Boys Will Be Boys

My three older brothers and their friends always seemed to be involved in exciting adventures in the neighborhood. They built "forts" on Niles Hill in a mysterious place known only as the Big Rock. They had a cabin in the back yard and once even began digging a deep hole until my mother discovered that there was iminent danger of collapse and put an end to it. Then there were the wars with the kids who lived across the river on Woodlawn Avenue.

As the pesky kid sister, I wasn't included in their adventures but I took advantage of one of their abandoned tree platforms, spending many a summer afternoon there with fictional girl sleuth Judy Bolton. I did not endear myself to them when I snuck into the cabin one afternoon while they were off fighting their wars and tattled about the contraband cigarettes I found there.

So when I was introduced to my friend Jeffrey's "Cousin Artie," I heard tales of their childhood adventures on the family farm ....cap guns, caps being exploded with rocks and carbide cannons. 

carbide cannon fun on Crandall Hill
Jeffrey and Arthur demonstrate to a young Tommy Gilliland

A carbide cannon is still known to be among the safest noise makers. The carbide reacts with water to form acetylene gas and when mixed with oxygen inside the cannon's chamber, it creates a small explosion. Google showed me examples of pre-made carbide cannons for fun and for chasing pesky birds 

 Arthur tells me that coffee cans worked the best back when coffee cans were really cans with a lid that you removed using a key to twist off the seal. What worked even better were glass jars and that process involved knowing exactly when to throw them against a tree. He scanned his palm to find the scar from the time he held on to the jar a little too long.

That little can of carbide is still around here somewhere ...

Keeping Track

 

I wait until after Christmas to buy my new appointment book, waiting for the half-price sale. Some years, the shelves, either at the Barnes and Noble or the shelves of the virtual kind, are still well-stocked. Other years, I have to settle for a book that's either too small to receive all my scrawled notes or too big to fit on the old dry sink that holds my old fashioned telephone with the wires that disappear into the wall.

Like the telephone, the appointment book is old fashioned. I could choose to download an app on my cell phone or use one of the many suggestions that pop up every time I log into Zoom. But I don't. I instead choose to continue my old fashioned ways.

I record many things in these books - certainly appointments if I happen to be near enough the book when the appointment is made. But then again, most appointments come complete with either telephone or text or email reminders these days. When it's relevant to remembering, the temperature gets recorded - mostly in the spring when I'm in the early stages of growing things, or to track the string of hot summer days that have become more common these days. Other weather, like the 14+ inches of snow we woke up to yesterday morning also finds a place on the calendar.

It also serves as a recordkeeping space for the farm. I once spent a great deal of time entering all the farm records into a beautiful web-based farm management application, only to revert back to my appointment book when it seemed impossible to find the time to log it all into the program. 

A look back at 2020 is different. There among records of the first lettuce harvest, the first ripe tomato, the 23-degree night that took out the tomatoes in the high tunnel are these kinds of notes "Jane to town: post office, grocery store (for Mom too)" "Arthur to Close's" "A & J to Wegman's in Corning" "S.D. visit with Aucotts on deck"

"You know there's an app you can set on your phone to track everywhere you go," I can hear a much-younger person tell me. But, the app couldn't tell me that I arrived on back Crandall Hill on a warm sunny March 18 after a drive across the country, just as pandemic was becoming a common word.

Giving Thanks

Brothers & Cousins

Because extended family and both sets of grandparents all lived in the same town, we'd spent Thanksgiving with the Heimels one year and with the Fish family the next year. When Christmas came, it was the opposite - if we'd dined with Danny and Grandaddy for Thanksgiving, we'd gather around Grandma Heimel's big table in the apartment over Heimel's Market for Christmas.

At both Thanksgiving tables, there were some traditional dishes I'd pass politely on to the next person without taking a helping - oyster stuffing, gravy with giblets, creamed onions, squash, mincemeat pie.

But I loved my mother's molded cranberry salad. She brought the old heavy Enterprise food grinder out of the pantry and clamped it to the enameled  countertop she'd pull out of the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes I'd help to grind the cranberries, walnuts, oranges and to add to the jello, dumping the mixture into the ring mold to chill. Probably there was a mayonnaise dressing in a custard cup in the middle when it was turned out on a platter lined with iceberg lettuce leaves.

I looked forward to the relish tray with its assortment of pickles from sweet gherkins to the green tomato pickles that Grandaddy so loved, celery sticks and pimento-stuffed green olives. That was a fixture at the Fish table, always set with the blue and white Spode china, with matching serving dishes, and gleaming polished silverware. It seemed the kitchen was always steamy, and someone would open the back door for cool fresh air. There were always the pre-dinner cocktails – Manhattans, probably. I think I can remember the year they all had a little bit too much Thanksgiving cheer, leading to a very late dinner but perhaps it's only because it became family legend.

The Heimels always did things differently. There were no pre-dinner cocktails there and the china was from Limoges. Dad Dad and Grandma took their places at the head and foot of the table with Grandma closest to the kitchen. We listen to Uncle Roy share the blessing and then Dad Dad got to work on carving the turkey to order. Sometimes there were shrimp cocktails (but perhaps that was Christmas) and sometimes my father had his oysters raw in a little dish in addition to the oyster stuffing that was scooped from the front of the bird.

This year, there will be no gathering around Grandma Heimel's big table that fills Paul & Lugene's dining room today. We won't have a "Friendsgiving" celebration with our Washington family and won't share a wild turkey feast with our son's inlaws. Instead, I'm going to attempt Ina Garten's turkey roulade from a recipe I read in the New York Times and we'll harvest the Brussels Sprouts I've been keeping watch over all year in the high tunnel. My mom's making an apple pie from our Northern Spy apples and will furnish the cranberries but the molded cranberry salad will have to wait for another year! 

Vivaudou And Me

With life in the present presenting so many challenges, it's appealing to turn to the past and disappear for hours in boxes of musty old papers and photographs. I share this escape with my 97-year-old mother who's spent countless hours with old family records and photos. She delights in bringing me little gems like the photo below.

That's my great grandmother MeMe, (Anna Warner Stevens) on the right, with her daughter, Mildred Stevens Knox on the left. My mother had written that information on the back of the photo and had also scrawled year ???

Have you ever put a magnifying glass to work on old photographs? I am intrigued by the details revealed, like Aunt Mildred's beautiful boots and the way her collar is turned up. I look at her face and think about the old lady with deep set eyes who came to Thanksgiving dinner in Danny and Grandaddy's dining room on North Main Street.

The bench they're sitting on appears to be made from twigs and there's a jacket hanging over MeMe's shoulder. It appears they're in the country but, of course, Coudersport looked very different in those days.

MeMe's hair is styled as I remember it too, though in my memory the little bun at the back of her head was gray. And then, I looked closely at what was in MeMe's hand.

Vivaudou, I read, and just a few keystrokes on my computer brought me to this.

It's an advertisement for Mavis perfume, most likely on the back cover of The Ladies Home Journal, and dated 1920. In 1920, Aunt Mildred would have been 35, mother of three little girls, and MeMe was 55.

Election Day

I first voted in a Presidential election in 1972, on November 7, only a month after my 21st birthday. Arthur and I were living in Coudersport, in an apartment above Uncle Roy's grocery store. Our apartment, with its big window looking out on Main Street, was the headquarters for the Potter County for McGovern campaign. It was my first foray into local politics, rubbing elbows with the Galeton Democratic machine and the County Chairman, Earl Howard. To say there were few supporters of George McGovern among the old-school Potter County Dems is an understatement.

Our support of the candidate who opposed the Vietnam War amid all the social unrest in the nation sowed discord within our strongly-Republican families, though some chalked-up our political leanings on our youth and "idealistic" viewpoint. Those times were especially difficult for my father, a World War II veteran with memories of his days as a tailgunner on a Flying Fortress.

I look back on Election Day 1972 with some memories in sharp focus - walking through fallen leaves on the sidewalks of Coudersport in the sunshine, musing how normal that it seemed when the world was falling down around us. Then there was the red corduroy pant suit I chose to wear that day with its wide bell-bottom trousers and jacket with wide lapels, a soft white blouse underneath.

What I don't remember is voting. It must have been in the courthouse and I know it was on a paper ballot but that memory cannot be coaxed to the surface. I remember driving to various polling locations in the Opel Cadet, popping in to places like the town hall in Millport (still remembering that visit every time I drive by there all these years later) to see how the election was going. The old ladies sitting in their semi-circle with the books spread out around them, trying to be polite but smirking at the thought of anyone but Nixon winning the election.

And when returns began pouring it, chronicled on our black and white television by Walter Cronkite, no one was surprised by anything other than the huge margin of victory by Nixon - a man would would later resign in disgrace.

I was indeed idealistic in 1972 and believed McGovern's words: "I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise ... I make one pledge above all others: to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command. .. I seek to call American home to those principles that gave us birth."

I've voted in every presidential election since 1972, casting my lot with some winners but many more losers. I've spent the bulk of my life amid folks with vastly different world views as Arthur and I raised our family on this piece of land we love. We've claimed our places here, earning our livings, volunteering to bring music to enrich the collective life of the community in the Arts Council, working to support the public library, participating in a faith community.

Through these years, we've sat beside friends with different beliefs at church, in the community choir, in the conference room at work, in the restaurant and in the bleachers at the basketball game. Sometimes we'd talk together, Sometimes we'd keep quiet. Sometimes they would keep quiet. And through those years, while the chill of disagreement might swirl in the air, never did the icy hate threaten the community we've built together.

But in the recent years, things have changed. While we might disagree about how and why things have changed,  I believe we can agree that indeed things are very different. It's the difference between the chilly breeze of November and the icy winds of January.

Today, Election Day 2020, dawned with waves of anxiety crashing in on me despite my best efforts to breathe deeply. I hear the washing machine spinning in the laundry room downstairs. The school bus rumbled by right on schedule. The smell of eggs frying in the kitchen comes to me, mingled with the slightly scorched smell from coffee that's been on the warmer too long. It seems normal.

But there are so many things that are not normal. It's not felt normal for a very long time. These days, there's no way to sit down with folks sharing different points of view, and it's not just because of Covid-19.

This morning, I wish I had the glittery magic mirror Miss Nancy stared out from at the end of Romper Room School on tv: "Romper, bomber, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, how are we ever going to find a new way?"

Chautauqua Memories

 A collection of thoughts scrawled in my Chautauqua notebook over the years:

• The dogs of Chautauqua: Folks seem to favor the tiny ones. The little guys that hardly stretch the leash, the ones that yelp incessantly when strangers approach.

• Heard On The Way To The Amp: "I'm fine with leftovers." "I think the ladies have adopted a pecking order." "Where are we going, Bob?" "She was sure that the cat was dead." "I want ice cream." 

• View from the third floor porch on Miller Avenue, the Republican flag flying in the breeze:

• When people walk here, very often they are looking around – at the gardens, the homes, the trees.

• The dark burgundy shirts over black bottoms, first the five Hispanic women, their voices carrying the rapid staccato of speech I cannot understand. The couple carefully hugging the sidewalk, carrying their tote bags. Woman with gray hair and new bright pink sneakers, laces snowy white. Woman cradling the long stalks of glads, colors just showing themselves at the tips. Man carrying glads upside down. Thin couple running, the sound of a phlegmy cough. Carefully coiffed blonde hair "my natural color" and a front fanny pack.

• Starling landing on striped awning casts shadows from his feet. The gossamer threads of spiders reflect in the sunshine.

• Thoughts On Opening Night: Jay Leno, overstuffed. Uncomfortable tittering in the audience. Large and broad applause for anti-Trump jokes. Little girl sitting on floor, face illuminated by the small device in her hand. This is a new normal, unheard of even five years earlier.

Random thoughts from various years:

 • The rain held off until most had made their way back. What was once a colony of little cottages has become a colony of posh second homes, gleaming white kitchens with granite counters, carefully tended and mulched gardens, air conditioners humming in the background.

• There's a guy down on the floor of the amp who looks like Greg Eldred. The same baldness pattern, his Hawaiian shirt exhibiting difficulty stretching over his belly, the big glasses, horn rimmed.

• A chipmunk dashes between the bikes resting in the rack by the lake. A bird calling from the treetops, hidden from sight but identified by its call. The small plant thrusting hopefully up through the mulch.

• Sound: Faraway cars, boat on the water, people talking, words indistinguishable. Birds chirping, thrumming, calling back and forth; airplane; splash as a duck occasionally lands, seeming graceful and at the same time awkward. The rhythmic sound of a runner on the street behind me. More running, this one faster than the last.

• Sight: Fog enveloping the lake. Sky milky, like when you wash a carton of milk that has gone sour down the kitchen sink drain. The empty lifeguard's chair facing out toward the lake. A purple flower grows in the place where the concrete walls meets the grass.

• Someone has just walked through the grass and makes her way to the dock, her sandals making the boards protest as she makes her way to the end. She sits, her legs straight out in front of her.

• I just walked into the Octagon Building and tried to remember my 16-year-old self, an aspiring writer. Alas! It looked unfamiliar. Maybe the long pinch-pleated draperies were familiar with their nubby texture and style reminiscent of the dining room drapes in my family's home.

From Dust To Dust

As sunlight poured into my bedroom through the eastern windows, I was performing a morning ritual, pulling up the sheets and blankets on the bed, shaking out the pillows and there, highlighted by the angle of the sun, were hundreds - probably more like thousands – of dust particles floating in the air. I've noticed this spectacle before but in these times, when the world is gripped by a pandemic, it felt significant of much more than simple household dust. Those particles of dust - much larger than the microscopic coronavirus - are omnipresent, visible sometimes but mostly not.

Can we think about the coronavirus in the same way?  It could be all around you all the time but you do not see. And thinking about that potentially lethal virus strain in that way should make us even more conscious of putting on our masks, washing our hands and avoiding crowds, especially in confined spaces.