Problems Solved

Winter in New Jersey was not too bad as far as weather was concerned.  I actually would have wished for more snow instead of just cold, gray days.  The worse part was the fact that it got dark about 4:30 in the afternoon being on the very eastern edge of the time zone. Actually I like winter time since I love winter clothes.  One cannot have too many sweaters but this winter seemed to just not be much fun.

In the past I had always been very good about looking on the bright side of everything when upsetting or disappointing things rolled my way.  Over the next couple of months I kept counting all my blessings of which I really had a lot.  Barney called the morning after our visit at the airport to make sure he had not upset me and to make sure we were still okay.  Both of us knew we were in impossible situations but it would eventually work out. 

I should be the happiest person in the world with a beautiful home, two fun little boys, a great job, lots of dear friends and enough to do everyday that there was not time to think.  It was easy to laugh about Dennis hating every minute of being in New Jersey and living in an old house.  I used to laugh and say that he knelt down every morning facing Southwest and prayed to some God to send him back to Dallas.  It was only after a fun skiing trip that I realized that maybe it wasn't just depression but that I might be physically sick.   

Riverton had a local doctor just two blocks from our house.  Since I never seemed to get sick I had not been to a doctor since we left Kansas City.  That time I actually went to Dallas to my old one so I had to have felt bad to seek a new doctor. The new doctor gave me no time to back out as he said to come the same afternoon I called.  When I described  that I felt bad when I seemed to eat anything, that there was this burning sensation across my back most of the time and I did not have my usual energy he sent me to have an upper GI x-ray at the hospital. That was fun.

When I went back to see him two days later he explained to me that he had thought I might have an ulcer.  That was a surprise as I thought only people who worried or ate really poorly had ulcers.  But I did not have an ulcer but had what he called gastritis.  Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach with many possible causes. He asked a lot of questions about diet, lifestyle and just what I was upset about. Needless to say I did not go into great detail about what was I upset about.  He ended up prescribing Tagamet for me for one month at which time I was to come back to see him.  In the meantime  he said perhaps I should straighten up my life because there was no physical reason I should feel bad.  Well, that was blunt.

It would have been easy to just ignore what he said but I did not think that would be productive.  So I spent sometime trying to figure it out.  Needless to say it wasn't my job at the Library which was more like playtime than work. Library usage was up about 200% so the Board was happy.  The situation with Dennis was no different than it had been for many years and I really had developed a real sense of humor in dealing with it.  The only things I could come up with were the house was always a mess since I never had time to really clean it but just sort of kept things picked up.  It was winter.  Then there was the little folder filled with medical school applications.

Winter would soon turn to spring so that problem would solve itself.  I could hire someone to come once a week and clean the house. The applications were another thing.  Had I just given up on trying again for medical school because just didn't want to go or was I just afraid?  I really needed to do better on the entrance test in Physics which I had never taken plus it had been several years since I even thought about the word calculus.

I found a lady who must have been close to a hundred years old to come one morning a week and clean the house.  I picked her up at 8:30 one morning a week, went to work, came home and fixed her lunch at 12:00 and took her home for $20.00 a week.  Not bad but I found myself really cleaning the night before she came so that the house looked halfway decent.  She was awesome at cleaning windows and bathrooms, not so good at vacuuming as I don't think she saw very well but together we made a great team.  Problem solved. House sparkled.

The stack of applications was not that easy to solve.  I checked around and there was a community college a short distance away that offered calculus based physics.  I could take the class in the fall and retake the medical school entrance test in the spring.  In the meantime instead of reading all the new books at the library I could brush up on the Biology and the chemistry as I still had all my books and notes from college. Problem solved.  My month of Tagamet was up and no more problems.  Maybe the doctor was smarter then I first thought.

Wes and Wally had been begging for a guitar.  Naturally my acoustic would not do so we bought them an electric guitar and an amplifier.  We also enrolled both of them in lessons.  Super Star Future Rocker Wes expected to sound like Kiss the day the guitar came home.  Wally just wanted to learn but the two of them fought over whose turn it was to use the guitar. Wes did not practice and really would not let Wally so lessons were cancelled.  There were times when Wes was not home that I would hear guitar sounds from upstairs as Wally would try to teach himself.

Spring finally came and there is nothing more beautiful than Riverton in the spring.  Wes went out for soccer and my very non-athletic Wally went out for baseball. Wally had to sell candy bars for the team.  He went out the first Saturday to all the neighbors and sold about half of them.  I was pretty proud of him as I really did not think he could do it.  A few weeks went by and the baseball coach announced that the boys needed to turn in their money.   Wally still had about half of the candy bars left so I forced him to go out and sell the rest.  He was pretty reluctant but finally went.  He came home and had sold all the candy so I asked him who he sold it to.  His answer was that he went beck to all the houses that had purchased it before and they all bought some more.
Several of the neighbors told me later that he looked sad and told them he would get in trouble if he didn't sell them all and they felt sorry for him. Guess it helped to be so cute and sad

Wes was pretty good at soccer since he had been playing since he was five years old.  His team was almost hand picked boys that seemed to win every game.  Wally had tried soccer once.  He was the little boy in the big shorts with little shinny legs that always seemed to be more interested in the dirt clods on the wrong end of the field than where the ball was. My thought that baseball would be his sport was certainly wrong.  

My thinking was a little too positive.  There were the same dirt clods in the outfield as there were on the soccer field.  When it was his turn to bat he always stuck out, would burst into tears at home plate and the entire team would rush out to console him.  Dennis started working late on Wally's game nights as he found Wally's tears embarrassing.  Fine.
Wes and I came up with a bribe to get Wally not to cry.  If he didn't cry at a game he would get to go to Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor for a Reeces' Pieces Sundae. That thing had seven scoops of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, pecans, Reeces' and Whipped Cream. It took several tries but he finally stopped crying although he always struck out and the three of us enjoyed one sundae.

Enter the episode of the Flasher. There was this 20-something fellow, well over six feet tall that had been rumored to have dropped his pants in front of the local high school cheerleaders. One day in the parking lot of the grocery store I noticed the five foot tall police chef putting him in the police car at which time he kicked the back window of the car out. A few weeks later I got a call from the Library that the same person had dropped his pants in front of some high school girls in the Library.  They laughed and he left.  The tiny police chef came by the next day to warn me about him and asked if maybe he should make his patrol rounds or park the police car in front of the Library in the evenings. I was not too concerned nor was I confident that this little police chef would stand a chance against the Flasher.

All was quiet for a week or so and then day the Flasher walks into the Library in the middle of the day.  Of course I was alone and rather curious as to how this was all going to play out.  He wandered around looking at books for awhile and finally walked up to the desk and starts up a conversation about Riverton and Palmyra. I can be nice and polite so I talked to him and he behaved in a perfectly normal manner.  He was actually quite literate and although I was waiting for the big reveal he was a perfect gentleman.  He came by several times in the next few weeks just to talk and then he disappeared.  The police chef dropped by one day to tell me he had gotten arrested in Palmyra for exposing himself and was now locked up in a mental institution.  I found that rather sad but maybe he could get the help he needed. 

What I was learning was that you can and usually do make yourself sick by not doing what you want to do or losing your sense of humor.  Relish the happy parts and laugh at the bad. There really is a silver lining in every cloud but you are the only one that can find it.

Dennis' Mother and his aunt decided they would come to visit us in June. Their timing was pretty good as we had just visited a little town on the shore named Sea Isle City.  Everyone else spent time at the shore during the summer so why can't we.  We rented a brand new house on the beach for the first week in June.  The first week of June was fairly reasonable in price and it seemed to jump up to over a thousand dollars a week by August. It had plenty of room for everyone which solved the problem of what to do with our visitors.

What a week that was!

Old Friends and New Realities

The day after the house tour I was still pretty exhausted but quite happy in my very clean, all decorated house that smelled like a forest with all the pine and holly branches spread around.  There was no need to panic about Christmas shopping that wasn't done since I sill had two weeks to get it done.  Or at least that was my thought until Dennis had another idea shortly after lunch.

When Wes was born twelve years before we had gone home to Oklahoma from Dallas that first year.  Then we decided that we grew up staying in our own house so it was easy for Santa to find us so we would do the same for our children. I have to admit I was totally surprised at his idea of going to Oklahoma for Christmas.  There were a lot of holiday parties I was going to miss but at the same time Dennis was going to be off work for several weeks and not looking forward to going to any of them. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all. The only problem was Shopping was not very good in Warner, Oklahoma and I needed to do a lot if we were going home.  

Being pretty good at lists I fine tuned one that included all the relatives I figured we would see and headed out with $700.00 dollars in cash.  A trip to the Mall and a pretty good list resulted in a Ford Van full of presents and a few dollars left.  Over the next few days I wrapped all the presents when the boys were not around and packed them all into huge boxes that fit in the van.The volunteers at the Library assured me they would be just fine, Tug went off to the dog hotel and on the 16th of December we headed for Oklahoma. I really did not want to go as Christmas at home sounded much better but as it worked out something happened that would eventually cause a change in my life. 

I really can't say I remember too much about that trip or Christmas itself.  Visiting in Warner meant a lot of time playing cards, working jigsaw puzzles or talking to Dennis's various relatives who came and went.  There were probably trips to Muskogee to see my two brothers and a trip to Oklahoma City to see Mom. At some point in time I must have stopped by to see my high school classmate, Robert.  He was always easy to find at his drugstore and always happy to see everyone who dropped by.  Somehow he was point central for everyone to drop by and say hello, talk about where they were living and catch up on some of our other classmates.

How the subject of Lisa came up rather alludes me but he mentioned she was still living in Muskogee but running a little loan company that her current husband owned in Checotah.  Lisa and I were not very close friends in high school but the summer between the ninth and tenth grade we spent a lot of time together.

That was the summer before two junior high schools blended in together at Muskogee Central High.  She had gone to one on the west side of town, I to one on the east side.  Naturally the two schools were the usual cross town rivals and there were some kids from the west side that I did know from church and girl scouts. But on the whole the thought of going to high school and not knowing half of the people in the class was a little scary. 

Muskogee at that time had a brand new YMCA.  There are lots of memories of the old one when I was little as Mother must have thought it was a good place to take the three of us.  Somehow she had met the director of the new one who was young and very interested in getting the teenagers involved in the Y.  That summer he planned a program where we could come on a Friday night, bring our 45 records and dance. He provided a room and a record player and while he worked in his office and we danced, talked and got to know our cross town rivals.  I don't remember many east side kids there but there certainly were a lot from the west side.  There was one girl who laughed a lot very loudly, knew all the boys and just looked like a lot of fun.  That was Lisa. She was not one to let you stand in a corner looking like a duck out of water and because of her I met a lot of the kids from the other side of town and ended up looking forward to school starting.

The only classmate I had talked to in the eighteen years since I graduated was Robert and now I find out Lisa is only a few minutes drive from Warner.  Dear Dennis had done a pretty good job of keeping me away from all my friends from Muskogee all the years we were married.  I resented that a lot especially when I had planned and executed his class reunion one year.  So when I breached the subject of wanting to go see an old friend in Checotah, especially in front of his Mother he didn't say no. I couldn't get to Checotah fast enough.  

The next morning I drove to Checotah, found her little office and surprised her.  She was the same Lisa I remembered full of laughter and stories about a lot of our classmates.  One of the funniest things she told me was how much she hated me in high school.  Seems like the 1954 red Chevy convertible I got for my sixteenth birthday had been hers before it was mine.  Seems like her Dad got mad at her about something and took it away and sold it to my Dad.  Every time she saw me flying around town with the top down she hated me a little more.  We finally decided to refer to it as "our" car and maybe she could like me after all.  After that visit with her visits to Warner seemed a lot more fun, letters flew across the country on a regular basis and we never seemed to run out of things to talk about.

I really should not complain about our visits to see Dennis's parents.  Alpha and Allen were really great people and were the best grandparents ever.  They adored Wes and Wally and the boys adored them.  We really did not see much of my Dad before he passed away.  He and Mother divorced before Wes was ever born. The most I saw of him was when he came to Kansas City to visit for a week when little Wally was only three and lunch when we came to Muskogee to visit. Mother did not pay much attention to the boys when we went to see her or she came to visit us.  It was always about her and what she wanted to do or talk about. Maybe she tried in her own way but she was not good at talking, listening or playing with them. She was good at reprimanding them so being around her was actually always a little tense.

It was nice to come home in January after two and a half weeks in Oklahoma.  Time for the kids to get back to school and Dennis to work.  I went back to the Library, the Home and School Association things, the Porch Club and all the other things I managed to get involved in. Barney came to Philadelphia in the latter part of January.  It had been almost a year since I had seen him although we talked on the phone almost every week.  I had noticed that although his business was going well and a second book had been published there was something in his voice that did not sound quite right.  When I asked how everything was going he always sounded like everything was great but I never wanted to really quiz him on the phone.

He was flying into Philadelphia at 9:30 and out at 3:00 on his way to Boston.  So I got the kids off to school and made arrangements for them to go to Sis's if I was late coming home.  It had been a year since I had seen him and I was very happy to see him get off the plane.  I hadn't really made any plans as where to go or what to do and he thought maybe we should find a relatively quiet place at the airport so we could talk.  That sounded a little serious but the weather was windy and cold, not really perfect for sight seeing but when someone says they want to talk I always get a little worried about what the conversation was going to be.

We found a relatively quiet place in one of the restaurants.  The conversation began with how much we were both glad to see each other and how everything was going.  He really quizzed me on why I was getting involved in the Library and all the town stuff.  I didn't really have an answer except that staying busy seemed to keep me happy.  That was when he handed me a folder with applications to the six medical schools in the area and asked me why I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do. I probably could have gotten mad at him for telling me I needed to do something I had decided was impossible but it had always been very difficult to get mad at him about anything.  I gave him all my excuses, the boys were too little and needed my attention, moving around, being out of school too long and I really didn't do well on the Physics part of the entrance exam because I never took the class.

Barney listened to my excuses and when I was done he asked if there was a real reason since none of those were valid if I really wanted to go after my dream.  I had to admit he was right.  It is much easier to come up with a million excuses that sound logical when you are really just afraid of failure.  Now that I had my lecture I asked him just what brought this on and what was going on with him since I knew by the look in his eyes when he got off the plane something was not quite right. 

He started out by apologizing for not talking to me about it over the phone.  Lauren, his wife, was having trouble passing the bar exam and went to work for some juvenile services organization and four months ago she decided to foster a little two year old boy.  He was surprised because she had never wanted children and she brings home this little boy.  In the beginning he thought it was alright as he wasn't home much but now she wanted to adopt him.  Knowing how afraid he had always been about being a father and not wanting children himself I knew this was not a very good situation.  The worse part was that we were now wading into the area of talking about our spouses which we had always promised not to do.

I would have liked to have just told him to let me think about this but I had the feeling he made the pass through Philadelphia for my opinion.  I wanted to just tell him I could not make an opinion on what he should do but I did not think that would work.  I finally just asked him what he really felt like was the best answer.  Maybe that was not the right way to ask that question because he answered it  in a way that was surprise, but not really.   He just smiled and said he wanted to marry me.  Sorry, but I had to laugh.  I sketched out the story he had just told me back to him.

He wanted my advice on what to do about adopting a child when (1) he had a terrible fear he would not be a good father from his growing up experiences (2) he always proclaimed he did not want children and (3) he wanted to marry me that would come with two children. He looked rather forlorn but realized what he had asked and said he had really missed me since I moved from Kansas City and it seemed liked he really only felt good was when we were together.  I told him I felt the same way and was probably the reason I always stayed so busy.  I actually think he would make a great father by doing everything he wished in his step-father.  You just have to love them, teach them right from wrong and let them pursue what they want to do whether it is to play sports or be in the band or study science. Most important you have to be there when they need you.  It isn't always easy and in the situation with you and me it is scary.  My boys are at an age where they might resent me leaving their Dad and marrying you.  Then what do we do?

He said he knew I was right and the last thing he wanted to do was to ruin what ever ridiculous 
relationship ours was.  He decided to try his hand at being a father which would be better than splitting with Lauren.  That would only cause him to have to move to New Jersey to be near me.  But I had to promise to at least try to get into medical school so I did not spend the rest of my life thinking I should have.  His last comment, said with a big smile, was that at least I did not turn him down on the marriage proposal.  No, I told him, I didn't because next time he was going to have to get down on his knee.

It was hard to watch him get on the plane. Seventeen years ago I turned down his proposal to live with him without getting married and now I had in effect turned him down again.  This time I did feel like I would hear from him again soon and I guess I was going to have to try to keep my promise about school.  It was a little scary but I at least needed to try.

Running Out Of Tomorrows

The summer of working...well playing at the Library came to an end when school started.  I still had the job at the Library but now the playing was going to have to stop.  Somehow I was going to have to become more of a Library Director and less of a Pied Piper of children.  Then there was the little matter of the Christmas House Tour only three months away. Procrastination was going to have to stop.

The chances were not good that hundreds of rolls of wallpaper and a truck load of paint was magically going to appear on the walls and woodwork no matter how hard I wiggled my nose like Samantha on Bewitched.  In addition I was going to have to spend some time with wallpaper books and try to decided what I was even going to do.

Since I had started upstairs then the best thing would be to finish the master bedroom and the adjoining room we called the dressing room.  I decided to go with navy blue and yellow mainly because I found a wallpaper that jumped off the page at me. All of the walls, even the closets, had wallpaper.  New rule: if there is one layer of wallpaper that has successfully stayed on the walls for forty years - go over it.  If in doubt put a coat of Kilz over the existing wallpaper to make sure it is firmly attached to the wall and to keep the color from coming through. Then paint all the woodwork, the old wooden blinds and the furniture with oil paint which tales a long time to dry between coats.  That pretty well ate up the month of September and part of October.

In the meantime besides actually appearing at work on a fairly regular basis there was the carnival that needed to be planned at school to begin raising money for playground equipment.  No one, including me, seemed to know much about school carnivals and our expertise came from what everyone remembered from their childhood. With no money to purchase anything all the games and prizes were donated by the parents. There were twelve parents involved and everyone came up with a game or a booth, built it, made up rules and got little prizes of some kind.  Most of the prizes were handmade or baked goodies that the kids loved. That made it fun for not only the kids but all the parents who helped. The carnival was just before Halloween and we included a costume contest.

My thought of stripping all the woodwork downstairs disappeared when I attempted to strip some louvered doors.  That thought did not last very long.  The doors went to a vat stripper and everything else sadly had to be painted.  Many years and layers of oil paint would have been an endless year project.  So  I decided to do the dining room next.  

A Saturday afternoon at the paint and wall paper store turned expensive as I not only fell in love with a wallpaper but fabric to match and oil paint for the woodwork and blinds. With the tour timeclock ticking off the minutes speed was of the utmost necessity and I became a Librarian by day and a wall paperer, painter and lambrequin  maker by night.  Good thing I learned to nap when no one was at the Library and open my eyes quickly when the door opened and someone came in.  Perhaps I did not always appear too alert but I did manage to get the dining room done by the first week in November.

Now the kitchen was a problem.  The floor was covered in a dark green linoleum with a black border and a gold star in the very center. I figured the floor had been there for probably forty years and no amount of Mop & Glo made it look any brighter.  A new sheet vinyl floor was the current rage but according to Harry, my resident plumber, heater and radiator caretaker, I was going to need a new subfloor and have the radiators raised.  Sounded serious but Harry knew best and was willing to do it.  I was also in luck here as the floor we had picked out for the house in Kansas was just the color and pattern that would be right for the kitchen which saved hours searching for that.

But before I could start anything I needed to solve a major problem.  The plaster ceiling in the kitchen was sagging.  Everyone said "Oh, don't worry about that.  They all do that."  Actually I did notice several sagging ceiling in some other homes but I couldn't see not fixing it.  What if the whole thing crashed down on the breakfast table one morning or worse - in the middle of the house tour.  Was there a plaster master around? Not that I could find.  Did I want to How to plaster?  Well maybe but not in the amount of time I had.  So what to do. Just by a stroke of luck I was one of the very first to have a subscription to The Old House Journal. Back in their beginning, before they had paid advertising and looked more like a newspaper it gave very good do-it-yourself instructions on restoring old houses.  Somewhere in one of the issues I found an article about tin ceilings.


There was a company in Brooklyn, New York that was still manufacturing the tin ceilings.  They had all the original dies plus some new ones.  It sounded quite simple to install and at that time they cost about $19.00 a piece for a 2' x 4' sheet.  The bad part was that for crating and shipping it would cost almost as much as the panels themselves.  So we went the cheaper route and drove to Brooklyn to pick them up.  It so happened that the company was only a few blocks from Coney Island and the Beach.  When we took the time to walk along the Boardwalk in search of something to eat we discovered that it was entirely settled by Russians and all the restaurants were of Russian cuisine and alcohol.
It was quite an adventure for Wes and Wally as when we picked a place to eat where we had to point at the food in the Deli case as no one spoke English. They thought it really fun but I did notice that we got quite a few stares during lunch.

So, Harry came and put my new subfloor, raised two radiators and installed the new vinyl.  I got the paint and the wallpaper done so it was time to install the ceiling.  Funny that the day Dennis decided to do it was Thanksgiving and I still think we ate a lot of plaster dust that came from installing the 1"x 2" furring  strips the ceiling was nailed to.  Oh well, guess it did not kill us and after two coats of polyurethane the ceiling was beautiful.  It was  now just two weeks away from the tour and the powder room, front hall and the living room were not done.  My playing/working all summer was no excuse for my severe procrastination. No need to cry over things I could not get done, just try to make it as good looking as possible.  After all just because I could not stand dead wedge wood blue maybe others would love it.  So I picked out paper for the powder room and got the paint done while I waited and waited and waited for the paper.

I still can't decide if it was a good thing or not that the paper arrived on Friday afternoon the day before the house tour or that Harry had noticed the windows we did not know what to do with in the basement while he was working in the
kitchen. They were actually the storm windows.  Dennis had said he certainly could not put the upstairs ones up so a good sized teenage boy in town agreed to put them up, of course, on the morning of the house tour. Great.  I spent the night in the basement washing years of dirt off of twenty-three storm windows. Fun.

After breakfast I sent the boys off to play with friends for the day and Dennis went out to put the storm windows up downstairs.  The boy came and got the windows upstairs installed.  Guess you have to have experience in that sort of thing.  Dennis had said he was not getting up on a ladder to do the upstairs.  When the kid came by to do the windows he had them done in thirty minutes not even using a ladder. He opened the window, removed the screen, pulled it inside and put the storm window out, attached it and it was done. Duh...guess you learn something new everyday.

By noon the commotion had stopped enough that it was time to wallpaper the bathroom.  Sis came over to do all the decorations and noticed that I still needed to vacuum and the next thing I realize is that several ladies showed up to vacuum and do the final cleaning.  Another lady showed up with a pot of homemade soup and rolls for dinner since there was going to be no dinner cooked in that kitchen that evening. I finished the wallpaper about four, got cleaned up my self, fed Dennis and the boys the soup, sent them off to the movies and was ready for the tourists on the stroke of five.

My thoughts on a house tour are that the visitors like to see the owner of the house and all of the house, not just a couple of rooms.  I also hate it when they put ropes across doorways so you can only glance at a room. I worked to have the whole house visible even if the traffic flow up and down the stairs was a little tight.  I literally propped myself up (I was ready to collapse from exhaustion) in the kitchen against the sink and happily greeted 1,000 people between five and ten o"clock that night. Sis had done a beautiful job with decorating every inch of the house with fresh pine and holly from the trees in my yard and it was beautiful. Plus the tin ceiling was a big hit and I was glad I was there to tell how it came about.

All in all I have to say that it was fun and the whole tour of six homes plus the Porch Club and the Episcopal Church was a huge success.  In the end I was fine with what all I had gotten done in the house especially since there were those who loved the Wedge Wood Blue.  Would I do it again...of course.*  

Now what to do about Christmas.  It was the 11th of December and I had not given Christmas a second thought.


*Our last two homes have been "on tour" everyday.  Guess I got into the tour thing.

  

Playtime On The Job

Even after living in New Jersey for almost a year there were so many things that were different from growing up and living in the Southwest
that took a lot of getting used to. Living in a small borough, as the smaller towns were called, was different especially in a community where the average age was sixty-five. Traditions ran very deep.

I can remember seeing a movie when I was about sixteen called "Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation".  I was very good at daydreaming about life somewhere else and had not yet gotten over wanting to be "Gidget", surfing and falling in love with Moondoggie.  Having the Hobbs movie come along created more fantasies this time about going and spending the entire summer in a ramshackle house on the beach. For a teenager who never even went on vacations much less fell in love with the likes of James Darren or Fabian a summer on the beach was a real dream.

Since Riverton was founded in the 1850's as a summer escape from Philadelphia by the wealthy families the escape tradition still held true. The only difference that as transportation improved the escape was to the Jersey shore and one of the forty-four towns that lined the beach. If you were ANYBODY you owned a summer home on the shore or scraped up enough money to at least rent a place for a week or two. Even with the advent of air conditioning the tradition remained.

Because so many families spent the summer or at least part of August at the shore school did not start until the Thursday after Labor Day. School also did not get out until the middle of June.  Planning a Summer program at the Library had to revolve around people being gone for extended vacations, loss of volunteers and kids whose parents could spend a lot of time away from their jobs. Being new to the whole Library thing was not easy either.

Summer hours for the Library were 9:00 to 5:00, closed Saturday and Sunday.  More than worrying about what to do with Wes and Wally there was a lot of guilt feeling about not being home and able to do things with them during the summer. This would be the first summer I eleven years I had not been home. I never did understand how women could not at least be home with the children in the summer.

My dear friend, Sis, had storytime for the preschoolers on Tuesday mornings and crafts for the older kids on Thursday mornings.  Wes went to sailing lessons every morning until noon and Wally, even at six years of age enjoyed the storytime and loved the crafts. So that took care of two mornings of the week.  

Finding Old Friends

My newest cat, one that I fostered and bottle fed from the age of two weeks, decides what time I should get up in the morning. She seems to always beat the alarm clock set at 2:30 am.  There is no way I can hide from her cold nose on my face or constant purring so I usually give up and jump out of bed.

This morning I remembered that there was no place I needed to be at some special time and it would have been easy to sleep in until at least 3:00.  But then I remembered that today I needed to write my weekly saga in order to have it done for tomorrow.  There have been too many weeks in the past three years when I kept putting it off because I do have to be in the right frame of mind to stay on subject and get the words on a page. It is difficult sometimes to write when my mind is in thirty different places as it has been for the last few weeks or so.

Maybe it would be easier to write fiction instead of real life.  I could forget what was going on around me and just make up stuff.  Is that what real writers do?  Or do they carefully weave real life events into their stories?  Since I have no clue as to what other writers do I just have to go with the easy writing days when the stories from long ago just flow onto the page, skip writing until those days return or get off subject and write about something that currently occupies my little brain.

Back in March I wrote a story about Class Reunions.  That one came about because I got the brilliant idea to help with our next one.  Why I decided to do this is a good question.  It involves a 170 mile drive to go to a meeting, a whole weekend away from home and I took on a project that has consumed the last couple of months. Thank heavens Marshell likes a lot of my classmates and looks at it as a "getaway" weekend. Both of us have really had a lot of fun visiting with my old friends as well as making some new ones. But that still does not answer the question as to why.

I can remember when we all graduated many said the only thing they wanted to do was to get out of Muskogee, Oklahoma.  There were bigger and brighter lights in other places. After twenty-seven moves through five states and many little suburbs or sections of a large city I discovered that every place is only what you make of it. There is not any difference in the politics or the number of pot holes.  There is a Facebook page for Muskogee where residents voice their complaints about not enough good restaurants or things to do which gives me a good laugh since they are the same complaints you would hear in any large city or small town. Every place is either too hot, too cold, too much snow or as windy as Chicago.  If you live in a very large city it would take you just as long to get to the good restaurant or the things you want to do as the short drive to Tulsa.

A few reunions ago when we were all having breakfast at the hotel a classmate said my blogs made her want to cry because I had such a happy time growing up.  Ann, that still blows my mind.  I, like pretty well everyone else, did not have a happy, easy time growing up. In between the lines and the jokes about Mother wanting me to look like Shirley Temple, broken dates and fun times there was all the insecurity of feeling like no one liked me. To make matters worse I wanted to be pretty and popular like the Ann I viewed from the outside.

One thing I did notice through all the reunions I have attended were those who never came.  What happened to so many of those Girl Scouts in the pictures in grade school or the junior high cheerleaders at the sweltering hot camp or all those people in the plays as there are many who never show up.  One at the very top of the "lost list" was a boy I played spin-the-bottle with at maybe age thirteen or fourteen.  Where was the grade school neighbor girl with whom I shared all my secrets?
Did they all only remember the terrible feeling of not fitting in?  Do they never want to see or to be reminded of what a hard time it was growing up?

Sorry but I would love to see Joe, Saundra, Bonnie, Roger, Larry and so many others that never come.  So I volunteered to see if I could locate those on the "lost list" which grew into a much longer list as we did not have a lot of information on about half of the class of five hundred.  In the last six weeks or so I have sent out over 300 emails checking the email addresses.  Now I am in the process of writing notes to those for whom I have addresses and not emails for in hopes that all the notes find their destination. It would be nice if the phone numbers were up to date but many numbers are very pre-cell phone times and phone books are not of much use.

Going through the Commencement List and the Yearbook several times everyday has brought so many memories that are happy and in some ways a little sad.  The sad comes from wishing I had not been so shy and did not try harder to be a real friend to more people. Also that I waited until now to start looking for all the classmates but now is better than never.  The happy comes from looking at all the faces in the yearbook and remembering all the silly events and all the really fun times that we really did have. As I look at every face in the yearbook it seems like I can remember something special or fun about almost every person.

When I sent out the emails to see if the address was still valid I really did not expect to get answers back.  To my surprise I have gotten quite a few from classmates I have not seen in many years and that was really fun.  If you are lucky enough to have graduated with the Muskogee Central High School Class of 1964 and get reunion information via email, snail mail or phone please think about joining in. We especially want you to come if you are one of the "I am never going to a class reunion" proclaimers.   Please do not make all this work, agony and anticipation that I have put myself through for naught. I promise not to tease you about coming after hiding all these years. Besides I am sure there is someone you would like to see and you can be sure that I would love to see you.


Back to the world of Riverton and the Riverton Free Library next week.