You Can Never Go Home Again - Or Can You?

By Dani Ferguson Phillips of The Cataract Club

When I was eight years old, my family and I moved to a beautiful new home. Having moved from the modest two-bedroom frame home of my childhood, this glorious four-bedroom home felt nothing less than grand.

One of the many attributes of the French provincial home was the parquet floor that went throughout.

I lived in this house with my family until I was 20 years old. Over time, the parquet floors started to show some wear and some of the wooden tiles had become loose and could be removed. There were loose tiles all over the house and I decided I would leave hand written notes under them.

I’d write my name and age on a small piece of paper along with the date and fold it flat and put them under the tiles. Sometimes I would jot down something about my family or who my boyfriend was at the time.

On my wedding day, I was in my room getting dressed when my shoe happened to kick up one of the loose tiles in my closet. I decided to leave one more message.

My parents sold their home in the summer of 1977. Since that time the house has had several owners. Last summer, 41 years after I left home, I was driving past the old neighborhood and noticed there was a garage sale taking place at my parent’s old house. I figured it was a great opportunity to talk to the current owners and tell them I once lived there as a child.

Two women were working the sale when I stopped and asked if one of them was the owner of the house. One lady answered saying that she and her husband and three children lived there.

I immediately told her my connection to the house and I was met with the warmest reception. She was so excited to hear about the house and its original owners and immediately invited me to go inside.

I followed her through the familiar entryway. The den was being used as a dining room and walls had been removed and an entire new family room added on to the back of the house.

Though things had definitely changed since I lived in the house there were many things that I recognized, from the brick fireplace to the parquet floors.

As we continued to tour the house the next room I was shown was my old bedroom. Though the wallpaper had long since been removed, the room was still pink in color and it was now the bedroom of their eight-year-old daughter.

I told the little girl that the room had been mine when I was just her age. I told her about how I used to line my stuffed animals up in the window box just as she had done. I then asked her if she had every found any loose tiles in the floor.

Her face lit up with a look of recognition and she replied she had. She then asked if I was the “girl” who had written the note.

Then the most amazing thing. She walked across her room and opened her jewelry box and pulled out a small, yellowed piece of paper and handed it to me.

I opened it and there were my words: “Today is my wedding day, I am leaving this house of my childhood for the last time. August 1, 1969."

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Irons and Mangles

By Barbara Sloan

When I was eight years old, I begged and begged my mother to let me help with the ironing. Little girls know nothing about what they ask.

My mother began my lessons with sprinkling. She showed me the simple sprinkling tool that she made out of a sprinkler head with a cork over the metal opening that fit into a pop bottle. The piece of clothing was laid on the table, sprinkled liberally with water, folded over and firmly rolled up so the dampness would soak evenly through the garment, then firmly packed in the clothes basket awaiting its trip to the ironing board.

She stressed the need for perfect dampness; too wet, the iron would leave moisture in the item, too dry, there would be wrinkles remaining that were totally unacceptable.

I helped with sprinkling for several weeks until she trusted that I had the proper ‘feel’ for the task.

One afternoon, my grandmother stopped by for a visit. She and I sat at the kitchen table while my mother continued to iron the heaped basket of clothes. My grandmother began telling us about learning to iron during her first job as a housemaid when she was 17.

“One of my major jobs was doing the ironing. You can’t imagine how particular Clara, the head maid, was about perfectly ironed bed linen, towels, men’s shirts, women’s blouses, skirts and dresses.

“Clara told me the key to having everything turn out wrinkle free and unscorched was the temperature of the hand irons when they came off the top of the old wood cook stove. She showed me how to pick up the heating iron, using a thick pad to protect my hand from the hot handle.

“She demonstrated how to test the iron for proper heat by licking a finger and barely touching it to the bottom of the heated iron. It had to have just the right sizzle before it could be used for ironing, not to hot and not to cold.

“You have no idea how many times I burned my hand or testing finger. You are fortunate to have electric irons with dials to regulate the heat.

“Clara checked every piece I ironed for months until she had confidence that I would do a good job.”

My mother sighed as she wiped the sweat off her forehead and said, “Just like you used to check each piece when I did the ironing for you.”

Finally, my mother thought I was ready to learn how to iron. The ironing board was folded flat, hanging on the wall of the laundry room. The first step was to stand the board on it’s hind legs, pull the loop on the end of the wire underneath to allow the legs to unfold, let the front leg unfold, while the board part came down with it until it was level and the right height so that I could use it.

I tried and tried to open that ironing board. All of these activities had to happen at the same time without the whole thing falling over, pinching fingers or half up and half down so the loop under the board became jammed. Step one was the only step.

My Mother finally gave up and for several years always opened the board for me. Each week, I spent hours with my mother standing beside me giving directions for the proper ironing sequence of each piece of clothing until I got it right.

In the early 1950s, my mother saw an ad in the Ladies Home Journal about an ironing machine called the “domestic mangle.” Domestic pressing mangles are timesavers. They are typically used to press flat items such as sheets or tablecloths. Skilled operators can also press shirts and pants on a mangle.

At dinner that night, she showed my dad the ad and said, “I spend hours ironing sheets, tablecloths and towels. I will have more time for cooking and cleaning. You just got a tractor because it will save time with the farm work. I need a mangle because it will save time with the housework.”

He read the ad, shook his head and shrugged. No sense arguing with my mother when she had her heart set on something.

I watched my mother struggle with this new, unfamiliar machine that was supposed to be every housewive's answer to the hated, time-consuming task of ironing. It was OK for sheets and tablecloths but she finally gave up on clothing. The old ironing board was much faster with fewer wrinkles.

I wonder where that old mangle went. As I finish my basket of ironing, I make another resolution to always buy wrinkle free clothes.

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A Woman Who Knows Where She is Going

By Jackie Harrison

Many years ago, I was asked to sing at the installation of the incoming president of the Southern Medical Association. The meeting was held in New Orleans.

Since all my expenses were paid, I was assigned a roommate, whom I had never met. When I arrived at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street and headed up to my room on the top floor, loud music streamed from my room. I thought, "What kind of roommate is this going to be?"

I opened the door expecting to see some type of rock and roll woman, but the room was empty. The music was coming through an open window facing Bourbon Street. There were cheers as a scantily dressed "woman" in a swing swung back and forth over the street.

The incoming president had selected the songs she wanted me to sing at her installation. As I sang, I noted tears in her eyes and in the eyes of several others. I had not anticipated this response. I thought, "It has to be the pathos in my voice or the words that struck a sentimental chord." Maybe it was both.

Following the successful installation service, I declared my mission accomplished. I said goodbye to my roommate, who turned out to be a nice and quiet lady. I packed my bags and ordered a limousine to pick me up. I waited and waited for it to arrive, checking my watch repeatedly. Finally it pulled up in front of the hotel. I took the only seat left, located in the back of the limousine.

I assumed we were headed for the airport since all the seats were taken and we were running behind schedule. But the driver stopped at the rear of a nearby hotel. He opened the door on my side and flipped down the jump seat directly in front of me. I was unaware of its existence.

Then he walked to the hotel where he took the bags of a somewhat wobbly young man. After placing the bags in the limousine, the driver directed the man to the backseat of the vehicle and pointed to the jump seat.

Making no attempt to sit down, the man stood there looking at me. Then his eyes moved from my face to my feet. He slowly scanned me from my feet upward to my head. When he finished the scan, a dragged out "hummmn" rang out for everyone to hear.

He sat about three feet away from me and began telling off-color jokes to everyone while his liquored breath blew directly into my face.

I looked at my watch, eager to get out of the limousine and away from this man. I also feared that we would be late for my flight. I said aloud, "I hope he hurries or I will miss my flight."

The man immediately asked, "Which flight is it?"

I said, "Eastern 441."

He slapped his leg and joyfully exclaimed, "That's my flight, too." He then proceeded to tell me that the plane stopped in Atlanta and I should get off with him and tell my husband I was delayed.

When we reached the airport, I was certain I could leave this man, in his drunken state, far behind by employing the semi-jogging walk I used on the beach back home. I had walked only a short distance when I heard loud breathing and panting behind me, then next to me.

I looked to my side. There he was! In a breathless but satisfied voice he said, "What I like is a woman who knows where she is going."

I managed to board the plane ahead of him. My seat was next to a young man who looked to be in his twenties. I mustered up enough courage to ask this stranger for a favor. I said to him, "If a man comes over here asking to exchange seats with you, please tell him no."

As soon as I had said this, up walked the man from my limousine. I held my breath as the stranger sitting next to me sternly told him no. I thanked him profusely.

During the flight, the man from my limousine repeatedly left his seat and came over to me, drink in hand, saying, "How about a little drinky?"

I guess he had too many "little drinkies" because I finally lost him.

I often thought his comment, "What I like is a woman who knows where she is going," would be a good title and theme for one of my speeches to women.

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Some Music

[UPDATE: So sorry. I initially omitted the byline when I posted this poem. My apologies - RB.]

By Ellen Younkins

Tonight I heard some music
that I knew from long ago,
the music that I danced to
with a love I used to know.

Tonight I heard some music,
we danced the night away.
The sun came up, and now
my love is gone, again today.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. PLEASE read instructions for submitting.]

Food in China

By Johna Ferguson

Some people wonder just what we eat in China. Well, every locale has its own specialties or main fare.

There are several things that natives of Qingdao eat and one of them is cloves of fresh garlic. They eat them just like a piece of apple as an additional flavor to the foods they are consuming. Personally, I don’t like them that way, but do love garlic grated over cucumber bits and sliced cold jellyfish with a little vinegar.

Because rice is usually raised in the south where it is warm, northerners eat wheat instead; noodles and mantous. Mantous are big solid rolls which are steamed since no one has ovens, therefore they look like uncooked brown-and-serve rolls and they are very dense.

One can buy big ones, with about a six-inch diameter or smaller ones about three inches across. They actually look like a big rounded mound of uncooked dough but they are good. Well, by my standards, best when sliced and toasted for they take a lot of chewing even though they are tender.

We eat a lot of tofu. There are many varieties one can choose from; plain, flavored, firm, soft, super soft, smoked, deep fried, fermented (tastes and smells like cheese), dried and tofu noodles.

Zhou cooks our noodles in a big wok filled with water, chopped pieces of Chinese cabbage and bean noodles which are thin and clear when cooked plus a little ground pork for flavor. For spices, he adds a few peppercorns, sesame oil, ginger, and finely sliced green onions.

Jiaozi is a standby of northern people. They are sold in restaurants in the United States and usually called dim sum. But here they are made like small dumplings and boiled in water or fried in hot oil. They are filled with ground meat and some kind of greens or with shrimp, eggs and chopped cabbage - actually most anything is okay.

This is often a family affair, one person mixing the dough, another rolling it into long rolls about an inch in diameter, another breaking off bits to then be rolled into small circles by another person. Then someone puts the filling on the circle and pinches it together and they are cooked and joyfully eaten. I have been known to devour 15 or more plus other side dishes at a dinner.

Because Qingdao is on the Yellow Sea, we have lots of fresh seafood available. Small manila clams are a favorite of mine. Zhou stir fries them in the wok with oil, ginger and vinegar.

Fresh water crabs and fish are available but I am not fond of either for they are a bother to eat, especially the fish as they have so many bones. But I do like fried, very small octopus, body and legs. Shrimp are very popular here also and often added to lots of dishes, but usually with head and shells. The eater just sifts through it all with their teeth and spits the shells out.

Of course, all these foods are consumed with lots of Tsingtao beer. When the Germans took over Qingdao in the late 1800s, they built a German brewery and that beer is now sold world wide. But only in Qingdao I have I ever seen it sold on the street in plastic bags.

In warm months, on many busy corners are kegs of beer. The seller asks how much you want and then he pumps it into a plastic bag hanging from a scale, just like the bags you get at the grocery store. You take it home and hang it on a door knob until you want to drink it. Pretty simple and no bottles to get rid of.

Below are pictures of the two sizes of mantous, our small kitchen where Zhou cooks delicious food and making jiaozi at a friend’s house.

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The Magic of Chicken Fricassee

By Marvin Waldman

If your wife, Irma, the only one who knew you weren’t such a nothing, has been dead for 17 years and your daughter calls you from god-knows-where only a couple of times a year, and then only out of obligation and if your friends, the few you had, are either dead and/or living in Boca Raton, and if the shoe store you took over from your father has long been turned into a Starbucks, then it’s a bet you no longer bother to match your socks.

If you should happen to look down and see that the right one is black and the left one is brown (yesterday the left one was white), you don’t feel the slightest compunction to correct the disparity. And if someone should notice that there is a mismatch going on in your shoes and tells you so, that’ll be just fine with you.

The likelihood of that happening, of course, is next to none being that you rarely leave the apartment you’ve rented, not to mention the fact that nobody is very interested in you, much less your socks. So you mainly stay at home wearing any socks you damn well please.

But every once in a while, once a year or so, you climb down the three flights from your apartment to the street, you walk seven blocks to the subway and take it downtown to where the store once was, where there once was a storeroom where you first made love to Irma - on a shipment of boxes filled with suede pumps.

When you make this annual trip to the honeymoon suite turned Starbucks, you stand there watching the people walk out carrying their lattes. And then you walk a few blocks to the delicatessen that is still there after all these years and you eat something good for a change.

It’s this year’s outing and here you are sitting in the delicatessen at a table near the bathroom where they put people who don’t complain about sitting at a table near the bathroom.

The waitress comes over. She is young and pretty and she has a big, round behind, the kind that would soften the hardness of boxes. She asks you what you’d like. You’re not sure.

“You had the chicken fricassee the last time you were here,” she says.

“You remember?” you say. “You remember?” You become aware of the fact that you said, “You remember?” two times in a row so you stop yourself from saying it a third time.

“Absolutely,” she says, “you were sitting right here and you had the chicken fricassee, the appetizer portion.”

You stare at her for what seems like 17 years and then, like an idiot, your eyes start to moisten and your throat tightens but you manage to blurt out, “I’ll have the chicken fricassee, the appetizer portion.”

“Good choice,” she says with a wink and heads for the kitchen.

After she vanishes behind the door you look down at your socks. You decide that after lunch you will go home and change.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. PLEASE read instructions for submitting.]

The Tree Hugger

By Lyn Burnstine

As you might guess, looking at my photos on this page and in my archives, I have a love affair with trees. The first tree I remember claiming as my own personal tree and friend was a persimmon tree in my grandmother's back yard, in whose branches I perched while playing my ocarina.

There were other trees on her farm that I was fond of, too: a big oak in the cow pasture where hung a high swing made from rope and a board, a maple in the front yard that held an amazing merry-go-round horse (lovingly restored by my sister and me with new, shiny paint and hung so that it dipped as it swung,) and the one in the photo that stood next to an old pig shack in the woods where we played.

We would giggle while we recited the limerick, "There was a young lady from Worcester, who used to crow like a rooster, she used to climb seven trees at a time, but her sister used to boost her," for, indeed, my older sister did have to boost me at this tender age of five, but not much longer.

Other homes came and went, bringing different varieties of trees than the ones I grew up with in Illinois - the cottonwoods, sycamores, elms, hickories, black walnuts and other deciduous trees. I grew familiar with live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, magnolias, dogwoods, and finally evergreens when I moved to the Northeast.

I now sit under stately beechwood trees in the summertime, writing my essays. Having now lived in the same area for more than 50 years, I have claimed many local trees as my favorites - some for their brilliant fall foliage and some for their graceful shapes, stark against a winter sky. I hope you enjoy getting to know them, too, by these images.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. PLEASE read instructions for submitting.]

Mistaken Identity

By June Calender of Big 7-0 & More

All of us have experienced inexplicable small incidents. If we're superstitious, we may attribute them to good angels, evil spirits, gremlins, leprechauns or voodoo. Or we may just shrug and shake our heads.

The slightly unstable may see signs they are becoming more unstable; the elderly can always blame incipient Alzheimer's.

Such an incident happened to someone I don't know yesterday and only I know that I caused it to happen. It's small, it's unimportant - unless the person to whom it happened is in the unstable category. It's a small story.

In our town, we have aggressive, dueling Honda and Toyota dealerships with an awful lot of both makes of cars on the roads and in the parking lots. I now have a gray Honda Civic. Although silver and white have been big best sellers, lately shades of gray have been strong.

Yesterday I went to the town library and parked in one of two or three spaces marked "Library Parking - 1/2 hour.” I also went next door to the post office and then came back to my car.

When I got in I thought, hmmm, it seems like the steering wheel is awfully close. It must be because I'm wearing this bulky winter jacket. So I moved the seat back a fair amount. Then put the key in and it didn't start. What!?

At about that time my eye fell on the side pocket and I saw some papers that weren't mine. I looked around a little more and saw an identical Honda Civic next to me. MY car!

Quickly as possible I got out of that car and into my own and drove away before someone accused me to trying to steal that other car.

About a block later, I realized that the owner of the other Civic was going to get in, find the seat too far back, wonder how on earth did that happen, have absolutely not a clue and go home feeling befuddle, cursed, or maybe just shrugging it off as not important.

To use Kurt Vonnegut's line from Slaughterhouse Five, so it goes.

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Dorothy Called

By Mary B Summerlin who keeps a photostream at Flickr

The phone rang, I answered and it was my good friend Dorothy. Dorothy and I have been friends since our kids were four years old or thereabouts. That’s a long time.

Our friendship has never wavered but our contact with each other has waxed and waned. We don’t live too far apart but she and I travel in different circles so we haven’t talked in a long time. I was delighted to hear from her and used the old greeting, “How are you?” and she used the automatic, “just fine.”

As old friends we have the privilege of getting right to the point. I answered, “Well, you don’t sound fine.”

And she blurted out, “I’m not, Martha died last night”. Martha is a dear friend of both of us as well as many others.

There is stunned silence on my part, then all sorts of comments stating that this was impossible, I had just seen her a few weeks ago, she hadn’t been sick and all - comments that pointed to denial of the fact.

Dorothy assured me that indeed she had died. She tried to hold back her tears as she gave me the facts as she knew them.

A short time ago, Martha had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. It had caused uncharacteristic behavior on Martha’s part. Martha was a retired teacher and whenever she taught a class at Lifetime Learning Institute or at any organization, she was well prepared, organized and presented an outstanding session.

Dorothy said the last one she went to was so unlike our Martha. She was disorganized, scattered and seemed to be unaware of it. The tumor was causing thinking and behaving in a manner that alerted all of her friends that something was amiss. But this had only been going on a short time. Only those who saw her regularly knew something was wrong.

The doctors gave her a choice. Without an operation she would live up to three months. With an operation, perhaps her life could be extended by a few months. Typical Martha, she said, “No operation.” But she and everybody thought there would be a few months, not death almost immediately. How can that be?

On the other hand, she would have hated to have lingered – suffering herself and causing her loved ones to suffer. So actually, it is better this way but what a shock. It has taken all day so far to try to absorb this new reality, Martha is gone.

I think of her children who are geographically scattered about and have families of their own now. They’re also in shock and all trying to make their way home. All are needing the warmth and comfort of family.

Dan, Martha’s husband of many years, needs all the support he can get. The thought of life without Martha is incomprehensible. Once again I realize how fragile life is and how dear friends are. I must remember to tell my loved ones “I love you.”

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. PLEASE read instructions for submitting.]

Bill Clinton and My Yellow Bird

By Alan Ginocchio of The Cyberspace Dawdler

I think it would be fair to assume that most citizens who exercise their right to vote do so with some measure of discern and understanding – both on the issues and in regard to their chosen candidate’s positions. Perhaps on the other hand however there are those of us who from time to time make casting their vote more of a personal thing.

I would like to say that I have never found myself to be quite that superficial in choosing a candidate but alas, that is something that I cannot say, unfortunately. I can certainly recall one particular instance that instigated that to be precisely the case.

It was in the early fall of 1976, and as I often did back in those days, I was moonlighting, filling my evenings by playing organ and singing at a local restaurant, The Marina, located in Lake Dardanelle State Park in Russellville, Arkansas.

It was your typical weekday evening and business at the restaurant was relatively slow on the evening in question.

As I recall, I had barely begun playing a favorite old instrumental of mine from my repertoire, Yellow Bird, when the front door of the restaurant opened and in walked a young man in gentlemanly attire, smiling for no apparent reason from ear to ear.

He immediately started shuffling from table to table, greeting the customers with a loud voice, laughing loudly and talking to any mouth not encumbered with chewing or shaking any hand that wasn’t preoccupied with an eating utensil.

As I earnestly labored at the task of weaving the melody of the beautiful Yellow Bird between the loud talking and laughing. I became more and more irritated at this loud-mouthed imbecile who had rudely interrupted my digestive concert.

At some point, I finally cut my song somewhat short and curtly announced to my unsettled audience I would be taking a break. In fact, it crossed my mind that perhaps inviting the a** hole who interrupted my lovely Yellow Bird out to the parking lot might be in order – business suit or not.

Well, the first thing I did after leaving my bench behind the organ was to approach the owner who was sitting at a small corner table by chance and immediately queried her as to who that loud-mouthed idiot was?

She chuckled and informed me it was some “not so dry behind the ears yet,” wannabe politician named Bill Clinton running for state attorney general and he had apparently stopped in to do a little campaigning.

I immediately chimed in with a rather loud and emphatic, “Well the a** hole won’t be getting my vote!,” secretly hoping of course that my words of displeasure would somehow knife their way across the room imposing on his rhetoric and raining on his parade.

I then got myself a glass of refreshment, lit up a cigarette and went and found my own corner of despair and drowned my misery in my iced tea! He finally left shortly thereafter and things in my world were seemingly restored back to some semblance of order so I returned not long after to my musical perch and finished out the evening.

But when November rolled around a month or so later – well, I suspect I don’t have to tell anyone who I did not vote for! I suppose, in hindsight, my self-sought justice was for naught since casting my vote in perhaps a vindictive manner to keep it out of the hands of my yellow bird nemesis had little bite since he was elected to his first public office in spite of my efforts.

And is often the case, misery sometimes manifests itself in threes as we’ve all learned. That proved to be the case because in the election cycle two years later, my yellow bird nemesis was elected governor of Arkansas – that’s two.

And after years of continued convalescing from the traumatic event I had suffered, in 1992 he gets elected to you know what – president of the United States and that’s three!

That was almost 40 years ago and as I think back on it all now, I suppose in my old age I have mellowed out and don’t any longer hold any measure of grudge against the fellow. He never, ever got my vote but as these things often turn out, it seems he never needed it.

And you know, he actually turned out to be quite a likable fellow when it was all said and done.

But, just as most folks probably think of Christmas anytime they hear Jingle Bells, so it remains to this day that anytime I hear Yellow Bird, well I’m forced to think of Bill Clinton.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. PLEASE read instructions for submitting.]