My new grand-dog Nellie is a soft, snuggly, copper-colored Vizsla with sapphire-blue eyes, which will turn green as she matures. She’s nine weeks old, and she’s already a linguistic genius.
When I arrived at Nellie’s house, she was in her kennel. As I came through the front door, she greeted me with a combination of barks and whimpers. Wow, I thought, she’s bilingual. Of course, Nellie wasn’t certain whether I spoke bark or whimper, so she alternated between both languages, hoping, I imagine, that her new Nana would be conversational in at least one of the two. Nellie had nothing to fear, I speak both bark and whimper. I understood her every word: “Hurry up! Open the kennel! Quick, I need a hug! Let’s go outside!”
I hurried to open the kennel, and Nellie and I exchanged nuzzles and cuddles. I put her leash on, and we went for a sniffing stroll. I let her explore the grass, sidewalk, and trees with her nose. Last week, while listening to Minnesota Public Radio, I was reminded why dogs love sniffing walks: The world is written in the odors they smell on the ground. Nellie was interested in all of them, especially the scent of some dried dog pee on a concrete step. The dog expert on the radio said pet owners should take their dogs for at least one sniffing walk a day and let the dogs move as slowly as they want. It doesn’t matter if the walk is short because all that sniffing is mentally stimulating for dogs, and it tires them out.
I’ve got something to say!
Nellie sniffed and walked. I walked but did not sniff. Somehow Nellie and I knew when we had reached the end of our walk–it’s our great psychic connection–and we looked at each other. “Let’s go home,” I said. Nellie stood on her hind legs, placed her front paws on my leg, and whimpered, “Carry me. I’m all worn out from sniffing and processing and analyzing.” (She’s a precocious puppy with a large vocabulary.) I picked her up, snuggled her against my chest, and one of us walked home!
Next, I fed Nellie and gave her some water. She ate only a few nibbles and ignored the water. Then she climbed onto the bottom shelf of the kitchen cart, using it as a step to climb up on a built-in shelf next to the lower cupboard. She curled up on an empty hot water bottle clothed in its own soft knitted sweater. She wanted to sleep. I reached in and pulled her off the shelf. “Not yet,” I said. I took her out to the backyard. We played with a ball and walked around the yard. She tinkled and attacked dandelions.
I can sleep here. I’ll be good.
Hoping she had worked up an appetite, I took Nellie back inside. She ate most of her food and drank some water, then she climbed back up onto the shelf. She looked at me and whimpered, “Please don’t take me off this cozy, sweater-covered hot water bottle on this tucked-away shelf. It’s my favorite place for a nap.” She hadn’t forgotten that I had removed her from the shelf twenty minutes ago.
“Sorry,” I said, for I truly was. “It’s time for me to go.”
I placed Nellie back in her kennel. She didn’t bark or whimper. Her eyes were dozy, and she was too tired for words. As I pulled the front door closed, she sat watching me go. I like to think that by the time I drove away, she was sleeping and dreaming about our next conversation.
[This personal essay was published in the April/May 2023 issue of Our Wisconsin. Last year and this year, the editors asked for submissions on the theme “Lessons Learned from Mom”in honor of Mother’s Day. Our Wisconsin is a print-only magazine. Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who mothers someone.]
Me (l) and my sister (r), circa 1963, about a year before our candy caper.
Mom taught us to think about how our actions affected other people. My sister and I were about 5 and 6 the first time I remember Mom delivering this lesson.
We lived in rural Franklin, Wisconsin, a mile north of the Racine County border. Sometimes Mom shopped at a small, independent grocery store. It was nearby, and she liked the store’s butcher shop.
On an autumn day around 1965, Mom loaded us into the car for a trip to the local store, which my sister and I relished. The vibrant-colored penny candy located by the checkout counter made our mouths water. Our pockets normally jingled with coins from our piggy banks, but Halloween was creeping up, so Mom had nixed buying sweets. “You’ll soon have plenty of candy,” she said. “Leave your money home.” We grumbled but left the house with empty pockets.
The store was old-fashioned compared to the supermarket where Mom usually shopped. At the supermarket, we had to stay with Mom, so we didn’t get lost. At the local store, we could roam. Mom could either see or hear us from anywhere in the store.
Mom walked to the back of the store to talk to the butcher. My sister and I remained near the candy. We yearned for Life Savers.
While Mom talked to the butcher, our chance arrived. The cashier left the counter while other shoppers browsed the aisles. I grabbed a roll of Life Savers and stuffed it into my pocket. “We’ll share them,” I whispered to my sister.
Mom finished shopping and paid the cashier. The pilfered goods rested in my pocket. My sister and I didn’t attempt to eat them in the backseat on the way home. Mom had something akin to eyes in the back of her head.
After returning home, Mom put groceries away in the kitchen, and my sister and I sat in the family room, opening the Life Savers. A debate about favorite flavors, eclipsed caution. Mom heard us arguing and appeared in the doorway connecting the kitchen to the family room.
“Where did you get those?” Her voice squashed our argument and dread rendered us speechless. We knew that she knew.
“Did you pay for those?” she asked.
We shook our heads. Lying to Mom wouldn’t work. She’d call the store to check.
“Get a nickel from your bank.” She glared at us. “You’re returning the candy, paying for it, and apologizing to the owner.”
The words, apologize to the owner, were the harshest part of the punishment. The butcher, a muscular man, owned the store. He wore a white apron splattered with blood. He chopped meat into chunks with sharp knives. Would he be holding a big knife when my sister and I had to stand before him and admit we robbed him? Would he yell at us?
Driving back to the store, Mom painted various scenarios, hoping we’d absorb what she said. She wanted us to understand the far-reaching effects our seemingly insignificant 5-cent theft might cause.
“You didn’t just steal from a store—you stole from the owner, a person.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
“He has a wife and children. If people steal from him, he can’t pay his bills. His family will go hungry.”
I pictured his starving children.
“He won’t be able to pay his employees, and their families will go hungry.”
I pictured more starving children. Guilt joined my apprehension.
“You stole from him, his family, his employees.”
I pictured a line of angry people.
“If he doesn’t make money, his store will close. His customers will be unhappy.”
Mom’s talk continued all the way to the store. I don’t remember what the butcher said to us, but he wasn’t holding a knife and he didn’t yell.
I never shoplifted again. When my 7th grade friends wanted to steal gum from a drugstore, I refused to go with them. I remembered Mom’s lesson—I wouldn’t just be stealing a pack of gum.
Mom applied this lesson to other situations, compelling us to be mindful of people’s feelings, explaining thoughtless behavior hurts people. But the hidden gem in her moral? We learned humanity.
Mrs. Luepke is part of my childhood, but I don’t remember her. She was my parents’ neighbor when I was born. But she is a legend in my mind because she taught my mother how to make a wunderbar German potato salad.
I grew up hearing stories about Mrs. Luepke who kindly shared cooking tips with my mother, who in 1958 was a young bride with no cooking skills.
My mother made Mrs. Luepke’s German potato salad for special events, holidays, and picnics. When I was old enough, I helped. The kitchen filled with the smells of boiling red potatoes and sizzling bacon. Followed by the sweet, tangy smell of vinegar and sugar simmering on the stove in a bath of bacon fat and butter roux, which would be poured over the potatoes, bacon, and sliced green onions.
My favorite way to eat the German potato salad was when it was warm. I’d sneak a spoonful (or two) while I mixed the ingredients together.
For years the recipe had been lost. But this winter my mother discovered that her brother, who now lives a thousand miles away, had a copy of the recipe. My mother copied down the ingredients on a piece of small paper, and handed it to me when I visited her for Christmas last year. The paper contained no instructions, so when I made the potato salad, my mother explained the steps. Our mother-daughter-German-potato-salad project was the highlight of my Christmas. And the salad tasted as wonderful as I remembered it tasting when I was a child.
If you make the potato salad, think of Mrs. Luepke. During the years when her recipe was lost to my mother and me, I never found another German potato recipe that tasted as good as hers. In some small way, I’m glad to keep her memory alive.
The Ingredients
3 to 5 pounds of red (new) potatoes (I used 4 pounds)
1 bunch green onions, sliced, including the greens
1 pound of bacon
1 stick of butter (I used no-salt)
4 tablespoons flour
2/3 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 cups very hot water, not boiling
The Recipe
Boil the potatoes with their skins. Cook until a fork slides in and out easily, but they shouldn’t be falling apart. Let them cool while you start the other steps.
Fry 1 pound of chopped bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon from the pan. Remove 3 to 4 tablespoons of the bacon fat. Keep the rest of the bacon fat in the pan.
Add 1 stick of butter to the pan. (I used no-salt butter.) Melt the butter on medium heat.
When the butter is melted, add 4 tablespoons of flour, making a roux. Stir while it thickens.
Add 2/3 cup of vinegar and 1 cup of sugar. Continue to gently whisk while it simmers until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens more.
Next add 2 cups of very hot water–but not boiling. Simmer and gently whisk together. The mixture will thicken again, but it won’t be as thick as it was before. Turn off the burner.
Return the bacon to the pan and add the green onions. Mix to combine. Cover the mixture to keep it warm.
Peel then slice the potatoes into a big mixing bowl.
Pour the warm bacon mixture over the potatoes. Gently combine.
Eat some when it’s warm!
Refrigerate leftovers. Thanks to microwaves, the potato salad can be rewarmed. But warm it, don’t zap the heck out of it!
I’m away from home, and I’ve been taking lots of walks. On day two of my amblings, I noticed a couple of signs had been posted with a picture of a black cat and the words: Lost Cat Please Call w/Sightings. There is, of course, a phone number.
When I’m walking, I look for the cat, but all I’ve seen are deer, woodpeckers, crows, small birds, rabbits, geese, ducks, turkey vultures, and two foxes frolicking in a farmer’s field. But I haven’t seen the black cat, so I haven’t used the phone number.
Several days have passed and the notices are still up, so the cat is probably still missing. I like to think if the cat had been found, the owner would have removed the signs. I leave for home tomorrow, but I expect to see the signs on my morning walk before I go. I hope the owners find their pet, but the longer the cat is gone, the less likely it will return.
Something might have killed the cat. It also might have found a new home. Cats have been known to do that. I had a good friend who gained a gray cat that way when it showed up at her house. While she tried to find its owner, she fed it and took care of it, and the confident cat made itself right at home. Then the cat disappeared for a couple of days. Then it returned, only to disappear and reappear again over several weeks. Finally, she discovered the cat lived across the alley and down a few houses. The cat, like a bigamist, had been keeping two families. Plenty of jokes were cracked about its behavior, and both of the cat’s families kept in contact in order to keep tabs on their mutual pet. Eventually, the cat dumped the other family and settled in with my friend. She felt badly and kept asking the owners if they would like their cat back. Sure, but only if the cat wanted to come home. They were pragmatic about the situation because it turned out that was how the cat had come to live with them the year before.
But that’s not much comfort to the owners of the missing black cat because they wouldn’t know if their pet was safe.
We had a black cat when I was ten years old. My mother brought it home. I’m not sure if it was because my siblings and I wanted it or if she wanted it. She didn’t need much prompting to bring home animals, and what little kid doesn’t want a playful kitten with a soft, rumbly purr.
My father wasn’t happy when he came home and was introduced to a black kitten named Lucifer. He claimed he didn’t like cats. Lucifer, sensing my father was his enemy, joined ranks with him. That cat greeted my father when he came home from work, sat on his lap when he read the newspaper at the kitchen counter, and curled up with him when he fell asleep on the couch. My father grew fond of Lucifer, the cat with a name that belied his personality. Dad had a soft spot for animals too.
Lucifer was full grown but less than a year old when he died. No one noticed that he was missing because he hadn’t been gone long enough. One of my siblings discovered his body floating in our above ground pool in the backyard. The sides of the pool were four feet off the ground, but cats have leaping superpowers. However, once he’d gotten in the pool, he was unable to get out.
We were all upset about Lucifer, especially Dad.
A few months later, the pool, too, would have a sort of death. My father flew skydivers, and one weekend afternoon, Dad and some of the jumpers thought it would be fun if a couple of them were to land in our pool. Boredom was probably the mother of this crazy idea because the skydivers normally aimed for a small metal disk in the middle of much larger circle of pea gravel back at the airport. I can picture the scales in their adventurous brains as they weighed their options: Same gray pea gravel, again? Or a Caribbean-blue pool filled with chlorinated water? Tipping the scale was the much smaller size of the pool, twenty-five feet in diameter, making it a more challenging target. The skydivers were thrill junkies. Besides, the pool’s water was only three feet deep. No one was going to be in over his head.
We lived out in the country on two-point-two acres, and our land was surrounded by sprawling fields of tall grass. So, if the skydivers missed their target, they had plenty of grass to land on. Also, my father had a certain reputation in the neighborhood, and if someone saw a couple of guys with parachutes drifting toward earth in our backyard, well, that kind of thing was business as normal at our house.
But like many good ideas hatched in the heat of a Saturday summer afternoon, this one was a near miss or a near hit, depending on your point of view about the half-a-glass-of-water personality test. One of the skydivers didn’t land outside the pool or inside the pool. He landed on the edge, crumpling the side. Skydivers don’t float like dandelion seeds landing gently on terra firma. They come down a bit fast, so part of their ground school training covers proper techniques for landing to avoid injuries.
The skydiver wasn’t hurt, but he took some ribbing for “riding the fence.” The pool was totaled because once metal is bent that badly, there is no unbending it, so my father dismantled it and took it to the dump. That fall we got another cat, a Siamese kitten we named Cleopatra but called Cleo. A few months later, sadly, she was run over by a car. We didn’t get another cat for several years, and we never got another swimming pool. My father kept flying skydivers, but there were no more landings in our backyard.
I hope someone finds the cat on the poster, and it returns home. And if not, I hope the cat finds a nice second home. I’d like to think of the cat as keeping someone’s lap warm.
Swanson (l) and Nystrom (r). At age 94, after writing Ford Tramps, Swanson made a motor car trip to Alaska and toured the 49th state.
In 1924, Seegar Swanson and Elliott Nystrom, both twenty years old and friends since elementary school, decided to take a year off and tour the perimeter of the United States, making sure to visit the four corners of the country: Maine, Florida, California, and Washington. They saved money for their trip and bought a 1919 Model T Ford touring car for $125. They left Ashland, Wisconsin, in the late summer of 1924, and returned to their hometown in 1925. The trip took about a year because they worked at different jobs along the way. Also, Swanson points out, more than once, that the top speed of their Model T was 25 mph, if the roads were good.
Along the way Swanson and Nystrom kept a log of their experiences and expenses and took many photographs. Additionally, they wrote long letters home. After Swanson and Nystrom finished their journey, Swanson attended Northland College in Ashland. In 1936, he became the editor of the Superior Evening Telegram and later on he worked at the Duluth News-Tribune. After a long career in journalism, he retired at seventy-two. At the age of ninety, when he started writing Ford Tramps, he had his detailed resources and years of writing experience. He spent three years writing his book, and his hard work and dedication paid off because Ford Tramps is a well-told story that captures the mood of the country and its people in the mid-1920s and gives readers a glimpse into the daily lives of ordinary Americans and the places they lived.
Published in 1999, Ford Tramps is out of print, so if you want to buy a copy from Amazon, it will be used and it will cost between $56.26 and $154.63. Thriftbooks has one copy listed for $59.99. I paid under $20 per book when I bought two copies in 2000. I gave one to my father, and I kept the other.
My father read Ford Tramps right away and loved it. I cracked open my copy in March 2023. It’s amazing how fast twenty-three years can drive by. And if I hadn’t read a blog about autocamping in the 1920s written by Chris Marcotte, my copy of Ford Tramps would still be parked on my bookshelf.
I wish I’d read Ford Tramp years ago, when my father was still alive so we could’ve talked about the book and why we liked it. Even though we never had that conversation, I’m going to tell you why I think he enjoyed the book so much.
He liked it because Swanson’s descriptions of the 1919 Model T bring the car to life. The Model T that Swanson and Nystrom drove had three pedals on the floor and a lever by the door side of the driver’s seat that controlled the transmission, and it had a lever on the steering wheel that controlled the throttle. A complex coordination between feet and hands was needed to shift gears. Machines fascinated my father. He loved being a part of them, manipulating them, controlling them, understanding them, and pushing them to their limits. He drove cars and motorcycles, and he flew planes. Just as Swanson and Nystrom had to learn the personality of their Model T and what it could and couldn’t be asked to do, my father took pride in mastering his cars, motorcycles, and planes.
He liked the book because the Model T broke down on the road, and its tires often went flat. Swanson and Nystrom played nursemaid to the Model T, learning what they could fix themselves or rig up until they could afford a mechanic. My father, a savvy mechanic, would’ve reveled in the Model T’s challenges. Sure, when the car broke down, he would’ve sputtered and cursed. Then he would’ve put the Model T in its place and back on the road. He owned his own garage where I once heard a customer with an old sports car ask him, “What if you can’t get a part?” My father answered, “I’ll rig something up, and it’ll work.” That 1919 Model T would’ve been putty in my father’s hands.
He liked the book because he was in his 60s when he read it, but he could be young again, on a vicarious adventure from the comfort of his couch where his standard poodle and his greyhound curled up near him. In 1955, he was eighteen when he moved from a small unincorporated town in northern Wisconsin to the big city of Milwaukee, hoping to make his way in the world. My father never took a road trip like Swanson and Nystrom, but in a small way, he liked to travel and experience new places and meet new people. Swanson and Nystrom met many interesting and kind people while working odd jobs and autocamping. Swanson’s writing breathes life into these men and women, allowing readers to work beside them in an orchard picking crops or sit with them around a cookstove as they share stories and food with other autocampers.
My father liked the book because Swanson included many photographs, maps, log entries, expense accounts, and receipts. It was fun to see what food, lodging, camp fees, car repairs, and other necessities cost in the mid-1920s. Swanson and Nystrom also reported how much they were paid doing manual labor. My father, an avid photographer, took photos when he traveled. After he had his film developed, he would show you ten pictures of the same vista, then ten pictures of the same museum display, then ten pictures of the same man who took him out fishing on a charter boat. My father considered maps to be among the most useful items in his life. He used them when driving to someplace unfamiliar, and he used them to plan his flights from one airport to the next. As a pilot he kept a log of all his flights, and as a businessman he kept expense accounts and receipts.
My father liked the book because the Ford Tramps spent time in his beloved state of Arizona. He moved to Arizona when he was forty, and he thought his adopted state was amazing. Swanson and Nystrom marveled at the Petrified Forest, amazed that trees had turned to stone. The pair debated between seeing a bullfight in Mexico or seeing the Grand Canyon, with both of them favoring the bullfight. The Grand Canyon won out because in Mexico, bullfights were only held as part of major holiday celebrations, and it was too long a wait for the next holiday. Some things are meant to be. Swanson and Nystrom fell in love with the Grand Canyon, agreeing it was, as Nystrom remarked, “The greatest thing we’ve seen so far.” They stayed for five days. They hiked to the bottom of the canyon and swam in the Colorado River. They hiked along the rim in both directions, and they attended a Native American ceremony. One afternoon they took shelter in their Model T during one of the desert’s quick moving and furious storms accompanied by lightning that seemed to touch the ground and thunder that redoubled its intensity as it echoed off the canyon walls. My father never tired of watching desert storms roll through Tucson.
I’m at the point in the book, when Swanson and Nystrom have just crossed into California. Even in 1925, in an effort to contain harmful pests, California border patrol officials stopped cars to make sure people weren’t carrying fruit into the state. The Model T was searched from top to bottom because Swanson and Nystrom admitted to having a handful of oranges that they’d been given in Florida. Embarrassed, but having nothing else to hide, they were allowed to enter California. I have eighty-eight pages left to read, and Swanson and Nystrom are about to visit Yosemite Park. I’m sorry my journey with them will soon come to an end.
Someone suggested I sell my copy of Ford Tramps, pointing out my investment in the book had at least tripled. I’m not selling my copy, but if I did I could list it as “like new” because it’s only been read almost once, and I haven’t spilled any coffee on it. I wish I had my father’s copy of the book, but I wouldn’t sell his copy either. However, I would’ve been willing to share one of the copies with someone else. My father would’ve liked that, too.
I discovered a nice surprise under the jacket cover.
My dog Cabela is fourteen-and-a-half-years old, so in human years she’s ninety-and-a-half. Living with Cabela these days is like living with a very senior citizen. (I’m not sure I like that term. Maybe I’d prefer aged person. But maybe not. It’s February and I get cabin fever in February so I get moody. What sounds good to me one day, sounds awful to me the next day. But this post isn’t going to be about what to call old people. And by the way, winter doesn’t bother me. I don’t care how much snow falls or how many days it has been since the sun has made an appearance. But the quality of the daylight changes in February, and it awakens something in me, and I get cabin fever which recedes sometime in April when I return to ignoring the weather. But this post isn’t going to be about weather either.) It’s about living with an old dog whom I love dearly. And a hardworking grandfather who lost his sight when he was eighty.
Cabela often enters a room and stops abruptly. She stands still, not looking in any direction, and hangs her head, pondering. She’s asking herself, “Why did I come in here?” or “Where was I going?” It takes her a bit to figure it out. I know, I know, sometimes when I go into the basement, I forget why I went down there. But I usually remember as soon as I go back upstairs. And most of the time I don’t forget why I went downstairs.
At night Cabela’s more confused and she often paces. It’s called sundowning, which is not a disease, but a condition that can occur with dementia, and yes, dogs can get dementia. Sometimes I think Cabela has a touch of it. She knows all her people. She hasn’t forgotten when it’s time for her meals, treats, and walks. And she doesn’t mistake the floors for the yard. But she has changed.
On most nights, somewhere between midnight and two in the morning, Cabela begins the restless pacing, the waking up and wandering from the bedroom to the family room to the bathroom. The first time she does it, I get up and let her outside. Lots of older people need to get up during the night and pee, and if Cabela needs to go, she needs to go. It’s not good to hold it. But after she comes back inside, she can’t decide if she wants to sleep on her bed in the bathroom or her bed in the bedroom or on one of the couches in the family room. I hear her paws swoosh on the carpet as she walks by the bedroom on her way into the family room. I hear her walk by the bedroom again on her way to the bathroom where her nails click on the linoleum and her body thuds onto the sheepskin bed tucked between the end of the toilet and the cupboard. I hear her rise up and once again her nails click on the floor, but instead of walking by the bedroom, she enters it. I know she’s looking at me, wondering why I don’t get up. Because I believe she thinks it’s time to get up. Finally, she settles down for a few more hours, but eventually she begins pacing again before my husband and I have to get up.
Last night Cabela was more restless than normal. The only one who slept through it all was Ziva, our other younger dog.
Cabela, left; Ziva right
So my grandkids and I took Cabela and Ziva for a walk this morning before it started raining. Cabela can’t walk far, but we went slow. We walked three blocks up, one block west, three blocks down, and one block east. My idea was to give her more daytime activity, hoping she’d sleep better tonight. But we’ve only managed one walk because it’s still raining, and it’s cold, soggy, and windy. It’s not good weather for a “ninety-year-old” dog.
On our morning walk, I thought about my grandpa George who went blind at eighty years old. He didn’t have dementia, but he was restless at night. He kept waking my grandma Olive and asking her if it was time to get up. He’d fuss about who was taking care of his garden or about something that needed attention at his gas station. In the darkness of night, things are always a worry. And for Grandpa, who’d lost his sight, I imagine those worries became terrors.
Before Grandpa George went blind, he still went to work at his station six-and-a-half days a week. He pumped gas and tinkered in the garage. He’d been going to work at his station for over sixty years, rarely taking a vacation or even a day off. He planted a large garden and grew raspberries, strawberries, green onions, sweet onions, new potatoes, russet potatoes, corn, peas, beans, beets, asparagus, carrots, and a few flowers between the rows of fruits and vegetables. He did the sowing and the harvesting, even at eighty years old.
Olive and George, 1930s
But after he lost his sight, his life screeched to halt, like a pair of rusty brakes on a customer’s old car that he once would’ve fixed. Grandpa George, who got up every morning before six, ate at seven, and opened his station at eight, couldn’t walk from his bed to the bathroom without someone to help him find his way. Grandpa George, who raised the finest garden in town that provided food for his family throughout the summer, fall, winter, and spring, could no longer read the rain gauge or sort his seeds for planting.
Grandpa’s days and nights somersaulted. He dozed on the living room couch during the day when he should’ve been filling someone’s gas tank and checking her oil. He listened to the evening news when he should’ve been checking the corn and pulling potatoes in the garden. At night when he would’ve been sleeping after a day’s work, his mind raced and he kept his wife up with question after question, starting with, “Olive, you awake?”
Grandma Olive tried to keep Grandpa from falling asleep on the couch during the day. At first people came to visit, and he told them what to do at the station in order to close it down, and there were the last crops to reap from the garden, all activities Grandpa oversaw while sitting at the kitchen table, his calloused mechanic’s hands resting on a white oilcloth decorated with nickel-sized cherries.
Someone came and tried to teach Grandpa to read braille. Perhaps books would entertain him. But his hands shook slightly, and he couldn’t track the raised bumps on the page.
Nuts.
Someone decided pecans were the answer. Grandpa sat at the kitchen table and cracked pecan after pecan. He sorted the meat from the shells the best he could, but someone else, usually Grandma, needed to pick out the stray shells. Another job for her to take on, along with all her other chores that needed completing on a short night’s sleep. The pecans were stored in jars and given to family and friends, all of whom soon had more pecans than they could ever use.
Grandpa kept cracking nuts, but he didn’t sleep better. Nights were restless and his mind paced, although the rest of him couldn’t. Grandpa was certain dawn must be coming soon, even though it was hours away, and he would ask, “Olive, you awake? What time is it?” And Cabela, certain the day should begin even though it’s hours away, stares at me most mornings as if to say, “You awake? It’s got to be time to get up.”
[Bloganuary is hosted by WordPress. A new topic is presented each day during January. This is yesterday’s topic.]
Nana Kitty in front of her house, 1978
I cannot describe what my nana’s kitchen smelled like because there is no specific scent I know of to compare it to. But on rare occasions, I walk into someplace and unexpectedly inhale a whiff of the same smell that was a constant part of her kitchen. Permanent just like the yellowed-white plastic radio on her burgundy-red linoleum countertop or the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil statuette of monkeys perched next to the acorn-and-pipe-cleaner figurine who played a single bongo drum, both resting on a shelf above the ledge where her princess phone lounged.
It wasn’t the smell of cookies in the oven or bread dough rising because she never baked. Her bankrupt cookie jar squatted in a corner to the left of the sink, tucked next to the toaster. It wasn’t the smell of fried chicken sizzling on the stove or a Sunday roast baking in the oven because Nana never cooked the way most women did in the 1960s. I don’t have a single memory of our family gathering around her kitchen table for a holiday dinner or any other dinner. She had no dining room. My siblings and I often stayed with Nana for two or three days at a time, but I remember little about what we ate.
Her kitchen was a small space with a trivial parcel of countertop, an afterthought of cupboards, a narrow gas stove, and an old diminutive, single-door refrigerator with a miniature freezer box tucked inside. The kitchen was designed to discourage cooking.
Perhaps the distinct smell of Nana’s kitchen was a conglomeration of its tiny world: a tea kettle of water boiling over a gas flame to make instant coffee; a sunny-side-up egg in melted butter, frying in a cast iron pan, basted to perfection; Malt-O-Meal bubbling in a stainless-steel pot; a slice of bread browning in a toaster, then layered with butter or marmalade; tea steeping in hot water, brewed to soothe a queasy stomach; a rose or peony cut from the garden, standing in a vase; shoes or winter boots gathered on yesterday’s newspaper near the outside door; an old oak table covered with oilcloth; faux brick vinyl wallpaper on the front wall; white cotton curtains washed in Fels-Naptha soap; cleanser scrubbed against the porcelain sink; wax applied to the yellow, brown, and orange patterned floor; aging varnish on wooden trim; the metal-lined milk chute, waiting for the day’s delivery; the heavy, dark wooden door, layered with years of oil from the hands of Nana’s grandchildren, children, and her dead husband.
It’s been awhile since I have smelled anything like Nana’s kitchen. Perhaps that’s because many of the smells that lived there are now too old-fashioned, having been made from products no longer used. Perhaps my sense of smell has dulled. Recently, I looked at pictures of Nana’s home on a realtor’s site. The kitchen has been modernized, but it’s still tiny, still designed to discourage cooking. I imagine the smells have been updated too.
Last week as part of Bloganuary’s writing topics, I posted “A Treasure That I Have Lost.” Sally, another blogger, read my post and liked it, especially the part about the quilt that my twelve-year-old son and I made for his grandpa. It reminded her of a similar story in her life when she and her twelve-year-old son painted a special picture for his grandfather.
Sally wrote a touching essay about the painting and how much her son’s grandfather treasured the painting. When I read Sally’s blog, I broke out in goosebumps, and I had to blink back tears. Both Sally’s father and my father have passed away.
To read her essay and see the whimsical painting she and her son created, click here: “Beep-Beep.”
One of the greatest joys of writing is when a reader connects with something you’ve written.
[Bloganuary is hosted by WordPress. A new topic is presented each day during January. I’m a day behind. And I missed some days, but I was writing other stuff.]
Yes, all of them, even the books I don’t remember.
The first book I loved was “The Little Engine That Could.” It was my favorite bedtime story. My mother once tried to convince me to choose another story for her to read, but I became Little Blue Engine chugging away, steadfastly keeping the course up the mountain, refusing all other stories until my mother gave in and read it. I finally understood her point of view after I had children and had to read “Green Eggs and Ham” a bajillion trillion times.
Grandma Olive believed in books. She was a teacher and gave us books for birthdays and Christmas. She was also the organist and choir director at the Presbyterian Church, so the books usually had a religious theme. She lived eight hours away, and I think she suspected my parents were lackadaisical in the religious education of her grandchildren. She was right to be suspicious. Before every trip up north, my mother reminded us not to mention that we only went to church when we visited Grandma Olive. But I liked those children’s Bible stories too. On Sunday mornings while my parents slept in, my sisters and I created a circle of books by opening them, standing them on edge, and lining them up cover to cover. We climbed inside, pretending we were “Three Men in a Tub,” and recited the Mother Goose rhyme. Then because it was Sunday, I read Bible stories to my sisters, secretly hoping Grandma Olive could sense our piety.
Nana Kitty believed in books. She had a set of encyclopedias from the 1950s on a petite bookshelf in her doll-sized living room. Those volumes contained the world, from Argentina to Yugoslavia, from Aardvark to Zebra, from Mercury to Pluto. I sat on her sofa and played alphabet roulette, reading about Queen Victoria one time and Canada another time. Nana also had a handful of Little Golden Books. My favorite was Scuffy the Tugboat. After Nana died, I ended up with some of the Little Golden books, including Scuffy, which I sometimes read to my grandchildren.
When I was in elementary school, my mother refused to buy me a pair of black patent leather shoes. I was a tomboy and she believed I would wreck them before I could outgrow them, so she considered them a waste of money. But my mother believed in books. Every time I came home from school with a book order form, which was two or three times a year, she let me order three or four books. She never told me they were a waste of money, even when money was tight. Each time my books arrived and the teacher gave me my stack held together with a rubber band, I smelled their newness then hugged them to my chest. I had wanted patent leather shoes, so I would fit in with the patent-leather-shoe girls. But my shoes were never going to make a difference. The books, however, were great friends who took me to new worlds.
In fourth grade I read biographies. The library at Pleasant View Elementary had a series of biographies. Eventually, I read them all–Marie Antionette, Catherine the Great, Alexander Graham Bell, Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell, Jenny Lind, Marie Currie, and others whose names I can’t remember. While I wanted to sing like Jenny Lind, the person I most admired was Madam Marie Currie. She was determined to get an education despite living through political upheaval and at a time when women didn’t routinely attend college. Between the biographies, I read Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators mysteries, and Nancy Drew mysteries.
On Christmas morning there were always some books and new pajamas under the tree. My third favorite part of Christmas day (after the unwrapping and eating) was to climb into bed wearing my new jammies and read my new book. When I was in seventh grade, my mom bought me a complete, unabridged, two-volume set of Sherlock Holmes. She knew I liked mysteries. During Christmas break, I sat in a stuffed armchair with a dictionary tucked beside me and Sir Authur Conan Doyle’s wily detective and his sidekick on my lap. At first, I needed to look up lots of words, but before long I could read Doyle’s stories with only an occasional turn to the dictionary. I was Little Blue Engine, chugging away, up the mountain of new words. I felt so proud that my mother bought something so grown-up for me.
I read through high school and college. During most of my twenties, when I read for fun, it had to be a book written by a British author before 1900. I’ve been a reader my whole life, fiction and nonfiction. I always have a book on my nightstand and a book on the end table. I often have a book in my purse, and in a pinch I have a nook app on my phone with some witty, heart-throbbing regency romances by Jennifer Tretheway, books that are so much fun they are worth a second read.
Once I learned to read, I never stopped. I have a lot of books on my to-be-read pile, but that doesn’t stop me from buying new ones. Will I ever get them all read? Well, “I think I can–I think I can–I think I can–I think I can.”
[Bloganuary is hosted by WordPress. A new topic is presented each day during January. I’m a day behind.]
When my father, who lived in Tucson, died in 2016, there were three things I wanted from his estate: a bed-sized quilt I’d made for him, a lap quilt my youngest son had made for him, and a scrapbook of photos I’d made for him filled with pictures of him and my sons.
I got two out of three.
Dad’s quilt with a white background in the focus fabric and a dark blue border
The quilt made for my father arrived first. Years before, on a visit north, my father had gone into a fabric store with me on purpose. Maybe it’s a cliché but most men don’t follow women into fabric stores. My husband always sits in the car. I had a friend whose husband always sat in the car and sometimes napped while she bought material. But my father wasn’t a sit-in-the-car kind of guy. Once on an afternoon jaunt along Lake Superior, I stopped at a yarn shop, and my father came inside with me. He found something to like in that store–the owner’s dogs. While I perused the yarn, they chatted about their dogs.
After I picked out some lovely woodsy, snowy themed material in the quilt shop, my father offered to pay for it. He didn’t say, “Make me a quilt.” The gift came with no threads attached. But in that moment, I knew I’d make him a quilt out of the material. A few days later, I bought a second set of the same fabric in a different color scheme, and I made two quilts, one for him and one for me. I thought about the quilts as a gift of connectedness: he had one and I had one.
Weeks later the quilt my son made for his grandpa arrived. It was late coming because at first no one could find it. I wanted my son to have the quilt. On his own he’d decided to make his grandpa a quilt. He picked out a focus fabric with an airplane motif because his grandpa had a small private plane, which he used every summer to fly from Tucson to Wisconsin to visit us.
The airplane quilt
The making of the airplane quilt was a joint effort between my son and me when he was about twelve. He selected the material, chose a design, and sewed the squares together. I cut the squares using a rotary cutter. If you’ve ever seen or used a rotary cutter for quilting, you will understand why you don’t put one in the hands of a child. When the quilt top was finished, I machine quilted it and put a binding on it. During one of my father’s summer visits, my son gave his grandpa the quilt, who most fittingly put it in his plane when he left and few it home.
The scrapbook of photos never arrived. No one ever found it. I made it for my father around 2005. I wasn’t into scrapbooking, but I had a friend who made gorgeous eye-candy scrapbooks to memorialize family vacations. When I was a child, a scrapbook had plain white pages and people taped or glued articles, photos, ticket stubs, and other flat mementos in them. I have one I made when I was a teenager after my trip to Europe. But scrapbooking had evolved, and people used decorative papers, elaborate stickers, and fancy stick-on letters to create themed pages, which were slipped into plastic sleeves then inserted into a binder.
I made one of those upscale, themed, gorgeous eye-candy, fancy scrapbooks for my father. I filled it with pictures of him and his grandsons. Pictures of him holding them as babies. Pictures of them fishing with him. Pictures of them with him when we visited Tucson. And, most sentimentally, the pictures I took each year of him and his grandsons in front of his plane, just before we stepped away and he climbed inside. We’d listen to him yell “clear” before he started the engine. We’d watch him taxi to the runway then take off. We’d stand on the ground and wave, and my father would tip his wings back and forth, waving goodbye to us.
The scrapbook is a treasure gone missing. No one is sure what happened to it. One year my father, who lived in a raised ranch, had water damage in the lower level in an area where he stored a lot of stuff that had to be thrown away. Maybe the scrapbook was part of the flood.
I have copies of all the photos, but it’s not the same. In the scrapbook, those remembrances were gathered in one place. I wanted to be able to open the scrapbook and wander through those collected memories of my father with his grandsons. I could’ve made another scrapbook, but I haven’t. I think of the one I made for my father as perfect, something I couldn’t replicate.
But I use the quilt I made for him on my bed. The gift-of-connectedness quilt that I made for myself hangs on the quilt rack in my family room.
My quilt with a tan background in the focus fabric and a sage green border
Writing Near the Lake 