by jphilo | May 20, 2013 | Reflections on the Past
Mad Men.
The show’s been hot for several years, but I didn’t start watching it until lately. It didn’t take long to get hooked, since the show’s first season is at about the time my first childhood memories kick in. We were a from a family of teetotalers, so I can’t speak for the drinking. But the hair styles, the furniture, the technology, and the unrestrained smoking are truly a blast from the past.
So are the petticoats.
And that is something I can speak about having been a bit of a petticoat connoisseur way back then. Though that may not be strong enough word to describe my preoccupation with petticoats. My heart’s desire was to have a petticoat poofy enough to make my dresses stick out like the dresses on the front of the patterns Mom bought at the dry good store.
But, to get that kind of poof required several petticoats. My sister and I each had one petticoat like the one pictured below. Rows and rows of gathered netting were stitched to the cotton outer petticoat. But to get quality poof, a second half-petticoat of almost pure netting could be slipped (hence the name slip) under the full petticoat.
Our family, like many others, couldn’t afford two petticoats per daughter. So our full skirts, along with those of most of the girls we knew, had more droop than poof. And that returns the conversation to the subject at hand. When those Mad Med actresses wear shirtwaist dresses with wide skirts, their clothes exhibit maximum poof. We’re talking not just two petticoats. But three. Maybe even four. And I covet every one of them.
Because I have petticoat envy.
And I’m not ashamed to admit it. In fact, if the show was casting extras for a crowd scene, I would audition in a heart beat. And I wouldn’t care if it was a non-speaking part. I wouldn’t care if they edited me out of any shot I was in. I wouldn’t care if the pay was lousy. Or nonexistent. As long as I walked away with a picture of me wearing a dress with enough petticoats to achieve maximum poof, I would be happy.
And resolved never to wear an under-petticoat again.
Because, if memory serves me right, those gathered layers of netting were extremely scratchy. So scratchy they went out of fashion and never made a come back. Except as an outside layer of foo-foo, a style which is way cute on a 6-year-old, but not nearly so cute on a 56-year-old.
Then again, it wouldn’t hurt to try one on…
by jphilo | Mar 25, 2013 | Reflections on the Past
The other day, II had lunch with a friend who’s a junior in high school. On the way to our favorite Chinese restaurant, we drove by the former site of Bryant Elementary School. It used to look like this:
Now it looks like this:
We both commented about how weird it was for the building where we had many good memories (I used to teach there) obliterated.
The conversation made me think of what’s happened to the other workplaces in my past. Sky Ranch for Boys, where Hiram and I worked from the late 70s through the early 80s closed a few years back. Several of those buildings have been bought and moved to different locations–a rather disconcerting thought.
One of the tan and brown buildings where I taught in Camp Crook from 1980–1985 has been replaced with a new grey building. Which needed to be done, But if they chose to replace only one building, couldn’t they have chosen the one I taught in for the least number of years?
Also, my Grace Community Church Director of Discipleship and Assimilation digs–back in the days when the church rented downtown office space in the basement of the Livery–is now the kitchen of The Good News Room Coffee Shop. The owners have done a bang-up job with the space and decor, but it’s strange to order a cup of coffee and think, “Hmmm, right there where the sink is? That’s where my desk used to be.
All these changes take some getting used to, but I’m adjusting. Except for one thing. Considering the track record of my former workplaces and the fact that these days I work from home, do you think it would be wise for us to up our homeowner’s insurance?
by jphilo | Mar 11, 2013 | Reflections on the Past
The man of steel and I are on a roll. Not only are we making progress on the sexiest remodeling project ever, but we also finished recovering the table and chair set last used eons ago during my childhood. Never mind how many eons ago that might be.
The important thing is that the original cracked and moldy red vinyl (circa 1957) has finally been replaced. The table top and chairs are all spiffed up and looking good thanks to:
- My mom’s refusal to let the sibs and me “play rough” with table and chairs or take them outside, which explains why the original white paint is in excellent shape.
- Mom’s decision in the 1980s to replace the vinyl on the table top and seats, but quitting halfway through the job. (She recovered the table top, but shoved the original chair covers and the remaining vinyl in a plastic bag.) So the set never was banged or dinged by her five grandchildren.
- The birth of our grandson, which prompted my decision to haul the set out of our attic, where they’d been mouldering since Mom gave up housekeeping in 2009.
- The man of steel, who helped with the project, doing all the stuff that made Mom abandon the project. (As I would have done had the man of steel not been around. Fitting the vinyl around those itty bitty corners and stapling them in place was a two person job!)
The table and chairs set look so good, they’re already in use as an end table in our living room and easily accessible to the pint-sized crowd. In fact, a two-year-old visitor to our house took them on a test drive. He discovered that the same piece of apple pie his mommy tried to feed him as he sat on her lap is magically tastier when feeding oneself seated at a kid-sized table.
This child-sized table is magic, a discovery I made eons ago as a child–still no need to disclose how many eons ago that might be–a discovery that skipped my children’s generation, and one we want our little grandson make during visits to grandma and grandpa’s house.
Because childhood should be full of magic, and grandparents are tasked with making sure it happens. Which means it’s time for me to stop blogging and start searching for fairy dust. It’s in the attic somewhere…
by jphilo | Jan 25, 2013 | Reflections on the Past
Tom Balm was an extraordinary man.
He laughed more than a minister should, at least by 1967 standards,
when he came to our small town Iowa church.
He spent too much time visiting the poor and needy,
too many hours sitting with those too infirm to come to church on Sunday morning,
too many Sunday school classes explaining propitiation to uninterested middle schoolers.
Several times a week, his voice mingled with my father’s
and floated down the hall to meet my brother, sister, and I
when we got home from school.
We walked into Dad’s room where he lay in bed,
Tom on a chair beside him,
both of them chortling and chuckling
until tears ran down their cheeks,
until the loneliness left my father’s eyes,
until Tom said good-bye and took the laughter with him.
I close my eyes and see Tom sitting by our Sunday school room window,
riding herd on a roomful of hormonal middle schoolers,
spreading his arms to illustrate Christ’s crucifixion,
earnestly explaining how the Son
bore the wrath of the Father
for the sins of the world.
Did he use the word propitiation?
I don’t know.
But decades later, when a pastor used the word in a sermon,
I pictured the window and the Sunday school room of my childhood
and Tom with his arms spread wide.
Finally, I understood
the extraordinary love of the God
Tom wanted to share with a group of middle schoolers,
Finally, I understood
the extraordinary nature of a man
touched by the love of God he wanted us to know.
A man with a heart full of laughter.
A man who made a difference in the lives
of a father who could not leave his bed,
and the three children who loved him.
In memory of Reverend Tom Balm, August 14, 1932–November 29, 2012
by jphilo | Dec 10, 2012 | Reflections on the Past
Hiram and I had a hard time getting excited about decorating the Christmas tree. Maybe it’s because we don’t have kids at home to turn the chore into a magical event. But this year, if we hadn’t been hosting our extended family’s holiday gathering, we might not have put it up.
Call us Scrooge and Scroogette.
We had to divide and conquer to get the job done. I unpacked and placed other decorations in their traditional spots around the house while Hiram put up the tree and strung the lights and garland. Once he was done, I hung the ornaments.
Call me a perfectionist.
I hung the straw angel, given to us by my closest college friend on our first married Christmas, and the calico ornaments I made that year for our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Then came the satin ball from our first grown up workplace, the now defunct Sky Ranch for Boys. Next came treasures our kids made when they were young: paper cup bells, construction paper wreaths, wooden frames around kindergarten pictures of Allen and Anne.
Call me sentimental.
After that were ornaments from former students, souvenirs from our visit to Alaska when the kids were 12 and 6, the funky retro Old Navy ornaments Anne and I found on clearance when she was in high school, and gifts from co-workers at Bryant School, the elementary building that was torn down a few years ago.
Call me blessed and thankful.
Finally, I opened the old shoebox and unwrapped the antique ornaments Mom divided amongst the sibs and me when she gave up housekeeping. Fragile glass balls she and Dad bought in the early 1950s. Even more fragile baubles she inherited from Dad’s parents about the same time. Trinkets I placed high on this year’s tree to keep them safe. Treasures that brought to mind the stories Mom told about their owner, the grandmother who died before I was born, as we decorated the Christmas tree each year of my childhood. Gifts that led to a change in my attitude and my name for Christmas trees.
I call them memory trees.
by jphilo | Oct 19, 2012 | Reflections on the Past
Hey, fellow baby boomers, do you remember how old you felt when you turned 30? How about 40? Remember chuckling at the jokes about wearing Depends? About eating bran muffins and drinking prune juice? Well, all that jocularity fades away when Facebook smacks you in the face with cold hard truth by announcing that one of your friends, a former fourth grade student, is celebrating her fortieth birthday.
The above scenario is completely hypothetical, of course. So, hypothetically speaking, how would you respond to the news? How would you reconcile the fact that one of the first students you taught was turning 40?
A. Would you do the Jack Benny thing and refuse to admit you were getting older?
B. Would you call a plastic surgeon?
C. Would you give thanks for the years going by swiftly and sweetly?
D. Would you be grateful for good health that makes you feel younger than are?
E. Or would you spin yourself as a child prodigy who started teaching at a young age?
Hypothetically speaking, C and D seem like excellent answers. But E has the ring of hypothetical truth, don’t you think?
image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
