Coffee Spoons and Trash Bags

  I know J. Alfred wouldn't have drunk instant coffee, but that's pretty much all we ever had in the house. Dave preferred making his own Maxwell House in the morning, and would get the real stuff on his way to work, and after he retired, occasionally at Stewart's, often with Don and/or other locals.
   I was never a coffee drinker, though I always liked the smell of coffee brewing. My mother would get up early---when I was little, it seemed she was always awake and downstairs ----and she would make my father's breakfast, brewing coffee in a little yellow enamel percolator. It was a comforting smell; all was right  with the world.  Later, for our breakfast, she would make us cocoa. I don't know about the others but I never switched over to coffee. During my "social years," I would go along with the others and after dinner and a drink or two, would come the coffee. I would take a few sips, and  that would be enough, even back then, to make my heart race a mile a minute.  I don't suppose I've consumed more than a pint of coffee in my entire life.
    So it would be incorrect to say "I've measured out my life in coffee spoons," but you get the idea.
  Now trash bags are a different unit of measure, and a more plausible one. The accumulation of life's daily existence could be measured by the contents of a trash bag.  "I have measured out my life in trash bags," doesn't have quite the same ring, though. Apologies, T.S. Eliot, I'll work on it.
     

Dave---

  Dave was never a fighter. During his youth, if the need for a physical encounter developed. he would turn it over to Don, a more willing combatant, and a loyal brother.

   But Dave, uncharacteristically, told me this story: He was in the army, maybe in training or in actual service. He was really thin then, standing almost  5'11" and weighing about 135 lbs. or maybe less. I know when we met, a few years later, that he told me he weighed 138 lbs., but I saw from his pre-marriage physical that  his weight was actually 128 lbs. His explanation was that he didn't want his weight to be less than mine.

    Anyway, in the army, he encountered a typical bully, as was common back then, though not labeled as such. Because Dave was so slender, and thus presumably weak, the guy nicknamed him "Shoulders," a play on the name Schroder. One day, leaving the dining hall, the guy was behind him and shoved him, saying, "Out of my way, Shoulders,"  Dave turned around and punched him once in the face, hard. The blood flowed, the nose was broken. 

    That ended the encounters with that guy. Nothing more came of it. The guy couldn't have known that back then, Dave had muscles of iron. For party games, he could lift his body straight up from a chair just by holding his hands on the arms of the chair. He used to jump straight up from a standing position, as with 2 people holding high a broomstick. He could drive  a golf ball the full length of the fairway, acing  more than one hole-in-one.  And he is the only one I ever knew in person who could walk on his hands. He did so in Ma's house, much to her amusement and astonishment at the sight of him walking from the kitchen to the living room on his hands. And so it goes.

The Same Flower That Blooms today, Tomorrow...

Hello, Grandma

Grandson just called. Went to a friend's wedding in N.J., and on way back home he had an accident., had a few drinks of which he is incredibly embarrassed.He gave the public Defender my tel.# to see if I could maybe "bond him out."

You know you're old when...

...most of your doctors are not with you any more, for one reason or another. I'm not referring to Dr. Foley, Dr. Grattan, Dr. Symansky, but the more recent doctors I have known, time, of course, being a relative term:
    Dr.  Carroza,  Dr. Binnick, Dr. Pietrocola, Dr, Mastrianni, Dr. Goldstein, Dr. Constantino, Dr. Almonte, DDS's Esmay & Carroll
There are quite a few more, but it's my choice not to see them anymore, or else I just no longer need their services, such as Dr. Verdini, and Interventional Radiologists Doctors Herr, Marshal and Amberdekian.
    So I still have my primary Dr. Petersen and good old Dr. Agrawal.

Sad...

Season in the Sun

Who is us?

   Back in the 1980's, our Parish was still assigned 2 priests. Father Bondi was the pastor, an outgoing, jovial sort. I remember at the time, it was a requirement to say daily Mass in Valley Falls, probably during Lent. Mass was at 6:30 a.m., and if the weather was bad few would show up at the church. Evidently a priest could not say Mass to an empty church, so if no one else was in the church, Father Bondi would drive down and pick up my mother.
  The other priest was Father Monte. He was somewhat younger, and much more reserved and formal. He was quite handsome, I suppose, with dark hair, and he possessed a very good singing voice. One day, he announced he was leaving, was giving up parish priesthood to serve in the seminary, to devote his life to prayer. He seemed to despair of the future; the only reason he gave us was that he had come to the realization that, "There are more of them than there are of us."
         I remember his words because I didn't quite grasp what he meant. Now I think I do.

Tradition---literary version

   A long time ago, I read that it was impossible to begin a tradition.I don't exactly know how that would work out, but the practice of visiting the graves of loved ones on Memorial Day reaches back far into my memory.
    My mother lost her mother in 1950 and she was very sad for a very long time. My father used to drive us to the cemetery, St. John's in Troy.  When Helen came to live with us a few years later, she would also go with us. They would plant flowers on the grave, geraniums, which my grandmother always had in her flower garden, just beneath the kitchen window, "over home."  I have always associated the smell of geraniums with Nanny's house, and later with the annual and melancholy Memorial visits.
   My father died in 1966 and was buried in the cemetery in Schaghticoke, so now there were two cemeteries to visit. Still a sad day of mourning, but that would change. I was doing the driving then, and in 1970 a newcomer joined our observances and sparked a new joy in remembering the dead. In a few years, with two kids, there was less grief and more life. After paying our respects and when the geraniums were installed in the urns, a new tradition, if I may call it that, began. That was stopping for ice cream cones, which all, and maybe especially  Helen, enjoyed immensely.
      We did that faithfully for a number of years, until my mother's death in 1983. By then, there were two teens and a six-year-old, and I'm a little cloudy on the visits from then on. I'm pretty sure the older kids still went, until they left for college.  By then Dorothy would go with me, and I'm sure the youngest child. I know I made the visit every year, and have a memory of the last time a child accompanied us.
     After Dorothy died in 2011, I still  make the visits, though I have given up going to the cemetery in Troy where my grandmother, Helen and Matt, as well as Ann, are all buried. The cemetery, in financial deficit, no longer had the caretaker in his cottage at the entrance to the cemetery. I was there alone that last day, and had the uneasy feeling that someone was watching me. There was a lot of terrain and hillsides, so I have not gone back, not by myself.
     So I'm still uncertain of how the  definition of "tradition" would apply. Can a tradition which once involved many be upheld by a single person, even if that person was the solitary observer for at least a decade? And do traditions expire on the death of the last participant? (The ice cream cone rider was abandoned years ago.

 

No words...

Tradition

Reset, or what?

That double-knock again, at 4:45 a.m.   The sound wakes me up. I don't know what it could be, sounds more wooden than metallic.

More Flora

This year's Mother's Day Petunias,
    Pic#2 is of one of my first plantings. Ma dug this Flowering Crab from the front yard where it was not flourishing she said. She dug the hole herself and planted this tree. It was beautiful for many years, but is now crumbling with age. Alas.
   Picture #3 is of one of Dorothy's Peony plants. I dug this one up, and either Dave or I planted it. It has had spectacular blooms each June ever since.
   Picture #4---Who doesn't like white Violets.
   Picture #5  and 6 are  of Lilies of the Valley, hundreds if not thousands of them, all deriving from about a half dozen Ma gave me from her garden decades ago. They have spread so far out in the lawn that now they are getting mowed. I'd donate those outriders if anyone wanted to dig them up.

Flora

Or how I spent my vacation... The bower of flowers is pretty much past its prime,  either or both seasonally or organically.
   First picture shows sad remnants of  our second Dogwood Tree. The first was a gift we planted roadside. It was struck by a car; I splinted it together, and it bloomed successfully until a second car hit it, completely snapping it off this time. We received another as a gift and planted it in the back of our property for safety. Maybe too near the shade of some trees, because each year another part of  it dies. What's left is worth keeping though, at least for a while longer.
     We used to have  healthy and fully bearing grapevines but for the last several years, the vines have flourished but the grapes dried up before ripening. So their structure, an old gym set, was torn down and discarded. However, pics# 2,3.4 show they still have signs of life. Maybe some time in the future...?
    Picture #7 is of a flowering crab, rescued from a field at the old house. Short season of bloom and heading toward the wires overhead.
     Picture #5 is a Bleeding Heart, from Dorothy. and last picture is of a group of lilacs which Ma gave me from her lilac trees which are still the most impressive in the area, rivaling even Rochester's Lilac Festival. I just scooped out some dirt and stuck the shoots in. They have been totally neglected and now overrun by brush and decrepit trees.

Our changing language

O, remember the days when people used to say thank you very much. No longer! Now everybody says thank you SO much. Just listen.

So he SAYS.

A.I. RIP

  At the computer listening to the finale of American Idol, which season I'd watched only sporadically. I personally did not care for any of the Top Five, including this year's winner, Just Sam.
   As does everything nowadays, it just made me sad. It used to be a must-watch show, with contestants such as Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia, Phillip Phillips, and my favorite, Adam Lambert. I remember Marilyn driving Dorothy and me to meet the family at Cape Cod through the densest rainstorm ever experienced. Joe T. had written on the cabin door the names of the 2 finalists, who he called Carrie Underwear and I forget the other guy.
   To my jaded self, this year's contestants were just plain dull, in voice and personality. It is true I can no longer find anything interesting, but Ryan Seacrest also seemed bored, sitting in his home, head in hand for much of the time. I guess I'll just have to wait for the release of Tiger King, the Movie.  Maybe Nicholas Cage will step out of the role and Donald J. Trump can play the part.

Lifesaver or Deathwish

This may be the most ingenious heartburn remedy ever, but just thinking about it makes me cringe. 

Unable to Multi-Focus

Now that a sign language interpreter is present at Gov. Cuomo's briefings, I can't follow his words because I can't take my eyes off the interpreter.

Social Distancing---Chipmunk Version

They stand their ground up until 6 -10 feet. Then they scurry away, the craven little

cowards.

Bear Collision

   

Report of man hitting bear in the road in Johnsonville the other day. He saw it, slowed, only tapped it. It was a small bear, so maybe a cub and part of a family. Don't think I'm not prepared:

I need an aide-de-camp.

My Lucky Day...

Just got a call from John Stacey of the California office of the  Mega Millions Lottery. I won---big.  (I said send me the money.

The Wind

   This Wednesday morning, enroute to VFPO, I saw a fairly large tree, maybe 2 of them growing close together, had been uprooted on the left roadside approaching the village. Fortunately, they landed sideways, so caused no harm or road obstruction.

Late Afternoon Squall

Treasures / Loot

May 9, 2020