WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

Hooray! It is finally apple time and I hear 2013 promises to be a bumper crop for Michigan apples. This morning it was cool and refreshing – perfect for a trip to the cider mill for warm donuts and just-pressed cider before heading home to watch the college football games. Unfortunately the beautiful a.m. weather will not extend through the p.m. and rain and thunderstorms are on the horizon. To satisfy my own apple cravings, I walked to Meijer today to buy my first apples of the season. As in the Summer when I try a different fresh fruit each week when I shop, I’ll try each of the apple varieties offered as they become available as we head through the Fall season. My all-time favorite varieties of apples are the scrumptious Honeycrisp and the sweet, almost tropical-tasting Pinata, which come out around Thanksgiving. I decided on Gala apples for today – they were huge and I only got one week’s worth to save my shoulders since I was hauling bananas, broccoli and bread on the other shoulder. Those seven apples weighed me down but will be good eating accompanied by a few cubes of cheddar cheese. Next week it will be Fuji apples – I like them as well, but today they looked rather dull and dusty looking while the Gala apples were shiny and bright. Hey, I could just as easily have washed them off, but it is all in the presentation and the Galas just looked more inviting. As the old adage goes “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and apples combined with a flu shot next week will hopefully ensure a healthy 2013-14 Winter for me.

The local cider mills opened on Labor Day weekend. It’s been years since I went to Apple Charlie’s Cider Mill in New Boston. Thinking of cider and donuts evokes a fond memory of goodies from the Franklin Cider Mill. One of the art directors at the ad agency where I worked in the late 70s lived near that cider mill and in the Fall he brought in cider and donuts for the whole department (forty of us) every Friday morning. We’d have the large conference room table ready with a throwaway tablecloth because he’d carry in cardboard boxes laden with big greasy bags of still-warm donuts. He’d make a second trip out to the car to bring in fresh apple cider and plastic cups. It was a much-appreciated treat and he got a kick out of doing it for everyone. The rest of the year, Dan baked a mean chocolate chip cookie and to everyone’s delight, we were often the recipients of several trays of warm cookies to have with our coffee on a frosty Winter morning.

I recently heard the proprietor of the Franklin Cider Mill being interviewed by Warren Pierce of WJR. He explained that it takes one bushel of apples to make one gallon of cider. I was amazed at that ratio! No wonder cider is pricey. I have decided my reward for reaching my next walking goal will be a half-gallon of the Honeycrisp apple cider. It is more expensive than regular cider, but this will be a little indulgence for me to celebrate attaining that goal.

As of today, in my quest to beat my car mileage with my own foot power mileage in 2013, the stats shake out as follows:

Grand total of car miles driven in 2013 as of 09/07/13: 287.00
Grand total of miles walked in 2013 as of 09/07/13: 258.25

I hope to surpass the car miles in the next few weeks, weather permitting. Sweet hot cider with a cinnamon stir stick will be the welcome reward.

Still another glorious morning – how very fortunate we are. It is too bad these beautiful weather days weren’t here last weekend for the long holiday. I walked along Fort Street this morning and saw several groups of kids trudging along to school, already looking weary and worn out from one abbreviated week of learning. They sure didn’t look motivated to be headed off to school. Perhaps as doctors and the media have been suggesting all week, students need a later start time for school to enable them to concentrate better … I, however, would counter by saying an earlier start time to head for bed, sans electronics on the nightstand, might work just as well. Sure, that’s a snarky comment but it’s true. It seems like I came home from school, did homework until dinner, a little more homework or library time after dinner and then trundled off to bed – to sleep. There were no devices to record television programs back then, so weekends were the only time to watch television or the Summer reruns. Sounds a little mundane but I don’t think I fell asleep in class unless it was very boring, but that was not from lack of sleep.

As to boring classes, in college I took an anthropology course. I was really looking forward to it, but the professor was so boring that NO ONE could stay awake in the class. He stood at the lectern and in a very monotonous voice read verbatim from a textbook he authored. No inflection in his voice – just droning on and on. No visual aids were ever used … we all would sit in lecture hall with our open textbook following him word-for-word or doodling around the page edges to keep from nodding off. All instructors cannot be outspoken like MSU Professor William Penn, who ranted and raved about the Republicans ‘til he got the boot, but it doesn’t hurt to stimulate your class once in a while either.

So many classes in high school or mandatory “core” courses in college were not my cup of tea. But, you had to take them and be present and accounted for day after day. I think now, all these years later, about how few of my courses really mattered and contained information that would eventually be applied to daily living? Perhaps none, except ninth grade typing class – you can go almost everywhere with the click of a mouse or finger graze of a touchpad, but you still have to know how to type to surf the internet or use social media.

Okay, I’ll concede that maybe basic math has also been helpful for day-to-day living, but think about it … what info have you gleaned from other classes through the years that you use on an everyday basis? As to math, I did horribly in algebra and geometry classes and I have to admit I “didn’t get it” and found it puzzling and nonsensical. I never took trig or calculus (probably a good thing) and I apologize to any math mavens out there who enjoyed these subjects.

I liked biology and zoology, but physics, physical science and chemistry didn’t interest me one iota. I liked geography but learned more from reading “The National Geographic” than I remember learning in school. In American history class the teacher spent nearly the entire school year instructing us on ancient events up through the Civil War, then suddenly it was the end of the school year and the rest of the history textbook was merely glossed over. I could take or leave my English classes; I absolutely despised dissecting or diagramming words and thought it was a waste of time. I frankly learned more about English grammar when I studied French.

As to the subject of French, I learned more about that language as a youngster in Canada where each student began studying French as a second language in second grade. Each student had an 8 ½ by 11 inch picture that matched the teacher’s large storyboard picture. We learned various scenes throughout the school year: a barnyard, a restaurant, a train station, a department store, a couple pushing a pram in the park and we learned what were masculine words versus feminine words. That teaching methodology made those French words stick in my mind, more than years of college French where it was rote and mere memorization of dialogues. I took a few semesters of practical French where no books were used and the whole class was conducted by conversing in French 100 percent of the time; this was probably more helpful than just memorizing the book. Unfortunately if you don’t use your foreign language skills you lose them. I’d be lucky if I could understand much French nowadays and unfortunately, I never did learn to trill my “Rs” very convincingly so I never spoke like a native. C’est la vie.

Alot of mandatory courses taken through the years I found to be just plain silly. A study of old-time movies like “The Great Train Robbery” or films with Buster Keaton or Mary Pickford was indeed a mandatory class for my studies and a waste of money and time. As to literature classes, I’ve had many and as to required reading … “Sons and Lovers” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” , both which I enjoyed the first time, were read and re-read and analyzed and re-analyzed until there was no enjoyment in reading them. Please don’t get me started on “Beowulf”. Really?! Even with Cliff’s Notes I was lost! Home Economics – well we learned how to make “cheesy wienies” and how to write out a shopping list. We got to make an apron from start to finish. The one I made for my mom was bright pink and black stripes and the ugliest thing you ever saw – I’m sure she only wore it to spare my feelings.

Yup, upon pondering the importance of school through the years, the best class I ever took was typing. Life lessons, of course, are invaluable.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” Ernest Hemingway

What an absolutely gorgeous morning, just picture perfect for a walk. Like Julie Andrews’ song “I Could Have Danced All Night” … well, I could have just kept walking and walking. While enroute to the Park, I saw a beautiful yellow Potentilla bush. I had one years ago but it became scraggly and leggy and I eventually pulled it out, but this one sure was pretty. I couldn’t remember if Potentillas had a scent, and I bent down to take a whiff of some of the flowers and I heard the unmistakable buzzing of bees. Wow! I peered through the bush and hadn’t seen the bumblebees on the other side of the bush. Wait! There were more down in between all the flowers just bobbing about partaking of sweet nectar. So … but for the buzzing, they blended right into that Potentilla bush. So what’s the buzz for this blog post? Lady luck was on my side and thankfully I heard the bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! That got me thinking about the bees buzzing and words that sound like the noises they are associated with. That dredged up a word I had not thought of since high school or college days: onomatopoeia. I think I kind of liked the way this word sounded (almost like some ornate dish of pasta or an Italian delicacy of some type) and that’s why I remembered it after all these years. Eons ago I had a delightful English teacher who fascinated our class with his extensive use of unusual words and phrases. Mr. Lorenz introduced the word onomatopoeia to us and explained its origin. He passed out a list of words, then encouraged us to think of more examples to add to his list. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and buzz were near the very top of his list and have stuck in my head, but some others I remember were boom, fuzzy, zip and zoom. But there are many, many more – here, have a look: http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/poetic-devices/onomatopoeia-examples/

We shouldn’t let the school kids have all the fun learning new things! At least this doesn’t involve homework and tests.

My boss is a wordsmith and learning new words is a hobby for him. He tells a tale that growing up in Saginaw, his father, an attorney, had a complete set of the “Oxford English Dictionary” and he made his three young sons study a page daily to learn new words. The volumes of the “Oxford English Dictionary” are actually extremely over-sized books. The collection takes up an entire bookshelf and the ratio is nearly one volume for each letter of the alphabet, except perhaps X, Y and Z. That is alot of new words to familiarize yourself with. Robb has continued this practice throughout his adult life. He owns a set of the “OED” at work and home plus the CD version is loaded onto his laptop. He continues to endeavor to pepper his speech and writing with unusual, sometimes archaic or quirky words and phrases.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”…Albert Einstein

There he sat, chin cupped in his hand, while looking dejectly at the ground. From a few houses away, he looked like a clothed version of Rodin’s “The Thinker”. He was sitting there the entire time I walked down the block and then suddenly someone started the car from the house and he remained sitting there motionless, wearing a rather sullen scowl – that is, on the part of his face which was not embedded in the knuckles of his right hand. I heard a voice holler out “Kevin, get in here and eat and grab your backpack and wait for me in the car NOW” (emphasis on the NOW) – still no movement. Blue-jeaned butt glued to the cement. My butt, blue-jeaned or otherwise, would have received a swift kick to it and that would have gotten me movin’, but that was another era; besides, I would’ve been too scared to tempt fate to begin with. As an only child, I had no older siblings to set the standard of what I could get away with, so conforming to the rules and regs was the best choice. I’ve said before that I’ve gotten a few paddlings in my day, and in the long run, was never any the worse for it. I restrained myself from telling this young man that his pose greatly resembled the famous sculpture because I figured my comment would have been rewarded with a grimace and a response of “whatever”. Most likely the observation would have sailed right over his head anyway, so I tucked this vignette away to share with you in this forum and I just kept on walkin’ … whatever.

There was alot of extra traffic this morning as everyone was bustling about; the need for speed was evident until everyone settles into the daily routine now that school has resumed. There were alot of big ol’ yellow school busses rolling down the road as well. I generally try to steer clear of school loading zones if possible when I am walking, especially on sunny days. Drivers are often distracted and don’t see you. I only have to pay attention on the jaunt to and from Council Point Park – sandwiched in between there’s a glorious two-mile path sans traffic. Most all the kids should be back to school by today – happy parents versus unhappy students who will no doubt already have homework tonight. I don’t remember much about my first day of school, pictured above, but I do know I loved school and was a good student until we moved to the United States. I detailed in an earlier blog post (https://lindaschaubblog.net/2013/06/06/frown/) how bullying, because I was “different”, started in sixth grade and continued through part of junior high school. As a result my stellar grades starting declining dramatically. But until that fateful time I enjoyed school and could hardly wait to start back every September. I attribute my good grades to my mom who had endless patience and great parenting skills in my formative years. Thanks to daily learning sessions, I was way ahead of the curve by the time I started kindergarten.

I was allowed to watch Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo in the morning and after my nap, there was afternoon T.V. time with the Mouseketeers while munching on animal crackers washed down with milk. But in between television, snacks and naps, we did the Three Rs – readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic.

Of course we poured over the “Dick and Jane” series which we read and re-read countless times. My parents had always been avid readers and instilled the love of reading when I was very young. They would enjoy their newspaper or a novel, while I sat in the corner on my little chair with my basket of “Golden Books” beside me. I think I had the plots and the dialogues memorized as I read them over and over again. Then I graduated to the “McGuffey Readers” and “The Bobbsey Twins” and “Little Woman” – there was no stopping me then!

My mom gave me a daily list of vocabulary words to learn and practice in a sentence and then I was quizzed on spelling the same words. Many years later, I would recall her diligence in drilling me to build my vocabulary and learn how to spell correctly when law firm colleagues and I competed in “The Legal News” annual spelling bee. For weeks before the event, all our co-workers quizzed us on various words, legal or otherwise; any of our team of four would be walking down the hall and someone called out a word to be spelled out correctly on the spot trying to stump us. We even searched in “Black’s Law Dictionary” and the regular dictionary to ensure no unusual word would trip us up (as if we could memorize everything for goodness sake). We went several rounds at the spelling bee and tumbled down on the pesky word “recidivism”. “Rats!!” as Charlie Brown would say.

Pauline Schaub’s patience was a virtue with her young daughter, Linda, while demonstrating cursive in a wide-ruled tablet. I had to write the word on the same line directly after the word that was written in my mom’s neat, slanted writing. I knew what the word meant and how to spell it but I usually fell short though on the pretty handwriting.

And then there was math. We began adding and subtracting at the kitchen table using matchsticks (yes, we were careful), or toothpicks … or just for fun we’d use Smarties (the Canadian equivalent of M&Ms). I liked the Smarties math method the best as we’d total the numbers and gobble up the answers afterward. One year for Christmas I got an abacus so we went for “advanced math”; it also eliminated any cavities from too many Smarties math problems, but it sure wasn’t as fun!

We didn’t have preschool back then, but when the first day of school finally arrived, circa 1961, I was a ready-for-prime-time player. Hope you have happy memories of your early school days as well. I know I just passed a pleasurable few moments recounting some of mine.

I headed out early and though the humidity (ugh) was still around, the slight breeze made it feel cooler than the last few mornings. I was walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden the smell of bacon assailed my nostrils. I sniffed appreciatively. If my nose served me right, I believe I smelled some hash browns too, or perhaps that was my vivid imagination. The humid atmosphere made the breakfast smells linger in the air, and oh my … as I passed the house the window was up and I swear I heard the bacon sputtering and sizzling. Flies were clinging all over the screen busily hunting for some type of opening to get in and investigate. I can remember coming home from school or work and walking up the side of the house and seeing dozens of flies clustered onto our side screen door. My mom would hear me jiggle the door handle and call out to watch the *&^% flies! She’d be frying up some greasy good food like chicken tenders or pork chops and the flies were on the outside looking in and hoping for a trip inside to sample what smelled so darn good. Even the screen didn’t help air out the kitchen because we did not have a hood over the stove and the grease smell would take forever to dissipate.

I kept walking, but hated to leave behind the house where the cook, presumably the mom, was determined she’d make one last big breakfast for the family before the routine of school kicked in and sports events might encompass most weekend mornings going forward. Soon, instead of hearing pots and pans rattling in the kitchen to ready a hearty breakfast to start the day, the sounds will consist of the ding of the microwave heating up a cardboard-tasting breakfast biscuit or perhaps the toaster popping up with toast or Pop-Tarts. Running late? There’s always breakfast on the fly at Mickey D’s. I’m a bowl-of-oatmeal person myself – seven days a week and I love it.

Now I can’t remember the last time I chowed down on bacon, which was part of Sunday breakfast for years, then dwindled down to an occasional treat during beefsteak tomato season to make an awesome BLT. But that was in the microwave. No counter-space in the kitchen meant the microwave reposed in the basement. A bacon-cooking session left the basement and the coats hanging down there smelling of bacon for weeks – not so nice. We finally eliminated the greasy, yummy bacon and opted for Canadian bacon – one quick turn in the frying pan or microwave and much less muss and fuss. Then my mom cut down on our sodium intake and bacon became an even-scarcer treat. I’ve kept up with the low-sodium diet and have waved so long to bacon altogether.

But growing up, my mom and her farmer’s breakfasts encompassed half of the day. By the time we’d finish up washing the dishes and putting them away, she’d finally plop down to read the Sunday newspapers and soon my father would wander into the kitchen and announce he was hungry. She would give him “the look” and he’d say “well, … maybe later”. The prep for the farmer’s breakfast actually started the day before when she’d peel and boil up a big bowl of potatoes, then as soon as she got up on Sunday morning, she’d dice up those potatoes and put them in the cast iron frying pan to start browning them. Next, she’d chop up two small onions and toss them in there as well; it smelled heavenly as they were frying and getting crispy and occasionally I’d burn my thumb and index finger trying to remove a crispy potato out of the hot pan. In another greasy frying pan was a pound of bacon needing constant maintenance to get it perfect – not too limp, not too crisp and it was spattering everywhere, despite the screen placed atop the pan. Still another two burners were occupied by smaller frying pans cooking scrambled and fried eggs respectively. My mom would lament that it took a good hour to cook our farmer’s breakfast, a half-hour to enjoy it and another two hours to clean up. We never owned a dishwasher – we were the dishwashers. After years of making a farmer’s breakfast every Sunday morning, my mom finally threw in the towel and we settled on a trip to Kate’s Kitchen in Flat Rock a few times a year. Kate’s is famous for its huge breakfasts, all served up with fresh, hot biscuits and white country gravy – mmmmmm. The never-ending crowd on a Saturday morning curves all around the parking lot. We’d leave sated and feeling unable to move, but the biggest plus in this cholesterol-laden-but-delicious breakfast was no clean-up!

Since the topic today is bacon, we’ll go from eating bacon to bringing home the bacon – what a segue, eh? Today we salute those who bring home the bacon. It’s a day to be toes up, kick back, relax a bit and unwind from the daily grind … there are so few three-day holidays during the Summer and now we’ve used ‘em all up. Happy Labor Day (or Labour Day if you are a Canuck like me), for tomorrow it’s back to the salt mines.

While walking, I often pass by a corner lot with a sizeable veggie garden out back. During the course of the Summer, I have watched the tiny plants morph into huge vegetables. It has been interesting to gauge the progress of the plants, especially the corn which has really shot up the last few weeks. I’ve often seen an elderly gentlemen, wearing a straw fedora, who tends to this veggie garden in the a.m., before it gets too hot to toil in the sun. His backyard is always colorful with brightly colored perennials and flowering kale, and now even more so with some cucumber plants with their pretty yellow flowers, and which are already supporting tiny cukes. The cucumber plants are winding here, there and everywhere, threading through the green and purple cabbage, dark-green kale, red cherry tomatoes and even some still-green beefsteak tomatoes. This morning he had a wide, brown wicker basket brimming full of freshly picked veggies and he was walking toward the house as I passed by. I called out to him that he looked like Farmer Jack himself. He grinned at that comment and said “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Alot of younger people would not know who Farmer Jack was, but he was the trademark icon and face of Borman’s Supermarkets for years until they went out of business in 2006. Well, my farmer friend told me he was having fresh corn-on-the-cob, dripping with butter and coated with salt tonight for his dinner, even though his cardiologist and his wife would take issue with that meal. I told him that was the only way to eat corncobs and have them taste like anything. My mom and I would limit ourselves to three corncob-eating sessions each Summer; whew … all that salt and butter, but you have to indulge in seasonal bi-colored corn as it is such a treat. The Lincoln Park City Attorney annually has a small veggie garden in front of his office right out on Fort Street. This year, his kale is extra large but two corn plants tucked in the back of the garden are trying valiantly to each produce one full-size corncob. There are two puny corncobs only, certainly not enough to have a corn roast on Labor Day

I subscribe to Meijer grocery store posts on Facebook and there is always chatter on their store-brand products or seasonal foods and I usually follow those posts. I had to laugh one day when they asked “how do you eat corn-on-the-cob … spiral-style or typewriter-style?” I immediately thought of this picture of the “mini-me” eating a corncob in my high chair, and probably ending up with more corn on my face or the floor than in my mouth. I believe I adopted the typewriter-style of eating corncobs judging from this picture above. So …

“’EARS LOOKIN’ AT YOU KID.”

Enroute to Council Point Park, I pass a house that has a retro-looking Dutch girl standing all alone in her klompen in a backyard flower garden. I can’t help but wonder what happened to her counter-part? I know it sounds silly, but you only ever see the pair, i.e. the Dutch girl and boy, standing on tippy toes in their clunky wooden shoes puckering up with one another. So what gives? Did the kissin’ cousins have a tiff? Is the Dutch boy in another part of the yard? Did her Dutch buddy break? If you’ve ever had resin yard decorations and dropped them, you know they will shatter into a million pieces. So many questions; so little time.

The Dutch kissing duo used to be a popular item for yard art but I don’t see them much anymore. Perhaps they went the way of wooden whirligigs. But this particular solo Dutch girl has a retro look, unlike most of the more-modern Dutch kids kissing where both statues are short and stocky. This young lady is tall with very pale markings and is reminiscent of a pair that adorned my grandmother’s backyard many, many years ago. Nearly every day when I see this lanky Dutch figurine it takes me back many years to when I was a little girl visiting my grandmother. I Googled around for an image of a vintage Dutch kissing duo to display with this blog, and the pair above is exactly the same as my grandmother’s.

Today’s blog highlights my grandmother’s garden since I have now reached 240 miles walked in 2013. This mileage marker represents the same distance to travel one way from our house to my grandmother’s house in Toronto. The trip was accomplished in exactly four hours door-to-door. We left at 6:00 a.m. and arrived in time to coffee klatch with my grandmother and aunt who lived together, plus half the neighbors who saw us pull up and unpack the car. My grandmother would put on a pot of coffee and filled her huge steam kettle to brew some tea and we brought homemade goodies that my Mom had baked in anticipation of our visit. We gathered around the kitchen table, that is, those of us lucky enough to get a chair … everyone else propped up against the sink or stove to catch up on all the news since the last visit. Sadly, most of the group are now gone and the house has had new owners for decades.

My grandmother lived five miles from downtown Toronto just off busy Dundas Street. Her house was smack dab in the middle of a block of row houses, all attached and nearly identical, each with a postage-stamp-sized lawn out front. The backyards all were long and narrow. Out front at Nanny’s house, there was really no room for any yard art, flowers or creativity, plus a huge tree encompassed the entire front yard. The tree was great for shading the big porch which often welcomed half the neighborhood in the Summer for small talk and big bowls of ice cream, but it sure prohibited any flowers to adorn the front; believe me, the backyard well made up for it.

After I was born, my parents moved from an apartment in Toronto out to the suburbs, to Oakville, which was about twenty-five miles away. We’d go to visit my grandmother about once a month, and after the initial hugs and kisses, she’d always invite me outside to see her yard. She would take my small hand in her large callused hand and lead me down the main path in the backyard. Nanny was very proud of her collection of flowering “hens and chicks” which grew in reckless abandon up and down the sidewalk from the back door to the garage. As you stepped out of the back kitchen into the yard, you couldn’t miss those hens and chicks anymore than you could fail to see the Mama Rhode Island Red hen and her four chicks trailing behind her parallel to the sidewalk. The flat wooden barnyard feathered friends were a gift from a relative and added a touch of whimsy to the yard. Well, we’d weave through wooden hens and chicks and the plants as well, and occasionally Nanny would pull away from me to bend over close to the ground, nearly tipping over, to snag a weed that dared to spout in the sidewalk crack. She’d always carry a little paring knife in her pocket to clip off a few weeds or snap off a long stalk of fresh rhubarb for me to have when we got back into the house.

As we walked toward that rhubarb plant, at the very end of the sidewalk was a weathered, brick-red wooden garage which supported several rows of colorful Hollyhocks. Amidst the Hollyhocks, the Dutch girl and boy were in a permanent lip lock. In one corner was a plethora of peonies and the other corner was the many-decades-old rhubarb plant. A flat, wooden, ochre-colored bulldog with a menacing face “guarded” the rhubarb bush and had not left his post in more years than anyone could remember. Nearly every time we’d go out there, Nanny would point at it and tell me she’d had that bulldog since my mom was a toddler. Indeed, there are pictures, circa late ‘20s, in our old photo album of my mom standing next to the bulldog. Likewise, there are near-identical pictures of me at the same age, some thirty years later, standing next to him, screwing up my face like I was about to cry.

My grandmother had a green thumb and she always kept a few plastic baggies and some paper towels in her purse. Wherever she went, if she liked a houseplant or an outside plant, she’d take a “slip” and place that cutting in some moist paper towel and slide it into the baggie and stash it in her purse. She was relentless if she saw something she coveted. We once took her to Frank’s Nursery and she wandered away from my mom and I and eventually returned to our cart, her hand filled with “slips” – my mom was aghast, and well … Nanny was quite nonchalant about it. She brought them home, we put them in water, and by the time she returned to Toronto a few weeks later they had rooted. She had houseplants all over the sunny window ledge in her back kitchen and a massive Christmas Cactus sat proudly atop her ancient Singer treadle sewing machine – good thing she only did hand sewing as the plant was way too large to be disturbed. It got an abundance of sunlight on its perch and bloomed profusely every year … one Christmas she had a record one hundred blooms. I like to think I inherited my grandmother’s green thumb for flowers – I know I have a green thumb for weeds as I can grow them effortlessly. (Smile)

Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers –
plant your own garden and decorate your own soul. – Anonymous

We’re on the brink of the long-anticipated Labor Day holiday, a/k/a as Summer’s last hurrah, though it feels more like the 4th of July with these steamy temps and high humidity. The cars have been gassed up and are ready to go, as are their owners, and a little spin in my buggy was also in order. I’d not had the car out in a week so we ventured out together. I glanced at the odometer and have amassed a whopping 2,500 miles altogether on my car which will be four years old on September 23rd … can you say homebody? Someday I will write a post about my beloved Buick Regal which was twenty-one years old when we parted; how it ended up with as many as 64,000 miles on it I’ll never know.

I headed to Meijer because I am able to give the car a run, plus I walk in the comfortably air-conditioned store, and I did in fact rack up another four miles toward my ultimate goal.

I had hoped to beat the crowd and arrived early but I was not the only one with that idea. Well, round and round and round she goes and where she stops – nobody knows …. I did multiple laps around the perimeter of the store before I made my first pit stop and started filling my cart with a few groceries. It was a great people-watching adventure this morning and I’ll share a few sightings with you.

The way I see it, three factions of shoppers arrived this morning: the back-to-school crowd, the picnic basket procurers and the canners.

First I saw the moms and their offspring looking to buy back-to-school supplies. Really?! The school supplies replaced the 4th of July paraphernalia and right now Meijer employees wait in the wings, tapping their feet to put out the Halloween trimmings and treats. Unbelievably, Meijer is sorely lagging behind Kroger who already is advertising pumpkins … where is the house on fire to get pumpkins and harvest décor on your porch may I ask? The pumpkins will be moldy before the long holiday is over. I doubt anyone is slaving over a hot stove baking pumpkin pies or roasting pumpkin seeds with temps hovering around ninety degrees!!

At any rate, moms and their kids were busy pondering over and picking up necessities in the school supplies section. These moms were all about getting ‘er done and getting those kids back to school (and out of their hair) and the kids were wearing a dazed look (either from the early morning hour or just recognizing that their 2013 Summer sojourn was nearly in the books). I overheard moms quizzing their charges on what supplies they needed and for the most part I heard one- or two-word responses like “dunno” or “don’t care” or I saw the perpetual shrugging of the shoulders. Note to kids: best be thinking about bullet points for the inevitable paper or recitation on “what I did on my Summer vacation”, that is – assuming it is shareable information. Notwithstanding the lackadaisical answers by her brood, most of the moms were simply muddling along filling their carts with school necessities: thumb drives, external hard drives, printer ink cartridges, laptop cases or backpacks and perhaps at the last minute, tossing in a lowly package of loose-leaf paper and a pack of pencils or pens, the latter items hardly used by today’s scholars.

School essentials for me back in the day were a new leather book strap, loose-leaf paper, binder, pens and pencils and maybe a compass or protractor – heck, we didn’t even have calculators back then because we had to rely on our noggins for math. I always had my trusty paperback Merriam-Webster Dictionary with me. Way back then there was no Google, of course, to type in a word to see if it was spelled correctly. I surely won’t bore you with the rigors of researching for term papers, which necessitated a nightly trip to the Lincoln Park Public Library to immerse oneself in encyclopedias, then with the information located, queuing up at the sole copy machine with a pocketful of dimes and copying all your info “to go”. Mr. Schaefer, our wonderful Lincoln Park librarian when I was growing up, would help you with any inquiries you had, but only after you scoured the library index card catalog, and you’d better know your Dewey Decimal System and have meticulously searched each aisle of books before attempting to secure his aid! Nowadays, modern school kids merely hop onto Wikipedia or eHow as a starting point. These students have it soooooooo easy – and no, I wouldn’t want to go back and start school anew.

Another faction, present and accounted for at Meijer this early a.m., was the people packing their coolers with goodies for the trek to the Great North. The pickin’s were fresh indeed and flyin’ off the shelves. Cold salads and grill fixin’s for the holiday weekend were being scooped up as if there were a fire sale. Cantaloupes were getting thumped and gimongous watermelons that would break your toe if they fell on it were piled into nearly every shopping cart. Ears of corn were shucked on the spot as customers peeked to check out the cob’s integrity and trails of cornsilk followed nearly every shopper as they whisked around the store.

In the canning aisle, a few women were engaged in a lively discussion of pickling spices and exchanging recipes on the fly. A few of them had a pencil and the back of their shopping list out, taking notes. Pickles seemed to be the predominant topic where an animated dialogue ensued regarding the virtues of garlic versus dill on at least two occasions when I sauntered by. Canning supplies filled their respective shopping carts and I heard the tinkle of Mason jars slamming up against one another when the clique of canners eventually disbanded. I could not contribute to the conversation because I’ve never “put up” preserves or veggies, nor did my mom. Oh, she would regale me with stories of her youth when her family members would slave for hours over a hot stove making red and green chow chow as they referred to what you might call tomato relish. They also made corn relish. This relish-producing extravaganza occurred every August. They would return to Toronto with a cache of tomatoes, onions and corn from my great-grandparents’ farm in Guelph where they travelled to help bring in the crops the last two weeks of August every year. Mom would tell me that she and my grandmother peeled tomatoes, chopped up green and red peppers and stripped corn off the cob for endless hours. My grandfather was relegated to their cool basement with a bushel basket of onions to peel and chop, (and probably cry despite the matchstick held between his teeth), as this was his contributing effort toward the family tomato relish. He was banished to the basement to contain the strong onion fumes. It was a family event and they bottled up a great stash of tomato and corn relish to last until the next year’s harvest. It was slathered onto ham sandwiches or plopped atop fried eggs. My mom said it was alot of work and she vowed to never embark on that type of project again.

Her only exception for “putting up” fruit, was blueberries and this was very simple preparation. Around this time of year Mom would pick up several quarts of fresh blueberries. She’d wash them and line them up, one by one, on her cookie sheets to freeze them. then tuck a Tupperware canister full of blueberries into the freezer. Once we were knee-deep in snow, she would whip up a big batch of blueberry muffins. Ahhhh, the smell of cinnamon wafting through the house and sitting in your jammies eating warm muffins brimming with blueberries is still another image for the memory book.

On my walk this morning I passed a corner yard and an older woman was in the midst of hanging her wicker basketful of laundry out on a clothesline. I could just imagine my mom watching her handiwork and cluck-clucking with her tongue that the woman did not know how to pin clothes on the line. Yes, the clothes were not hanging uniformly, but very haphazardly – one black sock here, a long-sleeved shirt with cuffs dragging on the ground next, then a red sock, followed by a nightgown suspended by the hem – my, but it looked like the person hung those items up while blindfolded … in my mom’s defense, even I was a tad amused.

Actually, I am surprised to see anyone putting their clothes out on the line to dry anymore, not with the ease of a clothes dryer – once and done and that chore is over. I know they don’t smell fresh and sweet like outdoors, but it really is the way to go. My mom never had an automatic washer nor a dryer for decades. She had a washboard in the basement for scrubbing, then washed the clothes in a wringer washer. It was a long-involved process, especially guiding a full-sized sheet through the wringer with one hand and catching it with the other hand and repeating this task several times to remove the excess water. The poor clothes would get flat as a pancake and you’d need to wrestle with them to open them fully to hang them up. In the dead of Winter, the clothes were stretched out to dry on plastic clotheslines around the laundry room, but the other eight to nine months of the year, they went outside on the clothesline. Poor Mom had bad arthritis already but insisted on pinning her flannel and cotton sheets out there on her pulley line and reeling them in a few hours later. The sheets and her fingers would be frozen stiff and she refused to wear gloves. My mom had gizmos to speed up the drying process which most people would never see in their lifetime. There were pants hangers where you put whole pants legs over metal bars which stretched the pants and created a permanent crease while drying. She had a similar device for pairs of socks – metal sock stretchers shaped like a big Christmas stocking which allowed the socks to dry faster. On a lark, I just went onto eBay and found vintage items of these stretchers for sale. We should’ve saved ours but we ditched them when we got the washer and dryer. This only goes to prove that you should always hoard everything and one day it will be worth something.

If the clothes washing was not enough of a chore, my mom ironed everything – even my father’s balloon boxer shorts and all our pajamas too. She would iron my uniforms and aprons from the diner where I worked and she told me the “greasy spoon fumes” emanating from the hot iron on those clothes made her feel nauseous. Anyone who has every worked in fast food or around grease will agree that at the end of your shift, you are saturated with a grease smell, from your skin and hair to your clothes.

Mom never had a steam iron until her later years and she would sit at the ironing board, with her water sprinkler and press cloth at her side to ensure every wrinkle was eradicated, including in corners. I can just picture her sitting at the ironing board, smoothing out every last wrinkle from the two sets of Priscilla bedroom curtains, despite my retrieving them still warm from the dryer set on “wrinkle release”. Our country kitchen at one time sported pretty cream and rust Priscilla-type curtains and each side was pinned back with a rust-colored sash. My mom would iron that sash and I had to climb up and fashion each bow so it looked perky and functioned as a tieback as well. Well, first off, I hate climbing up high anywhere and reluctantly I’d climb onto the stepstool and struggle to reach the rods over the sink, without breaking my neck, all in an effort to tie the bow just right. Both the sash and I started out perky but by the time we were done we were anything but perky – a little listless and bedraggled was more like it! You can see my efforts on the sash in the above picture and give me a grade of A through E.

Polyester and cotton-polyester blends eventually became our friends and slowly the need to iron everything slipped by the wayside. It has been decades since I even saw the iron – it is no doubt sitting in the basement with the other relics of “must haves” from years gone by.