I have a medium-sized yard. Last fall YA and I raked up 22 bags of leaves and yard waste. Always more bags than the rest of the neighbors. How can we possibly have this much stuff to be bagged up now? And we’re not even finished!
What do you have way too much of?
Like several other babooners, my folks grew up during the Great Depression, and considered themselves very lucky to get to college, which is where they met – Iowa State Teachers College (now State University of Iowa). They were “upwardly mobile”, and worked hard to be able to eventually own a nice house in the midwest, and be solidly part of the middle class instead of the lower.
When I came home with a hippie-looking guy, they didn’t balk too much. (I think they were still relieved that I was no longer with Wasband.) They were glad when we finally got married, but they had to travel to some unusual places to visit us (and their only grandchild) those first 5 years – a farm outside Winona; a big old 1885 house with carriage barn in Winona; married student housing in Muncie, IN; and back to old Winona house. It was about that place that we had an interesting discussion.
Dad couldn’t see why we would buy such a shabby looking house. Admittedly, we bought it because of low price – it was a fixer upper for sure – and we had more time than money then, as Husband was doing part-time teaching at Winona State. Like all good “hippies”, we had some very shabby used furniture mixed in with a few genuine antiques, which must have reminded him of leaner times as a child. When they saw the “before” version, it looked like this:
But eventually we painted the exterior, replaced radiators with central heat, put in a fuel efficient furnace (some of these were covered by a block grant”), stripped painted woodwork (seven windows/doorways) in one room down to clear pine, and repapered or painted four rooms, getting rid of the black/gold flocked wall paper in the foyer. I’ll never forget how satisfying it was when the folks visited after we were all finished:
My dad looked around in amazement and said “I never would have thought the place could look this good.”
When have you been fooled by appearances?
In early June our church handbell choir has a gig in Jamestown, ND at a regional convention of the Eastern Star. Our director is active in the Eastern Star, hence our invitation to provide entertainment. My grandmother was a member of the Eastern Star, as my grandfather was a Shriner. I always thought of the Eastern Star as the old ladies who swept up behind the Shriners and Masons. Our handbell director insists that they are quite independent of the Shriners. I sometimes accompanied my grandmother when she cleaned and straightened up the Masonic Lodge in town. She didn’t seem too independent to me, but perhaps times have changed.
I note that today in history in 1819, the Oddfellows were founded. My grandfather belonged to the Oddfellows, too, as was my Uncle Harvey. I have my grandfather’s Oddfellow sword. It is very sharp and you could run someone through with it. My father was a Mason, but in late life left the Lodge because he thought some of his fellow Masons had been rude to my mother. The men in my mother’s family never joined fraternal groups, as that was frowned upon by the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church.
In our town we have the usual fraternal groups such as the Knights of Columbus, the Elks, the Rotary, and the Optimists. In Winnipeg I noticed a sign for an interesting group called the Zontas, I never figured out what they did. Fraternal groups are fading. We have a big Elks Club building here that sports a restaurant, bar, and space for parties and receptions, The Elks decided they couldn’t keep it going as it was, and leased out the entire top floor, including the restaurant and bar areas to the local Apostolic Pentecostal Church. I think it is a delightful combination. The Elks will carry on and drink and eat in the basement, while the Pentecostals will pray and repent upstairs.
Did you have family members who belonged to fraternal organizations? Make up a fraternal organization that you would be willing to join.
Like half of southwestern Minneapolis, on the day before the big storm two weeks ago, I stopped by the store to “pick up a few things”. Just two weeks before that I had come across our wonton presses in the back of a drawer, so when I saw the wonton wrappers in the produce section I quickly put them in the basket.
When YA was younger, we used to make wontons more often, but these days our meal schedules don’t cross much and things like wontons have fallen off our schedule. But when YA came home and saw the wrappers, she was excited to make them. On Saturday her work was cancelled and she immediately decided we should do the wontons right then.
She made the filling, filled the wontons and then I did the frying. It was snowing like crazy outside and it was a great hour of cooking with YA. They were yummy and didn’t last too long.
Here’s our recipe for Vegetarian Fried Wontons
Ingredients
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 package of vegetarian crumbles (we use Morningstar)
2 Tbsp. tamari
1 package wonton wrappers (we use the round ones)
Vegetable oil (for frying)
Directions
What’s a good “last storm of winter” comfort food for you?
My father had a coffee shop and gas station where all the local working guys and sheriff’s deputies came for lunch. He also had a car wash that took up a lot of his time cleaning and maintaining. We had buckets of quarters from the car wash proceeds that my mom dutifully counted and rolled up preparatory to taking them to the bank. This was before the days of automatic coin counters.
My dad was pretty fussy about how his business looked, but he rarely, if ever, washed any of our vehicles. It was fine with him if I took a notion to wash the car ( I remember a brown Olds Cutlass) and polish it in the driveway, but it never at our own car wash. It was a waste of our money, in his mind. It was fine, and probably expected, that other people should wash their cars in his car wash, but not us. My dad had funny ideas about spending money.
I resist going to our local car washes until the dirt on our vehicles reaches critical mass. Husband likes to keep his truck clean. I could care less. I think I still hear my dad’s voice in my head saying “Car washes are for rubes. Don’t waste your money”. Like him, I am prone to fuss over small charges and not blink at larger expenditures.
What parental spending habits have you retained or rejected in your own adult life?
Today’s post comes from Crystalbay
I don’t have a whole lot of memories about childhood, but my brother hasn’t forgotten a single conversation, event, image, or visual of all of those years. I wish I could. Just imagine having every aspect of childhood in a file drawer in you brain?
When scrolling through old pictures, I found these two. In the first one, Steve and I are sitting with our beloved pets. Bobo, only three months old, and Timmy, who lived 21 years. Timmy was my only best friend until I left home. Bobo didn’t last too long. He had a habit of eating any shoe in sight and trampling our neighbors flower gardens. In an effort to block him from going upstairs to eat more shoes, Dad constructed a tall gate at the bottom of the stairs. This 180-pound dog took one look at it, leaned into it with his weight, and it went crashing down. He ended up at someone’s farm. It broke my heat.
The second photo is one of us, dressed up by home-sewn alpine costumes and all set to go to a “Best Dog” competition. We were certain he’d win – especially given our apparel tying into the theme of a rescue dog. All he got was the “Longest Tail” prize.
Who was the greatest pet in your childhood?
We are in Savannah now. The weather is sunny and in the 70′ and 80’s. I am stuck in meetings all day, so husband spent our first day exploring the historic area of Savannah by himself. He took a trolley ride that took him all over the city with a tour guide who explained the sights and scenes. Then he explored a little on his own. I like guided tours. I know some people like to explore on their own. There is sure a lot to see here.
How do you like to get to know a place? Any memorable guides who you have encountered
Today’s post comes from Chris in ND.
While hanging out in Philadelphia during the bicentennial summer, I was introduced to scrapple. Scrapple is not a culinary specialty of the Northern Great Plains. Most people around here have never seen or heard of it.
On the reservation where I work three days a week, my cooking options are limited. I often spend my evenings wandering one of the grocery stores, trying to figure out what to eat the next day. One night last week, I settled on some Jimmy Dean hot sausage and a bag of shredded extra sharp Wisconsin cheddar cheese. The next morning, I added the cheese to a pot of cooked grits, then mixed it up with the browned sausage. The result was surprisingly good. I named it ad hoc scrapple. I brought some home and will eat the rest it myself. Renee said that’s ok with her. I also sometimes have biscuit fits, but that is another post.
What weird foods are cooked and consumed in your family?
Forty years ago I gave myself a quest: to photograph MY North Shore, the stretch from Flood Bay to Silver Cliff, or as locals called it then, Silver Creek Cliff. Because I had use of a darkroom, it was at first all done in black and white, or perhaps with some sepia toning, or duotone effect, or Sabattier effect. Flood Bay back then was not the mass of concrete and curbs and cables it is now. It was then as it is now one of the very few official state wayside rests. Despite that, back then it was just a gravel patch with some posts to keep people from driving into the lake, which every so often people still managed to do. Locals routinely hauled away lake stone and gravel for their use, which left no dent on the amount on the shore. Also, then there was no monstrous resort along the shore. And Silver Cliff was a road, not a tunnel. The pictures I framed in simple shadow boxes without glass. I hung them on our knotty pine living room wall. (More about that later.)
The winnowing process of history to our benefit has eliminated most of the pictures. A few exist in my computer, taken from the negatives. My goal was to push pictures to expressionism. Often with high or low contrast.
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One picture that I took in the remnants of a lumber mill a quarter mile from Betty’s Pies was our Christmas card picture.
Sometimes good fortune favored me, when it disfavored elsewhere with a massive storm.
A few I have drawn in graphite or pastel, often doing some adjustment of reality.
One sad picture remains, even though I did not frame it. How did history not winnow this poor picture out? It must be a sign, must it not. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.)
When this picture first appeared in the developing fluid, my first thought was it not worth making anything of it. My second thought was that here indeed was a sign. It must be from God giving me my life’s quest. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) It could not be just random change. I was, in fact, until recently quite good with needle and thread, which my mother taught me at an early age, despite long sideways glances from my father.
I am sad to report that I never did discover how to fulfill the quest. Sigh. And now my chance is lost. Sigh. But I did fulfill one smaller quest and quite by accident. An undisciplined boy a year older than my son lived down the road from us. He was often in our house as small boy but not later. His teens were much troubled, as were his twenties. Now he is a brilliant photographer. I mean that. Does amazing work in the camera and in his computer. Travels the worlds. Makes a good living. Has a happy life. Most of his work is of the North Shore. He is friends with both of my children on facebook, where he told them that his inspiration came from looking at those photographs on our wall. To think such beauty came from such a shriveled seed!
Did you find a life’s quest? How has it gone?
The month of March was pretty difficult for our daughter. Early in the month she rear ended a large pickup with her Subaru Forester. She was only driving about 30 mph at the time when the pickup in front of her stopped suddenly. She was cited for following too close. The pickup sustained no damage. There was only $3000 damage to the front end of her car, but, since all eight of the air bags deployed, the insurance company wrote her car off. It would cost $16,000 to repair them. This, then, entailed her getting a rental vehicle, waiting for the damage estimate and the insurance cheque to get deposited in her account, and the purchase of a new vehicle. There were tons of phone calls to me, with her in anxious agony when adjusters didn’t get back to her when they said they would or when the cheque wasn’t deposited when it was promised. (The local car dealership was having a great sale on new Subarus, and she wanted to get in on the deal. They told her to just write them a cheque and they wouldn’t cash it until the insurance payment arrived. Since the insurance payment was late, there was angst and heartburn that the cheque to the car dealership was going to bounce.) This is the second car she has totaled in three years. Thank goodness the insurance company isn’t going to cancel her policy. She lives in an area noted for horrible traffic and lots of accidents, and she isn’t even considered high risk.
March’s next blow was a doozy. Daughter lives in a one bedroom apartment with her cat, a cat that never goes outside. Last week daughter noted that her cat was particularly droopy and was avoiding eating and was hesitant to walk on the carpeted floor. A closer look revealed that the cat and the carpets were infested with fleas. There were even fleas in her rental car. Daughter surmises she brought fleas home with her from work. She does intensive family therapy in people’s homes, and probably picked the fleas up in one of the homes. The same thing happened to her supervisor last year. Daughter had no previous experience with fleas, so this meant multiple, distressed phone calls to me, trips to the vet, constant laundry and vacuuming, and setting off flea bombs in the apartment. We are now flea free.
Daughter said that March’s events have prompted her to make positive lifestyle changes. She wants to slow down, simplify her spaces, and get rid of unnecessary things and be more orderly. She said that when she cleaned her Forester out preparatory to the insurance adjusters looking at it, she was appalled at all the junk she had there. “Mom! It looked like the Box Car Children were living in my vehicle!” She stripped down to socks and underwear outside her front door after work the other night and put her clothes directly in the washing machine. I told her she could probably strip in the bath tub for the same results and less alarm for the neighbors.
It does no good to scold someone when they are distressed, so my internal, unspoken monologue to Daughter during March has been a very constant and rapid “YOU NEED TO START TAKING YOUR G** D***** ADHD MEDICATION AGAIN!!! YOU ALWAYS DRIVE TOO FAST! SLOW DOWN! PAY ATTENTION!! THERE IS NOTHING I CAN SAY THAT IS GOING TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER RIGHT NOW. DEAL WITH IT!! HERE, TALK TO YOUR FATHER!!
It is no surprise my dentist told me yesterday that it looks like I have been grinding my teeth in the daytime. This is a recent development since my last checkup six months ago. I imagine it really increased in March. I paid attention today and noticed just how much teeth grinding I am doing. I hope that as long as Daughter sticks with her positive lifestyle changes, I can make my positive lifestyle changes and save my tooth enamel.
What has prompted, or could prompt, you to make positive lifestyle changes?
Trail Baboon 