I handed out the toys, and laughed till I cried. Never will forget it.
"
Excellent Dreamlady. That was so poignant.
Your story brought to mind a time when I was about six.
At Christmas time my family often visited my mother's mother near Houston (about a hundred miles from where we lived). I was really concerned that Santa Claus wouldn't be able to find us, but my mother assured me he would.
Unbeknownst to me, she had acquired a santa suit and her brother, my uncle Robert, had agreed to wear the suit. Apparently, it was pretty convincing because when he came into the living room, my cousins and sister were taken in completely. They all yelled Santa Claus! But, as soon as he spoke I yelled Uncle Robert! They showed me his beard, they showed me his suit, they showed me his belly, but he still talked like uncle Robert. I became more and more convinced that that was my uncle in that suit.
Little did I know, that night was the end of a dream. Santa was never Santa again, until I had youngsters, and experienced the dream from inside a fat man's suit.
Bob
Bob, great topic! I focussed on the word table as soon as I read it. In the house where my mother lived before the nursing home, there's this long oak table. I have so many memories that surround that table. We ate there as a family. I learned to play dominos and solitarie on that table. My dad helped me with homework on that table. He also showed me how to build things on that table with an old radio shack project kit. I remember laughing with my family around tht table, and crying at that table after the death of my father. There are few material things that evoke so many memories within me. I think it was becaused I was raised in the country, and the kitchen table and the kitchen was, in many ways, the center of life in the home back then.
Thanks again,
Lou
Wow that's so much the same for me also. I never thought about it until now. But my dad reading out bits from the newspaper to me, about the soccer team we both supported. eating my mother's curries, stews, and other delicious meals around that table, with mum and dad. playing cards with dad. I now am very lucky, to own our dining-room table, as both my parents have passed away, and my siblings offered it to me. So many wonderful memories.
I'll bet a lot of us have memories that focus around a kitchen or dining room table.
My parents got divorced when I was five, and my mom and I moved to Columbus while my dad kept my two brothers in Northeastern Ohio. My grandmother moved in with my mom and I. She had a cousin who was the daughter of her late husband's brother. This lady, Ann, was divorced and moved in with us for a year. She had an infant daughter (Mary Beth) and a daughter about a year and a half old (Sally). They stayed with us for about a year until Ann had a good enough job to support herself and her two young children. Even though I was five years older than Sally and six years older than Mary Beth, the three of us were very close and grew up as close as sisters. Every holiday meal as well as anyone's birthday meal was eaten together. We took turns between our house and Ann's house. This went on for years. When we were real young, no matter whose birthday it was, the candles on the cake had to keep being relit so that all three of us girls had a chance to blow them out. When I think of holidays and birthdays growing up, I think of my family as my mom, grandmother, Ann, Sally, and Mary Beth and myself. I saw my dad and brothers in the summer but spent no holidays with them.
As we got older and started to date, boyfriends were also a part of at least some of these family gatherings.
Then I went on to college, but we still got together for the holiday meals. Then my two cousins each grew up and went on to college and eventually got married.
We stay in touch, but I sure do miss those holiday and birthday meals all together.
Bob, I hate to admit that anything you do is a good idea, but this topic is great.
As we are having a damp rainy couple of days, I remember the house where we lived till I was about 14. It was I guess what you'd call a rancher-style, with everything on one floor. For the first six or seven years of my life, we had a coal-fired furnace and one register that heated the entire house. That thing put out some serious heat, too. One of my earliest memories was running through the house, and falling down on it, burning myself. I can also remember how much fun it was to throw stuff down through the grating. It would hit the top of the furnace itself, and melt, creating very interesting smells. n boyish fashion, I used to like spitting down there, and hearing it sizzle when it hit the top of the furnace. If you remember the little 45 record adapters that you actually put in the hole in the record, it wold take a couple days for the smell to disipate.
Lou
Hey, that's really interesting Motifaded.
I do remember those little plastic things you could buy to make 45 rpm records play on a record player that didn't have the center thingy that pulled up to fit the records.
Heating a house. That reminds me of this one house we lived in, a very bad house from a maintainance vantage point, for what six year old kid worries about that. One thing I remember about this house is that it was impossible to heat, so we heated the living room with a space heater and let the rest of the house freeze.
However, you have to go to bed at some point, and you almost froze at those times. But, I remember cuddling up with several quilts and a dog or two to keep me warm.
I also remember heating at the school for the blind. This was accomplished by a complicated series of pipes which carried boiling water through pipes into radiators scattered throughout the school.
These radiators were about a foot long, and when turned on, would gradually warm up, starting at one end and progressing slowly until the entire radiator was heated. It was a favorite initiation routine for new students, to force them to sit on a cold radiator and turn it on. You could hear the steam hiss into the radiator while the initiate became more and more frantic.
I will write something later about my memories of the tunnel system that carried that hot watter throuout the school.
Thanks for posting.
Bob
In my previous post I referred to my memories of the steam tunnels that ran beneath the campus at the school for the blind.
I don't remember when we first discovered the wonders of these tunnels. They had always been there as if waiting for another generation of kids to discover them.
The tunnels were accessed by way of a series of manholes that were scattered throughout the entirety of the campus. We had used the manhole covers as reference points in our baseball games (third base is just past the manhole cover over there), etc. But, for some reason no one ever thought of seeing where these manholes led, until one day when my roommate Dennis and I checked it out, just to pass the time away. We discovered an entire subterranean world unknown by us until then.
Bad move. At first Dennis and I were content just to go down into the tunnels, go to the next manhole and come up undiscovered. However, we soon saw the potential for adventures these tunnels brought. But, when we were almost busted one day, we realized that we had to apply the scientific method to exploring these tunnels.
The trouble came one morning when we had gone into the tunnels for a quick look before going to school. However, in our haste we became disoriented. As the time grew nearer for classes to begin, I panicked and told Dennis I was going up the next manhole we came to so I could go to class. Dennis said we couldn't do that because we didn't know where it led upside. I went up anyway, and found myself in the middle of a line of third grade boys lineing up to go to school. With exclaimations of surprise ("hey, it's a big kid", "what's a big kid doing in our line") buzzing in my ears, and a reddening face, I tried to make myself inconspicuous while giving the kid who happened to be standing on the manhole cover when I emerged a hand up. Fortunately, no adult who was supposed to be supervising the line of boys noticed.
harting the tunnels. Dennis and I had problems trying to map where each tunnel led from beneath the ground. One day, however, Dennis, who had some usable vision, realized that on a rainy cold day he could follow the tunnels upside by watching the mist that rose from the heated tunnels. Luckily, no one ever questioned why two kids were wandering around in the rain and cold, one of them looking downward and the other taking notes with a slate and stylus. Eventually we mapped the entire tunnel system in this manner.
Once we had the system mapped we had the problem of "so what" to work out. What were we to do with this valuable intrinsic knowledge? Our first use of this knowledge was to provide a place for us to smoke. I remember buying my first pack of cigarettes for a quarter, and taking it down to the tunnels for Dennis and I to share. We spent many useless hours freely smoking away solving all the problems of two teen-agers trying to break into a threatening world. I never will forget the surprise of a workman who had come down to do repairs in the tunnels discovering two of the inmate kids blandly smoking away. The guy was pretty cool about it, he bummed a cigarette, told us not to get caught, and went on his way.
Eventually, Dennis and I couldn't keep our secret. He told a few of his trusted friends and so did I. We took pleasure in giving tours to admiring friends. It turned out that our trusted friends had trusted friends that they told, until the news was all over the boys side of the school. More than once, Dennis and I were recruited to find smaller kids who had been left in the tunnels as a joke.
ultimately, Dennis and I were no longer roommates. We became more acquaintance than friend, and lost interest in the tunnels. I think each of us took away a memory of that time and that place, and the fun we had. I know I did.
Bob
lol, that's a great story,!
Oh, the steam heat! I remember it well. I don't know why I had this obsession with melting plastic (see my earlier post about the 45 adapters), but thermoform paper also made a wonderfully repulsive smelll when placed on those radiators.
I used to enjoy listening to the radiators clanging through the night. I pretended it was a prison (which it seemed like at the time, anyway.)
Lou
Hi bob. What a great story. I remember those little round things that went in the 45's. I stepped on a few. lol. I remember those radiators at the school. I also remember getting on city buses with my friends, and riding around the city at night. We'd stop offf at a Duncan Doughnut, buy doughnuts and holes, and continue riding. I also remember a place called The Icecream Scoop which sold charcoal hamburgers. Man they were good. Did you go to TSB in Austin? I think you said you did.
Do any of you who went to schools for the blind, do you remember the house parents? I do. I'll have to post about them sometime. Man, what a great topic.
Oh wow, the house parents--a kid's best friend ... a kid's worst enemy.
Thanks for the reminder.
Bob
Dream Lady, I don't think there's enough cyberspace in the world for al of us who went to residential schools to taslk about houseparents. (lol). I remember going to a party that my music teacher hosted after I graduated high school. Some of the people I saw drunk including houseparents did not make for a pretty sight.
Lou
I agree, Lou. There probably is not enough cyberspace for all the houseparent stories. I belong to an e-mail list for alumni of the blind school I attended. It's funny how we all seem to have different memories about the same housemothers. I came away with mostly good memories, but some of my contemporaries have horrible memories. I sometimes wonder how I could have missed some of the things they talk about. I guess a lot of it is just different perceptions of the same events. And also, there were housemothers who picked favorites and picked out certain kids to pick on. With the exception of one housemother, I seemed to be among the favorite kids for most of the others. I hung out with some of the "bad" kids but somehow managed to stay far enough under the radar not to get into trouble most of the time. The same goes for teachers.
Becky, I was a creative troublemaker at the school for the blind. God has his own revenge, however. When I student taought in public schools, some of the students found ways to annoy me that I never thought of to do to my teachers who were blind. One student was really good. He'd bang on an empty chair and blame it on the student on the other side of it. Worked several times, too. (lol).
Lou
My sixth grade teacher was totally blind. Our student desks were set up in sort of a cluster around his desk instead of the usual classroom set up with the teacher's desk in front and the student desks in rows. My desk was right beside his desk on his right. I would often quietly open the drawers on the right side of his desk and play with items in them with him sitting right there. He rarely caught me. He had this weird heavy ball made out of some sort of metal in the top drawer that fascinated me.
Well, I haven't thought of a memory for a long time, but today I had a flashback and wanted to share it. Be warned, it's not as pleasant as some of the other memories.
I can tell you the exact date, it was Monday May 4 1970. I was a senior at Texas Tech University in Lubbock Texas. The Vietnam war had been going on for about four years. (No one knows when it really started, it was as if we woke up one morning and found we were in the middle of a war in a place we had barely heard of.)
On this particular day I was really pissed. Totally pissed. My president, Richard Nixon had announced he was invading Cambodia to enhance the troops in Vietnam, and I was supposed to love my country for this criminal act? I did/do love my country, but I will always hate Richard Nixon: God curse his evil soul.
Fifty of us stalwarts of American youth had gathered on the common, a grassy paddock in the middle of campus. We had intended to sing songs and maybe march a little in protest.
I remember that we were trying to sing "the times they are a-changing" by Bob Dylan, when David Sanders, a friend of mine, turned to me and said, "are you allergic to gas?"
I knew the troops had arrived. About four or five truck loads of Lubbock's finest and smartest? police had come to restore order.
To make a long story short, they warned us twice to disperse, and released tear gas.
...
Later at the police station, we were all lectured about being good kids, and released. Of course the press were there, and I remember worrying that my mother would see the pictures. I worried about that and the fact that I had a geology quiz the next day.
That was the extent of my protest days. Not much of a story. Others like Stokely Carmichael, Noam Chomsky, Abbey Hoffman and others had lots more to say.
However, when I did return to the dorm I heard that four students at Kent state University had been killed by the National guard for a similar protest.
That's it, that's my memory. However, I just heard on the news that three more Americans were killed in Iraq last week. And I kind of wondered, where is your generation? Why aren't you speaking up? Where's the outrage? Aren't you the least bit ashamed?
Bob
Wow. I remember when we had child care workers.. This was in New York, but they were still cool. I remember this one in particular...