Goodbye, Kodak - Part II

I'm still fishing through Mom and Dad's scrapbook.  It has photos from when they got married through the early 50's (and thus, no photos of me or Denny - I haven't stumbled onto those just yet).

So here are a few more of my favorites...

Dad and his friend Leroy, fishing in Minnesota

My brother John (left) chilling out with his buddy, Kenny

My brother was quite the baker

I love what Mom wrote under this photo - "Daddy and his prize possessions, including new Chevy"

This photo didn't scan very well, but I like it because my brother and sister are so darn cute, and Mom looks so pretty.

This kills me.  Kids can sleep any way, anywhere

I guess it's a tradition for girls in our family to run around half naked, but thankfully only while under the age of 6.

I love this photo because of the look on my sister's face.  I think that is a tradition with girls in my family too, that goes well beyond the age of 6.

Isn't this a great photo?  They were so darn cute!!

Thanks Kodak.  Like the Paul Anka song in the commercial - the times of our lives.

Goodbye, Kodak

Kodak filing bankruptcy last week really upset me.  Granted, I have not purchased a Kodak product since the 1970's, but still.  Thinking of The Little Engine That Could, I feel bad for the iconic company that couldn't.

It prompted me to go through Mom and Dad's scrapbook.  I know snapshots would exist without Kodak, but it wouldn't be the same.

So here we go, round one.

 Dad, in a photo he would probably be embarrassed about me posting.

 Mom wrote "at Jax Beach in Fla" on the back of this photo.  Jacksonville?

Mom.  You're so funny.

Mom, Dad, and my oldest brother, John.  Then my parent's best friend's oldest, Kenny and John.

Mom and John... remember that mink coat I told you about??!

More later...

Memories from the younger generation

Since it appears FCN has become such a popular blog, I wanted to jump on the guest blogging bandwagon. Although I am a bit younger than this blog’s typical audience, I am an aspiring writer and any opportunity to get a story out there is always good for me. I have enjoyed reading Joanie’s past posts about her childhood, so I wanted to share one of my own.

When my family first moved to my hometown… well, that doesn’t make sense but we moved there when I was six, so it seems like my hometown to me, there were tons of kids in the neighborhood. That’s how it always is right? When you’re young, the neighborhood is swimming in children, but by the time you’re seventeen, everyone but maybe one or two families remain and new ones have taken their space. That’s exactly how we were. Most of the kids were around my age, maybe a few years older or younger, but it didn’t really seem to matter how old we were at that time.

At first when we moved to the new house, I was not exactly happy with my parents. By moving, they had taken me away from all of my friends, crushed my dreams of becoming a professional ice skater (our new town didn’t have an ice skating rink, NOT OKAY!), and didn’t even build me a jungle gym in the backyard. Like, come on parents! You’ve gotta be kidding me. But their excuse was a valid one: There was a lovely park only two blocks away from the house. At some point, I remember going to the park almost everyday. I have so many good memories at there. I used to bring books to read there, my journal to write. I would sit down there for hours. At one point, some of the neighborhood kids and I even had a type of fort in the tree line along the tiny creek. There was a perfect path paved and someone even brought down old, worn folding chairs and disposed car rugs to make it seem more “homey”. Some of them are even still there today, although weeds have grown through the path and spray paint covers the trees, but the memories still linger there.

The particular story I want to share was when I was about ten years old and in fourth grade. For those of you who don’t remember, fourth grade is a HUGE year in the life of an elementary school kid. You are finally considered an upperclassman of sorts, since you have reached the latter half of your elementary school career. But what I mostly remember about my fourth grade year was simply boys.

I went boy crazy in fourth grade, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I “went out” with basically every boy in my class of twenty. But eventually, I settled on someone, a boy named Carter. He was dumber than a box of rocks, but damn was he good looking. I could barely believe that he liked me, but I didn’t care. The note he passed me in Mrs. Holmes class with the circle around the word yes to my simple question ‘Do you like me?’ was all the proof I needed.

But of course there was a problem: his best friend, Michael, liked me. Well crap. A fourth grade love triangle? This had happened before, but not to anyone I knew. It was something of mythical proportions. Michael was a red haired, average looking kid, who I had always sensed had a crush on me. He lived in the neighborhood, and often hung out with his friend Joe. Michael and Joe would come to my house and leave me funny notes on my front porch and some nights we would stay up late playing basketball on Joe’s driveway.

But it was one night at the park I remember almost exactly. I had been standing near some friends when I saw Joe and Michael go down by the fortress and followed them. At some point Joe left, maybe beckoned by his parents, leaving Michael and I alone. We weren’t in the fortress this time; he was down in a sort of caved in part of the ground by the creek. It wasn’t too wide, but it big enough for me to almost slip into, and when Michael reached down to try and help me out, he fell in too, causing him slide under me in the mud and our faces were so close I could barely believe it. Was this it? Was going to be my first kiss? That’s probably the most nervous I have ever been in my whole life. I think he probably four inches from my face when Joe came back and laughed because it looked like Michael had poo all over his jeans and he helped us both out.

Not long after this incident, just before school let out for summer, Michael confessed his “like” for me to our friend Nolan, who of course told Carter who then told me. The gossip go around and people got a pretty big kick out of it, but I didn’t think it was that funny. At this point, Carter and I were either officially “going out” or very close to. I think most people thought that he had no chance with a girl compared to Carter.

But the one part of the whole story that I still can’t get over is that by the time fifth grade started, Michael and his family had moved away. I could barely believe it! I hadn’t seen him much that summer, but when I thought about it, I realized I had stopped seeing him casually bike past my house once or twice a day sometime near the end of July. I never even got to say goodbye!

Carter and I ended up going out until around the beginning of sixth grade (still the longest relationship of my life so far, thank you very much). But I have to admit; I spent most of fifth grade thinking about Michael and where he was and what he was doing and who his first kiss actually would be. This was before Facebook and before eleven year olds started getting iPhones so I just had to sit in Mrs. Bergmann’s class staring out the window, thinking of his freckles and red hair. I have been tempted to look him up on Facebook once or twice, but I wouldn’t want to ruin it and see him happy with his new girlfriend. I’d rather have him stay in my memories in his ten-year-old body, still in “like” with me, playing soccer in the street in front of my house. That’s exactly where I’d like him to stay. 

I got nothin

I hope the few followers I have enjoy a guest blogger from time to time.  Possibly more to come.

It still floors me that even though I have 10+ years on my last guest blogger, his childhood was far more deprived than mine.  What the heck?  I'm older, I should have far more "My parents were so tight..." stories.  Art and Wilma were teenagers - impressionable ages - during the depression, and yet I got nothing on Mr. Guest Blogger from the Plains.

Even though I can't compete, here are just a few memories that came to me recently...

After using them, my mother ALWAYS rinsed out plastic bags, turned them upside down, and placed them over some part of the kitchen faucet to dry.  I often thought she only ever purchased one box in each size.  Ever.

My aunts and uncles were pretty tight as well.   My cousin always had rather warm milk for his morning cereal because his father would not allow the refrigerator to be opened (wasting energy) to put the milk away until everyone was done eating breakfast.

My parents bought a car once that came with white wall tires.  My father made the dealer turn them so that the white walls faced the underbelly of the car.  White wall tires were too showy.  I know that is not a good example of my parents being frugal, but it does speak to their concern for other farm families that weren't doing so well at the time.

No scrap of fabric EVER went to waste in our house.  Before she married my father, my mother saved her money and bought herself a real mink coat.  She wore it so many years, she literally wore it out.  She took it apart and reassembled the parts that were still good - going from a long coat, to a jacket...  By the time I came along decades later, it was reduced to a stole and hand muff set.   She couldn't leave the scraps alone, so she made a coat for my Chatty Cathy doll.  Those animals did not die in vain.  My mother stretched those pelts as far as the eye could see.

I know there are other things that I can't remember - or maybe I just took them for normal.  Didn't everyone's mother cut their hair, make all their clothes and cook meals with 80% of the ingredients coming from their own farm?

Thoughts from the road...

After a favorable first attempt at guest blogging, I was going to refrain from another attempt until next month to build some creative energy, but given Joanie’s recent return to the employment ranks, I fear her blogging time has been reduced, and there could be a need for a substitute entry- at least to tide the masses over.  I’m guessing my writing style (which follows my dating history) has been described as that odd flavor gum.  You really don’t want to try the rhubarb flavored gum, but once you do- you find its very good, but then after a few minutes, it gets pretty stale again.  Which is why I’ll be content to be a guest blogger vs owning a site myself.  It would be like Cleveland from the Family Guy.  He’s OK on the original, but when he got his own show, lacked the carrying power.

Traveling this week for work, it gave me plenty of time to ponder the next blog topic.  So as I was relaxing in the hotel room, I was lucky enough to catch Little House on the Prairie “Tragedy Week” episodes (you know the ones, Typhus epidemic, anthrax infected mutton, smallpox outbreak, lost wheat crop- I’m sure they’re on the “best of” DVD’s).  Somewhere around the time Pa was hauling dynamite to earn some extra cash for Mary’s life-saving surgery- on a side note how did they find mountains in Minnesota?- I started to reflect on my South Dakota poverty driven childhood.  I guess it should more accurately be called my Mom’s thrifty efforts.  While in grade school- occasionally there would be a group selling rolls and orange juice before school for 50 cents.  Mom was so afraid I’d lose the 50 cents (rather than just give me a dollar or 75 cents), she’d tie the 2 quarters in a handkerchief.  She’d tie it so tight- most of the time I had to get a teacher to help untie the money- which maybe was a reflection of Mom’s cost saving efforts.  Regardless- the childhood stories always lead to a fun game I like to play called “I was so poor as a child that…..” where you fill in the exercise that would warrant the extra special thriftiness.

So let’s play a few rounds: 

  …Mom would cut napkins in half because you really didn’t need a full napkin

 …we never got a full piece of juicy fruit- ½ was just fine

…you can save that gum- it’s still good

 …when the ketchup bottle was ½ empty, water would be added

...the highlight Christmas gift was a “Slinky” (though it could be worse, a HS friend used to get          a brand new shovel to clean the barn)

...pretty sure I got year old socks for Christmas once- they were only worn once or twice

...we washed paper plates

...those heavy duty paper towels were washed and reused

...if you ever needed a rag- pretty good chance it was somebody’s old fruit of the loom

...Christmas papers and bows were used at least 2 or 3 years

...break a shoelace….nonsense- just re-lace it using less eyelets

...we did more than squeeze toothpaste- it was sliced open and scraped out

I could go on forever- though recently while playing a particularly competitive round with a friend- she responded during the volley with ….. we were so poor we used a tumbleweed as a Christmas tree one year.  I still doubt the accuracy of the statement and think it was exaggerated in the heat of competition, but all I could say after that was- you win.

In closing- as I had a moment of self-reflection driving for 8+ hours, it dawned on me that even though I consider myself an optimist (and try to be) does the simple fact that I refuse to buy a big bag of cat food in fear that the beneficiary of that cat food might go to the big litter box in the sky any day and leave me with an excess supply of unusable cat food designate me a pessimist?  I think she knows I’m talking about her mortality given the look I’m getting.

And that's that.

Welp, it's been nice, but I gotta go.  Go back to work, that is.

We've been living in Missouri for a quarter of a year now, and things don't seem quite as foreign as they did last Labor Day weekend.  I can drive to most places without the aid of a GPS now and even when I get turned around, I end up discovering new and exciting things.  I tried to find the veterinarian's office last week and discovered a new shopping center - with a Von Maur, Old Navy Bed Bath and Beyond, and a Victoria's Secret.  Score one for me! 

We've had lots of company stay with us and we're slowly making new friends.  John knows a guy who has been in the tire business as long as he has, that lives 20 minutes from us.  He sells pinball machines on the side, and had an open house last night.  We had our pick of over 50 machines that were all rigged to play for free.  He even had 3 vintage bowling alleys.  How fun is that?!?  (I rocked the Dr. Who machine.  That's me in the middle, in one little corner of his basement.)

So tomorrow I will travel back to Bloomington, to be retrained for my old job.  (A lot has changed in 4 months.)  I will be working remotely, part-time (9:00-2:00) from home.  I have mixed feelings about this.  

The Good:  I will have a 10 second commute to the back bedroom office.  No wear and tear on the car, no gas expense.  I will be working with the pugs sleeping on my feet.  Part time will allow me to do a lot of stuff around the house (lots and lots of rooms to paint) and I can get seriously crafty (I almost have my beading/craft station ready to go.)  I could never get a part time job that would pay like this (I still have nightmares about the olive oil and vinegar store).  I will get to reconnect with old customers that I genuinely miss.  I will be working with my original group of brokers and broker assistants - good people.  

The Bad:  I will never meet anyone here.  I miss an office environment (OK, I miss parts of it).  I will also be working for one other broker, who trades commodities that are unfamiliar to me.  I'm nervous about that.  

The Ugly:  Skyping, after I get off the treadmill in the morning and don't have time to put myself together before the 10 second commute to work.  

Looking at it now, I guess the good really does outweigh the bad.  And even if I do manage my time and get cleaned up before 9:00 am, no one has has to see the sweat pants I'll be wearing every day.  Score another one for me.

Food

Back in the autumn of 2000, I was sitting in my sister's kitchen with Mom.  The three of us decided that since other whacky families had put together cookbooks, we could too.  That Christmas, I gave everyone binders with photos printed on the recipe section dividers.  The next year, I handed out pages to add to the binder, that included recipes, photos, and quirky food stories.  My plan was to give everyone pages to add to the cookbook every year.

Well, we all know how those things go.  Especially with me.  I think that lasted 2, maybe 3 years.

But one year the pages included a few little food snippets - sort of like "The Little Things" postings, but all food related.  Some you've already heard about - like chickens meeting their maker on our patio.  Here are highlights of some others:

Angel Food cake, cooling upside down, balanced on a Pepsi bottle.  Mom made awesome angel food cake.  She didn't ice it.  She served it with a sort of syrup.  I would say it was more like a sweet gravy that you poured over the cake, but that just sounds weird.  And why did she turn it over and set it precariously atop a bottle?  If I ever find out, I'll let you know.

Snow ice cream.  We made it after most big snow falls.

Having BLTs and corn on the cob every day for 2 months during the summer, and never getting sick of it.  This will not surprise anyone who knows me.  A meal consisting of bacon (from our own "stock"), tomatoes (grown in our garden) and corn on the cob (from our own field).  Who could get tired of that?! My mouth is watering just remembering those days.

Listening to the markets at lunch time, then watching "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."  Prior to home computers and 24 hour news channels with stock and commodity price tickers crawling across the bottom of TV screens, some AM radio stations announced what was going on at the Chicago Board of Trade around noon every weekday.  The only thing I understood about this was when the guy sounded off about the corn, bean, wheat and livestock futures prices - everybody at the table had to shut up.  I got shushed more times at the lunch table than I did in church.  And the Mary Hartman thing?  That was a spoofy soap opera that made fun of all other soap operas.  Most of the jokes were over my head, but I love the fact that my father liked the show, probably more than my mom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IieOvaY-0c

Making "Pigs in Blankets" in my Easy Bake Oven, accidentally quadrupling the amount of salt in the recipe, and Dad insisting that they tasted great.


Mom molding hamburgers with my Easy Bake Oven pie tin for the next 20 years.


"Man" pancakes.  Pancakes in the shape of a person, and deciding what body part to eat first.  Good times.

Mom's pies.  One of her best was the China Clipper Apple pie.  It has instant tea in it.  Get it?  Tea - from China?  Anyway, Mom's pies were awesome and years ago, she gave my niece's husband a pie making tutorial.  Even though they are rarely made, it's nice to know her pie-making-secrets are still in the family.

The freezer.  The freezer in our "summer kitchen" was the largest freezer I've ever seen in a single family residence.  I used to joke that multiple bodies would fit in it, but it's true.  It would contain, among other things, lots of beef and pork (from our livestock), chicken (thanks to Sis), "freezer slaw" (vinegar coleslaw), homemade applesauce, and gallon tubs of ice milk (it was cheaper than ice cream - long before they started marketing it as "low fat ice cream" and jacked up the price).

Mom putting milk from our cow into containers from the grocery store so we would drink it.  Because, you know, milk from a cow is just gross.  Store bought milk was much better.  Mom was a sly one, she was.

Denny and I making Chef Boyardee pizza on Sunday nights, and all the popcorn we could eat out of a huge, dented kettle.  After I left the farm, I found out that lots of families had their major, weekly, all-the-family-gather-round meal on Sundays.  Not us.  Sunday = Mom's day off.  We usually had hamburgers after church (Dad grilled in the summer) and Dennis and I would whip together what resembled a pizza for dinner.

The "cheese" promoted on the box was granulated stuff in a little packet.  But I didn't know any better.  As far as I knew, that was pizza.  The kettle of popcorn was more than twice the size of any jumbo movie popcorn.  When Mom moved off the farm and had an estate sale of sorts, I made sure I got the kettle.  It's dented and not pretty, but every time I see it, I think about those Sunday nights.

I still have the binder and instead of re-typing recipes, scanning photos and making every page look fancy, I've been literally cutting and pasting.  My cookbook will end up looking much more like Mom's did - a notebook with recipes taped to lined paper, notes scribbled in the margins, complete with various colors of food stains.  And that makes it even better than before.

Behold! FCN's first Guest Blogger!

After being a loyal reader of the “Forever Circling” blog, I have been awarded with the prestigious honor of being a guest blog contributor.  Rather than waste the readerships precious time and attention span (I’ve done some research on the subject and found that readers spend only 96 seconds per blog) with a boring background of this author- I will simply leave you with a ghost name of “Bob” and the knowledge of my rough childhood of growing up in depression era rural South Dakota circa 1980.  Plus the limited knowledge adds a little to the “mystery” contributions.  And maybe this is an “Andy Kaufman” type situation and the author is delving into the deep psyche of the loyal readers?

So what topic do I expand on for my brief blogging moment of fame?  While a seemingly unending supply of topics to entertain the masses- most when put on paper lacked a certain d’humour.  I thought of taking you through a week’s worth of received mail (which while seemingly boring- had its moments), or relating scenes from a recent overseas flight (why would the airline give you socks) and then watching a 60+ year old lady try to utilize the socks in the close confines of airlines seats would be worth the price of admission- but had to be there to get the full humor.  Any of my childhood stories would drive the readership to drink or perhaps a submission of my name to Oprah so those will be avoided- leaving the other member of my household for some 10+ odd years as the first blogging topic..my cat….I’m sure everybody has the “pet” that assumes a personality which can best be described as quirky, so if nothing else, you will be able to relate.  Her nocturnal stalking, her 3 AM cleaning rituals not 6 inches from my ear that sound like my name being whispered (which post Paranormal Activity movies, can play tricks with your mind), her burrowing under the pillow (which I think is actually an attempt to push the pillow over my face), her fairly violent reaction to some recent dates (don’t wear flip flops and leave one of the little piggies exposed around her), her evil, mischievous look all make her somewhat unique.

Now before I get labeled as some uber sensitive type for having a cat or taking in some poor stray from the shelter (unless you’re a 30 something SWF who likes those labels, then I can adjust), there was a legitimate reason for this odd matching.  Pre-2000, I was living in a very rural area with a company house situated very close to a field….which as most know living in rural country areas also brings about a higher population of field mice.   Outside of the sanitary issues- the seasonal ritual of increased mice counts really didn’t bother me.  I’d set traps, kills some mice and then reset the traps.  All was good.   But then I believe the real life example of Darwinism surfaced.  I actively killed mice via traps- some cheese, some chocolate, you name it, was all good bait and at peak times would trim the population by 5-6 mice a day.  The problem was, I think all it did was kill off the slow stupid mice and breed back a superior type of mouse- kind of like the next generation terminator.  The frustration bubbled over one night as I had a mouse run over my chest and instinctively grabbing the mouse as I wavered between sleep and consciousness and throwing the mouse across the room.  Realizing the mice had crossed the line- I went to biological control.  A co-worker told me about a batch of “kittens” she had.  This seemed like a perfect solution- but upon picking up the kitten- I realize that this kitten had already outgrown the cute “kitten” stage.  No matter- she was there for “mousing”.  And what a “mouser” she was- on several occasions, I’d find the remains of 3 or 4 mice at my bedroom doorstep.  All was good…until….that little kitten reached an age of maturity.  With a quick phone call to the vet- I was told this problem couldn’t be fixed, until the cycle had finished and a urging I should have had it done earlier (but did he know she had mice to catch?).  Who would know that one small cat could make that much noise to break free from the confines of a house in search of some Tom.  One day- I was sloppy and the door was left ajar just enough- and she bolted.  And 2 days later, that little kitten came back pretty satisfied.  A couple weeks later, I realized I was probably going to be buying more cat food.  As the big day approached- something didn’t quite seem right-there were complications.  A quick trip to the vet, disclosed that one of the kittens had ruptured the lining and it didn’t look good for the home team.  It was either euthanize or surgery with no guarantee.  Having grown somewhat attached to the cat, I had to give the surgery a chance.  Well $250 later, $50 in some sort of cream that needed to spread on the stiches and some pills that had a snowballs chance of getting down her, I had my cat back.  She looked like death warmed over with stiches running along her belly and shaved legs (IV’s?).  An amazed vet told me “She’s a tough little bugger”. 

Since that time- she’s moved across states and has settled into a very lazy- retirement like attitude as her mousing days are behind her.  I can’t even get her to scare a rabbit away through the window.  Her only visible scar from the surgery is an “undercarriage”.   Fortunately, she carries some extra pounds these days, so I don’t think she’s too concerned about how she’s perceived.  With the 96 seconds long past- I will refrain from adding more to the “middle” and “late” years until later blogs.  But it could be worse- I’ll leave you with a picture of my brothers blind cat watching TV. (You can’t make stuff like that up!)