Category Archives: memories

Christmas, memories

A View of Christmas Past: The Nativity Scene

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bumpkins-manger-scene-croppedBack in December 2010, I started this series, intending to do a post each year, or many a couple, around Christmastime about my memories of childhood Christmases, maybe linking that to how times have changed. I didn’t do a good job with my series. I made two posts in 2010, then not another one until last year. Time to resume telling about Christmases past.

Long past? No, my past.

One of the things our family did, which perhaps was unique, was how we did the nativity scene. We called it the manger back then, or perhaps the crèche, not the nativity scene. That term entered our family much later, but I’ll use it now since that’s what most folks call it.

This was, perhaps, the first Christmas decoration to go up in the house. Last year I wrote about our tradition of progressive decorations. Well, the nativity was one of the first to go up, two or three weeks before Christmas. But it had only animals in it. I remember a cow, a donkey, a horse, and some sheep. Maybe we had a shepherd too (can’t remember), but probably it was just the stable and animals. So where were Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus?

They were somewhere across the house. Joseph and Mary were, that is. They were enroute to Bethlehem, to the stable. Every day they moved a little closer. I think the nativity was placed on the closed sewing machine table in the dining room. If so, Mary and Joseph were somewhere in the living room. But baby Jesus wasn’t with them. He wouldn’t appear until Christmas morning.

Day by day the couple inched their way to Bethlehem. Obviously the geography of the Holy Land wasn’t a factor. Focus on the journey, not accuracy, was the intent. Eventually they made it to Dad’s desk, also in the dining room, then to the Windsor chair next to the sewing machine, then finally, on Christmas eve evening, they arrived at the stable. Christmas morning Dad or Mom would bring out the baby, and one of us would put it in the empty feed trough. And a couple of shepherds would arrive, along with their sheep (three, if I recall correctly). And I think we added an angel as well, on top of the stable. What about the wise men, you ask?

They also appeared on Christmas day, but not at the nativity. They started a long ways away from the stable, and started their trek there, which would end on January 6, Epiphany. The next day the nativity would be put away with the rest of the decorations.

So for one brief day, the nativity scene was complete. This was a lot of fun for us kids. And I think it helped us to better understand the dynamics of the story. Rather than have a static scene of all participants, we had a moving story that we participated in. We never actually read the Christmas story, ever, on that morning. But we understood what was going on.

What about in adult years? I think I tried this a year or two when we lived in North Carolina. We had a large, older home, with lots of territory between Nazareth and Bethlehem, and between lands to the east and Bethlehem. But the tradition never got going. Maybe all the relocations we made made this impossible. Not every place we lived would have worked for a moving nativity. Plus, the nativities we had didn’t have as many moving parts.

Now, with just me and the wife, and now the mother-in-law, in the house, it seems unnecessary. So the manger sits, all participants in place, as if it were Epiphany. The photo above is of how it looks this year, on our new console TV converted into a table. It’s pretty, even if it’s not historically accurate.

memories, miscellaneous, Wisdom from Dad

Wisdom From Dad – A Peck of Dirt

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About 1934
About 1934

Wisdom from My Dad – A Peck Of Dirt

My dad, Norman Todd, was a smart man. No, he didn’t have a great education. He quit public school after eighth grade, which was sort of a standard for many people around 1930. He went to work for “Old Man Angel” in East Providence, Rhode Island, as a farm hand. He worked the five weekdays and a half day on Saturday, and for this he got “a dollar a day plus my dinner” (by which he meant lunch). I’ll talk more about that in a future edition of Wisdom From My Dad.

He didn’t stay out of school, however. He entered a trade school to learn the trade of a linotype operator. When he finished, he started work at this trade, and worked at it till his forced early retirement at age 60, interrupted only by his time in the army during World War 2.

As I said, though only moderately well educated, Dad was smart. He had these sayings he used to say. One of them was “You have to eat a peck of dirt before you croak.”

I never asked him to elaborate on that. And I’m not sure whether this was one of those things he said to be witty, or if he really believed it. But I see in it a lot of wisdom. A lot of people will recoil at the idea of eating a peck of dirt. For those who don’t know, a peck is two gallons (eight quarts). Unless you’re an unsupervised and adventurous kid playing in mud puddles, you’re going to ingest this dirt grain by grain over the years. A lot of food goes in, along with a little dirt. You don’t notice the dirt.

So, is there any wisdom in Dad’s saying? Do you actually have to eat a peck of dirt before you can hang up your cares in this world and move on to the next?

To me, it means you have to live life. Don’t shrink back and be a wallflower. Don’t let others run your life. It might also mean don’t avoid things in life that are messy. Not everything you need or want comes in a pretty box with a bow on it. Sometimes you must get your hands dirty to accomplish anything.

I wonder if it also can be taken literally. Not everything you eat or drink is pure. Some of it has dirt on it. Eat it anyway. The dirt and a few germs will make you stronger. We have a tendency now to try to make our personal environment as sterile as possible. In a noon hour class yesterday I watched a man go to adjust the thermostat when several people complained about the temperature in the room. He took a key from his pocket and tapped the thermostat key. I thought that was odd. Then I remembered this is a guy who touches nothing in a bathroom without a paper towel covering his hand. When he washes his hands he turns the water on full blast for a minute or more, scouring his hand until the last germ he might have encountered has reached a distant sewer. He fears picking up a germ on the thermostat button, so he won’t touch it directly. Of course, no germs would be transferred from the button to the key to his pocket and later to his hand.

Can we totally avoid germs in our lives? I don’t think so. Should we take reasonable efforts to avoid contacting germs? Yes, for sure. Should we take extreme measures to avoid contacting germs? I think, for the normal person with normally functioning immune system, germ avoidance can indeed be taken to an extreme. Take in a few germs; build up some anti-bodies; keep stressing that immune system to help it grow stronger; get your hands dirty; live a long life.

Thanks, Dad, for this bit of wisdom.

memories, miscellaneous

A Shot in the Arm on a Dull Sunday

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I had my flu shot a little over a week ago, but that’s not what I’m referring to.

This morning we had a good sermon, a great service, and a great Life Group class (that I didn’t have to teach). It was a difficult lesson, and my co-teacher did a wonderful job with it. But that’s not what I’m referring to.

After church, we dropped off recyclables, which is on the way home. That’s a once or twice a month Sunday ritual. Then we had a simple lunch. I pulled out the piano and vacuumed behind it. Then I vacuumed one little place in our bedroom that needed it. I paid a couple of bills and walked them to the post office, about a 2 mile walk. Thence it was re-hydrate with some ice water, and to The Dungeon to see what I could accomplish. Many things to do, including write this blog post, and not enough time to do them in.

First thing I did was check my e-mail. Ten new ones, which I figured were the usual junk and “who cares” type of e-mails. But there, in the middle of the ten, in the “from” line, was the name of a high school and college friend I’d lost contact with. Actually we’d all lost contact with him. By “all” I mean every single one of my high school and college friends I still keep in touch with. Every time we get together we speculate about ________, wondering if he was alive or dead (an awful speculation, one that will only grow through the years), where he was, what he’d done with his life, etc. I had looked for him on FB and not found him.

He found me. Said in his e-mail he was organizing old negatives, found a couple with me in them, went looking for me on the Internet, found my website (I guess) and thus my e-mail, and sent me the photos. We’ve now exchanged a couple of e-mails, and have caught up a bit. Turns out my February business trip will be to his current city of residence. Hopefully we’ll be able to see each other.

It’s always a shot in the arm to reconnect with someone after four decades. But what’s even nicer about this is he tried to find me. That has happened so rarely in my life that I’m sure I could count them on the fingers of one hand. Sorry for the cliche.

That wasn’t what I was going to write about today. I had two other things that crossed my mind and would have made good posts, but this seemed better. Hopefully the other ideas will come back to me at some point.

memories, miscellaneous

Saying Goodbye to an old friend

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045We are assimilating the “stuff” of my mother-in-law into our house. Her large furniture has been sold, or put in use in our house: one bedroom set and three easy chairs. In the garage are a mattress and box springs (surplus), and an extra box springs (bought by someone years ago but never picked up). In the house are mostly smaller items, including linens and paper items. Those will take time to go through. The garage is full of her stuff spread out on tables, mostly marked for sale. When the sale will actually take place is a mystery, but hopefully soon. Part of our work yesterday was more work going through the pantry to see what might be too old to keep, seeing what was now duplicated, etc.

Meanwhile, the need to de-clutter has been on our minds. We knew we had to start, so that we don’t leave our kids in the place my dad left us, with a houseful of stuff to be sorted, priced, and sold or discarded. Yet, saying you will de-clutter is easier than actually doing it.

I made a little progress two weekends ago. I moved things around in the basement storeroom to accommodate a spare bedroom set. While doing so I found four suitcases we’ve had since heading to Saudi Arabia in 1981. These are well-traveled suitcases, but still in good condition. We originally had 12, of two different sizes, but through the years the others have been damaged and discarded. Even though we have new suitcases, we kept these because…why did we keep them? I suppose because they were in good condition and we thought we might use them someday. I pulled them out and set them in a place where I can easily take them upstairs when we have the garage sale, which hopefully will be soon.

Then, behind where the suitcases were, I saw my old trumpet. I bought this in the fall of 1963 (6th grade), with my own money, Dad later chipping in with some money he owed me (that’s a long story), and played in the school band from 6th grade through 12th grade. Truth is, I was never very good, and in high school never made it past 3rd trumpet. But I enjoyed it and I played.

Then came adulthood and children and overseas adventures. The trumpet went in storage twice while we were out of the country, and otherwise was in whatever storeroom we had in whatever house we lived in. Here in Bella Vista that’s the basement storeroom. The last time I played it was about 20 years ago. The interim of no practice hadn’t made me a better player.

So I thought, “Time to de-clutter; unused trumpet.” Two and two went together. I thought I should donate it to a school district for a kid who wanted to play but couldn’t afford one. The problem was the case was really beat up. I once rammed it into a fence post while trying to avoid hitting Adele Palazzo with it between home and school (another story, not so long). That gave it a crack, which later expanded, and a small piece of the case was lost. Then, around 1997 I loaned it to a family at church who couldn’t afford to buy one. It came back in a few weeks with several long cracks in the case. And when I pulled it from storage, a 7-inch piece of the case was on the floor under it. Would anyone want it with a severely damaged case?

I decided to check. One of my wife’s step-sister’s husband works at a Catholic school system, was a music major years ago, and is involved in music with the school. I asked him if his school system would like it, damaged as it is, and he said yes, very much so. I told him I’d bring it to Oklahoma City next time we were there, and he said he’d actually be passing through our area soon and would pick it up. That happened yesterday, and it is now gone, somewhere in Norman, OK, waiting to be used by some student who can’t afford one and can live with a bad case.

So I say goodbye, old friend. Sorry I never gave you a name. You were part of my life for 52 years, though admittedly I’ve neglected you for the last 45. You were money well-spent. Yesterday it was nice to see your valves still worked after at least two decades without maintenance. May you find love in a new home, and help some kid to come to appreciate music. And may your tones bless the world for decades to come. Over the next year, no telling how many of your storeroom buddies will also find new homes.

Meade, memories, miscellaneous

Something Special: Meade High School, Class of ’67

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This was the fourth reunion I attended of Meade (Kansas) High School class of 1967, my wife’s graduating class. We also attended in 1995, 2000, and 2005. Now some of you may ask how a class with year ending in 7 has reunions in years ending in 0 and 5 instead of 2 and 7. To explain I need to tell you a bit about Meade.
First you need to find it on a map. Look for southwestern Kansas. Find Dodge City, Liberal, and Garden City. Mead in on US Highway 54, about 40 miles southwest of Dodge, 39 miles northeast of Liberal, and about 60 miles southeast of Garden City, about 100 miles east of the Colorado border and 20 miles north of the Oklahoma panhandle. Notice on the map how the towns in this area are ten to fifteen miles apart. The dryland/irrigated agriculture of the regions does not need population centers with services closer than that.

Meade, the city, has somewhere around 1,700 people. It peaked at 2,200 people in past censuses, when agriculture boomed and oil drilling was in full swing. But 90 percent of their high school graduates move away. A few move back ten or twenty hears later to raise their families, and a few people move in in search of jobs, but not enough to replace those who die off.

With the small population, and with the largest graduating class ever being about 64 people, and with a total of 3,400 graduates in the school’s 98 year history, the Meade High Alumni Association decided to have all school reunions on the 5 and 10 years. They hold this on the closing weekend of the county fair. So all interested alumns came to Meade last weekend.

Lynda’s class had 61 graduates, and three “friends of the class” who for whatever reason left the cohort, making for 64 people associated with the class. Near as anyone can figure thirty-two of those attended some or all of the events. We drove in late Thursday afternoon, not knowing her class was holding a party of the early arrivers, so we didn’t attend that. We did attend the Friday evening party. It was supposed to be for the class of ’67, but there were people there from ’57 (kind of old and out of place), ’61, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, and probably ’69. All over town there were similar gatherings that evening.

Saturday was a reunion at Lynda’s home church of returning attendees, then tours of the old school, then a picnic at the park of the classes of ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, and ’69 (while other groups met elsewhere in town). Then a banquet and program that evening of all the classes, then an after-banquet party for ’67 that sort of fizzled (or started very late), then an ecumenical church service on Sunday morning. At each of the official or semi-official gatherings, the conversations lingered long. Heck, even the check-in on Saturday morning was a reunion, with small grouped engaged in animated conversations.

I enjoy going to these reunions, even though I didn’t attend that school and had met only one of her classmates before 1995. I sit back with the other spouses or significant others, and watch the interactions of the returning classmates. For a long time only two or three lived in Meade. That number is not up to six, so almost all of them are coming in from afar. The interaction is great. Every reunion someone returns who has never been to one before, and that person becomes a star of sorts as everyone tries to catch up. the men keep looking older in five-year chunks, and the women seems to change less, no doubt the chunks mitigated by applied colors and perhaps surgeries. The women all insist the guys take their caps off to see what they are hiding. The guys…make no similar request of the women.

This class of sixty-four has something my class of 725 doesn’t have: a shared school experience, and a shared community experience. They all went to the same grade school and junior high school, actually in the same building as the old high school. When someone tells a story about Mrs. Griffiths, one of the two 6th grade teachers, everyone knows her (even those who had the other one), and can appreciate the story. Everyone in the class knew each other well, and hung out with a large proportion of the class after hours. They shopped at the same grocery store, tormented the same elderly people, vandalized the same vacant houses, and played in the same woods.

In contrast, I doubt if I even knew a hundred people in my graduating class. I think not more than five others from my elementary school spent all twelve grades in the same schools I did, though many others spent more years together. Those shared experiences and relationships with the entire class is what I don’t have with my class. Maybe part of it is because it took me forty years to ever get to one of my reunions. Bit I knew very few of those at my reunion. Of the 79 who attended, I probably knew fifteen. I met about five or ten of my classmates for the first time, even though forty years ago we walked the same halls and hated the same assistant principal.

My class will never have that special bond that Lynda’s class has. It can’t have it. For all the benefits of growing up in a good sized city with a large school, the lack of shared experience is one of the unfortunate drawbacks.

Kudos to Meade High class of ’67. I hope you know what you have.
memories, miscellaneous

A Long, Long Time Ago…

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…in a galaxy far, far away, I was in high school. Cranston High School East, to be precise, class of 1970. We had our 40th year reunion last night. This is the first one I attended. Of a class of about 725 (numbers given last night ranged from 700 to 749) 79 came. That seems like a small number, but everyone said it was better than number 35.

I saw three people from the old Dutemple Elementary School. Macia, Roger, and Jimmy all went to the other junior high school, then we were reunited for the high school years. That went back a long way. Grace was there, who I went to church with (though different elementary schools), then jr. high and high school, so we went back a long way. I brought some grade school photo albums, and we got a kick out of looking at them.

Four of us from the old “A” division at Hugh B. Bain Junior High were there: Jane, Sharon, Jeanne, and me. That was fun to see them. Jane was in physics and science with me, and I had brought some memorabilia from that class. She had a great time looking at it. Ginny from that class was also there. She said she needed another drink before looking at what I brought, but never got back to it. Shawn from physics class was also there, I understood, but I never did see her.

Well, I may have seen her, but a lot of people didn’t look the same. Some I had become familiar with their present appearance from Facebook, so wasn’t surprised. A number of people look like a little older versions of themselves, but well preserved. It was casual dress for the guys. The women tended to dress up a bit more, and there was lots of cleavage showing. I told my wife and cousins this morning that I hadn’t seen so much cleavage since Bay Watch was canceled.

Some people I hoped to see weren’t there. Gary, Kenny, Bobby G. Art, Bobby F–all skipped it. And my three closest friends skipped it in favor of our Monday night gathering. Even with many gone, I’m glad I went. Oh, and it was good to see Barbara, whom I was in home room with for six years, but never in class together. That was a pleasant surprise.

So many there I didn’t know, so was meeting for the first time. How could I not know classmates, you wonder? Because there were so many, and I had the circles I was in and didn’t meet a lot of the kids outside of those circles. I was in band, and there were four of us from the band. I played football, and six footballers were there. I ran track, and four of us tracksters talked briefly. Of course, nowadays we’d run the 100 in times we used to have for the 440.

Will I go again? Who knows, but most likely not. They may not have a 45th, and ten years is a long time to plan for. I won’t say no, but possibly this was a once in a lifetime event.

memories

Going Back Again

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Last week I was in Rhode Island for the first time in almost five years. Visits there are less frequent now that Dad is gone. Then we went every couple of years to see him (and when we were overseas we made Boston our port of entry and Cranston, Rhode Island our home base for visits to the States), but now it takes a wedding, a funeral, or a business trip to get us east of Chicago. Not many of those come up.

This was the longest time between RI visits for me. Perhaps it was this length of absence, but Rhode Island almost seemed a foreign place. Of course there is the language barrier–accents that are strange after years in the midwest, overseas, south, and for the last eighteen years the border between the south and the midwest, but it’s more than that. Place names are mostly familiar, but not roads. Does RI 37 have an interchange at Pontiac Avenue? I wasn’t sure, but took a chance and it turned out it did. Does this city street extend from Pontiac to Reservoir? I didn’t think so, so I accessed it via Pontiac. Turned out I was right again. But the memories were weak, more instinct based on years of learning how cities and streets develop than memory.

I could write much more about this, but have little time to do so. The visit to the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried brought familiar scenes to the fore, a mixture of pleasantness and loss. The trees surrounding Birch Garden in Highland Memorial Park were larger, but it seemed many must have died, for it was not as grown up as I remember it from 1997.

The URI campus was much changed, a mix of familiar and new. Trees bigger. Traffic patterns changed. Frats and Sororities in places I didn’t remember, but with buildings obviously old enough to have been there when I was. The lay of the land and topography seemingly new. New athletic facilities that seemed so large they must have been a waste of taxpayer money. I found I only remembered an axis from Butterfield dormitory to the Student Union and the quad and on to Bliss Hall (the civil engineering building), but little else. Even the streets I used to ride my bicycle on to get to work in Wakefield seemed different. The second dorm I stayed in (only for one semester) I couldn’t have picked out. Maybe if I was on foot, but not from a car.

The years have flowed by, like water in a pipe. Life has taken me down paths I never would have guessed, though the work of my career has turned out quite similar to what I decided on my junior year of high school. Last night Lynda and I were discussing the mini-reunion I had with friends in Cranston last week. That led me to take my senior yearbook from the shelf and spend almost an hour in it, something I haven’t done for probably three decades. So many of the faces were foreign to me, even some of those who signed at their picture. I knew that person? How? It says we were in band together (or English or Chemistry or football or track), but I just don’t remember them. For a lot of years I have limited my ready recall to just those few I was closest to. Maybe that’s how most people do it.

Hopefully I’ll be back in RI new year for my 40th high school reunion. About 680 graduated from Cranston East in 1970. Per actuarial tables, most of us should still be alive, though not all will actually attend. Will seeing people in the flesh bring back the memories? I kind of hope so.

Bible study, books, memories, miscellaneous, Writing

Sidelines Syndrome

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I first encountered Sidelines Syndrome when I was in junior high, a skinny lad who loved both academics and sports but who excelled only at the former and struggled with the latter. I didn’t know what to call it then.

I experienced it mainly on Sundays, in the fall, and it continued strongly all the way through high school. We went to mass at 9:00 AM, and got home around 10:30 AM or a little later. Cereal and toast were consumed, Dad fell asleep either on the dining room floor or in his bedroom, and it was time to read, do homework, or watch whatever pre-game football shows they had on in the 1960s. Eventually the game itself would start. How great it was to watch the New York football Giants, with Y.A. Tittle and later Fran Tarkenton at quarterback, Homer Jones at flanker, and…others whose names I can’t remember. I think Frank Gifford may have already retired. But I prate.

However, by the end of the first quarter, I was tired of watching and wanted to be doing. So I turned off the television, went outside, and started playing basketball alone. Not sure what my younger brother was doing; perhaps he sometimes joined me in the wide part of the driveway, next to the detached, two-car garage, where Dad had put up the hoop and backboard. Within a half-hour, certainly before the end of the first half, my neighbor Bobby, same grade as me, would come out and we’d have a friendly competition. An hour later and we were throwing the football in the street. Other neighborhood kids would join us, and we started a pick-up game in the street. The “field” stretched three telephone poles, the middle pole being the first down. It was always Bobby and me against all the others, all much younger than us. Bobby was Fran Tarkenton and I was Homer Jones. The ten or fifteen kids we played against didn’t stand a chance. But again I prate.

Sidelines Syndrome, as I define it now, is the physical or psychological reaction of body, soul, and spirit to being on the sidelines rather than being in the game. As teenagers, SS caused us to have an overwhelming urge of needing to be in the game, not watching others play the game on television even if they were quantum leaps ahead of us in skill and ability. We had to be out playing, not watching. I’ve noticed that SS has the exact opposite effect on us as we age. Instead of wanting to be in the game, we are glad to be on the sidelines; it lulls us to complacency, tiredness, and an overwhelming desire to sleep through half the game. At least it does me.

Last night, I experienced my first case of teenager SS in years. After working late, I went to Barnes & Noble to read, relax, research, and drink that large house blend that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. I began reading Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages. I read about ten pages, then felt an overwhelming urge to be writing instead of reading about writing. I couldn’t concentrate. So I put that down and began reading in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Poetry. I managed to research one minor topic, then SS interrupted the neurotransmitters and I had to lay it aside. Next was a book about fifty skills a writer should have, or something like that. I couldn’t get past the table of contents. The same was true with “Poets and Writers” and “Writers Journal” magazines. Concentration was impossible. I had to be writing.

So I went home, fixed dinner, went to my reading chair, and began planning out what I think will be my next book, a Bible study, and doing some research on it. SS was satisfied, my brain fully engaged, and productive words and concepts flowed. As the evening progressed and way led on to way, I quit about 1:15 AM, a blog post made and three sell-sheets drafted for three future books. I was satisfied; my brain was satisfied, a teen-age type attack of SS fully suppressed, and a 5:55 AM alarm setting turned on. Hey, maybe I’m getting younger!

Don’t bother to look up Sidelines Syndrome in a medical book, or Google it, or check it in Wikipedia. It doesn’t exist as a clinically defined medical or psychological phenomenon. I assure you it exists, however, and needs to be dealt with in the right way. Maybe this post will spur those professions to get off their duffs and figure this out—quickly. I can’t take many more nights of less than five hours sleep.