Skype with family

Skype is wonderful. 

Here's a screen grab of my son teaching Heersa to make mouth noises.

And while I'm showing off grandchildren, here's Seth dying on stage.

running into strangers

Grammar off day. This stuff is going to take a lot of revision!

sad story from dad
the little indian boy in Little Falls

Dad loved transportation. His idea of an entertaining time was to take the family to the airport to watch planes or to take a train ride. (He died while on a cruise to see the Panama Canal.) When we lived along the Mohawk River, he liked to take us down to the Erie barge canal. On one of our walks, Dad told us stories of a little Iroquois Indian boy who played on the cliffs before the town of Little Falls was built. I don't remember the stories, except perhaps that the boy collected the "Herkimer diamond" quartz crystals. But the little boy became very real to us. One day I asked Dad what happened to the boy and his Indian family, and Dad told me that our ancestors had driven the Indians away. I still remember being very upset about this.

Down at the station early in the morning

See the little Puffer Bellies all in a row

See the engine driver pull the little handle

Chug, chug, toot, toot

Off they go

I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal

We've hauled some barges in our day
filled with lumber, coal and hay
And we know every inch of the way from
Albany to Buffalo.

Chorus:
Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

Dad and Marian invested in a movie camera and used it to record family members for posterity. (I had some of those films converted to video. Now I need to convert the videos to DVDs.) When they visited more distant relatives, he interviewed them on film. One film of a highly accomplished and aged second cousin had understandable sound of her playing the piano, but the picture was baffling. Dad enjoyed showing this film of something fuzzy but apparently alive. At one point, Dad would shout out, "Here comes the blink!" and, sure enough, the object moved. It was an eyeball. Marian had filmed the whole scene holding the camera backwards.

One time Dad had driven south to visit me in Maryland. We were to meet Marian at the airport because she was arriving from a conference in New Orleans. When we were at BWI near Baltimore, Dad went to the counter to ask where to find the flight. When he took out his notes, he saw that he was at the wrong airport. We were supposed to be at the National Airport near Washington DC. As we were thinking about the logistics of finding our car, driving to Washington, and being very late to pick up Marian, we were amazed to see her walking down the BWI hall towards us!! It turns out that there was some problem with landing her plane and they were rerouted to BWI. Just a few moments later and we would have been heading to DC only to have to drive back. Who was more surprised? Probably Marian was equally surprised to see us waiting for her.

It seems that people in my family frequently run into people we know. I think this could be true for everyone if they kept their ears and eyes open.

Dad was visiting Annapolis Maryland from upstate New York. He was at the downtown docks looking at skipjacks and other sailing vessels. Passengers were disembarking from a small tourist ship and Dad found himself face to face with a man who was on the board of directors from his last job in Poughkeepsie, NY. This man had a lot to do with Dad's decision to retire, so it was not someone Dad was fond of. "Bob! What are you doing down here?" the man asked. Dad pointed across the river "See that large yacht over there ... ?"

Dad was in the ski lodge at Gore Mountain. Someone sitting nearby was looking at an ad in a local newspaper and telling his companion,"See that guy in this real estate ad? I think that's the Bob Morse who was in my third grade downstate in Ardsley." And Marian, who overheard, said, "That's my husband."

A friend of mine, Jamie, and I drove from Annapolis to Arlington Virginia to join in a Messiah sing. I kept looking around the singers to see if there was anybody I might know. Jamie said, "I half expect you to stand up here and shout,'Anybody from Potsdam, NY?' " After the singing, there was coffee and cookies in the church basement and we were approached by a young man who evidently was attracted to Jamie. During the conversation, we learned he had gone to music school at Potsdam State at the same time I was there.

One summer, I was in a special short residential program for math and science teachers around Maryland. There was a special banquet to start things off. I got into some good conversation with people at the table and was very pleased to learn that one woman had gone to the same upstate NY high school that I had. She was four years old than I, so I had never met her. But I was astounded to learn that she was in the Hi-Y club where my dad was Y director. That club had no more than 10 kids in it at one time. Still more remarkable was that my dad, when asked, could describe her. After over thirty years.

Seth in New York
My grandson tells the story of making a trip to New York City. He said to his Mom, "I feel like I'm going to see someone famous, right here in this street." Shortly, a man near Seth asked him about the Japanese Manga (graphic novel) that he was carrying. (***.... get details from Seth)

sad stories from Mom

Mom told us that she was 13 when her mother went to the hospital and never came home. She had teeth pulled and, as a result, developed leukemia. (I suspect that it was really sepsis, but this is the story my mother's family tells) Mom told us that she regretted saying mean things to her mother before she died and that the hospital would not allow her to visit because she was under age for visitors.

Mom was never a good swimmer. She says that her mother taught her to swim by calling her to wade into water that was over her head. This was one of the few persistent memories she had of her mother. She describes her parents as so in love with each other that they gave their children little attention.

After her mother died her father was overwhelmed with taking care of three girls. He did hire a Mexican girl to help. Mom told us about living in a tent and having squirrel meat for Christmas. Of course that story was also her way of letting us know how ungrateful we kids were for the good fortune we had, just as I disapprove of how spoiled today's kids are.

Another story Mom shared was of being reprimanded in school for chewing Dentyne gum. Dentyne had been advertised as being good for your teeth. Mom did not think of it as chewing gum, but as doing something healthy, so she was highly offended at being told to stop.

She also fascinated us with stories of wearing a horned toad as jewelry. She avoided trouble in school until one day a teacher saw it move.

That reminds me of a story about some relative who had a pet frog that lived decades until it got stepped on on the stairway. I can't remember the source of that one.

Patty passes on this story.
The turkey incident was in New Mexico when they were living in a tent and Mom was sleeping in a food locker. Grandpa was so good with a twenty-two, he could hit a squirrel between the eyes to save the meat. I don’t know what they were going to have for Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t going to be turkey. They woke up in the morning and there was a flock of turkeys in the yard that they had never seen before. Of course Grandpa shot one for dinner and they never saw the flock again. And that was the story. Turkeys around here are pretty common, I guess they just hadn’t seen any.

lp's and Christmas

Part of the family environment was sound. Here are some of the sounds we listened to:

Sing along with Mitch - Mitch Miller was on tv in the fifties and sixties, leading a chorus of cheerful singers ("Bob" McGRath of Sesame Street was one of them) in old turn of the century standards such as "My Wild Irish Rose" and "Sidewalks of New York".

Tom Lehrer was a piano playing satirist (and a college level math teacher). His repertoire was just shy of naughty and skimmed the surface of above ground. He was never heard on TV or radio until the 70's when he wrote a few songs for the Electric Company, a public television show that encouraged beginning reading.






Stan Freberg The United States of America - The voice of adman Freberg was well known on the radio. His recordings of Broadway musical style numbers about United States history, still make me laugh. My parents and friends loved to sing "Take an Indian to Lunch" around Thanksgiving time.








West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein music and Stephen Sondheim lyrics were a huge part of my growing up. We listened to the Broadway musical record album, saw the movie, heard "Tonight" on pop radio stations, and I played the ballet from the piano score for my music school audition. Right now there's a revival playing on Broadway.







Frank Warner - Dad knew folk song collector Frank Warner because he was a fellow YMCA professional. That gave Dad some credentials with the local folk song crowd at Saratoga's Cafe Lena, a place which was pretty well respected in the folk song world. The Jolly Tinker became a part of my own guitar and singing repertoire. Our whole family liked to sing "Fod!" and "Away Idaho". I have a few LP's of his, still, and one is signed.





Christmas traditions

Generally, my family had a New England protestant heritage in which Christmas was celebrated with a tree and snow. After 1957, the tree, ideally a balsam fir, came from our own property. Christmas was a Currier and Ives painting.

We put up a nativity scene. I have looked without success for a replica of the creche that was destroyed in a fire in 1973. It was cardboard and the figures resembled the grave-faced figures I have seen in Tiffany stained glass windows.*

Dad would read "A night before Christmas" and we would attend Christmas Eve service.
Later, in the sixties we would listen to a recording of Dylan Thomas reading "Child's Christmas in Wales" and we would chime in during our favorite parts.

And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero -...
...And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo!

Mom liked to put up a sugar plum tree which was a plastic tree which held gum drops.

Dad put up stockings which were found Christmas morning to contain tangerines, hard candy which only older people like, nuts in the shell and often a can of black olives (so Dad wouldn't have to share his).

Grandma always recycled wrapping paper, so we opened our presents carefully. Each recipient was the center of attention as a gift was unwrapped. That person would make a guess at what they would do with the present. If Dad said "I'm going to wear it." and it turned out to be swiss cheese, we would all enjoy that.

The ornaments were diverse and were added to over time. The idea of a monocolor or theme tree was completely alien to our family. We had many kinds of ornaments, lights, maybe a chain of popcorn, "ice" always placed one at a time by my sister who was the only person with patience to do it, and a star ornament at the top. We would sit and stare at the tree and make discoveries with our eyes.

The greatest loss was the disappearance of the family ornaments when Dad's vacation home, the Crest, was burnt to the ground. Two special ornaments that were destroyed in the fire have stories. One was a hollow alligator that was about four inches long that came from my father's childhood. Actually the story is that there was no story. It didn't look like a Christmas sort of ornament and there was no explanation. Story number two was a plastic angel that originated as a Cracker Jacks prize. My sister was given it by a kid in the park, in exchange for the chewing gum out of her mouth. That story was repeated every year when we hung it and long after.

No one every told us that there was such a creature as Santa Claus. We visited North Pole, NY and listened to the story from the book, but didn't believe for more than five minutes at a time.
Many presents had the name "Saint Nick" written on the "From: " line of the tag, but it was obviously in Dad's handwriting. We were allowed to believe if we wanted, and on a snowy morning when we could hear the jingle of the chains on the passing plow, we might get excited for a few moments.


*The window that we would gaze on from the choir loft of Saratoga's Congregational Church was Tiffany. Why did only the choir get to gaze on it?

Miscellaney

Part of a family's culture is the food that they grew up with. With the fragmentation of families, the food traditions are weakening as well. I can only describe my mother's cooking and a little of my grandmother's . We were too distant to know what the other relatives were eating.

Mom's cooking

Mom’s best dishes were split pea soup, minestrone, chili con carne, and tomato aspic.

Mom was the main cook in the house, although pancakes and french toast were delegated by default to Dad who did a superb job with both.
Every now and then we'd have "pioneer stew" for supper. Mom would pronounce it "pioneer" with such passion that it evoked a mental image of my mother growing up in the Southwest with her cowboy parents. I really hated it. But when I grew up I made it myself, frequently, but was careful never to call it "pioneer stew". It was simply leftovers. I wonder when I crossed the line from loathing it to loving it.

People on Maryland's Eastern Shore joke that"mac and cheese" is considered a vegetable. In upstate New York, where I grew up, it was a main course, the core of a meatless meal. Mom's was made with cheddar cheese that we shredded ourselves and it was baked in a glass bowl or pan. Over time and my sister's and my sloppy dishwashing habits, the bowl would be marked at the top with the outlines of baked on macaroni. That marking indicated the location of the best part of the dish, the part where the cheese would concentrate and was very chewy.

Mom's meatloaf was made with bread, ground beef, sausage, onions, and an egg to hold it together. Once when Mom was in the hospital my Dad made a meatloaf. It was a chunk of ground beef with tomato sauce on top. Lacking the vital sausage ingredient, it didn't deserve to be called meatloaf. Turkey stuffing HAD to have sausage, the rest was whatever might be found around the house.

Mom came from the jello mold generation. We always enjoyed the ring shaped aspic. Mom was very creative and did many things with that jello mold. Sometimes the tomato aspic would have spanish olives or hard boiled eggs. And then there was a period of our eating history with apple jello with shredded lettuce and celery in it.

My sister has my mother's recipe for minestrone. I have never found a minestroni as good as my mother's.

baked beans

Like the macaroni and cheese, the baked beans were best around the edges where the well soaked beans would evolve like old people back to infancy and become crunchy. Mom was never stingy with the molasses.

Mom's domestic skills were gained, not by role models, but by virtue of her great intelligence. My mother, whose job it was to maintain the house cleaning, had no set routine, much to my father's great consternation. But when she set herself to the task, the house cleaning was thorough. Her cooking required quite a bit of time and planning, much more than American mothers do in the present day. One of the greatest skills my mother tried to pass on to her daughters was to have all of the parts of a meal show up at the table at the same time. Cooking with success was a topological feat in discrete mathematics. By making a critical path in scheduling, the food arrived hot, fresh, baked, cooled or gelled all at the same time.

Grandma Morse was not known for her cooking, neither good nor bad. She made a good pot roast with cloves, and a “shepherd’s pie” which was baking powder dumplings floating on a beef stew. Grandma was also fond of sweetened stewed tomatoes with bread. She presented it to us grandchildren like it was a treat. I never told her that I didn’t like it.

books on the table top
the family of man













pay the two dollars

cartoon book about having a baby

Elmer West

In the years before my brother was born. our family went tenting. We had two canvas tents, the green umbrella type that originated from my Dad's childhood and a larger saffron colored wall tent. We would meet new people at the camp sites and form instant friendships. Dad once took a neighbor's steaks out of their cooler and left a note saying "We were here. signed, the raccoons"

One summer's day we went to visit Dad's cousin Edith. She lived in the shadow of Moxham Mountain which was north of North Creek. She and her husband Dave lived in a low-ceilinged cottage and kept a greenhouse. My sister and I liked to sing "Davey Crockett" to cousin Dave, and, although he was generally pretty morose, he played along with us. Down the road from Cousin Edith there was a place for sale that had a log cabin, a small frame house, a sturdy log barn and 80 acres of land, both pasture and forest. Our tenting days were over, our family took up fixing up "The Ranch" (as in, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch ....")

There were piles of garnet studded stones left in fields and lichen covered stone fences in the many pastures. Such stones were a great place for kids to play. We made forts. We constructed stone houses with roofs made of sticks and straw. The glaciers that had been through this area left large boulders everywhere. On top of one glacial erratic across the road from the cabin, we put on variety show acts with singing and dancing . Once my sister got so enthusiastic with her performance that she danced right off the boulder. My sister remembers that my mother, who had been the audience across the road and up the hill, was there instantly to check for concussions and broken bones, but there was no injury. Meanwhile, I was back at the cabin, cracking up with laughter.

Out in the middle of the pasture in front of the cabin, was a lone boulder the size of a house.

We befriended Elmer West, who was around eighty years old. He earned income from the county by mowing the grass next to the road with his scythe. The dirt road was called "West Lane"(*now called Cobble Creek Road) and up the road about two miles at the end of West Lane were the houses and outbuildings that Elmer had built for his family and many children. He told us that the large boulder used to be a small stone that had been in his pocket and he threw it in the field where "it growed".

For us, Elmer was like the Indians that befriended the Pilgrims. He helped us raise our log cabin on jacks and replace the rotting bottom logs with new wood. He also helped us build a large screened in porch (from where we watched Patty's variety show). The porch had a cement floor and had slices of elm wood embedded in the cement. Elmer called the wood "ellem" and in turn we called him "Ellemer". He helped raise the porch beam by holding it up on top of his head, so we always enjoyed saying that Elmer used his head to make our porch.

In addition to his mowing the tall roadside grass, Elmer made a living an Adirondack guide. He took tourists hunting and fishing in the wilderness around his house. Year round, he served his company venison and gravy on biscuits and hundreds of four-inch bullhead fried in corn meal and bacon. He didn't worry much about seasons or hunting limits, and nobody else worried about his catching bullhead in fish in traps, either. Apart from the game he caught for food, his groceries were cigarettes, beer, Bisquick, corn meal and bacon.

He played the fiddle, the country way on his chest rather than under his chin, and I can only remember him playing "Red River Valley". His house was papered with Vargas girls. His bedroom, built into the porch, had no door. You got to it by climbing through a front window. Perhaps the furniture was there as he built the room around it.

more stories

Finding people on the internet

Since I was a teenager, my dad had often mentioned Anne Franke. She was the girl my dad had wanted to visit for a weekend when he was seventeen. His parents had vetoed that visit and I don't think he ever forgave them. They thought that he "might get into mischief." And he admits they were probably right. Anne Franke was quite something, evidently. My dad kept her letters and I got to see them about a year before he died. After reading them, it's my impression that she really strung him along. They corresponded through world war II and even after she married.

I was telling Dad about how I was able to find old friends on the internet. Right away, he asked if I could find Anne Franke. This was going to be quite tough since he didn't know her married name. He knew three details: her sister's married name, that her father had become Secretary of the Navy under Eisenhower, and that he had retired to Vermont. These turned out to be enough.

I found her by looking for the sister in obituaries in the New York Times. I figured that her father's distinction as Naval Secretary might rate his daughter a mention. What astonishes me, is that she died only a month previous to my search and was listed. In the obituary I found Ms. Franke's married name and home state in the list of survivors. She had been one of the originators of the state's Nature Conservancy and her telephone number was listed. I called and spoke to her son and told him that my Dad would be happy to hear from her. She was away from home, tending to her sister's affairs. She did respond once to email from my Dad but not again after that. Thanks to the internet, she broke his heart again.

Another remarkable internet find was a childhood friend on the internet. Patty had been my best friend from the time my family moved to Porter Corners when I was 11 until I was about 17 when we moved to Eastern Queens. We had been on the same telephone party line and had a lot of fun confusing a boy we had both dated. He'd call one of us and we'd call the other and say "Stanley's going to call you. I'm going to listen in." and after had made the second call, we'd listen in and then chime in when the conversation was well underway. We got into mischief in ways that baffled our parents because apart we were remarkably well-behaved. When we were fifteen, she and I shoved a curtain rod through a wall of my parent's summer place when there were boys on the other side. It seemed to make perfect sense at the time. One of the boys on the other side of the wall tugged on the curtain rod and needed stitches as a result.

I was living in Maryland when I started this internet search. I had forgotten her married name. So I thought I'd look for her older sister, Ellen. As a girl in highschool, Ellen had been mysteriously very skinny. I remember hearing that she had been hospitalized and had been fed milkshakes. Years later, I had the impression that she was anorexic. I figured there was a good chance that she had not married. I typed in Ellen's maiden name and couldn't believe my eyes. There was a listing by her name in the very Maryland town I was living! This is 402 miles from Porter Corners. Sure enough, I found Ellen living exactly 30 minutes away from were I live. Besides counting Ellen as a friend these days, I've had a chance to visit with Patty a few times. Ellen did marry, but retained her maiden name. To add to this string of coincidence, Patty's husband grew up in the community where I lived when I first moved to Maryland, 138 miles from where I live now.



Singing with dad's dementia - refer to story I wrote a few years ago.

One class of stories is the "dope story." Which what you would expect it to be. I have a few stories of my own, but I'll save that for my recollections of my "hippy days". Here's a dope story. It's not my own, but a good one told by and about a friend of mine.

The Disney movie Fantasia was making the rounds to "a theater near you" in the early 1970's. Fantasia is still circulating. It's a movie of wonderful Disney animation from 1940 which is set to classical music. It is famous for dancing hippos and Micky Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice.
College-aged Mark B. got stoned before going into the theater. About half-way through the picture, he had a revelation, the kind that only stoners can get. He stood up on the chair in that small-town theater and cried out "It's all in time to the music!!"

facts of life

It seems that in my family, kids are most cute when they are around three. And cute kids make the best stories.

I am told I have made some serious factual errors in the following story, but I think it's more fun than the "factual" version.*
My grandson who is extraordinarily cute and unusually well behaved has a story told about him during a rare time he misbehaved. He had a lock put on the outside of his door when he was a toddler. He never required spanking or even a verbal dressing down, but when he was in trouble he was told to take a "time out". One day his father brought him into his room for a time out and a little talking to. Suddenly, three year old Seth jumped up, ran out into the hall and locked his father in his room. "Now YOU take a time out!" he told his father. His father had to climb out Seth's bedroom window.

Long before Seth was conceived, I was taking my precocious three-year old brother to his first church service. John was cute, not so well behaved, but very verbal. I was eleven and had prepared him as well as I could for the church experience. As we were sitting there waiting for the service to begin. My brother whispered "Where's God?" I said "You can't see God. God is invisible." Then the organ stopped and the pastor stood up from behind the lecturn. My brother shouted out "I see God!!"

As I've mentioned my brother was precocious. He talked and read at an early age, and had a large vocabulary. When I was seventeen and he was nine, we were watching a movie on television. Tuesday Weld was looking pretty sorrowful in "A Summer Place."
"What's wrong with her?" my brother asked.
"She's pregnant" I answered.
"But she's not married." he argued.
"You don't have to be married."
In my family, the mom told the facts of life to the girls and the dad told the facts of life to the boy. I realized that this was my chance to find out the dad's version.
"Didn't Dad tell you where babies come from?"
(in a tentative voice)"Yes"
We watched TV a few moments more, and then I asked "What did Dad tell you?"
John recited,"A man places sperm in the woman and it fertilizes the egg and then the baby grows in the mother's womb."
A few more minutes passed, and then I asked "How does the man place the sperm in the woman?"
"He didn't say."
Minutes.
"How?" John asked me.
I used the Socratic teaching method at even this young age.
"Well, John. What does a man have that a woman doesn't have?"
He thinks. Then slowly his eyes grow big in astonishment.
"I didn't know they were detachable!!"

My own son learned the facts of life when he was much younger. He was about six and it was the seventies when Free to Be You and Me and Our Bodies Ourselves were popular books. The minute the poor kid asked a question, I was armed with books and photographs. After reading with Gareth the cute picture book Where Did I Come From?**, I proceeded to The First Nine Months of Life, a book that I'd often consulted when I was pregnant. I explained that the photographs of sperm and embryonic babies were enlarged under microscope. I was proud of my son as he listened with interest. Then he beamed and exclaimed."I'm so glad I'm a spermer!!! When I get married I'm going to get a microscope and show my wife my sperm!" Later that week a neighbor told me that she overheard a conversation between Gareth and Andy, her son who was two.
Gareth: And look at these pictures! These are sperm.
Andy: Yeah
Gareth: and you and I are boys and we have SPERM!
Andy: Yeah
Gareth: Aren't you glad that we are spermers?!
Andy: Yeah


* My son points out,"I had put the lock on the outside of the door only for the purpose of time-outs and bed time. Seth was four years old and refused to stay in his room at those times. Never would I lock the door at night in fear of emergency situations such as a house fire or even less drastic instances such as if he felt sick and needed to let us know."

"The books I had read around that time suggested never to leave a child in time out for more then 10 or 15 minutes so I never locked his door for longer than that and always remained close to the door when it was locked so that I could listen out for sounds that would give me concern for his safety. After 10 or 15 minutes he would most often stop crying and that is when I would enter his room and ask him if he understood why he was on time out. On that particular night he just got up and shut the door behind him. At first I told him he had better open the door. I looked around the room and found that I had done too good a job at child proofing it. There was nothing small enough to pick the lock. All I could think about was how his mother would come home and find him roaming around the house with me locked in the room. Jumping out the window would have not worked out since that would only mean I would be locked outside the entire house instead of only in a room. I didn't want to destroy the door either. Finally I realized that the best way to get him to open the door would be to let him know that he would not be in trouble if he opened the door within the next few minutes."


**Here's how a review described Where Did I Come From? at Amazon.com:

....Mayle and Robins are disarmingly natural about the naming of parts ("Now, if you put your mother and your father in the bath together you'd notice something interesting. . ."), probably as detailed as kids' interest allows about fetal development (incidentally, it's a girl), and bolder than any children's book yet about the "tickling feeling" of "making love": "The man pushes his penis up and down inside the woman's vagina, so that both the tickly parts are being rubbed against each other. It's like scratching an itch, but it's a lot nicer". . . and it ends in "a tremendous big lovely shiver" that is a little like a good sneeze. You can't deny Mayle's talent for translating adult experience into child-level concepts, and we found Robins' irreverent cartoonlike illustrations (the pudgy nude figures are anything but erotic) a welcome break from the breathless wonderment that has recently prevailed. .... (Kirkus Reviews)

Dad's expressions and more food stories

Part of being a part of my family was hearing certain expressions that my Dad used.
When he wanted to reprimand a child he would say "Pasta fazool!!" which is, simply, pasta with beans, but the child didn't know that. We acted as if it were a magical incantation to make us behave. We'd be bickering with each other, Dad would say "Pasta fazool!!" and we'd stop. We would be dallying and Dad would say "Pasta fazool!!" and we'd hustle. My sister says it was Dad's version of "You better straighten out and fly right!" It worked so well on my own son, that he refuses to say it with his own son because he thinks it is abusive.

We ate dinner as a family at a round dining room table. Usually some child would be balking about eating something. Dad would threaten,"no pie for you!". As we got older, we learned to ask "IS there any pie?" and Dad would say "No, but there's no pie for you!"

Whenever we got into the car ready for an excursion, Dad would say, as he turned the key in the ignition, "We're off! Like a dirty shirt!" For some reason, that still cracks me up.

Dad's favorite nicknames for my sister and I were "Sad Sack" and
"Sunshine". He called us both by both names and usually Sunshine for the one who was being grumpy at the time.

When my brother was born we lived in the upstairs of a two family house. Many many times we were told not to bother the family downstairs:"Don't disturb the Rostheizers." Even after we moved away, the phrase echoed in our ears whenever we started to get noisy.

We were proud that we had a family whistle which was handed down from my father's family. If our parents wanted us to come running they would whistle: sol mi, sol mi, do re mi, sol mi
Up until I heard another family use it, I thought my family had invented it.

When I was about ten, the volkswagon microbus came on the market. Our family was one of the first in town to get one. It was basically a box. In the days of tail fins and chrome, our basic box car was an embarrassment to a pre-adolescent. Once we were driving on an Adirondack two lane highway when we were passed by a few motorcycles. A few more stayed behind our van. As we passed through Warrensburg with two motorcyles before and two behind, Dad gave big waves to everyone that could see us.

Years later I suggested to Dad that he stick his left arm out of the car while the passenger on the right did the same with her right. Then as they went around curves, they moved their arms to simulate glider wings. His car and my car did this on the ramps to the Baltimore beltway. Good times.

Dad instilled a few food traditions.

Corn on the cob was a treat and was available only for a short season. It was considered the main course and eaten at an outdoor picnic table. The hamburgers were only a side dish. It was best served freshly shucked from the garden and boiled in a big pot. The little corn shaped holders that stuck in either end were essential. We would roll the ear in the margarine on our plate and sprinkle on salt. And then, before we bit in, there was an almost ceremonial shake of the cob. Dad ate his corn with this little shake, so we all did.

Once Dad was at a YMCA conference and he and his friends went to a restaurant. The restaurant had many conference participants as customers. There was a sign on the wall that said "Baked macaroni with rich cheddar cheese". So when it came to order Dad said "I'll have the baked macaroni with the rich cheddar cheese!" Then the next person ordering said "I'll have the BAKED macarOni with the RICH CHEDdar CHEESE!" and the next person said, while slapping the table in rhythm, "I'll have the BAKED macarOni with the RICH CHEDdar CHEESE!" Pretty soon everyone in the restaurant was chanting,""I'll have the BAKED macarOni with the RICH CHEDdar CHEESE!" Back at home, Mom made excellent macaroni and cheese and it was a frequent main course for supper. Whenever we ate it, we would do the macaroni and cheese chant.

Other food traditions were having spaghetti at Christmas because it was easy and well-liked.

At Thanksgiving we upstate New Yorkers practiced the Baltimore Maryland tradition of having sauerkraut because our family friend from Maryland, Eileen, liked it. While my grandmother was alive we always ate turnips, as well. After she died, because nobody else liked them, we missed the smell of turnips on Thanksgiving.

Mom’s cooking

Mom’s best dishes were split pea soup, minestrone, chili con carne, and tomato aspic. Grandma made a good roast with cloves, and a “shepherd’s pie” which was baking powder dumplings floating on a beef stew. Grandma was also fond of stewed tomatoes with bread. She presented it to us grandchildren like it was a treat. I never told her that I didn’t like it.

food stories

Nana and the ice cream

One very warm day, when she was in her eighties and living with us she walked down to the village of Ardsley while we were all gone and purchased a quart of ice cream. She really liked ice cream. She took a taxi back up the hill and when she went to open the door of the the house she found that she had left the key inside. The ice cream was starting to melt. She had no spoon. A walk around the house showed that a small cellar window was open. Without a bit of hesitation, she climbed up, in the window, down on to the washtubs and into the cellar. She really liked ice cream.

Dad and the liver

Dad lived as a choirboy in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine choir school when he was around ten years old. The boys led a pretty formal life. He told us children about how, like me, he didn't like liver as a boy. He would "finish" his liver by putting it in his pocket and throwing it away later. Once, however, he forgot to throw it away and was discovered when the jacket in his closet began to smell.

John and the broccoli

My brother John had thought he'd found a way to dispose of unwanted dinner until a very thorough house cleaner found petrefied broccoli stuffed in the pedestal of the dining room table.

Rick and the animal crackers

During a family gathering at Grandma's, Cousin Rick did not ingratiate himself with the family when he threw his box of animal crackers into Great Aunt Sophie's soup. He's been in disgrace ever since.

Eileen and the cheese

A close family friend came to visit one evening and started to walk around the house with a funny look on her face. "What are you doing, Eileen?" "I think I smell a dead mouse and I'm trying to locate it." "That's not a mouse, Eileen. It's the cheese you gave us for Christmas!"

Dad and the milk

The kids in my family really liked milk, but we could never get as much as we liked. Dad would say "Milk is a food, not a beverage." Sometimes on the lucky days we would have pie, Dad would give us all pie with a glass of milk. We would usually finish the milk before we finished the pie, and Dad would not let us have any more, saying "Milk is a food, not a beverage." With nothing to wash it down, the last forkfull of pie was unpleasant. Meanwhile Dad's milk glass remained full until his own pie was finished. Then he would pick up his glass and drain it, saying "AAAAAAAHHH". Thus we had a lesson in delayed gratification.

At Christmas (more on Christmas later) we would have a big bowl of shrimp to be dipped in shrimp coctail sauce. To be sure that the kids wouldn't be fighting over who got the most shrimp, Dad would count it out. "Everyone may take three shrimp!" and we would. Then "Everyone may take three more shrimp!" and we would. And on and on until the shrimp was gone. Of course we would gobble it as we got it. But when the shrimp was gone, Dad's plate was full of his own share of the shrimp. Thus we had another lesson in delayed gratification. Every year.

I understand that children who are able to delay gratification grow up to be greater successes in life than those who don't. This has been tested by leaving children alone with marshmallows. I don't know how kids develop this skill. Neither my brother, sister nor I have it.

stories on race relations

My sister's memories are quite different than mine, and in some cases more detailed. I guess getting a black eye from a green apple when I wouldn't defend her would create a lasting impression. Perhaps she is getting some satisfaction in reminding me what a villain I am in HER family stories.

Like those in other White Anglo-Saxon Protestant American families, members of my family have travelled a long road when it comes to racial understanding. Each generation has rid itself of a little more prejudice than the last. Some of our family stories reflect the prejudices that continue.

Grandma tells the story of taking young Bob to the movies to see The Ten Commandments. (Dad was two when the 1923 Cecil B. DeMill movie was made.) When the movie was over, they were walking on a busy street. Bob saw a Jewish man with a long and impressive beard. "Look Mother! There's Moses!"



When I was roughly two or three, Dad invited a colleague for dinner. Men usually wore fedoras as daily wear - the way men now wear sports caps. There was a lot of laughter from the guest when I asked, "Mister, why are you the same color as your hat?"





This story my Dad told to show off his mastery of the Irish brogue. He left a memoir of his grandmother in writing, so I will reprint his version here:
William Moulton (Sr. ) liked to be up to date and soon after Model T Fords became available, he purchased one and took the whole family for a ride -- over the Brooklyn bridge and into Manhattan. They were doing fine until they got to Broadway and 42nd st. where a policeman directing the traffic stopped the cars, including the Moulton's headed East on 42nd. The car stalled so Grandfather jumped out and cranked it to get it going and when he got in to go, the policeman had stopped the East bound traffic again. It stalled again and the procedure was repeated. By this time , the traffic was backed up all the way to 8th street. The policeman was angry, Grandmother was mortified and the rest of the family huddled down as far as they could in the meager seats. Finally, the policeman in complete desperation held up all the traffic and walked over to grandfather saying with a real Irish Brogue --- "Ef yer ever get that tin lizzy goin again, take it back to the ferm and keep it there". My grandmother was a proud woman. ( I really would have liked to have seen that.)

Mother learning Spanish

Mom's mother died when she was thirteen. The family lived in the SouthWest in Arizona or New Mexico and Elsie-Beth went to school with several Mexican friends. They gave her lessons on several phrases she might find useful. However, she didn't know they were off-color remarks.
My sister tells me that was around the time the three girls were sent to live with cousins in the northern states.


My family took pride in being in the vanguard of racial tolerance. My grandmother was in a sorority that included Jewish women. My mother's father famously challenged a fellow Baptist over his acceptance of colored people. And my father and his boss were proud to have allowed colored kids into the Tarrytown YMCA. Even though there is plenty of racism in my family and in me, my family has never considered racism as politically correct.

I'll get this out of the way first

If I'm going to talk about my family in a book that is read anyone who comes upon it, it will agitate some of my relatives. They will disagree with things. They will not like my own point of view made public. I'll clear things up right away and stress that this is a book of stories, not facts. Chronology, science and majority opinion may run counter to the things I tell, but I am only passing on stories. As in any history, the true facts may never be known. I have invited others to make comments and add recollections. I may or may not use them. True or not, it depends on whether or not they create better stories.

The stories I wish to tell are those that were told more than once. Such stories take on a rehearsed tone and seem to be simply waiting for a cue. Often the story is more fun to tell than to hear.

My mother told me several times about the time she came upon a surprising scene in the bedroom that my infant sister and I were sharing in New Hartford. I was playing on the floor and my sister was in the crib. My sister had reached out and had pulled out all of my hair. There was hair all over the floor. I had very blonde and very fine hair. It grew in rather slowly and, when I was close to one, my father labeled a sled box I rode in "Cathy Express" so that people would know I was a girl. So my folks were probably concerned that all that hard earned hair was gone. (picture of Cathy express)
This story may have stretched over the years, or I have misremembered it, because 1) I have no pictures of me being bald after two and 2) I was a real crybaby and mother would have heard me yelling. This is an example of a favorite family stories - how true or accurate it is will always be debatable. I also have come to distrust the stories of our family, mine own included. But I will do my best to be faithful in recording the lies I am fond of remembering so that they may be passed down through the family line.
(picture of me combing patty's hair) This is the first family picture of my sister. She wasn't born at this size. Like many second children, her babyhood was taken for granted. That table with a chair in the middle was fabulous and it was used 8 years later by my brother. For a short time, it prevented my sister and I from killing each other. But I digress.

Another favorite story of my mother's was when she asked a neighborhood child "Where did you put your turtle?" and the child said "I gave it to Patty". That got my mother busy looking for Patty. She knew that Patty put everything in her mouth. When she found Patty, sure enough, the little tiny turtle legs were sticking out of her mouth.

While Patty was still under four, Mom took her to the Child Guidance Clinic, where they explored why she did things like kick Sunday school teachers, bite other children, and eat turtles.
After a few initial sessions of Mom telling them that her sister Cathy would never do such things, they decided that Cathy was the child they were supposed to be seeing. So they took me to the Child Guidance Clinic. I can remember play therapy where I built bridges with blocks and played with toy people. I've been told that they were anatomically correct people, but I have no memory of that. My father often said, with sadness, that in the good old days before I was five, I was "so well behaved". I guess they cured me. I guess that is more a story about me than about Patty.

Patty tells a story about her difficulties learning to read. She had a great deal of difficulty in primary school.* She says that in grade 3 she could understand whole paragraphs, but her decoding skills were non-existent. Evidently she was a context clues kind of kid, on whom phonics were useless. She says that something "popped" in her head and suddenly she could read. She still loves to read, but her spelling is a source of great amusement for others.

When I was eight and my brother was born, Patty and I once again shared a bedroom. Patty was considered a messier housekeeper than me. My toys lasted years, hers lasted moments. One night I dreamed that we had worked hard with our parents to clean our bedroom. By the end of the dream, the room was neat as a pin. Then I woke up. There was the room in its usual messy state. I tend to get my dreams mixed up with reality, so I could only assume that Patty had gotten up and messed the room up again and gone back to sleep. So I went over to her bed and started beating her up before she had woken up. Patty had a hard childhood and I don't think getting beat up before breakfast was any help.

Patty would have had a different, easier life if it weren't for her sister getting others to gang up on her every chance she got. Once I overheard her telling a bully in the park "I'm going to get my sister and she'll beat you up." and I stepped out from behind a corner and said "I will not". My sister says she got her only black eye from that kid. The nastiest thing I did was when we moved to a new place, I would tell the new kids all the bad nicknames ("witchie", "cooties") she had from where we lived before.

One thing my parents will deny was that they used the expression "son of a bitch" and other words often enough for it to become part of our regular vocabulary. One year, our rural school got a first year teacher who taught grades 6, 7, and 8 and who served as principal as well. At first he was really easy going. He had read Summerhill. He listened to Joan Baez. He drove a VW beetle. He was great friends with our parents. He took my mother and I to see Andre Segovia. But as the year went on he got much more rigid with his students.** One day he announced that students using foul language would have their mouths washed out with soap .. liquid green soap. The first student caught cussing was my sister, who said "damn" having no idea that it was bad language. Mr. Montgomery was quite distressed at having to punish the child of his friends and, to provide an out, asked her to spell "dam" in hopes that she'd provide the homonym. That might have worked but "somebody" called out "Oh Mr. Montgomery. You know Patty can't spell anything." Later, my parents said "we never use that sort of language". Well, they didn't after that.


* Unlike her sister who brought home so many A's that she was thrilled when she got a C in handwriting - hoping in vain that her parents might fuss as they did over Patty. Instead I was greatly disappointed when Dad said "I, too, had bad handwriting when I was your age."

** Once he caught me slapping a student and I had to write "I will not create a disturbance without asking the teacher's permission." 5000 times. That's when I learned that if a teacher is going to make students write sentences they should at least contain something worth remembering. Like: "A fraction is in its simplest form when the greatest common factor of the numerator and the denominator is one."

A start

family stories

So many of grandma's stories are forgotten. I can hear her telling them in her upper class New England moviestar accent and playing sorrowful notes with her voice. She used lost words like "cunning" and "stout" and "gay"

I'm a story teller myself. I know this because my friends have been trained to hold up two fingers to tell me I've told the story before. Or maybe to indicate "peace".

patty pulling out hair
eating turtle
kicking the Sunday School teacher
biting people
therapist
learning to read
waking up and hitting her
getting mouth washed with green soap

race understanding
there's Moses
Mister, why are you the same color as your hat?
the irish cop
mother learning dirty words from Mexican kids

food
Nana and the ice cream
Dad and the liver
John and the broccoli
Rick and the animal crackers
Eileen and the cheese (dead mouse)
"milk is a food, not a beverage"
milk with pie

Dad's expressions
pasta fazool
"no pie for you!"
We're off! Like a dirty shirt
Sad Sack, Sunshine

food traditions
shaking the corn cob
I'll have the BAKED macarOni with the RICH CHEDdar CHEESE!
spaghetti at christmas, sourkraut and turnips at thanksgiving

dirty jokes
rust- mom
I'd swear I had two when I came in

Stories I have told
John and God
John and the facts of life
Gareth and the facts of life
Finding Anne franke on the internet
Singing with dad's dementia

Dope stories
It's all in time to the music

Will Brady stories
What will they do now? Farm
looking at geology
"my faith in you is restored"

Don't disturb the Rostheizers
The family whistle

Elmer and the stone
Elmer and the porch
Elmer and bullheads,bacon and bisquick, vargas girls

Mom's cooking
pioneer stew
macaroni and cheese
baked beans
meat loaf and turkey stuffing
tomato aspic
Grandma
shepherd's pie
stewed tomatoes with bread

books on the table top
the family of man
pay the two dollars
cartoon book about having a baby

Records
Sing along with Mitch Miller
Tom Lehrer
Stan Freberg The United States of America
West Side Story
Frank Warner

Christmas
creche at christmas - looked like stained glass window images
night before Christmas
sugar plum tree
tangerines, hard candy, olive can in the stockings
Child's Christmas in Wales
dad counting the shrimp

sad stories from mom
how her mother died
how mom learned to swim
living in a tent and having squirrel for christmas
being reprimanded in school for chewing dentine, wearing a horned toad as jewelry

sad story from dad
the little indian boy in Little Falls

Marian and the eyeball
marian at the airport
Dad in Annapolis
Cathy in Virginia
Seth in New York

appendix .
stories dictated or written by Dad
When the Kennedy's came to Raparius told by cousin Edith

Songs
When Apples Grow on a Lilac Tree
Desperado
Good morning Merry Sunshine
Broadway's a Tame Street
A Man Without a Woman
Love's Old Sweet Song

Back in 71

http://gjbgraphics.com/mylife/2008/05/11/my-mother-was-once-a-rookie/

bloggishness of gratitude

I'm just so pleased with my son, DIL, and grandson. Saturday was a
weirdly snowy and cold day and the scouts were having a bbq chicken
fundraiser at the Moose Lodge. My DIL picked up two chicken halves
for me, but saw a man holding a sign saying "I'm starving" so she
gave him one of the halves. Later, there was a lot of left over
chicken, so my son and grandson went out looking for homeless folks
to give it to. They also ran into some people who wanted to buy some,
so they made some more money for scouts and still had chicken to give
away.

I'm remembering when my son was little and his grandparents overdid
it in the candy department. We decorated real hardboiled eggs, so
there would be something healthy included in what we were giving
away. We loaded up a red wagon and took "Easter" to a nearby family
recommended to us by a friend in Social Services (this was in pre-
HIPPA days).

I am so blessed to have a family - however small it may be - to share
and pass on such wonderful experiences.