Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Likely my dating confusion may be at least partly laid at the feet of Greg Clarkson who ruined me that beautiful spring for (many, if not all) other men. In the summer of 1963, we'd moved again from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. I grew to my full adult height and from about 90 pounds to maybe 105 between the end of the last school year and my birthday at the end of the summer. My teeth were not snaggly new growth any longer, though it seems there were still a couple of molars to come, and the wisdom teeth that never did make it through the gums but were finally surgically removed when I was over 40. I could fix hair nicely, my own in a dark Gidget flip, and I washed and set my mother's to earn money. I worked cheaper than a professional in a beauty parlor (now called a salon). At the coming Christmas, I would receive makeup in my stocking - Angel Face pressed powder and the palest pink lipstick ever seen. Upon my body, curves existed where none had before and these made me feel just slightly awkward at the country club pool. (My parents eschewed the golf side of that club so I could make full use of the pool. It was a bargain to them to pay half-price and they knew I'd swim more than they would golf.) I turned 11 late that August.

The truck transporting our household belongings to Salt Lake was involved in a terrific accident along the way. Everything we owned was destroyed and my parents received a sizable insurance settlement. We gathered donated items from relatives to use in an apartment while we gathered ourselves. By early autumn, they had bought a house on the (then) far west stretches. Construction having just begun, there was still time to add a few custom touches and then we waited. We'd often drive out to the site after my dad came home from work. He'd hoist me up onto the second floor into what would be my bedroom and I could see all over the valley, lights beginning to twinkle here and there. I dreamed. This was to be the nicest home they ever owned, decorated nicely, with everything in it brand new. There was little development yet near Taylorsville. Everything needed to sustain life was also under construction to accommodate the booming growth in housing and residents. Oh, yes, there were gas stations and some mom-and-pop stores. But for major shopping, the library, and other necessities, we'd have to drive a bit. Dad would actually have a commute into the city.

Though some families were already moving into their completed new homes, the schools weren't springing up quickly enough to accommodate all the kids. The Valley West developer, whether a thoughtful Mormon father himself or under pressure from the new homeowners, devised a shortcut for the kids to take to the elementary school thereby avoiding Redwood Road. This heavily trafficked thoroughfare was used by everyone coming into and going out of the area and also by semi-truck drivers passing through. There were no sidewalks, the crumbly blacktop meeting the gravelly, weed-choked dirtpack irregularly. During the early autumn months, the shortcut flowed with a veritable river of kids going through the covered pathway and across a now-deserted sugar beet field. The school was an ancient, forbidding hulk of dark brick and no architectural relief, 3-stories and maybe 100 years old. Until the new schools were ready, the youngest children began their day at 6:00 a.m. and upperclassmen at 1:00 p.m., with school getting out at 6:00 in time for dinner, an imperfect temporary situation. When the snow flew, the shortcut became difficult and I remember trudging along Redwood Road in the afternoon, arms filled with books, heavy coat, gloves and boots. Soon enough I came to understand the honking, hooting truck drivers were not sounding "Hey, kids, get up farther on the verge to walk" messages, but "Hey, baby" salutations. Parents carpooled the kids home in the dark and snow, and soon enough John C. Fremont Elementary School was ready for us.

Normal school hours and a new facility, not yet even filled to capacity, made for a wonderful spring.  Softball began and counted as our PE portion of the day, with my 6th grade class pitted against the other. Remember the year: girls were not required to play softball if they didn't care to, but they had to go to study hall if they didn't play. Once a month for a few days, a girl could plead a physical excuse if she cared to. And then - the Promise Land - on softball days girls could begin to wear some form of trousers, but only on the diamond, not during the rest of the school day. That was OK enough for me. My father always, but always, treated me like his kid, not only like his daughter. I knew how to play softball. I was now bigger than most of the other kids and stronger, including the boys. I was fearless and skilled, sliding into base having never bothered me. I was pretty fast and I could catch a hurtling cannonball without dropping it. "Don't drop that ball, Les. Morgans play hard!" "OK, Dad!" But, oh!, the piece de resistance. My father owned a most wonderful wooden bat, 36" long and 33 oz. - a most manly bat and likely too much bat for me at the time. On softball days, I attracted some noise carrying in my bat and my bag, which I think was a bowling bag, with my pants and sneakers in it, for we also did not wear sneakers during the rest of the school day. These days were the highlight of my week and I learned much that spring. I learned never, ever to throw my bat again after making a young fellow drop to his knees in tears. I'd never much thrown my bat before that, but I got a little show-offy there on home plate, adding a little elan to my swing. I learned that some of the glee expressed by others on softball days had to do with me running the bases like the wind and getting in under a high pop fly. It wasn't so different from the swimming pool or the honking, hooting truck drivers.

"Hey, Greg Clarkson really likes you." A boy from the other 6th grade delivered this message and I flinched, I am sure. "Oh?" "Yeah, he thinks you play really well and you're cute." Uh-oh. "Oh." I walked away, completely unprepared for such an announcement and not knowing how to cope with it. Oh sure, I knew who he was. He was in the other class and may have been the only player more talented than I. Quite tall and very thin, he was strong and fast and tough. He stared me down at the plate and on the field. I always knew I had to play against Greg Clarkson and not so much against anyone else. The other pee wees kind of ran around and Clarkson was the only real competitor. I imagine he felt the same, in softball terms, about me. We always pretended not to be looking at the other, but now I noticed his hair was longish and curly, dark. Oh, not long hair as an original affectation like the Beatles who were taking over all of our pubescent or prepubescent minds. More like his mother had allowed him to skip one haircut because the Beatles had taken over his mind. Soon we began to exchange notes. I was comfortable with that, easily finding my voice in written word. He had miniature messengers at his command and the notes fairly flew back and forth. Then it was telephone calls. I began to use a phone upstairs so my parents, both with eyes bugged out at the notion of a boy calling me, would not be able to hear every (innocent) word of my side of the conversation.

The girls who were my friends were fascinated and began to suit up for softball so they could watch us on the field. The boys who were his friends seemed to watch him exclusively. Were they taking lessons from his example or had they been warned that I was his and they should not even look? We'd each dawdle on the grounds for a short time after school and finally a chaste, quick peck of a kiss was exchanged, some 20 child observers marking the occasion in silent awe. One afternoon he head gestured me to join him around the corner of the building. I looked toward my friends and weighed whether I would do this. I did. Around the bend, he wasted no time pushing a small parcel toward me, a jewelry box, to be precise. Taking it from him and feeling not on solid ground, I noticed he had dirt under his fingernails at the end of the day. Inside was a modest neck chain and a clear pendant with a mustard seed inside, perfectly appropriate for an 11-year-old girl heading for 12. Since that time I have heard a couple of different mustard seed legends, but when Greg asked me if I knew what it meant and I said I did not, he told me it represented "I love you." I did not respond to that in any verbal way, but I felt my eyes widen. Then he proposed what he knew to be my favorite tune as "our song", the meaning of which also had to be explained to me. We exchanged a kiss no more heated than the ones delivered in view of mesmerized 6th graders, he put the chain around my neck and we emerged onto the playground. I surmise Greg had older brothers or sisters because he was smooth - smooth! - and I knew nothing about any of the steps. But I liked the dance.

We became local celebrities, Greg Clarkson and Leslie Morgan. Even the teachers seemed aware of the chaste connection and smiled at us. The mustard seed pendant was much handled by young girls. I don't know what Greg had to deal with in his crowd of admiring boys. We held hands while walking in the hallway, though we would never have kissed openly and nothing, nothing changed on the softball field except that I tucked my necklace down the front of my shirt. The end of the school year approached following an idyllic spring and it was announced we'd have a 6th grade party day to include a movie in the cafeteria, "free dress" (slacks and sneakers ~ yay!), and if we brought our own records, we could play them and dance. A number of the moms provided better-than-school-cafeteria snacks and it was a red-letter day. Funny that I do not recall what movie was shown. But I remember that we sat close and held hands throughout as other kids exchanged looks and grins. No other young people so coupled up. What, we were enough for everyone, even if it was vicarious? When the music started, it was revealed that Greg arranged for our song to be played first. We danced, surrounded by silent classmates. He danced quite well, actually. Soon I saw some girls dancing together. When some fast tunes came on, some of the braver boys jumped on board. It was better than a prom.

He told me his family was moving to Alaska in the summer. I was good at geography and I knew his bike wasn't going to carry him to my house or the pool any longer. He reminded me we were nearly 12 - well, he actually was already. It wouldn't be so long until we could design our own lives and not be held hostage by our parents. My mother told me to invite him for dinner. She grilled steaks and did not act weird in front of Greg. My dad talked decently with him about baseball. He held my hand in front of them and kissed me goodbye at the door. They saw this. And then he was gone. He was an excellent letter-writer and he was allowed to call me once a month for 10 minutes. My parents allowed reciprocal phone calls. I did not cry or pine miserably, though I missed his company. Eventually it faded away, perhaps when we moved back to California in a couple of years. Or perhaps when the next youngblood said "My friend thinks you're cute." Or maybe Greg was attracted to a lovely young female in a parka. Anyway, it ended predictably, without rancor. I owned the mustard seed necklace for a very long time - decades. I do not know where it is now.

In my ears right now:  Oh, come on, what do you think?

Time to Tidy Up

I broke out the DustBuster on Sunday. Oh, it's literally true that there was some crumbly debris in the crevice between the carpet and the baseboard. I got it up and then tried to locate some coffee grounds or cat hair or anything, really, to pull up into my DustBuster. It took me a moment to notice the symptoms. For when I start obsessively vacuuming, it is metaphorical. It means I need to tidy things up. Ex used to joke that when I was "chewing on things", trying to restore some order to myself, he would run out to tell the neighbors to throw open their doors because I was on the way down the street with the vacuum cleaner.

I am not "troubled", exactly. It's more like my head is filled to maximum capacity and some of the voices are speaking too loudly. Some of it is about my writing and some about other aspects of life. I'm unsettled and dissatisfied with myself and it's time to regroup and become tidy again. I want to write and I also want to read the writing of other bloggers. I want to do something with the closet that almost contains all the crafting materials and - oh, yes - I'd really like to make something with said crafting materials. I want to make a huge crockpot of red sauce and feed people, but I can't focus to buy the thoroughly well memorized ingredients.

I have an unruly queue of posts waiting in the wings. I want to finish Chapter 2 of The Field Trip and I've still not told the best Sugarhouse story of them all, despite having written Chapters I, II, and III and about the Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society. The holidays came and I got distracted writing about them. I need to get us out of Sugarhouse and on with the ensuing 50 years! I still have a mountain of photos to share from the last camping trip and the one before that, and there are three embryonic posts about the things I see and experience "out there".

The race weekend unsettled me as they always do if I cannot be present. One wants to be at the race, given some meaningful occupation. One wants to drive ahead, get out, wait for the peloton to appear, check out his position and form, assess his well-being, and repeat the process. One wants to hand up water at the designated place on the course, and if one fails to plant the water in his hand, she cobbles a plan to drive forward, get out where she can easily be seen and keep trying to give that water until she succeeds. Only the first race of the season has been completed. Knowing the hellish conditions he rode in, I found it particularly difficult to watch the clock, watch the radar, watch the hour-by-hour weather and hope not to receive a phone call too early for him to have finished. It's going to be a busy spring, with races near and far.

This morning, at the intersection of Desert Inn Road and Durango Drive, my (almost) four-year-old car turned 20,000 miles. At the moment the digital display flipped from 19999 to 20000, it hit me that I had an empty BlackBerry holster in my purse. I did the 360, went home, collected the device from the exact spot where I knew it would be, and made it to work on time. It is not like me to be so forgetful, and particularly about the BlackBerry that is always at my fingertips.

For Tag and for Kirk (and anyone else, of course), I saw a news article that revisits an old topic once presented on this blog. It seems the Neon Boneyard is undergoing some changes and perhaps some day soon, I won't have to contemplate jumping the fence to commune with those venerable things.

Friend Tag had something cool on his blog this morning and I'm going to snag it from him, as Kass has already done. Its theme is what happened in my birth year. I like trivia games and round robin games. I've been known to start one or two and participate in more. I'm going to process mine a little differently, however, leaving out the boilerplate stuff that applies to everyone's birth year and commenting on the things that strike me. I have a few entries of my own to add, as well.

What happened the year I was born.

In 1952, the world was a different place. There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. I seem to remember that.

In 1952, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was This Is Cinerama. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazed eyes when looking at the poster. They were still showing it widely 8 years later when I was taken to see it. I remember the trip over the Grand Canyon and the virtual roller coaster ride.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. Heck, even before there was VHS. People were indeed looking at movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty. And mostly all of that without 3D computer effects. It was also before colored TV and transistor radios.

In the year 1952, the time when you arrived on this planet, books were still popularly read on paper, not on digital devices. Trees were felled to get the word out. The number one US bestseller of the time was The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it? It resided on my parents' bookcase and I have read it.

In 1952, West Germany has 8 million refugees inside its borders. I was born not so very long after World War II.

Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom at St. James's Palace, London, England. This pleases me as I am an Anglophile and I think she is a practical, likable woman who knows how to do things we might not expect of her. She did active military service in World War II and when an intruder entered her bedroom in Buckingham Palace, she talked him down while she rang for assistance. She shoots and is outdoorsy. Ex was fascinated by the pastel purse that always hangs from her forearm. He was convinced she kept a gun in there in case she had to take care of herself in a dust-up. She certainly wouldn't need to carry a wallet and ID and money. She has other people to do that for her.

The Diary of Anne Frank is published. I first read it very young. It was my first awareness of Jews and what they suffered. At the time I read it, I didn't know there were bad things one's father couldn't prevent from happening. It terrified me.

The United States Army Special Forces is created. A British passenger jet flies twice over the Atlantic Ocean in the same day. Martial law is declared in Kenya due to the Mau Mau uprising. The first successful surgical separation of Siamese twins is conducted in Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to François Mauriac. The Nobel Peace prize went to Albert Schweitzer. The Nobel prize for physics went to Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell from the United States for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith.

The 1950s were indeed a special decade. The American economy is on the upswing. The cold war betwen the US and the Soviet Union is playing out throughout the whole decade. Anti-communism prevails in the United States and leads to the Red Scare and accompanying Congressional hearings. Africa begins to become decolonized. The Korean war takes place. The Vietnam War starts. The Suez Crisis war is fought on Egyptian territory. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others overthrow authorities to create a communist government on Cuba. Funded by the US, reconstructions in Japan continue. In Japan, film maker Akira Kurosawa creates the movies Rashomon and Seven Samurai. The FIFA World Cups are won by Urugay, then West Germany, then Brazil. I think of the 1950s as cold and steely gray. No color. The cold war, men with gray hair in gray suits driving big gray Dodges, sterile scientific progress being made everywhere.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in November, 1952. For me, he epitomizes the men with no color, the men with gray hair in gray suits driving big gray Dodges. And yet . . . Stepfather was an aficionado of Norman Rockwell paintings and the art on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. He was generally Rockwell's age and he appreciated the images that reflected life in his era. I am not particularly a Rockwell fan, but when Stepfather organized a group he took to lunch and then to a Rockwell exhibit, I went along. I am not a Rockwell fan, but I was a Stepfather fan. The museum was packed with patrons ogling the magazine cover images. I roamed around, not impatiently, and landed before Rockwell's portrait of Eisenhower. Although painted mainly in white and neutral tones, this image utterly screams color. It is warm and exudes light. This must have been what the man was like in real life. Colorful and engaging. It was painted in 1952, the year of my birth.

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15? In the Heat of the Night. I do, but Bonnie & Clyde rings my bell more clearly. My father took a girlfriend and me to see it at a drive-in. It was a grand outing until a bedroom scene showed itself and Clyde's lack of sex drive was discussed. One of the most uncomfortable moments I've ever spent in my father's presence. Today we'd just cackle about it. Then it was excruciating.

Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was Ode to Billy Joe by Bobbie Gentry. I remember. I didn't Google this, I have that thing for lyrics, remember? "It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty delta day, I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay . . . ."

Were you in love? Certainly.

Who were you in love with, do you remember? I've never forgotten for a moment.

When you were 8, there was Pollyanna. I wanted to be as adorable as Hayley Mills. I still want to be as adorable as Hayley Mills.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1952. There's TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Kukla, Fran and Ollie. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There's The Ed Sullivan Show on now. That's the world you were born in. I was introduced to my Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show at age 11 in 1964.

"Progress", year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading? The quotation marks are my addition. I'm not sure we are making "progress". I'm a bit jaded, a little cynical. I am terrified about where the world is heading.

The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1952. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? The Floppy Disk. Optical Fiber. The Fusion Bomb. Anything would have blown my mind in 1952. I was a newborn that August.

Christopher Reeve was born. And Dan Aykroyd. Douglas Adams, too. And you, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone special. Everyone taking a different path through life. Angela Cartwright (Ha, Kirk!), Annie Potts, Carol Kane, Cathy Rigby, Harry Anderson, John Goodman, Juice Newton, Leslie Morgan, Marilyn Chambers, Mr. T, Patrick Swayze, Roseanne Barr. I'm in some pretty good company here!

It's 2010.
The world is a different place.
What path have you taken? I'd say that differently. I haven't "taken" it. I'm still "taking" it. I'm not complete yet. I'm still standing.

In my ears right now: The Beatles. The End. Kass wrote about love being the great equalizer and I'll take one of those to go. Because I know that in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Something that charmed me: The Badger dropped in his sincere thank you comment this afternoon. He was touched by the kindness of so many.

That Summer, the Arm and How One Handles Things

Summer of 1958. I was still 5 when we moved to Salt Lake City. I'd turn 6 in August, just days before starting first grade at Columbus School. My teacher was to be Miss Ross, who was probably about 24 or 25, just a little older than my parents. Miss Ross appeared to like my father very much, and he seemed to like her right back. My mother didn't seem to care for this mutual liking. Mind you, dad and Miss Ross met exactly once, at Back-to-School Night. But my mother was sufficiently put out by that mutual liking to sign on quickly as Room Mother. I think she wanted to keep an eye on that Miss Ross, even though serving as Room Mother would require her to come to our classroom with cookies, cupcakes and the like, sometimes in inclement weather, pushing Gary in his buggy. She had a fine run as Room Mother, never failing to appear when requested, and always having enough treats for all the kids and Miss Ross. This was not the last time my mother's antennae would come out when my father spoke to another female. He is a gregarious man. She must have been wrapped in knots frequently. And there was all that time he spent traveling on the job . . . .

I was recently commenting on the blog of one of my followers. His post and the commentary had started a couple of trains of thought. One was aging, one was about making poor decisions in life, perhaps having addictions, exhibiting troubled behaviors, simply not knowing how to find one's way. I commented that I, too, was a broken person trying to make good and that I was already at least damaged (if not actually broken) by the time we moved to Salt Lake. By the time I was 6, I was in a complete state of confusion about many things. That's a pretty broad statement. By it, I mean that about many, many things, I simply didn't know how to act or react. I didn't know what one was supposed to do in certain situations. I had no siblings to chew on stuff with. I was not spanked, so I didn't learn in that way that I'd behaved unacceptably. I mostly took my cues by studying adult facial or other physical cues. The trouble with that is that some of the adults I studied were a little skewed. I had a tough time balancing my impressions and landing on conclusions that would hold from one event to the next.

I've already written that, yes, I know hearts, heads and psyches practice selective recall. And this incident will have some of that woven through it. I'll ask the reader's indulgence. It was a traumatic event and I'm just telling it the way it feels to me. I see it in short, vivid scenes, an old black-and-white movie that plays and then breaks from the reel, only to take up again a little later.

It is the only time I can recall that my mother played with me. I'm certain she had to have played with me other times, but I can't bring a specific example to mind. Literally. It was late June and dinner was over, dishes cleaned. My dad watched TV indoors. The Christensens, Lorri, my mother and I were in the back yard, the shadows long, the sun dipping into the west. My mother suggested we play a game in which one person lies on the grass (that was she), bringing her knees to her chest, feet up. It is hard for me to imagine her being willing to lie on the grass - she was prissy - but she did. This once. The other person (Limes and Lorri, alternately) sits on the feet of the one lying down who then snaps the legs forward, sending the sitter flying through the air to land as she might. We did this a few times each and, for a small woman, Mother could really put some English on that snap! But, of course, we were small, too - good projectile girls. It happened on my fourth or fifth snap-and-fly. That time, when I rose from the grass, I was crying. One did not have to be an M.D. to know that something was very wrong with my right arm.

Mother Christensen had been varnishing the redwood picnic table and I have a vivid memory of her scurrying to our back door, varnish can and paint brush in hand, calling for my father. Father Christensen scooped me up and dashed for the garage we shared, to place me in the back seat of our car. His good wife told my father, "Go! Get your wife's purse for her and get going. I'll take care of Gary." My mother rode in the back seat with me, her shrieks drowning out my crying. At some point, I pretty much stopped crying and just felt pain. She continued to wail and apologize, oddly, to my father. But, remember, she'd been routinely criticized for her caretaking of me. She was sensitive. Father repeatedly snapped his volleyball head around on his broomstick neck to ask my mother to calm down and "pay attention to Limes". She was having trouble managing that. The windows were all rolled down - it was summer and hot - but I began to shiver, teeth chattering. "I'm cold!" That broke her meltdown, and I got some good facial expression to study. Today I'd express it as "What's the matter with this child? It's hot!" I was probably shock-y and, since it was summer, there wasn't a sweater in the car to put across me, so we rode on and I shivered.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Dad managed to maneuver Mother and me into the emergency room. Mom was in pretty bad shape, so a nurse took her to a room to be examined while Dad went with me. The reader doesn't want a medical report and I couldn't give a perfectly credible one and that's not what this is about. The arm and wrist were badly broken, although not compound fractured, and we spent a long time in that place while the doctors decided whether to send me to surgery or whether to set the limb and allow it to heal. X-rays were taken several times and hours passed. Nurses came in several times to tell my father that my mother was in very poor condition and she was finally medicated. My father never left my side, though I remember he was terribly distressed. Ultimately, a cast was applied and we were sent home, with advice to get some traction on that arm. It was suggested that they put me in Gary's crib, with the mattress dropped to the lowest level, and tie the arm up to the crossbars with a dish towel. OK, we could do that.

My father poured us into the car, the drugged mother, the injured kid. It was late. Maybe near midnight. I remind myself that he was 24 years old, and this had to have been an excruciating experience for him. Kid badly hurt. Wife melted down. As when the uncles had said goodbye a couple of weeks earlier, I could sense my father's concern that his wife could not handle life and her family. Mom's head was lolling in the front seat and Dad talked to me quietly in the dark. An idea struck him. I imagine he simply wanted to do something nice for us all at that moment. "Limes, would you like some A&W Root Beer? There's a stand up ahead that stays open late." Well, sure. Who wouldn't want root beer in the summer? Dad sprung for a full gallon, contained in those huge, heavy glass jugs of the day. Now, my dad's no fool and we'd had a pretty terrible evening already. He knew one didn't stand a gallon jug upright on the floor of the car. It might tip over. He laid the jug carefully on its side on the floor. "Don't let it roll around too much, Limes." I wouldn't. I put one of my feet, in P.F. Flyers, on the round surface of that jug to make sure it didn't go anywhere. The other foot was planted firmly on the floor.

Here the old black and white film goes slow motion and silent. I can only feel confusion, guilt and shame for what happened and for the things I could have done differently, should have done differently. The foot that was planted on the floor got an odd sensation. As we passed under a street light, I bent over to take a look. To my horror, I saw that my beige P.F. Flyer was now brown and wet. A&W Root Beer was slowly and quietly dribbling out of that gallon jug lying on its side and being held so firmly by my other foot. This was not a torrent - no wet swishy noises to be heard. That jug was just silently empyting itself onto carpet, a kid's shoe and sock. Today I think, "OK, the cap wasn't properly tightened and the liquid poured out. No big deal." But I also know that most kids would have let out a whoop over that escaping root beer. "Hey, Dad, stop the car, we've got trouble!" But I cringed in shame - yes, I am using the appropriate word for the feeling that was overwhelming me - and let most of that gallon of sticky stuff silently saturate shoe, sock and carpet. This makes me feel very sad, still today. I don't feel guilt or shame any more. I feel sad that by this time, I was already silent. A secret keeper. One unwilling to deliver any type of bad news, even if I knew it would be discovered anyway, even if it meant no root beer to enjoy, even if further disaster could be averted by my ringing the bell - maybe only a pint of that root beer would have been lost. Arrival at home and the night's activities were not pleasant. Gary was dislodged from his crib and I was put into it, lashed to the bar with a dish towel.

The next morning, I was sick. I know I was sick, because I would not have sat in a child's chair in my bathrobe on the porch you see if I had not been sick. And that is what I did. The parents felt I needed sun and fresh air. I probably did. They felt I needed quiet. Lorri was only allowed to visit long enough to be the first to sign the cast and ask why I was outside in my bathrobe. As I sat on the porch, nauseous, the parental voices droned quietly. The Chevy was parked in the driveway near the porch, both doors open, one parent bending through each door, going after that root beer. My mother worried out loud about Gary having to lie on the floor on a makeshift bed. My father worried out loud about the damage to the car's carpet. I worried silently about all of it.

I'll end this post attempting to be as good and balanced as my friend who said about her trauma,"There were many good things that happened to counter-balance the bad." I remind myself that these young parents had a lot on their plates and had no special attributes that made them better prepared to handle problems than anyone else. I ask myself how I might have handled their troubles differently. I think I know at least some of the answers.

In my ears right now: Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It came out in April, 1968. It was presented to me as a memento of that time shared. I love it. Gram Parsons is on it. Jim/Roger McGuinn [far too into his numerology]. A couple of really poor tunes. And some wonderful ones.

Something that charmed me: It's * * *cold* * * in Las Vegas. I walked in temperatures lower than 30 degrees this morning. Although I had layered up tremendously, my clothes didn't keep me warm enough, so I mixed in a little running. Arriving at home, I turned up the heat, turned on the oven and popped into bed to read awhile. Quite soon, I had two warm cat heaters pressed against varoius parts of my body. They hung around awhile, too!

Photo credit, with gratitude: Kathryn Feigal

R.I.P. ~ Remembering Tiny Tears

I have repeatedly revisited the photos Kass took of my old neighborhood, seemingly taking in something new each time. I've zoomed in for a closer look and mentally organized the placement of the houses on either side of my duplex, piecing together which way was north, which south, and which direction I would have walked to the mom-and-pop store with Lorri to buy my hoppy taws. Someone else pointed out to me there is crusty snow on the ground on the parking strip. I'd missed that! I'm simply trying to take in too much information and imagery at one time.

And so, it was only today that I saw it in the photo above. Although I have erroneously referred to it as a telephone pole in a previous post, it appears that the huge spike at the end of the driveway is actually an old wooden light standard. However, there can be no question about it. Pedaling along the driveway on the bike, it is surely that very pole I needed to avoid when I executed my right hand turn onto the sidewalk. Of course, I didn't make it. I whacked into that post with my front tire, thereby ejecting Tiny Tears into the street and cracking her head.

I have a certain fondness for the memory of Tiny Tears. It seems she was an important member of our small family. Granny-O had made her a doll quilt to match my quilt, and dresses to match some of my dresses. She'd traveled with us from L.A. to Salt Lake City in the backseat of the car with me, not in the moving van with other toys. I wonder if my carsickness bothered her as much as it bothered everyone else. She never said anything.

My daughter will turn 20 in January. I remember the toys she played with ~ how carefully we selected them and what learning we hoped each toy would foster. For Amber's toys had purpose. At age 3, the child pushed a wheeled cart filled with clunky, toddler-hands-friendly plastic Fisher Price food around the house for 6 months. She carried a crayon and a waitress' order pad (I bought those pads frequently~ this child had a lot of customers who looked only like Ex and me or Grandma or Grandpa) and served us plastic meals of chicken legs, grapes and corn on the cob. She wore an ancient apron made by my Granny who had died 3 years before Amber was born. She sported a name tag Ex found. Her waitress name was Esther. I liked her name and her game. I felt it taught her about diet and nutrition and what people did for a living. She had a crude working knowledge of customer service, because she called her dad "Sir" and always made sure to wipe the table and fold a napkin. We gave her play currency and she returned play coins that we left on the table for a tip. Fun and games with purpose in grown-up Limes' home. That's how we approached parenting. Provide toys and activities as realistic as possible, considering her age, safety and what we hoped she would learn.

I compare this to toys when I was a child. Little 1950s girls were expected to be future mothers and housewives. We needed babies and tea sets and plastic high heels and pop beads to play with and dysfunctional families to emulate when we played house. Tiny Tears was a study as a faux baby. I'm sliding a whole lot of slack to the American Doll Company for the lack of technology during the period of time they produced Tiny Tears. Lots of points for "Hey, it was the 1950s." But Tiny Tears could well have been the cause of many serious future parenting disasters. For Tiny Tears' operation and configuration was, um, odd.

Her head was hard plastic with a molded wave of baby hair thought attractive in the day. Her eyes were revolutionary! Instead of snapping shut like other dolls' eyes when one tipped her baby back into a reclining position, Tiny Tears' eyes fluttered shut in a more natural way. The American Doll Company's tagline was "rock-a-bye eyes". The long, bristly black nylon lashes were attractive, too. On her face, between her eyes and the bridge of her nose were two tiny holes that make me think of a reptilian face. These were not her nostrils - they'd be in the wrong location. These were the holes from which her tears would flow. Her nostrils were in the usual location and had no opening. Hard, solid pink plastic. Her pink rosebud lips appeared to have a perfectly symmetrical hole drilled between them - this to accommodate her baby bottle and other accessories. Tiny Tears was a girl who could do many things! Of course, she wet her diaper - lots of dolls could do that.

But Tiny Tears' coup - oh, the poetry of it! - was something that no other doll could do. Her body was made from soft, pliable plastic. It needed to be soft and pliable for a girl to cause Tiny Tears to execute the coup. Any of the waterworks tricks began with filling Tiny Tears with water. One did this by means of the baby bottle. So after a feeding, Tiny Tears could be expected to expel the liquid by wetting her diaper if one simply fed her and let her be. If a girl wanted to create tears, however, she would feed her baby and then squeeze the doll's abdomen hard to make her cry. I would likely cry, too, if loaded with water and then squeezed hard. But the coup ~ ~ Tiny Tears came complete with her layette and a bubble pipe! And, yes, the girl could blow bubbles. After a young lady convinced her parents to allow her a drop of diswashing liquid for the pipe, she then had to bottle feed Tiny Tears, remove the bottle from her mouth, pop the pipe into her mouth and squeeze the abdomen again - hard. While the squeezing to produce tears could be less extreme, I squeezed so hard to produce bubbles, I could feel my fingertips touch through Tiny's middle - I'd squeeze her to about 1/2 inch thickness. The reader can imagine that a girl's playroom could get pretty wet and sudsy as she worked through her busy day learning to be a mother. That didn't sit well with the real parents, either.

I'm going to credit my own and other 1950s parents with wanting to achieve similar goals to those of Ex and me: Provide toys and activities as realistic as possible, considering her age, safety and what we hoped she would learn. I must state that imagining Tiny Tears' insides conjures up images of very bad plumbing schemes and the rituals of "feed her, let her wet", "feed her, squeeze out some tears", "feed her, squeeze her extra hard for bubbles" gave me some very strange ideas about babies and mothering. But I sure-as-shootin' got the message that parenting was hard work and required one to be able to juggle a lot of balls at one time. That lesson was good and true.

I didn't enoy getting the sharp side of my parents' tongues for whacking my bike and my doll in one fell swoop. I wanted a little sympathy for having whacked myself, too. I was pretty banged up. I think I'll close this post with the three Nows standing on the sidewalk you see. Young parents a little tightly twisted and echoing much of the tender upbringing (yes, that is sarcastic) they'd suffered. Scraped up and bewildered kid who had some damned funny ideas about taking care of babies, who knew she needed a few more practice rounds turning out of the driveway, who knew her Tiny Tears was toast, and who knew she had experienced a small trauma and felt - oddly - guilt and shame for it. On another blog over the past days, I've participated in some commentary about feeling guilt and shame in situations where those emotions don't seem appropriate. This was one of the first times I remember feeling misplaced guilt and shame. It wouldn't be the last. And I am not ending the post on a downward tone. I'm telling what happened and how it was for me. That's the purpose of the exercise, remember?

Photo credit with gratitude for the shot of my childhood home: Kathryn Feigal

In my ears right now: I wanted to end this post with a giggle and some noise. I knew just what to go find. There is so much wrong with this, I couldn't possibly complete the list. And - yes - I really love it! It started my birds chirping loudly and it made me jump up to dance. Too bad I'm not nearly as narrow as either Mick or Bowie!


Something that charmed me: Writing about one's family can be difficult. One doesn't want to have her stories stamped "whiner". In the blog I mentioned, where there was discussion of parental behavior and its effects children, the blogger was so level and balanced in her refusal to be critical of her parents. She said, "I'm just telling what happened. There was plenty to counter-balance anything bad that happened." I hope I can come across in just exactly that way as I write about my life and my family. I have to tell it the way I feel it. I try not to judge harshly. I still don't have the means to understand some of it. One might want to look at that blog. The post would be The Chalk Line, December 2, 2009.

The Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society

The first morning in our new home, we spotted Lorri Christensen in the back yard as we ate breakfast. I asked why a girl was in our yard and the finer points of duplex living were shared with me. OK, I didn't mind sharing. "Limes, she looks near your age. Why don't you go out and make friends?" I was a child who wouldn't look a parent in the eye and say "no", but I did all right at simply remaining seated, saying nothing. My father knew I could use a little help in the ice breaking department and took me outside. Dad started a conversation I joined within moments. Lorri and Limes became fast friends very quickly.

She showed me around the back yard where her father had installed a swing set complete with slide and seesaw, a sandbox, a spot for a wading pool and a painted-onto-the-black-asphalt-driveway hopscotch course. We talked about the things we liked to do. She had a little pee wee bike upon which she was a hellion in the neighborhood. I said that I was getting a bike this summer. She had Mr. Potato Head and I had Cootie. She owned a ViewMaster, while I claimed a record player and all the Mickey Mouse Club records, including the Davy Crockett theme. She loved a toy accordion and I was proud of the piano Uncle Ralph and Aunt Martha had given me. We liked jumping rope and we loved to Hula Hoop, but the activity that could eat up entire afternoons in the sun was hopscotch.

Lorri asked me that first morning how many hoppy taws I owned. I didn't understand the words. I looked at my dad and he didn't seem to understand, either. Lorri got a little heated, saying, "Hoppy taws - for hopscotch!" We were still drawing a blank. "Wait here!" She huffed off into her side of the duplex. She reappeared, carrying a small flannel bag with a drawstring. From it, she pulled some articles that resembled hockey pucks. These were round, real rubber (not plastic) disks about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They were rather flat and they were wildly patterned with swirls and whorls of many colors. Dad and I still didn't understand. I managed to squeak out, "I don't have any of those." She gaped at me. "Well you're going to need some." She stepped up to the hopscotch course with one hoppy taw in her hand. With a small flick of her wrist, she landed it in the square marked "1". She hopped scotch exactly the way that I did, but she used her hoppy taw in place of the rock or crumpled paper or small plastic toy I'd always employed. She moved the hoppy taw along with her hand, by tossing it, or scooted it ahead with her toe, just like the rules of hopscotch required. My father and I caught on pretty quickly to how the hoppy taw was used, but we still didn't understand that it was a requirement where we now lived.

Lorri seated us on the back porch and proceeded to teach us the ropes of hopscotch culture in Sugarhouse, circa 1958. If a girl had no hoppy taw, no other girl would want to play hopscotch with her. If a girl owned one hoppy taw, she was barely alive. Lorri seemed certain that three hoppy taws were the best number to have, and I noticed that she had three. A girl was highly regarded if she had a drawstring bag in which to carry her hoppy taws, but was regarded as a dabbler if she carried them loose in her hands or her lunch box. Dad asked why a girl needed more than one hoppy taw, and Lorri replied that maybe she would switch them each day or use one hoppy taw for "evens" and one for "odds". Maybe one favored hoppy taw would be a girl's good luck charm, or certain ones might be used only for school or only for after school. Then Lorri let us know that girls who carried five or more hoppy taws were just show-offs and usually delayed the games with little rituals of using all their disks in every game. Excessive hoppy taw use was not considered good form. A few minutes with 5-year-old Lorri had put us in the know!

My dad is a practical man. Where did one buy hoppy taws and was Lorri certain three was the correct number and were the drawstring bags purchased along with the hoppy taws? The hoppy taws could be purchased at the mom-and-pop store down a very long block of 6th East. No street crossing was involved in getting there. The hoppy taws cost 10-cents each and no two were alike. One's mother had to make the drawstring bag and that gave Dad and me a little pause, because my mother didn't . . . well, let's get the hoppy taws first. I was given the princely sum of $1. Lorri and I walked that long block to the store with wooden floors and spent a proper amount of time and consideration selecting three hoppy taws sufficiently different from one another to give me legitimacy. There was enough money left in change to buy two bottles of YooHoo which we enjoyed on the long walk back home. Mrs. Christensen had quickly sewed me a drawstring bag while we were on our shopping expedition, and I was in business!

There followed many, many months of hopscotch. We played it at school, we played it at other girls' homes, we hosted tournaments in our own backyard at which we sold lemonade and cookies. I became good at hopscotch because I played it incessantly. I tore chunks out of my bloodied knees from falling on burning asphalt and frozen asphalt alike. I got good at more things than simply navigating a simple course by hopping on one foot. Hopscotch is the first activity I can remember that called upon me to strategize, to size up an opponent, to predict what another player would do (after observing her through many, many games), to learn the strengths and weaknesses of other players. It was the first arena in which I spotted cheaters with my own eyes and I concluded that some people had to win - it was all that mattered to them. My father is a man who believes a person should pursue any activity he or she takes on with total spirit, total commitment. He believes we learn from every single thing we do and, therefore, every single thing we do is important. He talked to me about hopscotch. He coached me at hopscotch. He encouraged me to chase after something I loved, and to be good at it, drawing every lesson I could from it.

These are the things I learned about myself on the hopscotch court, something I recognized decades later: I am fair and honest and big enough to lose if someone else beats me. I am not aggressive, needing to win and also crush my opponent. I am a keen observer of people and situations. If I am quiet and absorb what is happening, I can draw on that information later. I can be cautious and aware that others in a situation are bigger or more experienced than I, but that doesn't give them the win. I can look the dragon in the eye and roar back. And I learned that a kid with Father Now's DNA was never, ever to fold. For any reason. Bad weather, nasty tumble on the asphalt, too tired, bored. Uh-uh. You don't walk away or stop trying about anything that's important.

In my 30s and 40s, I was a kickin' labor union rep, a position I landed upon by defying seemingly all odds. I was not educated or experienced to do this work. I had to work hard to win the privilege. The employers of our members always, but always, hired attorneys to meet with the union for contract negotiations, disciplinary hearings before the school boards and other matters of labor relations. I have seen grown men blanch at the thought of going up against this shyster from that law firm or a fabled hired gun. Trust me, reader, I have qualms about many things, but meeting a giant in the board room never terrified me. Because I'm fair and honest and big enough to lose if someone else beats me. I'm not aggressive, but I'm unfailingly assertive and I'm still a keen observer of people and situations. I still absorb information and draw on it later. I'm cautious and keenly aware of an opponent's strong points, but that still doesn't give them the win. I can look the dragon in the eye and roar back. And I never, ever fold. I won far more hearings than I lost. I settled contracts that people said would never be settled. I'm not a braggart, or even particularly remarkable. I'm simply saying that what I learned on the hopscotch court helped me to be successful in life. You see, The Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society really did prepare young girls for future life.

True story: I lived in Salt Lake City in two separate residencies with some L.A. in between, and never after age 13. For decades, in California and Nevada, when adult women friends talked about their childhoods, the subject of hopscotch would come up. I never failed to ask about other womens' hoppy taws. I never failed to get blank stares. Not one friend had ever heard of such a thing. What, did that old man of the mom-and-pop store whip hoppy taws up in a laboratory behind the house and only sell them out of their tiny store? Were Sugarhouse girls the only kids in the world to have known about such things? I began to think I was delusional and eventually stopped bringing it up. One doesn't like to feel others think she's just a bit odd. I've not asked anyone about hoppy taws since before the age of the internet. I decided to try one time in the privacy of my own office to research online about hoppy taws before writing this post. No one would know. I didn't have to be embarrassed.

The information highway is a wonderful thing! Guess what I learned? Hoppy Taws, LLC, is a Salt Lake City business, operating for many, many years. No wonder I didn't connect with others who knew about them. I wasn't mingling with Salt Lake City women. It pleases me that hoppy taws can be purchased online everywhere now. Maybe the word will spread and before I am doddering, I can say "hoppy taw" to another woman whose eyes will light up at the memories. By the way, hoppy taws cost upward of $4 each online. I'm no John Maynard Keynes, but I'd say that's quite a lesson in economics from a 50 year perspective.

In my ears right now: Still the Rolling Stones, "Waiting on a Friend". I posted the lyrics on my blog sidebar. I'm planning a short post to tell why something I found on YouTube charms me, as related to this song. When Justin came in from his route yesterday, he said, "Limes, that same song was playing when I left here this morning!" "And all day long, Justin."

Something that charmed me: I have a new Salt Lake City friend. More specifically, she is a Sugarhouse friend. I have $1 that says she knows about hoppy taws, and her daughter(s) and her granddaughters.

Cup of Sweetness in Sugarhouse

I've been writing stories from my early life and I put the cart before the horse, saying the name of the place, Sugarhouse. That grabbed the attention of friend, Kass, who immediately wanted to know specifically where in Sugarhouse. While I slowed the story-telling in order to lay a foundation, she patiently awaited the release of my address. I posted it Sunday.

Yesterday she went out with her camera, and I don't think that's much different from many of her days, even though we are of short acquaintance and she hasn't told me her schedule. The bloggers were pretty quiet Monday, but just as I was about to lock up the office and call it another long day, she popped up. I hurried to Old Sugarhouse and when the first image came up, I had to push the chair back from the desk and take a very deep breath.

For there, right before my eyes, was the red b rick duplex and the long asphalt driveway. Exactly as I remembered them. I'd been typing about that driveway 15 minutes previously. It's the stage upon which Tiny Tears and I played out a bicycle drama. There was the pine tree, a behemoth now, but after all, it's been 51 years. She took photos of the neighboring houses and various items of interest throughout the neighborhood. We now know we grew up in very close proximity to one another. Later in the evening, she let me know she'd PhotoShopped a sepia image of my home, and that gives it a distinct 1950s flavor, even though the picture was shot in 2009.

Looking at these places I remember (yes, that's a Beatles song I love) at the same moments I'm writing of them feels surreal. I am struck by this blogger's kindness, energy and creativity. Last night on her other blog, she commented: "Since I bought my little, inexpensive digital camera, I am in LOVE with taking pictures." I would say so, Kass! We can see that you do! Please keep doing it. Thank you for sharing what you see in the world with your own creative spin.

Photo credit with sincere thanks: Kathryn Feigal

In my ears right now: Rolling Stones, "Waitin' on a Friend". I've always loved the song and I'm playing it now in the spirit of making and keeping new friends.

Something that charmed me: Well,l what do you think? That travelogue through Sugarhouse and the pilgrimage to 2503 S. 6th East!

In Sugarhouse ~ Inspired by Feelings that Kass's Blog Stirred Up: Chapter III

Join us, please, in 1956 and 1957 and 1958. Gary has been born, found to be profoundly retarded, the young parents traveling everywhere with him to seek medical care and advice. My father continued to run a printing press at Firestone. My mother had a more than full-time job caring for Gary's every need. She did not drive and we did not own two cars. Taking Gary somewhere for an appointment involved buses. We were not taxi-cab wealthy. Many members of the large extended family bestowed acts of lovely kindness on all of us Nows, from taking me off for a weekend with the cousins, to collecting Gary's dirty laundry and returning it clean and folded. My job was to go to preschool, then kindergarten and to "be good". "Be good" was repeated so frequently and emphatically, it sounded like a fierce verb to me - lots of action in it. It was said to me so often that I wondered if I wasn't good or if I failed to show goodness in some of my behaviors. I honed the fine skills of being quiet and lying low.

My dad has a good curious mind. He's good with his hands and his head. So it happened something like this: he got the printing job just out of the Air Force. He did it awhile and became very good at it, attracting all manner of positive attention. Once he'd mastered the craft, then he would want to know about how the press worked and what about the inks and how would one fix the whosis if it broke and how does my press compare to others available? He's a knowledge and information seeker, still today. When people would come to work on the presses, he'd learn things from them and then go to the library and learn more. Finally someone, one of those forgotten printing press types, told him of a job opening he'd heard about. Dad went for a round of interviews and was hired to be a salesman of printing presses, working from Salt Lake City, servicing a territory throughout the mountain states. Read this: away from home a lot. Home includes anxious wife, seriously damaged child and the other child. No relatives nearby, no friends yet, as they'd only ever driven through the place, not stayed there.

"Limes, what do you think of moving to Salt Lake City, Utah?" Granny was walking me home from her house. I told her I didn't know about Salt Lake City and it was she who gathered books and magazines showing and describing the Great Salt Lake and the topogrpahy of the place, some of the points of interest like the Capitol Building and the Temple and the Mormon Tabernacle. She showed me a map and it looked way too far from her home. "We'll come often, Honey. You'll enjoy the snow and your daddy has a new, very good job." A whole culture grew up around the words "your daddy has a new, very good job". For that man was upwardly mobile before the phrase was coined, and we were embarking on our gypsy phase that was to last for as long as we remained together as a family. By the time I was 9 years old, I could have driven between Salt Lake and L.A., if only my feet could have reached the gas and brake pedals. I knew the way that well.

But I'm speaking now of the summer I'd turn 6. I'd completed kindergarten in June. My parents had made two scouting expeditions to Salt Lake City and found us a place to live in a nice duplex at 2503 South 6th East [there's the address, Kass!]. I would begin first grade at Columbus School at 3530 South 5th East - one doesn't need to know Salt Lake to understand that school was one block west of home and several blocks south. Easy walking distance. My father wouldn't have to travel for the first 3 months, as he'd be learning the ropes of his new job in the city. Three uncles were gracious about driving ahead with our furniture, so dad could transport the family a few days afterward. Those good uncles also completely set up our home for us. Although I was only 5, when we arrived in Salt Lake and it was time for the uncles to return to L.A., I remember understanding the concern in their good-byes. I understood that they were not certain their sister could handle life and her family.

In the few years between Dad leaving the Air Force and the move to Salt Lake, we were the most rooted we would ever be. It seems there hadn't been any (or at least not many) long driving trips during those years. For we learned to our shock and horror, before we got out of Los Angeles County, that Limes was the most carsick child who ever lived (or died from it). Maybe I'd been sick from time to time on a longish outing a time or two, but there weren't enough of those for anyone to realize how bad it really was. This was the first long, sustained journey in a car and it was to alter us all for the next few years. Because I was a girl who would be sick 3 or 4 times every hour. This had happened maybe 4 or 5 times when I began to get a little fearful of announcing that the next episode was at hand. Although I write with humor and although it's been decades and although it's not the worst assault upon my senses I've ever suffered, it's fair to say those parents traumatized me about getting sick. From my vantage point in the back seat, I saw their heads and necks as broomsticks with volleyballs. I'd start the deep gasping that announced it was almost showtime and those two volleyballs would snap around on their broomsticks like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. "Are you going to be sick?" Well, favored readers, the answer became "No!" Permanently, invariably "No!" Never mind that they could see I was sweating, pale, miserable, obviously about to be sick. Never mind that it happened 50 times or more in a long day of driving. After a handful of "Yes" answers, it became forever "No!" And they were invariably surprised each time happened. As they knew it would. For at least the next 7 years.

I know that heads and hearts and psyches sometimes have selective memory, and so do mine. It seems to me that we only traveled on the road in objectionable weather. There might be some circumstantial evidence to support that, because driving for the holidays would put us in snow and moving from one home to another usually took place in the summer when school was out. But I have no recollection of one temperate miserable trip. These were the days before baby wipes and other conveniences that might have helped out. I was a kid. I usually got it all over the place. And have I mentioned that Gary rode in the car on the floor of the backseat in a travel bed they made for him . . . . directly at my feet? "Did you get it on Gary?!?" "No!" Sometimes that was true. So many of these episodes involved cleaning and changing the clothes of not one, but two, little kids in high summer or deepest winter. For 12 hours straight in heat and in snow. The aunts had many ideas: 1) Feed her tea and crackers only; 2) feed her nothing; 3) feed her a regular breakfast; 4) keep her up all night so she'll sleep in the car (I still got sick, although I slept between episodes); 5) don't let her read; 6) try Dramamine; 7) push fluids; 8) don't let her drink a drop of anything. Nothing made any difference whatsoever. I was a delightful addition to car travel until I was in my teens. I think it must have been as terrible for them as it was for me. Each of us trapped in our own personal misery in the tight confines of a passenger car . . .

The first day in our new home, we learned the selection of that duplex was fortuitous, for there lived the Christensens who were a nice complement to the Nows. Lorri was 10 months younger than I, and would be starting kindergarten at Columbus School in the fall. She was a pampered pink poodle of a girl whose parents took parenting in a deeply serious, but calm, common sense kind of way. It was a second marriage for each of them and they each had other adult children. They knew how this was done! Remarkably, to me, Lorri's mother was in her late 40s and her father was at least 55 - they looked like Granny-O and Gramps. These people were wonderful to have on the other side of the wall from where we lived. Built in girlfriend for me, from a family who felt like mine did about what girls should be doing and not doing, and what kinds of other children made acceptable playmates. Lorri's mother was good to my mother, showing her how things were done, and Mother Christensen soon learned all the intricacies of caring for Gary. When I think of the Salt Lake of the day, or maybe it was Sugarhouse, or maybe it was just our duplex and backyard on South 6th East, the words that come to mind are "wholesome" and "clean". It was the summer I broke my arm, but got my bike and it seemed we had landed in a place that was good for us and we were safe.

Special thanks and acknowledgment: To Kathryn Feigal and Glen Werner, she a most fascinating woman and intrepid photographer and he an amateur Sugarhouse historian. I thank them for the use of the picture of Columbus School and in future posts I plan to use some of the photos Kass has generously set out before me.

In my ears right now:



Something that charmed me: I landed on the blog of a really interesting woman that I want to share coffee with every morning. Her blog led me to her other blogs and I came to realize she lives in Sugarhouse. I was flooded with memories and feelings that have long needed to be poured out, and suddenly have begun to be. All I said was, "Kass, I have a Sugarhouse story to tell," and my early childhood began to escape my heart, head, soul and fingertips. I haven't enjoyed every moment of retelling it. Some of it has made me giggle. And I'll keep on. If something resonates with the reader, that's wonderful. But this is really for me. Finally.