About Me

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DISCLAIMER: I don't really use a typewriter anymore. Oh, and this picture of me is, well, old. If you don't know me already, I'm happy to let you draw your conclusions from what I post here. I do, myself. As William Faulkner said, "I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

Friday, August 12, 2011

Codswallop and Mule Fritters

Software Glitch
My scanner has taken  a notion, like Bartleby, to prefer not to do the job for which it was engaged, and it is seriously cramping my inner photo-essayist's creative output.  The copying and printing functions of the machine work fine, but there seems to be no communication between the scanning part and the computer.  I suspect Software Glitches (they're kind of like house elves, only dumber).  

  Since I have a live-in computer technician, it will take slightly longer for me to get this issue addressed than it would those of you who have to call someone in.   Nostalgic blog entries involving nifty old pictures from my albums will have to wait until I can coerce sweet-talk  someone into re-loading the program.



 In the meantime, some observations of the Cranky Old Mare variety.  
   
   My Dad was fond of the word "codswallop".  I don't know where he heard it, but when he encountered a word he liked, he adopted it for his own.  As near as I can figure out, it means "used beer". Think about it.  If you're in Texas, get prepared to drink it.   Again.  

No one  cares about me,
no one cares about me at all
I can imagine Dad listening to the current ad campaign for brake service---Personal Pricing on Brakes.   "Tell us what you want to pay for brakes, and we'll do our best to make that happen."    Seriously?  "Let's re-do all 18 wheels for $12.95."   Uh huh.   Codswallop.   Or how about "Using Dr. Farfel's Flea & Tick Goop" shows your pet you CARE".   My pet gets a distinctly unloved look about her when any sort of grooming, administration or application seems likely to occur.  
What shows her that we care is a crunchy bit of toast, preferably peanut-buttered, or a smackerel of honey.  

*******

People who are paid to talk ought to learn how.  If they're paid to talk "news" at us, they should, at the very least,  be able to convey whether something is happening, already has happened, or will be  happening at some time in the future.  Have you noticed how newscasters like to say "We're back right after these messages" ?  I got news for yews...you're not back until you're back.  So you can't say "we're back later".   Stop it.  And don't say "NEPA" as if it were a two-syllable word.   Acronyms shouldn't be wordified in speech.  

*******
I have a handy "pocket" dictionary that I keep beside my reading chair in case I need to look up a word when I'm reading.  Every time I look for a word and don't find it in there, I write it on the inside of the back cover for future reference to a larger dictionary.  The list is so long now,  I think I may as well just donate the useless tome to a library book sale or something. Clearly it only contains the words I  already know how to spell and define.   And since it weighs 2 pounds and measures 7 inches by 5  inches by 2 inches, it has no business being called a "pocket" dictionary anyway.

**********
Recently I had occasion to send a sympathy card to the family of a co-worker who had lost his father-in-law.  I thought I'd check the internet for some etiquette tips on how to address the envelope.  In the process I found this incomprehensible advice:    "If you are attending the funeral with someone who could not make it, offer to take a handwritten note from the absentee..."

Oh, and back to those pesky newscasters...I heard one tell us this morning that there is a new piece of legislation that will make it against the law to be in this country illegally.    What?    Mule fritters.   


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Are you saving the stamps?

Looks like that's pretty close to four pounds.

   I don’t want to live in the past, but I do like to keep in touch with it.  One of Faulkner’s    characters said “The past is never dead.  It isn’t even past.”  (Forgive me; you’re going to have to put up with these Faulkner quotes.)   He was referring to the ongoing influence of some unpleasant history, but the same is equally true of the good stuff, and that’s what I consciously carry around.  It’s been pointed out to me that I grew up with a way of life that isn’t familiar to a lot of people of my generation (we used to call that being behind the times).   I’m going to take that as a license—nay, a mandate!--to indulge myself here with some nostalgic posts about my childhood and youth in the small villages and towns along the Delaware River, and in the unbelievably lovely surrounding country. 


   The photo at the top of this post was taken in the early 1960’s, which unfortunately is another way of saying “in the middle of the last century”.  The man behind the scale is my Uncle Gordon, who kept a general store.  He could sell you bandanas and bullets and flour and eggs and gas, but it wasn't anything at all like Wal-Mart.  There was a low wooden porch and a screen door that slammed satisfactorily in the summer time.  

 Right inside was the soda cooler.  Before the door stopped vibrating behind you, you could open the lid, reach in and pull out a dripping bottle of Coke, pry off the cap on the opener set into the front of the box, and wet your whistle.  A dime on the counter, and you were square with the man in charge.    

We lived just up the hill from the store, and I often got off the bus there after school to buy a soda and a bag of potato chips or Dipsy Doodles.  My grandmother lived in a small apartment in the back of the store when she wasn’t staying with us or one of her other children’s families who might need her extra pair of hands for a while.  If she was home I’d want to check in with her before spending my money, because she might have fresh cookies or a piece of coffee cake to offer.

   All the “pharmacy” items were behind the counter with the ammunition, cigarettes and loose tobacco.  The main freezer from which the ice cream cones were dipped was back there too.  Eight cents for a single, fifteen cents for a double.   If you zoom and look hard at that first picture, you can probably identify some familiar brands on the shelves---Velvet pipe tobacco, Contac, Haley’s M.O., HEET---those are fairly easy.  I can also spot the Vicks 44 cough syrup, Chapstick, Lysol concentrate, Absorbine Jr., Listerine in its brown paper wrap, and Johnson’s baby oil.   The corner of the glass candy case is there to the right of the scale. On top I recognize the big tub of pretzel rods--3 for a nickel-- and Planter’s Peanuts, Tums, Bic (pens or lighters?), Luden’s cough drops.  Too bad we can’t see what was inside that case---fireball jawbreakers, Tootsie Roll Pops, Bazooka bubblegum, Sugar Daddys and BB Bats, full size candy bars, Rolos and Lifesavers.  Beyond the candy case was the meat case, and then the small freezer that held the popsicles, ice cream bars and Nutty Buddies.  

   What is that slab of meat on the scale, there, do you think? Somebody was going to have a lovely Sunday dinner, I’ll bet.  If you wanted a pound of ground meat, Uncle Gordon would rip a perfectly sized piece from the huge roll of butcher paper on its dispenser with the built-in cutting edge, and lay it on the scale.  Then he would scoop .a mound of raw beef from the bulk bin in the refrigerated case. Splat! onto the paper, and miraculously the needle on the scale moved  to register precisely one pound. Flap, wrap, and round about with a piece of string from the spool next to the roll of paper. Slight jerking motion to cut the string on its own sharp mounted blade. Quick knot. "Anything else?"  “That’s it, I guess. Put it on the bill."    

   Uncle Gordon ran a tab for almost everybody within 10 miles in any direction.   Each family had their name written on the top edge of a small tablet, which stood lined up in a drawer under the counter. Most people settled up regularly, but there was a separate section in that drawer for those whose totals ran too high, or who went too long without making a payment.   No more credit on those accounts until they were reduced to a comfortable level.

  The main shelves of Gordon's Store were stocked with essential household supplies, the usual canned and boxed foods---Campbell’s soups, vegetables, cereal, flour, sugar, basic spices---and a few exotic items like Chun King Chow Mein and Appian Way pizza mix.  I never ate real pizza until I went away to college; I was married and living in Louisiana before I encountered a Chinese restaurant.  I’m not sure how I came to be the adventurous eater that I am now, but in those days, eating unidentifiable vegetables in a gelatinous sauce poured over crunchy brown noodles that came from a can was considered very cosmopolitan!

    In Louisiana,  I had a choice of supermarkets within walking distance (that was important!)-- either Winn-Dixie or the A&P.  I did most of my shopping at the Winn-Dixie.  It was clean and modern; the variety of meat and produce was wonderful, and I had no trouble staying within my budget, tight as it was. Besides, they gave out the same Top Value trading stamps Uncle Gordon used to reward his customers.   The A&P was a little farther away and harder to get to...it involved crossing a fairly busy access road divided by  one of Louisiana’s ubiquitous drainage canals. (Back home we’d have called that a ditch.)  I took the trouble to go there when I was feeling a little homesick, though, because the aroma inside  an A&P store was the same everywhere, and could whisk me instantly from the suburbs of New Orleans back home to the great Northeast.

Too bad Ann Page left town
At home, the A&P had a store-front on the main street, with a wooden screen door---no automatic opener.  It didn’t have a huge parking lot, wide aisles, or a deli counter full of prepared food, either. The floor was bare wood, and it creaked a bit here and there.  It was a little dark inside and smelled richly of wood, spices and freshly ground coffee. Long before gourmet coffee bars and exotic flavoring captured the nation’s fancy, long before I developed a taste for any kind of coffee, I loved the smell of freshly ground 8 O’clock beans.  A&P store brands were packaged under the watchful eye of a woman named Ann Page, who I assumed grew up with Betty Crocker, and took some basic cooking lessons from Aunt Jemima.   The A&P in Gretna, Louisiana, didn’t look like the one I grew up with in Hancock, New York, but it smelled exactly the same. After shopping in there I could go “home” and feel that Home wasn’t quite so far away.

I really am grateful for the convenience of modern supermarkets.  I appreciate the pharmacy on the premises, the availability of a roasted chicken when I’m too tired to cook, the acceptance of debit cards.  I am happy to see the growing number of products made from recycled paper and plastic on the shelves.  But I don’t think in 20 years (should I still be doing my own shopping!) I will feel nostalgic about any of those things.  I miss the sound of creaky screen door hinges, and kind of wish that “running to the store” still meant hurtling down the sidewalk, leaping over tree roots and having an extra dime for a creamsicle to eat on the way home.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

TESTING, TESTING


THIS IS ONLY A TEST. (strange little technical noises here)   THIS HAS BEEN A TEST OF THE FORMATTING SYSTEM. IF THIS HAD BEEN AN ACTUAL POST YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN LAUGHING BY NOW.  (IS IT EASIER TO READ ON THIS BACKGROUND? YOUR OPINION IS IMPORTANT TO US.)

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

From the bookshelf

I'm always reading somethingI belong to a wonderful community of readers, writers, librarians and lunatics over on LibraryThing.com, a website originally designed to allow people to keep track of the books they own.  The social aspects of the site took off in ways I don't think the founders anticipated, and now it is hard for me to remember what life was like BLT.  I was always a reader, but there isn't any math to explain how my literary universe has expanded since I joined Library Thing.  I comment on the books I read on  my own personal thread there.   I probably won't blog about all of the books I'm reading, especially the ones I think are well known already.  But from time to time, if I find something exceptional that might not be on the common radar, I'll highlight it here.    Such is the case with a book called Gotcha Covered: A Legacy of Service and Protection, edited by Ginger T. Manley.





I read it because my mother enthusiastically lent it to me over the weekend, and I found it thoroughly delightful. Ginger Manley is married to some degree of cousin of mine, which I always fail to calculate properly. Her husband's grandmother and my grandmother were first cousins...I think. ANYWAY...Ginger and her husband, who live in Tennessee, recently visited my Mom in NE PA, and Ginger gave her a copy of this book. When Ginger's great-aunt moved out of her farmhouse and turned over a collection of vintage domestic aprons to her, Ginger and her classmates from the Vanderbilt School of Nursing (Class of 1966) were motivated to create  The Nurses' Apron Partnership to help nurses provide services they might not otherwise be able to manage.  This book is an anthology of creative pieces inspired by those old aprons, which are featured in photographs at the beginning of each selection. Most are reflections or reminiscences; there are a few poems, some short fiction, a delightful collage, and the beautiful watercolor which graces the cover. The proceeds from sales of the book go to Burning Bush, Inc., a micro-credit organization established by a former Vanderbilt nursing instructor, to make educational loans to the Mt. Kenya cluster of Private Nurse Practitioners, who provide the majority of maternity and primary care to women in their area. You are unlikely to find this book in your local library or bookstore, but if you are inclined to help make a difference in a small way, while giving your eyes and heart a treat, you can purchase a copy through the TNAP website linked above.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Opening the door...

It's a glorious day in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and I'm not stuck in an office.  So what have I been doing all morning?  Designing this blog that I've been contemplating for, you should pardon the expression, a coon's age.  I've pretty much used up what creativity I might have brought to the day, though, so this is all there is for now.   I'll be posting a broadside on the barn now and again, about books and travels, reminiscences,  things that irk me and things that make my heart sing...same stuff everybody blogs about. I'm going to spend the rest of this day outside playing in dirt and thinking.