Dad's Ditties

After writing about one of the books I have been working on. . .I couldn't go to sleep last night. I began writing more funny expressions my Dad says, and I wrote several pages before my husband woke up and asked me if I was reading.

"No, writing." I responded. "I keep thinking of things Dad says. Do you want me to turn out the light so you can sleep?"

"That would be nice."

"Okay."

So I turned out the light, and lay in bed thinking of more stuff that I could have written down. If it hadn't been for my hair appt - to "get my hair wrinkled" as Dad would say - I would have gotten up and written a bit longer. I only hoped I'd be able to remember what I hadn't written down this morning. . .

No problem. I woke up, wrote down a few more Dadisms and went to my hair appt with notebook in hand. There, I wrote a few pages while waiting for my hair to "wrinkle."

I have carried that notebook around most of the day - remembering - writing - remembering and writing. I even remembered some of Dad's antics. For example, when Barney's Sooper Market was built in Pinehurst in '67 or '68, they had the first automatic doors I had ever seen. You would step on a rubber mat leading to the door, and voila' the door opened for you. Dad would walk up to the door, grab the handle, and let the door fling him inside stumbling with atonishment on his face. My sister and I would laugh our heads off (not literally) each and every time Dad pretended not to know that the doors were automatic. He did this for years, as long as he had an "audience" - namely us. I don't think he ever did it when he went to the store alone, with Mom, or with anyone else. It was primarily for our entertainment.

Today, I wondered if any of the checkers ever saw him fly into the store (more than once) and wondered about his sanity. If they ever did, they didn't tell anyone. The town was too small for something like that to go unheard.

Dad doesn't "goof off" now when he enters a store. After a hip-replacement, with a walking cane - to help stablize him when he "teeters." He lets his quips and wits be the source of entertainment.

My Dad's Humor

My dad doesn't have a computer, so it is not likely that he will see this blog. Regardless, I have to say he is and has been the best Dad ever!

Dad has an amazing sense of humor that has popped up at unexpected times as well, as the expected ones. For example, one time we were walking along the streets of downtown Spokane, and my dad asked my mom to hold his hand. She took his hand, and he began to walk a step or two behind her, doing his gorilla imitation. My sister and I started to laugh, so my mom turned and seeing his antics, threw his hand from hers and said, "Now stop that!" She was mortified. I don't know if we laughed harder at her response, but that was the way life was with Mom and Dad. He was the goof-ball, and she was the unsuspecting "straight man."

When we would go to the grocery store, Dad would invariably pretend he was going to run the cart into the grocery shelves or displays. "BAM!" He would say, as he heaved the cart toward this side or that side of the aisle, stopping just short of hitting something. "BAM! BAM!" As we went up and down the aisles. One time, his depth perception was just a little off - and he knocked down a stack of cans or boxes. We laughed at his embarrassment, but that was okay with him. He knew we were laughing with - not at - him.

When I was away at college, my sister introduced a young girl to my parents who was looking for a new foster home. My parents took her in. After she became comfortable living with my family, my dad took B with him to the grocery store. When he started BAMMING and acting off to embarrass her, she turned to him and said, "If you don't straighten up, I'm never coming to the store with you again." So Dad complied. I guess her personality was a lot like Mom's, and Dad only acted up when someone thought he was funny.

My sister and I can attribute our sense of humor to Dad. Although we didn't inherit his love of public displays of goofiness, we like to banter, joke, and do plays on words. We so "get" each other's humor, that sometimes we don't have to finish saying something, before we are both laughing so hard we can't stop. We have thus far evaded disaster at Barney's Sooper Market [how they spell it] by retreating to different aisles in hopes we don't hear each other's snorts, guffaws, or snickers. Someday, if we aren't careful, we will hear, "Clean up on aisle 6 - - -and aisle 7."

I can see Dad's humor in my daughter's also. Each one has a little different style, but they are all funny. Sometimes it isn't evident to them how much they share the same sense of humor, until a friend will say. . ."What's so funny?" (while my girls are practically falling out of their seats with laughter.)

Thanks, Dad, for the sense of humor that you inherited from your parents and passed along to us. You are the best Dad ever, and this is only one reason why. . .

Myrtle Beach stirs memories. . .

Gotta check out MyrtleBeachWhale's post on "masks" today at:

http://myrtlebeachramblings.blogspot.com/

Here's the comment I left after reading the post:

Great post! I remember going to Mrs. Watts house in Smelterville, but didn't remember the performances!

Did most of my "trick-r-treatin'" in Pinehurst. And - don't beat me up - we used PILLOW CASES! Our take was that they were sturdy enough to last the evening and we didn't have to buy anything to carry our candy in. (Maybe my mom rationalized that since she bought and gave out FULL-SIZED candy bars - and we usually got around 300 trick-r-treaters - that her kids should make "a haul."

You brought back great memories. . .even of the cheap "masks" available at the time. I had forgotten about the elasitic string held by a staple on each end. What a joke.

Also loved Rob's post (comment) within your post about the playground equipment. I remember those "hot" slides - if your legs were bare - as in short pants or DRESSES - (Arg!) -you'd STICK to the slide and burn your skin off. . . Thanks for the email about your post. It was great!

Now for my add- on: I remember one time my sister tried to go down the slide on the 2nd - grade playground at Pinehurst school. It was summertime, and we had gone there to play. She had on shorts, and when she started down the slide, her legs stuck to the surface. They were burning and she was upset. I'm not sure if someone came to her rescue, if she tried to "scoot" down, but she was MAD! (And you never wanted to see my sister MAD!)

I do remember several people trying to "scoot" down the slide, by lifting their knees and easing their backside toward their feet. There was a sort of "screech - screech - screech" sound as they alternately stuck and scooted all the way down. You never wanted to be the first person on the slide when it was in the sun. You learned that the slides were much better in the shade of the afternoon - or after 30 or so kids had just gone down, and the surface was cooled to body temperature!

I'll need to blog about Halloween later.

Smelterville Rollerskating add-ons

I spoke with my sister, R, who called me for Mother's Day. (Our mom has been gone for nearly 17 yrs now - so we talk to each other. Since she lives close to Dad, he was invited to her daughter's house for their Mother's Day celebration.)

She had a couple of memories from the Roller Rink in Smelterville in the early '60s. She remembered that Dad also taught hockey at the rink. I remembered playing hockey, but didn't remember that Dad taught it. (The hockey season, may have been in '63 after we moved back to Pinehurst. The rink wasn't open much after that year.) She remembers going to the rink almost every Sat from the time she was about 2 yrs old, although I don't remember her being there as much as I was.

She asked if I remembered the grape and spearmint (green) licorice they sold there. I had forgotten, but they did have some exotic flavors. She remembered eating purple, green and brown (chocolate) licorice there. She also remembered the candy bar machine with the pull knobs where you could get 5 cent candy bars. I had remembered it also, cause I would ask Dad for money and usually bought candy bars. She said, "There was probably a cigarette machine right next to it." I said, "There was."

She also remembered having ice cream at the soda shop between the rink and Wayside Mkt. She thought mom was working at the Wayside then, but I told her that Mom didn't work there until after we moved to Pinehurst.

It's kinda funny how I had a stay-at-home mom until I was 10, but she only had a stay-at-home mom until she was 4. So our outlook about growing up was quite different. For her, Mom pretty much always worked, but for me it was quite an adjustment to not have her at home when I became sick at school, etc. I'll blog more about that in the next installment.

Smelterville: My Sister

My sister R was about a year old when we moved to Smelterville. I can remember her walking on the sidewalk out front of our house with someone holding onto her hands. She must have had new shoes on, because she was "high steppin' it." Since I was nearly five years older than she, we didn't play together much. I was always going places with Dad and she mostly stayed home with Mom.

When she was old enough for a big bed, my parents bought a set of bunk beds for us. I was ecstatic! My friends, the Johnson girls in Kingston, had bunks. Their dad built them a three-decker set in their basement bedroom, and now I had a bunk bed, too. Since R was small, she had the bottom bunk, but I got the top one! The bunks were wooden with a ladder and a rail (to keep me from falling out). My rail just ran from the headboard to the footboard with space underneath -- I remember because L Johnson spent the night one time, and slid under the rail and fell to the floor. (She was okay).

I quickly learned how to climb up the footboards, so the ladder was no longer needed. (And R couldn't get hurt trying to climb up to my bed.) I loved playing on my top bunk, it was like having a space all to myself, where R couldn't mess with my toys and books. My friends and I could play up there without being disturbed and R couldn't get into my Barbie stuff.

A side note: The window in our room, instead of running up and down, was installed side to side, and higher than most windows. When the bunks were up against the window wall, the window was parallel to my bed and the sill was close to the top of my matress (may have been lower). I just remembered that I could lay in bed and see the lights from Nickerson Brother's blinking on and off, as I drifted off to sleep. It was very comforting.

But back to R. Sometime, when she was in diapers, R acquired a taste for soap. Now, as I mentioned before, I ate dirt when I was mad, but I was old enough to have a purpose. R ate soap, because she liked the taste. Now the soap was not likely to harm her, but it did lubricate her intestines, resulting in a tremendous mess for my mother to clean up. The soap at home was out of R's reach but the neighbor's wasn't. One day we were at the Jerome's house, and I needed to use the restroom. As I looked around the restroom I saw something that struck fear in my heart: There on the edge of the tub - was a bar of soap with a half-moon chunk missing. "Maaaaam, R's been eating soap again!" I produced the tell-tale bar, and we quickly exited for home in anticipation of what was to come.

R. was a cute little sister, but had a fiery temper. She started to bite sometime when she was around 2. She'd bite me when she wanted something and I wouldn't give it to her. I would reprimand her for biting and yell, "Maaaam, R bit me!"

Mom would reply, "Now, you be nice to her. She's your little sister." I got the impression that my mother didn't believe me, or she thought I had provoked her. (Since my mom was the youngest in her family, I figured she sided with my sister, who was the youngest in ours.)

Finally, the day came when my mom caught R biting me. She had latched onto my arm and for the first time Mom saw it. Mom was furious. She ran over to us, grabbed R's arm, and bit it herself until it turned purple. R screamed and Mom said, "Don't bite!" R never bit me again.

I'm not sure what time of year it was, but Mrs. R Gilman had come to visit my mom and the ladies were sitting at the table drinking coffee while they visited. R and I were eating candy - hard candy. They were rootbeer flavored disks, like LifeSavers -- but without the hole. R tried to swallow hers whole, and it got stuck. She was gasping for air, when R Gilman jumped up from her chair, ran over and picked R up by her ankles. She shook her up and down, until "plunk" the candy dislodged and rolled out onto the floor. My mom was in shock that her baby nearly died. (She had already lost one child). She ran over grabbed the candy off the floor, then ran back to the table for the rest of the candy pack, and threw them both in the wood stove. From then on we were only allowed to have LifeSavers with the holes in them. (After that I thought - Maybe that's why they are called LifeSavers.)

The Robinson's House

We moved from the little house to the "Robinson's house," when I was about 2 1/2. It was a stucco house with a livingroom, kitchen/dining room, two bedrooms, a bath, and a hallway leading to the back door. There was also a large dirt driveway and a detached wooden garage where my dad used to work on his stock cars. We had a yard, unlike the little house, with a lawn that I could play on. (At the little house there was a dirt driveway, and area for parking cars where my dad worked on his stock cars, and where I played. Somewhere there is a photo of my friend PJ and I working on a stock car engine with popscicle sticks.)

The Robinson's house belonged to the Robinson family - who owned and rented this house to my parents. They lived on the corner of 6th street and Oregon and we lived next door. Another Robinson family lived in a brown house behind us (on Nevada) and were likely related to our landlords. They had kids near my age, and I played with them when I was old enough to leave the yard.

When I think of the Robinson's house, I think of the dark brown linoleum tile on the living room floor, the green couch, and the heavy black phone in the living room. We had a simple phone number I memorized during that time: Sunset 2-2922. You didn't have to dial the letters, just the numbers then.

There are lots of memories from the time we lived there. . .eating M&Ms, watching American Bandstand with the babysitter, dressing up in the outfit my Grandmother L. made for me, playing with the Robinson's dog "Trixi" and helping her eat her dog food. (Hard dog food in various shapes and colors - tasted like Rye biscuits do now).

My mom told me, that I used to threaten to eat dirt when I was told to do something I didn't want to do. "If you make me, I'll eat dirt! I'd threaten." I don't think it was much of a deterrent, because I can still remember what dirt tastes like. Or maybe I remember the taste of dirt from going to the Pinehurst Race Track on the weekends to watch my dad and his friends race. I remember the time my dad rolled his stockcar on the Southwestern turn. I wasn't old enough to be scared, but I was excited to see him climb out of the car. (There was a picture of my dad and his stock car on the wall of the Tall Pine last time I was in there.) I thought I would be a stock-car racer when I got older, but the track was closed. Now the bar that sat between the track and Division St is gone, as is its name from my memory - but it was still there in the 70s when I was old enough to dance to the tunes of Mary Juma's (Yuma?)Band. The entire area is covered with RVs and trees today.

We were living in the Robinson's house when my little sister was born. I only remember one incident involving her at the time. She was crawling behind the brown stove in the living room, and my mom scooped her up and spanked her. I started to cry. I didn't want my mom to spank the baby.

My dad has photos from that time, as well as some home movies of my 5th birthday party. I had remembered my "doll cake" from that birthday. The movies showed my guests and I sitting on the livingroom floor (on a sheet, I think) eating birthday cake. I wish I had access to that movie today, so I could list the guests. (I can think of some, but not all, and I wouldn't want to leave anyone out - just in case they ever happen upon my blog.)

I used to travel a lot when I was still a pre-schooler. I spent a week or two at a time with the Shaffer's in Cd'A and the same with the Boje's in Otis Orchards (now part of Spokane Valley, I think). At the Schaffer's we'd walk down to Sander's Beach on Cd'A lake to swim. At that time Sander's was a public beach and easily accessed by anyone who wanted to swim there. I loved the smell of the lake - a kind of rotting wood smell from all the logs - and I loved to play in the water.

At the Boje's, my favorite thing to do, was to play dress-up in the basement. The Boje's had 3 girls and they had a lot of dress up clothes. We used to also play with "movie star" paper dolls. One thing I didn't care much for was when we had to go to bed. Their mom used these strap things on the bed, so the covers wouldn't move. I couldn't get out of bed very easily to use the facilities or to get a drink. I remember squeezing myself up and out of the opening at the top of the covers to get a drink one time, only to be told - once I hit the hallway - to get back into bed.

An interesting side note to the Boje story, is that one of the daughter's closest to my age went into teaching. She currently teaches at Kellogg High School under her married name, and has raised her boys in the Silver Valley.