The Rain

By Lia Hirtz

It has been sunny and very hot all day and now the air is heavy with moisture. The sun has sneaked behind a menacing, dark cloud but I know it’s there because it’s hard to breathe as it slowly melts the clouds above.

I am playing house under the coffee tree full of dark red beans. I am six years old with long braids and crooked teeth. I live with my parents, three aunts and my cousin. We live happily with my grandmother in her old adobe house in a small town in Mexico.

“It’s going to rain in a little while,” my all-knowing grandmother says. “We better get the clothes off the lines and bring in the jerky from the roof. I wonder if the cats have gotten to it – Maaarrrriiiiaaaaa!” she screams. “You better watch your damned cats! I bet they’ve eaten the jerky!”

My aunt, Maria, defends her cats and says she already fed them liver and they wouldn’t touch the tough jerky anyway.

Then violently, without any further threats, the rain erupts like a mighty upside down volcano. Sharp and searing, the sky spews its load on the tender earth. My mother calls for me to go inside.

It’s a downpour and my aunt Maria is scared out of her mind. She grabs the jar with the holy water that she keeps by her bed, she interlaces a rosary in her pretty hands and begins her supplications as she dips her fingers in the water and furiously shakes the blessed droplets around the doors of the house.

She begs Jesus to stop the thunder because it scares her and the cats. She begs Mother Mary to stop the rain before we all drown in its fury.

Then, just as quickly as it began, the rain stops and the sun inhales the plumes of vapor back into the sky.

The water runs like rivers in the streets. The toads burst forth from all directions to entice the bright green lady frogs. Their neck pouches inflate in a flirtatious rhythm. The frogs look dumb as they aimlessly jump as if the rain has hit them on the head a bit too hard.

The toads move in and right there on the street, in the back yard, in our living room, there is romance. Everywhere you look, the amorous ritual continues until Maria squashes down a pair with a broom or a car runs them down on the street where they will remain conjoined forever in their last love dance. Then they bloat, explode and eventually dry out and disappear because nobody bothers to pick them up when they’re dead.

Unperturbed, I sink my bare feet into the running water gushing down the street. I see the bread man go by on his bicycle balancing a basket full of sweet bread on his head.

In a little while, I will ask my grandma for 20 cents and run to buy a piece of sweet bread and devour it with zest.

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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.]

Retirement – The Greatest

By Mary B Summerlin who keeps a photostream at Flickr

I retired from teaching elementary school when I was 55 years old. My district offered an incentive to encourage retirement and I was ready. I had not made any financial or work plans; I just knew that it was time for me to make a change.

The offer was made in April and I retired in June 1991, not knowing how I would make the September mortgage payment. That was both daring and a leap of faith.

A few financial windfalls came my way and I began working at jobs I invented or that I heard about through the grapevine. Some of them are: counselor at a farm camp where I drove the tractor and pulled a trailer full of school kids around the farm as I stopped and lectured about interesting things; worked for a company as a computer graphic person (just to learn how to do it); house-sitting jobs – for house and/or animals and/or kids and/or plants.

You get the idea – I was all over the place and loved every minute of it.

After some re-evaluation of what I was doing, I realized that I was operating in panic mode and that I had some choices to make. All my jobs were taking a lot of time traveling and bringing in very little money. Making any money gave me some security at that point but what I really wanted to do was be a professional storyteller and I couldn’t concentrate on that while doing other jobs.

By this time, I had figured out that I would be making enough money in retirement for the essentials of life. Therefore, I had some leeway in choices.

I put all my time and energy into storytelling, finding stories, learning them and writing personal stories. Then I began marketing myself and was successful enough to pay all the storytelling expenses and some extra. That was all I needed.

I told stories in my area at churches, schools, AARP activities, festivals and any other event that seemed promising both in an appropriate place to tell and in making money. I soon realized that my favorite type of stories was personal stories and so I began writing about myself.

No, first I told the stories but then I began to realize that I would have to reinvent the story every time I told it. It didn’t make sense to create the structure, the timeline, special sayings or words every time I wanted to tell the story.

Soooo, gradually, I became a writer and after that, a memoir writing leader. It was only natural – I used the teaching skills that I had and the story and writing skills I had developed and had a passion for.

I led classes at local colleges, Bard, New York State University at New Paltz, Marist College and Vassar College. The classes were a part of The Lifetime Learning Adult program.

Other places where the classes were held was The Fountains, a retirement center; the UU Fellowship; and some private groups. I did this for about 15 years. It was such a bonding time as we, the participants and I, learned from each other.

Life was such pleasure and discovery. I could create programs, market myself and express myself in creative ways. I felt like a flower blooming - nothing in my background said I could be creative. What a discovery!

I also helped begin and organized a coffee house known as the Spoken Word Café. I ran it, booked performers, did PR and was the emcee. It was a glorious time. I’m proud to say that it is still running and has a regular following. It’s my baby.

I also discovered digital cameras about the time I retired from teaching. Through trial and error and an occasional class, I have become a photographer. I have had at least six exhibitions and at the current time, I have photographs displayed in a B&B, a business office and a restaurant.

Oh, the discoveries I have made. One reason is that I have the freedom to take a chance, to experiment, to learn and question. Retirement has been such a time of discovery and exploring.

I have been fortunate in that my retirement takes care of the essentials (I mean basics) and therefore gives me room to be creative and not worry about the necessity of making money.

Good Health also adds freedom. I have been blessed with good health until the last year. Soon I hope that will no longer be an issue. Each bit of money always adds a plus to my life.

I think two of the best things that happen to us as we age is having grandchildren and being able to retire and enjoy it. Of course, that requires you to feel passionate about something; doesn’t matter what but something. Of course, that is what gives life its zest anyway, isn’t it?

To anybody thinking of retirement, I say “Go for it!” It’s like entering another stage of life – you’re not ever ready for it. But when you do it – it’s the greatest.

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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.]

My Hospital Adventure

By Dorothy Moffitt

It was a wild and stormy night. Rain lashed the earth and the wind blew the power lines down. I helped my husband get the milking finished with the motor after the power cut out. It was midnight when we finished.

I had been battling pain all the evening. Finally, I said to my husband, “Can you call the ambulance? I cannot stand this pain any more.”

The volunteer ambulance drivers finally arrived and loaded me in for the wild, wet ride to the big town 40 miles away. All went well until we came to the river crossing into the town. The bridge was under water!

The drivers radioed the doctor who suggested we try the town 80 miles the other way.

Finally we arrived there as water lapped the sides of the road. I was not known at this hospital and they looked at me rather suspiciously as they had already had a patient who had tried to commit suicide and another who had terminated her pregnancy.

Next morning, they suggested I go back to the original destination town but I was not moving again. At midday, they finally operated and removed my appendix. I was meant to go to this town as the young doctor filling in for the local surgeon on holidays did a much neater job than my own doctor did on my husband later.

I was in a two bed ward with a dear old lady in her last days. When I was ambulant, I had some fun times trying not laugh with another old lady who had broken her leg chasing a cow on her farm and was trying to master walking with crutches. She later sent me some bulbs.

My minister visited and asked me to visit the patient who was suicidal when she thought she had cancer. I hope I made a difference in her life.

My husband sent my clothes in a suitcase in the local passenger bus. It was still waiting to be retrieved when he brought the family to visit several days later. I was still in a hospital gown.

It was an interesting and often amusing experience. I have had several visits to hospital since but none as dramatic as that one.

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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.]

Push My Buttons Please

By Joanne Zimmermann

Mary awoke early; she was so excited!! She'd had a facelift a few weeks back and the results were just stunning. She already had a gorgeous figure, naturally curly hair and she was lunching with the upper crust in her town! They were looking for new board members. She was positive she would be chosen.

She passed the full- length mirror, looked twice and thought she was having a bad dream!!

Staring back at her was a smooth, grey figure shaped like a ladies restroom symbol. There were only slits for eyes!! She tried to scream but no sound came out.

She quickly ran to where her husband slept, lying on his stomach. She uncovered him and saw he looked just like she did but shaped like the men’s room figure.

He awoke and regarded Mary with just as much horror. Who are you? he thought. She saw he had pushbuttons up and down his back and each had one curly antenna on top of their heads.

This scene was played out in households throughout the world. All humans had been turned inside out and all looked the same. Kids had the same shape as the adults. All had buttons on their backs and by pressing them one could tell a lot about the person.

All thoughts and deeds, good and bad, could be learned by pushing each others' buttons. Many tried to delete the information; it was so revealing. But it was permanent and could not be reprogrammed.

A lot of hugging now went on; each pressing the other's buttons to learn what was really inside each other.

There was no need to breathe, eat, sleep or have sex. There were no sex organs or ears, so there was no noise, music, sounds of any kind. Some regarded this as reason to kill themselves but this was impossible. All were being operated through their antennae.

An outer space colony called Myrth had invaded earth. Earthlings were chosen as they were regarded as shallow, with false idols, soon due to self-destruct! The Myrthians carefully studied their victims as a social experiment to see what change they could initiate over a period of a year.

This completely changed humanity. Looks did not count. Money did not count. What counted was that everyone could see the real person, not just a front that most had carefully contrived.

Those who had behaved well during their lives were feeling good. They were proud of the paths they had chosen. Even if they were ugly, deformed outcasts in their former selves, all had changed. Suddenly they were popular, in demand, admired. It was almost too good to be true.

Those who had bad interiors, jealous, mean cheaters clawing their way to the top through looks and possessions were now exposed. They had to assume the status that the former ugly ducklings occupied. Their lives had changed overnight.

Mary discovered Larry had cheated on her with her best friend and Larry found out Mary had used all of their savings on beautification.

Myrthians saw many bad people now trying to connect with former outcasts. Those with good interiors wanted nothing to do with them. The “Goodies” carefully searched humanity, pushing buttons daily, until they found those with similar interiors.

Children had time on their sides to alter their behavior before it was too late and they accumulated any bad buttons. Parents did not have to parent anymore; in fact, the kids acted as parents. They were more adept at changing and wanted their “Baddie” parents to shape up.

What would happen to you if the Myrthians invaded?

Eventually, everyone was returned to their original selves. The Myrthians were not cruel but very happy and successful. They kept an eye out for many years to see if anything changed because of the experiment.

In the comment section, please let us know how this might affect some of your plans. You would not have to spend money for cosmetic appearances but would have to enrich your lives by association, study, devotion, charity, good stuff.

Would that be much different from how you live today? Would you get new friends? Would you discover some truly beautiful people you had overlooked? Would Larry and Mary remain together? Stay tuned.

Pushing someone’s buttons is usually negative, but perhaps some good reprogramming could be done by friends. Each human had a new chapter, beginning with the invasion. Would you like a chance to “start over?”

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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.]

An Important Moment and a Simple Truth

By Michael Gorodezky

My very first employment after graduating from Berkeley was as a Deputy Probation Officer in Alameda County, California. As a naïve 22-year-old working in the criminal justice system was a huge awakening. One story is special for me.

I was doing adult investigations which means I wrote short reports on various adults convicted of (mostly minor) crimes. I had an office in a new building near the freeway in Oakland. The office had what we now know as cubicles but in 1967, it seemed only that the walls did not reach the ceiling.

There were doors, but they were glass and I felt comfortable with that arrangement since I suspected many of the people I met were not my friends.

On this day, I met a young man who told me that his family was on welfare and had run out of money. It was the end of the month. He told me that he had two children and only a piece of bologna to feed them. He asked if I could “loan” him some money. I gave him 10 dollars. In those days that was a good bit of money.

The next day or so, I went to see my supervisor, Mr. Green, who I considered a very wise man. I asked if he thought I had been stupid? Had I been hustled? Was I a fool?

The conversation was very brief. He simply told me that I had a choice. I could be one of two people. I could be someone who risked being a fool, but also might help a family to eat. Or, I could be someone who is never a fool and who never takes the chance to help someone. Who did I want to be?

Good question. I am grateful that Mr. Green shared his wisdom with me.

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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.]

Remembering Childhood Friends

By Dani Ferguson Phillips of The Cataract Club

Different people have different definitions of friendship. For some, it is the trust in an individual that he/she won't hurt you. For others, it is unconditional love.

There are some who feel that friendship is companionship. People form definitions based on the kind of experiences they have had.

They say a person who has found a faithful friend has found a priceless treasure. I found just such a treasure in the summer of 1957, when I was eight years old and the summer Karma Ann Hulslander moved on the block.

I don't remember meeting her; it's as if one day she just appeared and became my best friend. Karma was the original Pippy Longstocking. She moved to Oklahoma with her mom, sister Arta and baby brother Kenny while her dad remained in Colorado to run their ranch.

Karma's mother had a dream of becoming a doctor so she and the kids moved here so she could attend the University of Oklahoma. Mrs. Hulslander was about 4 feet 11 inches tall and she was as round as she was tall. Both Karma and Arta towered over their mother and baby Kenny wasn't far behind.

Karma was the first tomboy I ever knew. She wore boys' jeans and cowboy boots when she bothered to wear shoes at all. Her long brown hair was worn in a ponytail and her face was covered in brownish red freckles.

She was like a magnet and I was drawn to her instantly. Karma had an unending imagination and being with her was always a new adventure. She was the Lone Ranger and I was her faithful companion, Tonto.

Karma and I couldn’t have been more different. She was fiercely independent, could hold her own with any boy and was what my daddy referred too as “tough as a boot.” I on the other hand was a timid, insecure, sissy girl.

I wanted to be brave and daring but it just wasn’t in my nature. I was a peacemaker at heart and avoided confrontation at any cost. Just being with Karma made me believe I too could be brave and daring even if it was only wishful thinking.

To earn spending money, Karma collected pop bottles. She received 2 cents a bottle and she would hike all over the university campus picking up bottles and trading them in for money to purchase little wooden animals from Dee's gift shop.

Karma would have rather played with those little animals than any old doll. One Christmas, her dad built her a doll house complete with electric lights but it was never used to house a Barbie or any other doll for that matter. Karma's prized animals were the happy homeowners.

One summer, Karma's dad built a playhouse in their back yard but Karma insisted it was not a playhouse but a ranch. No matter what name it was given it was a really great place to play.

We made dishes out of mud and even had running water after Karma found an old enema bag and hung it from the chimney of the barbeque grill.

One night we decided to play hide 'n' seek and the ranch house was home base. Everyone took off to hide and my brother Mike climbed up into Hulslander's attic. He probably would never have been found if he hadn't fallen through their living room ceiling.

Mr. Hulslander was sitting in the living room when Mike's legs came crashing through the ceiling. There he was, dangling above Mr. Hulslander's head and the game was over.

Karma's mom never got accepted to medical school. In the 1950s, it was very hard for women to get admitted plus she was older than most of the other students and considered a bad risk. She did go on to pharmacy school and after her graduation the whole family moved back to Colorado.

Karma would come back in the summers to visit riding the bus from Colorado to Oklahoma all by herself. One summer when I was 12 years old, I went back to Colorado with her on the bus. To this day I can't believe my mother let me go and she never would have if I had been with anyone other than resourceful Karma.

She was a wise old soul in a 12-year-old body who made us all wish to be Peter Pan and remain children forever.

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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.]

Loaded for Bear

By Deb who blogs at Simple Not Easy

It was early spring and the mountain air was sharp and fragrant with the rising sap from birch, oozing resins of fir, spruce and pine. Our wee house was located on the downslope of the last stony thrust of the Rocky Mountains. A small flat area had been bulldozed to the east.

The main door opened onto this area. The only window on this side was just large enough to allow you to see who was on the front porch.

The western side had the windows and the view was breathtaking - a stretch of meadow, the Columbia River and beyond that, the perpetually snow-capped Purcell Mountains. We lived surrounded by miles of unbroken wilderness.

Friends had come for dinner and it had been a pleasant evening. I tucked my boys (ages two and nine) in and went to bed. About 2:00AM, I was awakened by our dog barking and pawing at my bedroom window. He raced around the house baying and I had the sickening thought that maybe coyotes had gotten into the barn with the livestock. I threw on my robe and went to check.

I was a few feet from the front door when I heard the creaking. I stood transfixed as the door visibly bulged inward. I turned on the porch light and looked out the window. A huge black bear was standing on his hind feet, his shoulder pressed to the door, pushing with all his might.

My first thought was for my boys. If the bear got inside, they were only steps away. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a skillet. I drew back and hit the door as hard as I could with the bottom of the skillet. It rang like a gunshot.

The bear said "Oof!" and jumped backwards off the the porch. The dog grabbed a mouthful of bear end and began shaking. It wasn't much of a match but it took the bear by surprise. He took off up the hill, the dog right behind him.

The next day, I borrowed an ancient long gun from a neighbour. When I fired it, the recoil knocked me down. The RCMP came out and laughed at me and my borrowed gun. “If you hit him with that you'll just make him mad,” the officer said. “You'd better get a better gun than that.”

So I drove the 40 miles to town to buy a gun.

The gun shop owner wouldn't sell me one. "Here's what you need," he said. From under the counter he pulled a slingshot. I am not lying. He wanted me to go after a huge bear with a slingshot. "This is a hunting sling," he said. (It was an aluminum gizmo with an extension that slipped over your forearm.)

"All you want to do is sting him,” he said. “Make him associate your place with pain. Get some rocks about the size of a big marble and smack him as hard as possible in the ribs with rocks as fast as you can reload."

So, that night I had two dozen marble-sized rocks lined up on the window sill and my sling at the ready. When the dog began screaming, "BEAR! BEAR!" I slammed the skillet on the door and while the dog and the bear circled each other 15 feet away, I stood on the porch and hit the bear in the ribs with three or four rocks in quick succession.

He jumped, said, ooofff, and then hightailed it up the slope, dog on his heels.

The bear woke our nearest neighbour about midnight a few nights later. John raised sheep. John heard bleating, grabbed his gun and ran to his sheep-pen. The bear was lobbing sheep against the side of the barn, one by one. By the time John shot him, 80 sheep were dead.

Most of the time the bears (and cougars) came and went without incident but this was the exception I'll always remember, and gives me the right to brag that I've hunted bear with a slingshot and lived to tell the tale.

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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 Road Trip

By Lia Hirtz

Every year in October, anticipating the religious festivities celebrated between November and December in his hometown in Mexico, my father would go into a total state of rhapsody. Not only for the fantastic tribute he paid to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the myriad of saints, but also because there was so much drinking during this time that I don’t think he ever remembered which divinity he was hailing in any of the ceremonies.

With his seven guitars, his wife, four daughters and a son, my bohemian father eagerly began planning the three day road trip. Those of us who were in school were pulled out. The note I took to the school office every year (that I wrote because they didn’t speak or write English) read:

“Dear Teacher, I need to take Rosalia out of school for four to five months because we have a family emergency. Thank you, Carlos Figueroa.”

I don’t think the school believed that every year around the same time, we had a family emergency but back then, nobody seemed to care. I stopped going to school in October even though we did not leave until November because my mother needed help with the kids and “What’s one more month without school going to do to her anyway?” my father would argue.

I was attending Catholic school in the Old Mission in San Juan Capistrano and Sister Grace, my first grade teacher, gave me books to take with me and study during the family crisis.

My father refused to take the books because they took up valuable space in the car and would say, “What if you lose them, then I’ll have to pay for them. They’re safer at home.”

Due to these extended leaves, I repeated first grade three times.

My parents didn’t seem to mind much. My father was the type who thought that I, too, would have the incredible fortune, as he did, of finding work in a widget factory once I had completed the useless years of schooling. This was the American dream for him, to never run out of work.

Finally, the day arrived. We packed the hunter green station wagon with the wood side panels beyond capacity. Since we had no suitcases, my father had picked up some sturdy carton boxes from the supermarket dumpster.

The boxes were stuffed and carefully tied with thick rope to the rack on top of the car.

Between the layers of clothing, my clever father hid record players, hammers, flashlights, screwdrivers, old transistor radios, pointy white bras, gently used clothes from the Salvation Army, screws, bolts and I’m almost certain he once snuck an illegal American chicken into Mexico. He sold everything! He was like Aladdin hawking magic lamps.

The kids were excited as my caring father prepared a comfy bed of blankets in the back of the car for their comfort. I usually got the middle seat unless my sister Amelia became car sick. I think she faked it most of the time.

My mother carefully packed 500 bean and cheese tacos, a jar of hot salsa that obliterated the delicate skin from the roof of your mouth, pork skins, Tang for the children and a thermos of weak Folgers coffee for the adults. This was our diet for three days.

Once we entered Mexican territory, my father came alive. He slowly pulled out a menthol cigarette from his shirt pocket and, almost theatrically, deeply inhaled its smoke and then he coughed uncontrollably for a few minutes, throw the cigarette out and never smoke for the rest of the year.

But for him, in Mexico, everything was just so much better. For starters, Mexican authorities allowed you to light a fire right on the side of the rode and cook your chicharrones and warm your bean tacos. You were allowed to pee anywhere as your mother held a towel around you, while you prayed that she would not drop it like she had so many times before. To my father, this was true freedom!

Virile and young, he drove non-stop for the first two days of the trip or until he began hallucinating from lack of sleep. Then, at my mother’s insistence, he would pull over in some deserted area and instantly fall asleep for a few hours.

He would wake refreshed and splash his face with water from a plastic jug and continue on his mission.

Meanwhile, in the back, my sisters and brother battled, ate or slept in an odorous cloud of blankets. If they fought violently and did not let go of each other’s hair, my mother would screech at me to go and separate them.

“Aren’t you the eldest?” She would ask. “Aren’t you the one that needs to keep the peace back there?”

No one ever gave me the title of peacekeeper, but I knew better than to argue with my mother. So I slithered like a snake over the seat into the great unknown of the “back.”

Then, since power had been granted to me by my mother, I used lethal force when I unhooked their little claws from their tangled hair. My sisters screamed like banshees warding off death. They cried for a while, recoiled into their own corner to lick their wounds and fell asleep.

Sometimes, these policing activities took so much out of me that I ended up car-sick. I still don’t know if it was the effort of trying to separate them or the potpourri of smells from five unwashed kids, but one of them would see me go pale and cry to my mother to pass down the empty tortilla bag she had previously saved especially for these occasions.

The kids would laugh hysterically, tasting sweet revenge, as I poured my soul in pieces into the tortilla bag that read “La Cumplidora - The Best Corn Tortillas.” My body convulsing, my forehead drenched with sweat, my eyes bulging out of their sockets, white and oval like hard boiled eggs.

Then, panting like a hound, it would be over. Carefully, with trembling hands, as if death had touched me, I tied a knot on the bag and flung it out the back window where it would explode in mid-air like colorful confetti.

On we drove, like birds flying south for the winter - my father’s glee as big as the sun. We sang, we fought, we laughed and cried during our pilgrimage.

And in a little town beyond the mountains, her heart beating a bit faster with joy and anticipation, my grandmother impatiently looked out the window waiting for her flock to return home.

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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.]

Grammar School Hierarchy

By Ernest Leichter

”All men are created equal” - from The Declaration of Independence

All countries have some kind of hierarchy. In Great Britain, the peerage system has been in place for centuries. In this system, monarchs are ranked highest followed by, earls, counts and barons. Commoners bring up the rear.

The only way a person can move up in class is by marriage. By marrying Prince William, Kate Middleton jumped up from just plain Kate to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

When I started grammar school in San Francisco, we students also had a kind of hierarchy. It wasn’t based on birth, wealth or power. It depended only on who had the most elaborate lunchbox.

The highest status was conferred on people with a rectangular, metal lunchbox with an artistic scene painted on both sides of the box.

Just below the lunchbox in status was the owner of the lunchpail. Lunch pails were cylindrical in shape with no pictures painted on them.

The lowest class in our K-3 caste system was the brown baggers. They couldn’t afford either a box or a pail. Sometimes there was even a grease spot on the bag meaning it had been used a second time.

During the early 1940s, Americans were at the very end of the Great Depression. Most parents couldn’t afford a lunchbox. The lunchbox brought to mind a leisurely picnic in the park for the idle rich. The lunchpail symbolized a quick meal in the middle of the day for the working class. The brown bag suggested unemployment.

My dad was doing so well financially that he could afford to buy me a very expensive lunchbox. My lunchbox had a beautiful scene painted on the outside. The scene depicted deer in a forest peacefully looking through the trees at the sky. The sky was filled with birds and butterflies.

My family lived about three blocks from our grammar school. From kindergarten through second grade, Rhoda, who was three-and-one-half years older than I, walked me to school every morning.

As an upper-division grammar school student, Rhoda was too sophisticated to carry a lunchbox. The fourth through sixth grade students had their own hierarchy. The financially well off students bought their lunches at Gracie's Delicatessen up the the hill from school on the corner of 25th and Balboa. The others carried their lunches in brown bags and ate in the schoolyard.

Mom had my lunch ready to take to school when I woke up on school mornings. She filled the box with two kinds of sandwiches - peanut butter and jam and deviled egg. She also included an apple and three Oreo cookies. The school provided milk for all of the students.

As I walked to school, I would deliberately swing my lunchbox back and forth hoping my fellow students would notice the treasure I carried in my hand. When I arrived at school, I would carefully set down my lunchbox on a shelf in the cloakroom. Students with lunch bags had to write their names on the bags, but everyone knew who owned the lunch boxes.

When lunchtime finally arrived, we raced to the schoolyard to secure a picnic table. Everyone wanted to sit at my table. At first, I thought it was because of my sparkling personality. When I got older and more worldly, I discovered the real reason for my popularity.

My friends were hungry and looked to me as a food bank. I always gave the fattest kid in my class, Ed Plutte, my deviled egg sandwich. Nobody wanted my apple. I would take one bite and toss it in the garbage can. The Oreo cookies were the biggest prize of all.

One day I would give one to Jim Guthrie. Another day I might toss the chocolate masterpiece to Alan Ortiz. The other two Oreos were mine alone. The cookies were to be savored.

First, I split each cookie in half and licked the sugar off each side. Only then would I bite into the chocolate and chew each side ever so slowly. I would swish the chocolate around in my mouth before finally swallowing. It didn’t matter to me that my teeth were brown for the rest of the afternoon.

After lunch, I quickly placed the lunchbox back in the cloakroom. I feared that if I left it unattended in the school yard, it would be scratched or dented.

By 1943, the Great Depression finally came to an end. Wartime jobs were plentiful and adults, who hadn’t worked for years, got jobs in shipyards and other war-related industries. People now had money to spend. Children with lunch boxes lost their status. Every Tom, Dick and Ernest had one.

Democracy had come to our school. The caste system faded. From that time forward, all children in our school were created equal.

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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.]

New York City

By Johna Ferguson

This one’s for you Ronni. New York City was wonderful and I would love to have been in your shoes and wandered all over the place, but my time was limited.

My daughter-in-law, granddaughter and I walked around the entire area where you lived. My most favorite place in the city has always been around Washington Square Park. Sure, it doesn’t have the class of uptown and those billion dollar condos by Central Park, but it is without a doubt the most friendly and interesting part of New York City.

Most everything south of 14th Street is worth spending time looking at. From where you lived, it was a nice walk to Chinatown but like you, we took a bus back with all the interesting things we bought.

Of course, the weather was wonderful as the east was having a summer spell; no coats like we had to put on as soon as we arrived in chilly Seattle. And of course, here we have lots of hills while New York City is flat, but too many cars for much safe bike riding although there are always those few brave souls who seem to just fly around the cars and trucks.

I guess I forgot how noisy the city is, even in the middle of the night. Seems there are always sirens going here and there although I never saw any fires or shootings.

It also seems that more than half the buildings around Washington Square are being refitted in someway - tuck-pointing old brick or putting in new thermal windows for there is scaffolding everywhere.

The NYU law students' dorm we were staying in had all the windows covered with plastic film so even though we were on the 13th floor we couldn’t see out or down to Broadway until the last two days when the workers removed it from the living room and dining room windows, but not the two bedroom’s windows.

Prices on many grocery items seemed higher than those in Seattle – well, all except in Chinatown and they were as cheap as those here. We ate pizza from Lombardi’s - a very large, completely greaseless one with lots of toppings which only cost $35.00 plus delivery tip.

We watched the dogs playing in the dog parks, kids in the children’s parks and lots of pick-up basketball and handball games in their own areas.

We listened to a young man play a baby grand piano in Washington Square Park and wondered where he stored the piano, or even how it got there, but it was great free entertainment on a sunny day.

Enclosed are some pictures. One of me standing on what used to be the stairs leading to Ronni’s apartment:

And shots of nearby shops:

But if you go to New York City, be sure to spend a lot of time wandering around between Greenwich Village, Soho and Chinatown. I guarantee in the spring or summer it’s a great outing with such a variety of shops it dazzles one’s mind.

And if name brands are important to you, just wander up Broadway and go in and out of Coach, Patagonia or Polo too name just a few. I’ve been there before, but each time I find I like it more and more so I can understand how Ronni must miss it and hope she can enjoy a little bit of my travels in her old stamping grounds.

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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.]