Archives for category: Memories

Dating in the old days

April 7, 2013 //

When you’re watching your grandchildren grow up, you can’t help but compare their lives to yours at the same age. It’s always jarring to look at a picture of yourself and realize you look as old fashioned to them as your grandparents did to you. You only hope that they can look past that and learn from your infinite wisdom, also hoping you have any.

When I was in 7th grade, junior high then, most of us started social dance classes. Other communities had similar places, but, in Tulsa, we had Skilly’s, where we first learned etiquette. They seated the boys on one side and the girls on the other and the boys had to learn how to walk, not run, across the room and politely ask a girl to dance. That was palm-sweating, nerve wracking, embarrassing and, yet, we all learned to be gracious. Not only did we learn to dance – fox trot, waltz, swing, cha cha – in the basic class, but they had dances for us to get real practice. This is me in 7th grade at one of the dances. Since I started junior high at 11, I must have turned 12 by this time, probably wearing my first heels, strapless dress and petticoats.

We had lots of dances in junior high and high school. It seems like there was always something going on. We also had social clubs in junior high and high school for both boys and girls. The clubs had dances, the school had dances, there were dances after football games, friends had dances in their homes where we played our stacks of 45s and 33 rpm records. And rock and roll was growing by leaps and bounds, so we had great music, lots of local bands, and plenty of opportunities to practice our skills. We danced fast and furiously and we danced a lot. At least I did back in the 50s and 60s. New dances came out all the time. The Twist was our new favorite my senior year.

As with most things, there was good and bad in the clubs, which excluded some kids and involved voting on members, not all of which was pretty, kind or fair. But, we learned to organize and plan events under the helpful eyes of our mothers, we learned to invite people out, and we started dating. Dating started with dance school, social club and school dances with your parents driving. There was the giggling with your friends at school while you eyed the boy you wanted to ask you out. There was the cringingly painful waiting by the phone, literally waiting by the phone since we didn’t have either portable or cell phones, and there was the horror when someone asked you out that you didn’t want to go with. And, finally, there was the joy of having the right boy call or ask you out, followed by the awkwardness of being together and getting to know each other. No wonder so many couples went steady, which was when you were supposed to be exclusively with that boy or girl. At least you didn’t have to wonder about the dance.

There weren’t just dances. We dated a lot. There were coke dates (casual dates to go get a coke and either get to know the person or just be together), movies, football games, basketball games, picnics, church events, and anything else we could come up with as an excuse to go out. Once you were going with someone, it wasn’t so much a date as deciding where you were going to tell your parents you were going. One time my future husband and I toured the Wonder Bread factory on a Friday night for a cheap date. I didn’t ever lie about where I was going, but I did end up other places, too. There was a lot of time until our Midnight curfew for most girls. I got to stay out until 1:00 when the dances ended at 12.

We hung out with our friends, too. I spent a lot of time cruising with my girlfriends and even groups of guys. Nobody seemed to ask where we were going on those nights, so we just cruised all over town, laughing, listening to the radio, and looking for whatever Friday night would bring. American Graffiti was the story of my high school days, music and all.

Anyway, I digress with lots of memories here. By the time we got to graduation, most of us had been on lots of dates of various kinds. Here I am at what was called the Southern Ball, a high school sponsored dance, my senior year. I had the dress and heels, had been to the beauty shop, because I know I could never have gotten my hair to do this on my own, and we were headed out. Rockin’ and rollin’ in the big heels and big hair. I think I still had my braces on – they came off right before my prom.

By the time we got to college, we were prepared as much as you can be to jump into the craziness of campus life. Here is a picture of my husband and me at a dance at Oklahoma State University a few months before we got married, my senior year. I love his high water pants – he had gotten out of the Navy that summer and grown a few more inches and his old civilian wardrobe needed some updating. But here we were, engaged and out on a date, going dancing as we had since we met.

My grandkids don’t date as much. They have a few dances, which they hate because there are so many drugs and the dancing isn’t as much fun. At least we knew how to do close dancing as well as do the newest ones and anyone drinking was thrown out. Movies are expensive so that isn’t an every weekend option. There don’t seem to be places for all the kids to hang out and they don’t attend the school sporting events like we did. It’s a new world. I don’t blame their parents for sheltering them more, for keeping them home where there are movies and video games to entertain them. I don’t blame parents for anything. We all do our best to protect and raise our children and who am I to say what I would be doing today. I’m just an observer, looking through the lens of what was and what is.

The word dating has a new generation meaning. Parents go on Date Nights, where we used to just go out with our husbands. The word dating is almost a euphemism these days. I never know for sure what they mean when adults say they are “dating.” It has shaded differences, for sure.

I’m being nostalgic as I remember the fun we had, blocking out the bad dates that also came with the experience. I hope my grandkids date with more than texts and emails, explore meeting different people and falling in love in the best of ways, not matter what they call the process. It’s all about learning to be in relationships where we feel the most comfortable and loved and have the most fun life can offer us. I wish everyone finds that, at least once in their lives.

Tags 50s, 60s, dating, nostalgia, reflections

Categories Entertainment, Family, Memories, Music, Reflections

Good Manners

March 29, 2013 //

Today I was in the check-out line at Sam’s Club and watched a man holding a little boy talking to the elderly woman behind him. Then he had the boy give her a high five, which was cute. It also made me think of something my mother said when high fives were first getting started, “what will happen to shaking hands?” She wasn’t against high fives, but she saw the writing on the wall as to the next generation of greetings. Little boys were taught to politely shake hands when they met adults in the old days.

Then, the line being slow, my mind went to her lessons in manners. And the music started in my head. She had a record, a 78 rpm, called Manners Can Be Fun by Frank Luther. I looked him up and he was a country singer, songwriter, etc, who gained a lot of fame with children’s records way back when. The record was based on the book of the same title by Munro Leaf. Anyway, this was one of my mother’s favorites and we sang it all the time. She laughingly swore later that she played it for us in our sleep. And I can still remember all the words the minute the music starts.

When I had my own children, I found the new version on 33 rpm, and played it for them. I hope it sank in – I’m sure it did. They all have good manners, although I’m not sure the parts about picking up their rooms was so effective as they grew up.

One of the most fun things I ever did for my mother was to dig out the record and send it off to have it made into a CD. It must have been the original 78 because i couldn’t find anyone in town to do it at the time. The man in California who transferred it for me was so entranced that he wrote me that he had made a copy for his kids. I gave copies to my children for my grandchildren in hopes…

I played it for my 3 year old granddaughter in the car the other day and she seemed fascinated as I watched her in the rearview mirror. Maybe it was the fact that I was singing along and knew all the words. If I ever want her to know her great-grandmother, this is the perfect way to start.

Hope this link works so you can enjoy it, too.

Thank you!

01 Manners Can Be Fun

Tags children, family, manners, music

Categories Entertainment, Family, Memories, Music

Canned Fruit

March 18, 2013 //

Here’s the kind of conversations I get into with my friends…one friend was looking for spiced peaches to serves and she couldn’t find them at the store. We started talking about how special those were when we were kids and how our mothers served them to guests. She thought it was a southern dish. A real treat to us as children. Then I was with some other friends and mentioned the spiced peaches. None of us had thought of them in years, so we started talking about how good they tasted. And about canned pears with cottage cheese, which ladies served at luncheons. And we moved on to the absolute childish joy of fruit cocktail. And how there were too few cherries in it, so you had to try to get one in your serving.

We all know about trends in foods as well as other things. Today, all those fruits, along with the canned vegetables (canned corn, green beans) we loved before there were frozen vegetables, that were staples of our diets way back when, have been found to have too much sugar or salt. Today, we can get fresh food easier than we used to be able to in the cities back then or cans with less sodium, less sugar, and so on. Companies like Del Monte have been around since the 1880s, so they have always been around in our lifetimes. They were timesavers from the days of growing and canning your own, a help to the modern housewife of the 50s and 60s.

I’m all for the health trend, but we all know what happens when you remember the taste or smell of something from your childhood. My friend and I had looked online to see if they still make spiced peaches, which they do. I was supposed to look for them at the store, but I kept forgetting. Today, I was just about to check out and decided to walk back to the fruit section. There were spiced peaches, right there in front of me. I opened the jar as soon as I got the groceries unpacked to see if they taste the way I remember them.

Yum! Yes, they do. Not only do they taste the way I remember them, but now they are flavored with the memories of childhood with every bite. I may never eat them again, but today I had a sweet taste of my childhood.

Tags canned fruit, family, history, nostalgia

Categories Family, Memories, Recipes

The Ugly Words

March 16, 2013 //

There are some ugly words out there, some of them mean and cruel, racist epithets, hateful terms. But there are a couple that I find the ugliest of all.

The first one is Cancer. If you hear this word, no matter what you know or who it’s about, you immediately think DEATH. Tell me you don’t automatically go there, no matter how many people you know who have beat it or are in remission. In those first shocking seconds, that’s what makes you gasp! From what I’ve read, it’s always there and it just gets a foothold on us when our immune system is down or we suffer a trauma or many other reasons. And it never really goes away, even if you’re in remission for years. You may never have another occurrence, but it is always hanging there. If it’s active or recent, you live from scan to scan. Even after the all clear, there has got to be a gulp before a doctor’s visit or every time you feel a twinge or ache. It’s not a death sentence for all, thank goodness, but it’s still pretty devastating to hear it said. I’ve lived through it with my husband and son, both of them gone because of the disease & the treatments, and with friends, some who lived through it, some who are still dealing with it and some who are now gone. It’s just an ugly word.

The second ugliest word to me is Widow. I looked it up and it’s been used since before the 12th century. That’s what it feels like…archaic. It comes from Middle English, Old English, Old High German and Latin variations of the word. The Latin word, videre, means to separate. I learned that widowhood is also called viduity. That’s an obscure, strange term that sounds like…what does that sound like? Anyway, widower doesn’t seem to have the same ugly sound to me. Widowers are men, sad and lonely, who most often will find another woman as quickly as they can. That’s kind of cold, but it’s very often, not always, true. This doesn’t mean they didn’t love their wives, but it’s just a male thing. I’m not making a blanket statement, just an observation. There are always exceptions.

I don’t know what the label Widow does to most women, but I didn’t like it. It’s a strange word to check on forms, an ugly word for a strange club you never wanted to join (as another widow friend of mine said). Here’s what the word conjures up to me.

Now, tell me the truth. Isn’t that the image that jumps to mind? Some variation of this, at least. Especially the wringing the handkerchief part. At least this one isn’t wearing a black veil. I’m not trying to be flip about it, because it is a painful, painful state of being at first. Your heart is ripped apart, if you loved your husband, and you feel like you’ve been torn in two. It’s not an easy thing and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I know people who have suffered through this at all ages, although I guess at some point as you get older, you suspect it will happen to you or your spouse. Even then, it’s not easy and can still be a shock. My parents were married over 50 years and my mother was devastated. She was a strong woman, but this was her life. Like all of life, everyone handles it differently, hence, the merry widow, the black widow, etc.

I don’t know where I’m going with this but it was on my mind since I’m marking 15 years of living with this label. I still think of him every day, I still miss him, I can still hear his voice. Mostly, I remember with love and humor and I’m lucky to see him in our children and grandchildren. My life isn’t like I pictured it when I was young and in love. It’s not even how I pictured it when I was turning 50, but it’s pretty darn good. Maybe because I know how loved I’ve been all my life. But, that crappy word. What can we do about that? Or would any word be just as bad? Just ugly, ugly, ugly!

Tags cancer, death, family, grief, widow

Categories Family, Memories, Reflections

Sixteen years ago today…my new life..

March 10, 2013 //

Sixteen years ago today, I became a different person. I went from mother to grandmother in one second that exploded into years that fill my heart and life. Sixteen years ago today, my first grandchild was born, followed by another one eleven or so weeks later and another one eight months later and then they kept coming until I now have eight, six boys and two girls. The first seven are between eleven and sixteen as I write this. The youngest is three.

But, sixteen years ago, my husband and I entered this new phase with joy and humor and all the anxieties that come with watching your children enter new phases of their lives along with you. We took the Grandparenting Class at the hospital to refresh our memories and see what was new in the world of babies. We learned, with amused glances at each other, that we were expected to do things a little differently this time around. There were car seats to contend with from the moment the baby left the hospital and infant CPR to learn and other things that I’m sure I’ve already forgotten. We graduated with a certificate that declared us as ready as we could be.

Shopping with my first time mother-to-be was an experience. In the years since I’d had my children, the baby business had exploded. I went with her to register at Babies R Us (the name makes this old English major cringe) and was overwhelmed by the aisles of choices to get this little one started. How did I ever manage in my little duplex right off the college campus when I had my first one, the inexperienced, but very educated, young mother that I was? Where we had one brand and one size of disposable diapers and only used them when traveling, there was an aisle filled three shelves up on both sides with diapers. Just disposable diapers. There were new kinds of diaper pails, which we probably could have done without, but listed anyway, going with the hype.

I used a new kind of baby bottle with my babies, Playtex with disposable liners. They had those, but there were infinite other kinds. Where to begin? There were different styles of binkies, which we called pacifiers and my babies never used. And accessories for the binkies. And an aisle of cribs and an aisle of strollers and an aisle of high chairs to match every decor and an aisle of car seats and an aisle of cribs and then there were the crib accessories. It went on and on and on…I couldn’t even begin to give advice because I had never seen most of these things or never had so many choices. Besides, most of the things we had so carefully protected our babies with had now been deemed unsafe. I think a lot of the industry is built on guilt and fear because who doesn’t want their child or grandchild to be as safe as possible?

Then you got to the cute side and all the clothes and toys and you just oohed and ahhed your way through the store, ending up with a long list of what you thought you needed along with all the things that looked so cute you couldn’t resist. The registry led to baby showers with young mothers and other grandmothers-to-be. Of all the parties that women have devised, baby showers are about the most fun. Opening all those gifts with those cute little clothes…it’s our way of playing dolls again.

When the time came, my daughter had read her copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting through and through and was moving on to the next book in that series, leaving me to flip through my old copy of Better Homes & Gardens Baby Book and remembering having to prop it open to follow the pictures on how to bathe a baby when I was starting out. My mother had done the same with her copy and she stood by me as we both began that journey together all those years ago. My daughter was induced, which has become pretty common for who knows what reason. On the morning of the birth, the entire family gathered, except for our son who was away at college. This was a far cry from our days when nobody was allowed in with the mother and the father sat in the waiting room with the other fathers. When it was over, he could call the rest of the family from the phone at the hospital. No cell phones for instant pictures then!

We could all go into the labor/delivery room to visit until closer to the time and my husband and other daughters, both of whom were also pregnant by this time, and I waited with the other grandmother-to-be. What a difference a generation makes. My son-in-law was not only allowed in for the delivery, but carried the baby to the nursery. That was pretty scary since I’m not sure he had ever held a baby, but he did it like he had always known how. He got to stand there with pride while they weighed this not so little 9 pound 5 ounce boy and we all watched through the window. By that night, everyone had gathered and we filled the room, baby talk beginning to stream out of our mouths. How instinctive is that?

They throw the moms out of the hospital as soon as possible these days and they have the babies with them most of the time, so it’s a little bit hectic between the nurses, the visitors, and trying to figure out what is going on with your body. I was happy to remember my two-five days stays when I had my babies as times I could get some rest and gear up for the rest of my life. I was visiting the hour that the lactation nurse came to explain breast feeding and I’m sure my son-in-law would have killed to be back at his job at that moment. It was all my daughter and I could do to keep from giggling as she told her how to stop swelling by plastering her chest with cabbage leaves. I hadn’t nursed because it was kind of out of fashion at the time I had my first child, but was happy with my choice by the time this nurse got through with us. I’m all for it, but it was a bit of overkill from an overzealous advocate that day.

The parents were thrown out on their own with this new baby and I spent a lot of time remembering the ropes myself, hoping to be helpful as I remembered what an overwhelming responsibility it is to become a new parent. Fortunately, it is amazing how quickly you remember how to hold a slippery, wiggly baby. My mother and I laughed a lot remembering our own adventures and bonded with her new role as great-grandmother. It was a time of happiness and joy. What is better than having a little baby snuggled up against you?

By the end of that year, we had three new grandsons and I was well on my way to being known as Mimi as well as Karen (I’m not sure all of my grandkids know my real name even now).

We had had first trips to the car show, the zoo, the Drillers baseball games, the swimming pool and the pumpkin patch. Life was changing and repeating itself in the best ways. It was also teaching us about life and death as my husband was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of this season of births. He died a week after this oldest grandchild had his first birthday, changing all our lives and teaching us how love heals those losses and life is never-ending cycles.

Once I became a grandparent, grandkids started coming at a fast rate. Within the next couple of years, there were two more boys…

Then a girl and a boy.

Each time there was a birth, the ever increasing family filled more and more of the hospital waiting room, ready to greet the newest addition. We could all diaper a baby in seconds, had wiped more faces than we could count and the babies probably had to figure out sometimes whether the person holding them was a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle. They were interchangeable at family gatherings. And they grew up way too fast.

Then we had another one. The only two births I missed being at the hospital for were my two granddaughters. The first one was born while I was in Seattle with my son as he battled cancer, so we met her together over the computer, laughing at her first hospital picture, and then meeting her in a few days at the airport. The second one was my son’s daughter, also born in Seattle. I’d have been there, but we didn’t know when she was coming, so I heard from a text in the middle of the night and saw her first pictures on Facebook the next morning. Such was the new technology in those fast moving years since the first baby came.

So, now I have eight wonderful grandkids and each is unique and a delight, just as their parents were. They teach me so much and keep me up with what is going on in the world and make me feel old and young at the same time. Following their busy lives, watching them grow into young adults, sharing their mistakes and triumphs, is a blessing beyond words. I am lucky to have all eight of them here with me. I make some of their ball games…soccer, football, basketball, baseball…and their assemblies and their confirmations and graduations. The biggest problem is that they grow at a faster speed than my kids did. Maybe I’m just on that downhill slide that comes when you go over the hill. We won’t talk about that.

Sixteen years ago, I started on a new journey with my children, watching them become parents, watching them grow as people, watching them nurture their children through life. Now we’ve got babies who are taller than their parents but not as smart…yet. Sometimes I think that watching my own children with their children may be the very best part of it all. May I live long enough to see my grandchildren with their children and my children become grandparents! How much love can one family have? There’s always room for more.

Tags family, grandchildren, grandmother

Categories Family, Memories, Reflections, Uncategorized

The Birthday Cake

March 3, 2013 //

Every year on March 3, I make a birthday cake, German Chocolate cake made from scratch, for my husband. It takes awhile and it’s not my favorite in the world, but it was his. He died fifteen years ago this year. We don’t spend a lot of time sitting around grieving, but we do remember and we laugh a lot. I just make the cake and tell the kids it will be ready and they show up.

I met Alan when we were both 16, just before he turned 17, at a church dinner during our junior year in high school. I was there with another boy and he told me I just had to meet this guy, he was so funny. I was hoping to get to know another boy I liked, but that didn’t turn out to be so great. Anyway, I remember this tall guy rushing through the room with some other boys, acting goofy. I actually thought he was younger than me and that was that. But, for some reason, I never forgot that moment I first saw him, it stuck in my head. That summer, we met again at a church retreat where we spent a week on a small college campus. This time, I did get to know him and really liked him. He was tall, about 6’2″ at that time, and weighed about 220. He was silly and fun to be around, liked to dance, and we could talk to each other. I don’t know what we talked about but I wanted to see him again when we got back to Tulsa.

He had enlisted in the Navy Reserves and went to boot camp right after we got back. I remember writing him for the two weeks he was gone. We had a retreat reunion right after he got back and he had lost 30 or 40 pounds at boot camp and I remember riding on his shoulders in the lake at what was then Skyline Amusement Park, which had a small lake, roller coaster and other rides. It’s now Post Oak Lodge in Jenks. We hit a wall after that. He wanted to go out with a friend of mine and I admit she was a little hotter than I was. Finally, after many phone calls and conversations with my girl friends trying to figure this out, I asked him to a dance my social club was having. We had our first date in September and danced and danced. I’m not sure how I got him to ask me out again or who badgered him into it, but we really did start dating and that was the beginning. We were seniors in high school, I was skinny and had braces on my teeth that came off right before the prom, he grew two more inches and was skinny with his ears sticking out and I was in the advanced classes and he wasn’t even close, but we filled each others gaps (a quote from Rocky).

We went to separate schools in the fall, he went to two years of active duty the next year while I stayed in school, and we wrote a ton of letters to each other. Long distance calls were expensive and we didn’t have computers, cell phones, etc to communicate. By my senior year in college, he was home and returned to school as a sophomore and we got married during our two week Christmas break. I graduated and started teaching as a graduate assistant while he went to school, he started working for my father in the summers, we had our first daughter, and we finally came back to Tulsa for him to work full time for Daddy. Three more children came along, and we lived our life together with a big fun family.

I can’t say what made us a couple. He always made me laugh but he could be moody, my brooding Scotsman. I always understood him though. All those talks and letters for 4 1/2 years had given us a pretty good sense of each other. We were always each other’s best friend, we shared the same values, we loved our family, we loved each other, and we laughed so much….so very, very much. We would look at each other when we were the maddest and sometimes break out in laughter at the absurdity of it all.

We lost him way too early through cancer that attacked fast and furiously and took him right after he turned 53. Life moved on for all of us, but we always take time to stop and remember. As I bake his cake today, there will be a flood of memories, sweet, funny memories that surely sift into that cake. I will always love my sweet guy. Happy Birthday, Alan!

Tags family, memories, traditions

Categories Family, Memories

Riding the Bus

February 26, 2013 //

There’s a lot of talk these days about our need for more mass transit or rapid transit. Way back when I was little, the bus was a big part of my life. Not that I took it all the time, but it was a pretty fun way to travel or get around town. One of my grandmothers drove a little, around Ardmore, but not on the highway, so she always took the bus to come see us or stay with us while my parents were on a trip. We would pick her up or drop her off at the bus station. I loved the bus station when I was little. It was such an exotic place to go and watch all the people coming and going. Tulsa had the beautiful Art Deco bus station – and airport – in those days.

Sometimes, I would go home with my grandmother, riding the Greyhound with her all the way to Ardmore, which must have been about a 6 hour drive in those days. It was fun to sit beside her watching the landscape go by, different than from the back seat of my parents’ car. As I got older, and I’m talking about 9 or 10, I got to ride the bus by myself. I would take it to Oklahoma City to see my other grandparents and my cousins. Once, I took it all the way to Ardmore. On that trip, my aunt in Oklahoma City met me at the station there and waited with me until it left again for Ardmore. I remember sitting next to a window, reading a book and looking out the window. And watching the other people on the bus. Quite the adventure.

While my grandmother stayed with us, we took the bus downtown. I think she could have driven my mother’s car, but that was a scary thought for all of us. She wasn’t the best, an understatement, driver, even in her own car. She walked a lot at home. Anyway, we’d walk about two or three blocks to the bus stop and ride downtown to eat and shop at the Kress store, walk around, look in all the store windows, and come home. It’s hard to describe how much fun that was. I guess it was just different than driving downtown with our parents and because she always bought us some little thing at the store. She didn’t have much money, so it wasn’t much, but it was a treat. And, we weren’t in any hurry so the waiting and slow pace was nothing to us.

As I got older, my friends and I rode the bus downtown. I can remember being in Oklahoma City when I was about 12 and going to a movie downtown with my cousin. My aunt dropped us off and we were to take the bus home. We got tired of waiting for our bus, so we just took the first one that came along and ended up somewhere other than where we were supposed to be. On purpose. Not that we were scared…we often did stupid things together, giggling all the way. We walked for a long time after getting off the bus and I can’t imagine how we found a phone to call my aunt to come get us when we realized we were probably in trouble. No cell phones in those days! My aunt wasn’t too happy with us…giggle, giggle.

As shopping centers popped up and I became a teenager, we began to walk to those places for hanging out with our friends. Waiting until we could drive cars. No more buses after that!

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a city bus in Tulsa. We’re very much a driving city, which doesn’t help those who can’t afford cars or don’t want the hassle of parking or driving in traffic. The only thing that will change our driving habits is the cost of cars and gas, although that doesn’t seem to matter to most people. I drive a small car that costs almost as much as my first house. And it’s a cheap car comparatively…a hybrid. Getting places quickly is the main issue, I think. Nobody has or takes the time to wait for a bus… or anything else. The age of instant gratification extends to getting places, too.

The buses I take these days are mostly charter buses or tour buses or shuttle buses. Taking the bus long distances has the reputation of being dirty and dangerous. Pretty sad. Oklahoma State has wonderful buses, the BOB (Big Orange Bus) system, for those who commute to the university in Stillwater. I rode one with a group and they are plush compared to what I remember. A comfortable place to study on your way to class down the highway.

I rode the buses a lot in Seattle when I used to visit my son, later son and daughter-in-law, there. I easily learned the bus routes and loved the ease of jumping on and riding downtown or back rather than fighting that traffic or finding an expensive place to park. They were colorful trips to say the least. The diversity of Seattle was seen in force on the buses, a never ending parade of humanity. I looked forward to it actually.

I still have a little origami bird that an elderly Chinese man made for me while we rode. I was sitting across from him, watching him create this little treasure from a piece of newspaper. I found out later that he was known for riding the buses, giving away his little birds. He quietly folded the paper, then looked up at me, smiled, and handed me the bird. Charming! One of those serendipitous experiences in life that we should treasure!

I don’t know where the bus system will end up here in Tulsa or if my habits will ever change or have to change. All I know is riding the bus was a special part of my childhood, one that I wouldn’t trade. As I sing “The Wheels on the Bus” with my granddaughter, I’m sure what I see in my mind is so different than her vision…the wheels go round and round, round and round, all over town.

Tags 1950s, bus ride, family, memory

Categories Family, Memories, Reflections

Research Papers

February 19, 2013 //

Here’s how I got to this topic today…

I saw a movie about Joan of Arc, the one starring Ingrid Bergman as a 3o something year old playing a 16 year old, although she did a great job with what she had. I’ve always loved the story of Joan of Arc and find her story absolutely fascinating. Late last year, I had seen an old movie of Joan of Arc, I think it was silent, that had been on a list of top ten movies or female performances or something of all time. It was based on the actual transcripts of Joan of Arc’s trial and was just brutal. The poor actress never acted again.

Anyway, that took my confetti brain to a paper I wrote in college when I was taking a semester of Mark Twain in graduate school. My thesis for that class was on Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, not one of his more well known books, but one he called his favorite. The book was highly criticized when it was published, probably because it was so different from his other works, especially the ones where he viewed religions so irreverently. It was called too sentimental and not historically correct. I took the stand, with all my 21 years of experience, that Twain based the work on more historic truth than they thought. He probably did base his own image of Joan on his beloved daughter, Susie.

Those thoughts morphed into memories of those term papers that I always seemed to be writing. As an English major, it was part of the deal. While I was taking the Twain class, I was also teaching Freshman Composition as a graduate assistant, having to teach how to write those papers. In those golden old days, a research paper was a tedious thing, unless you really liked researching, which I did. It required many visits to the library, a grand place to go at Oklahoma State University. There you plowed through the card catalogue by hand, looking for anything remotely connected to your topic. Then you had to find this book or article and either check it out or sit in the library and read it. I think I made notes on little note cards for some reason. Maybe I organized them into something…who knows.

After you digested all of this information, you took all the notes and started writing a rough draft…by hand. I learned to write papers in junior high and high school, using the rules in this little blue book, which I can’t believe I still have. I may need it some day and it does have really good information on just writing in general.

Either in high school or college, I also used this book, good old Strunk & White. While writing this, I looked it up and found that it was considered antiquated just a few years ago. If you know nothing about writing, it still gives you some good lessons.

After you had your final draft finished, and you may have had to write several, you were faced with some of the low tech of the time. Papers had to be turned in typed, sometimes with more than one copy. We didn’t have copiers then, so we used carbon paper. I knew people who had to have several copies of each paper. Oh yeah, there could be no errors. Sometimes, the professor would let you get by with one or two. Picture sitting down at your typewriter, which was an electric one by the time I got to college. I learned to type on a manual. Electric typewriters were all we had until word processors came into being by the time some of my kids were in college. At least they had copiers.

Anyway, you sat down to type your paper, which had to have footnotes and a bibliography, knowing you couldn’t have any mistakes. There was also the time factor because few college students got to this point until the night before the paper was due…no matter how long you had worked on it. You had to stop and roll the paper down part way to insert the footnote number, hoping you would get the paper back in the same spot. And you had to plan when to stop the page so that you could have room for the footnotes. It was a delicately balanced process.

Then came the dreaded mistake. You had to peel back each copy and correct each one with a typewriter eraser and something to scrape off the carbon word. Later we got Liquid Paper, although teachers didn’t like that so much. Even later was correcting paper or tape. Imagine a 20 page paper with this process. I’m cringing now…and I was an excellent typist.

OK. You finished the final page and rolled it out of the typewriter. Then you had to proofread the paper. Oh no! You find an error and you have to start all over. I was a student counselor in the dorm as an undergraduate and saw some real drama with term papers. When I was teaching….well, I saw some real interesting final products. And you might have more than one paper due at the same time. Super drama!

So, I have gone from Joan of Arc to this tale of research papers. I’m so grateful for what that old process taught me. There was a real sense of accomplishment when you had a good idea and found information to prove it. There was a discipline to it all. I don’t know how they teach this process today or why it’s nearly as hard with computers, but I’m sure it is. Students are students and they probably still write their papers the night before.

This is one of those times I’m just glad I can look back on all of it and don’t have assignments due or grades to worry about. Life is worrisome enough after college. In fact, those worries don’t seem so big now. Happy Spring Term to all those students out there. You’ll end up ok, even if you procrastinate. Smile.

Tags college, education, high school, research papers, writing style

Categories Memories

Photography and me

February 16, 2013 //

My lifelong obsession with photography began with looking through drawers of photos at my grandmothers’ houses. They both threw them in a top drawer of a chest of drawers in a back bedroom and I would just stand there going through them, looking at my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncles, and friends and relatives that I didn’t know.

My father used to take a lot of pictures, especially during the war. He had movies he took from his bomber while traveling to Puerto Rico and South America before flying over to Africa, snapshots of the guys stationed in Africa, and color movies of African cities. He even took movies while on bombing missions. He was the Squadron Commander and pilot. He laughed much later, saying he took rolls of color film with him, not realizing he couldn’t replenish it easily during the war. He took a few pictures of me when I was a baby, but he didn’t take that many through the years. A few when he and my mother travelled, but not so many.

My mother didn’t really like photos until much later in her life. Her father died when she was 5 and her mother struggled to raise three kids during the depression, so maybe she was trying to put those memories behind her, although she recalled those years with much humor and love. She just didn’t like photography as much as I did, I guess. In her later years, she treasured the photos of Daddy after he died and loved the ones of her grandkids. They began to mean more to her.

When I was about 12, I got disgusted with the photos in our house being thrown in a box and put them in an album. I didn’t really organize them and I glued them, so they’re hard to get out now. I got my first camera around that time. It was a Christmas present and I can still remember the bright yellow Kodak box it came in. I was so proud of that camera!

It’s hard to explain to this generation, with their phones that have cameras built in for instant gratification, what it was like to have a camera until very, very recently. My Brownie Hawkeye was the latest thing at the time for the general public, not like the fancy Nikons and Leicas that real photographers used.

My camera used flash bulbs, which were sometimes unreliable and not always handy. You could take the flash attachment off if you wanted and we took a lot of pictures outside. At my age, I was dependent on my parents for supplies, like film and bulbs, so I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I would like to.

Basically, here is what you had to do to get a picture:

1. Load film in the camera. This was tricky because you had to insert the end of the roll in one spool and roll it around, then insert the spool in the camera. Sometimes, you didn’t roll it straight and had to do it again or the film would break.

2. Once the film was in the camera, you rolled the film with the little knob on the side until the number 1 showed in a little window at the back. Rolls of film had 12 pictures back then. Later we got rolls with 25 pictures.

3. If you were using flash, you had to attach the flash attachment and then insert a bulb, making sure it was in all the way.

4. You looked down into the viewfinder and held the camera very still while pushing down on the release. If you pushed too fast, you jerked the camera and ruined the picture, which you wouldn’t know until you saw the pictures later.

5. Then you rolled the film to the next picture so that you didn’t double expose the film and have one picture on top of the other.

6. You removed the flash bulb, which would be hot, and threw it away.

7. At the end of the roll, which sometimes took weeks since we couldn’t take as many pictures, you rolled up the entire roll before taking it out so you didn’t expose the film to light.

8. You took the roll to the drug store or someplace where they could develop it and waited a week to pick it up and see your pictures, which were small squares with black and white images.

Needless to say, I have embraced the advances in photography through the years, having many cameras, and loving my digital Nikon D5100 I have today, which takes photos and movies and gives me more than instant pleasure. I took classes years ago, learning to develop and print, which has helped me now that I can edit on my computer. I don’t know if photography is less or more trouble now since we spend more time on way more images, but it sure is fun. My kids and grandkids won’t have a drawer of photos to look through, but they have my computer and Facebook and albums.

My lifelong fascination with capturing moments in time is undiminished through the years. Click!

Tags camera, photography, photos

Categories Memories, Photography

High School Revisit

February 14, 2013 //

Yesterday was an interesting juxtaposition of years of my life. I was working on my 50th high school reunion in the morning and received emails out of the blue from the guy who was our senior class president and another who was Mr. Edison that year. It’s Edison Week, the week Thomas A. Edison High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma celebrates the namesake’s birthday with a week of celebrations, culminating today in the awarding of the next Mr. and Miss Edison, along with class superlatives.

Yesterday afternoon, I was at Edison for several hours to watch one of my grandsons in guy cheerleading, a fun tradition of Edison Week. I hadn’t thought about any of this until last night while I was watching videos of the day with him. When I go in the doors of Edison, I immediately feel at home. The halls look smaller, but I can go back and picture the kids, in their various cliques, grouped around the front hall, waiting for the bell to ring, as they were back in my day. The outside has some changes structurally and there aren’t motorcycles out front as much as cars, which is a change. We didn’t have too many kids with cars back in my day. The girls aren’t wearing hoop skirts either!

We didn’t have drugs, but we had the smoke hole. We had more dances and they may have been more fun since kids don’t really date or dance the way we did. There were downsides to that, too, for those who didn’t have dates. Today’s kids are more group oriented when they go out, but that can be a good thing. How can they possibly afford to take someone to a movie or out to dinner? Nobody goes on Coke dates anymore. There are dance classes, but few take them. They can learn the latest from YouTube.

But, when I started really looking back, there are so many things that are basically the same. We decorated the halls of the school…

…just as they do today. This picture is a great illustration of the teenage boy’s brain as he improvises a way to hang a banner by balancing on a 2 inch brick when standing on a chair on a table didn’t work. There were ladders close by, by the way.

The school has fewer students today, but they have more cheerleaders. Here are the cheerleaders in 1963…

Today, they do intricate routines, way beyond 2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate. The gymnastics are incredible.

Face it. The kids are much more fit than we were, especially the girls. It’s a different kind of training, different kind of body toning than we knew. Even our biggest, strongest athletes couldn’t match the bodies I saw yesterday. Or the jumps, leaps and throws. I’m not sure that girls today could even relate to the quaint, which is a kind word for those hideous outfits we purchased at Sears and had our names monogrammed on, gym suits we wore. Jumping jacks and sit ups were pretty much our exercises, although we did get to do some modern dancing, play a few basketball and softball games, and swim. Swimming was awful because we didn’t have blow dryers and you had to walk around all day with your hair in a scarf. I guess you could wear rollers to class – ha!

Edison Week really hasn’t changed much. We had a gridiron show and I found pictures of our version of guy cheerleaders, 50 years ago. These were the football players and the other jocks. The guys have gotten more creative through the years with intricate routines that are SO teen age boy in their enthusiasm and silliness. I have film of my son’s guy cheerleading group.

Here is my grandson’s sophomore class guy cheerleading group…

One of my sons-in-law was Mr. Edison, way back in 1990. It’s a shock to my kids that Nostalgia Day this year was a look back at the 90s, with the kids wearing the styles of that era. My kids are cringing and I’m smiling and trying to remember what they wore. What the heck did I wear way back then, by the way? It’s so far back… Yesterday was Luau Day with all the school dressed for the islands. We had some Hawaiian skits and my kids had luaus, too. It’s always a good party theme.

One of the nice things about living where you grew up is seeing the continuity of life and viewing the changes through different generations. My parents were from other places, so I felt no connection with where they went to school. My kids and grandkids are walking the same halls in high school that their father (for part of junior high) and I did. Yesterday, I got to share in their youth and it was refreshing to be surrounded by all that energy and excitement. I loved the cheers and screams and laughter…mostly, I loved that I got to breathe in some of that rarified air that goes with all that can be good with teenagers.

I watched with pride as the kids said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the National Anthem. That hasn’t changed.

Mostly, I guess that what I wish for the next generation is that they continue the traditions, making them their own. I do wish they had sung “Hail, Hail to Edison” for me. Just for old times sake…but, yesterday wasn’t about me…it was about them. My past and our future!

Tags high school, memories

Categories Family, Friends, Memories, Places, Reflections

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