Mid Century Modern

Me.  Circa 1960

It dawned on me the other day that my baby hands held my great-great grandmother’s hands and she was born in 1876.  These same old hands of mine have held a newborn’s tiny grasp; a little someone born in 2012.  My mid-century birth has been a gift that has enabled me to bridge centuries.   In 1960, our family took a special picture of all the living women in my maternal line because we had a fifth generation, ending with me!

I remember my great-great Grandma Head.  She was born in Leipzig, Germany, and came to the United States by ship when she was five years old.  As a four year old, I remember she had shocking white hair that she kept in a black hair net and enjoyed burnt toast dipped in hot tea every morning.  She always sat at a rectangular Formica table next to a big white stove in the kitchen.  I played three-handed pinochle all summer long with her daughter, my great-grandma James, and my Aunt Robin.   I walked Grandma James’  toy poodle, Tiny, when I was in grammar school and had to be quiet in the house when she was taking her afternoon nap on the back porch.   Her daughter, my grandma Brock, took the bus every day into downtown Chicago to wait tables at the Palmer House Hotel for tips.  She supported her entire family, all women.  Her household held three of my grandmas and my mother and her three sisters.

All the women in Grandma Brock’s home.

I used to steal vegetables from backyard gardens in our neighborhood and surprise Grandma Brock with them.  She would scold me as she lovingly placed the contraband on her windowsill to ripen and then she’d ask me if I had seen any string beans around.  She always had a wink and a smile for me.

Now it is up to me and mom, who will turn 70 years old this May, to remember.  All my grandmas have been gone since the mid-1970′s or sooner, but I still remember how our lives were.  There was love in my grandma’s house and that love grabs at my heartstrings –especially when I see red tomatoes on a vine.

The Chicago museum used to do these moon pictures in the 1950′s. (L-R) is Aunt Joyce, Aunt Robin, and my mother, Paula.

Charlie Harper Week

How could I have JUST DISCOVERED this amazing illustrator!

Charlie Harper (1922-2007) created over 50 “minimal realism” environmental themed posters for national parks, nature preserves and wildlife sanctuaries as well as being a frequent contributor to Ford Motor Company’s magazine Ford Times for nearly two decades.

He painted birds and beasts moving about in their natural habitat–breaking the portraits down into simple shapes and forms using vibrant color palettes.  He especially loved birds and bird watching.  His subjects are going about their business, undisturbed by the viewer.

My family expects  accepts my quirky collections, random interests, and impulse fetishes.  This week it is definitely Charlie Harper week around here.   I will spend hours researching this artist and his works.  All I want to do right this minute is save all of his illustrations in a file on my computer so I can enjoy them later.

Most of what I learn will fall on deaf ears as my family will, no doubt,  “fake listen” to me regurgitate new found facts and potent potables.  They will nod politely, say uh-huh, and smile while trying to hide the fact that they are texting on their phones in their laps.  I can see the texts now:  Hey, Adam, Mom is a cuckoo-cuckoo bird!

Time Travel

My brother, Woody, me, and my cousin, Sandy 1965

Time travel can be a state of mind.  Memories are alive, vivid, and fluid in our brains.    To travel back in time, we only need a trigger.   A flash of lightning, the wail of a siren, the soft mewing of a kitten,  or even a simple aroma can transport us and transcend us into the living world of memory.

Crack open the lid on a Play-Doh can, close your eyes, inhale, and you’re four years old again.  It works just like Dorothy’s ruby slippers minus the flying monkeys and the scrappy yapper dog.  Sorry, Toto.  Your mind’s eye starts watching you roll snakes and flatten pancakes.  You smile, flooded with recollection.

I spy the school supply shelves in a five and dime, look both ways, and sneak open a box of crayons.  Just because I’m tricky I can.  One whiff and magically I’m in Mrs. Greade’s  first grade class, adding the big box of 64 Crayola crayons to my Christmas wish list, careful to list the crayons under the first thing on my list, a  two wheeler.

I need the 64 count box because it has the sharpener in the back.  In the new year I’ll spend snowbound winter afternoons working with the prism blues, reds, and yellow discards–the captured, scrolled crayon shavings.   Molten artwork   masterpieces cover Mommy’s Frigidaire, created by melting and pressing these squirrley-curly scraps between two sheets of waxed paper with a warm iron and some elbow grease.  In my tween years I’ll advance to melting whole, peeled crayons, the junky ones, under a candle flame and dropping the heavy colored drops into peace-love-and-rock-and-roll designs whose sole purpose is my self expression and self pleasure.

Forget Calgon Bath Beads, lilacs take me away every time.  A mild  breeze, the buzz of a bouncing bumble, lifting my face up to absorb the first hot sun rays, all lead up to a trigger:  blooming purple lilacs.  One rush of their French perfume and I’m back in my grandma’s backyard, horsing around with my cousins and waiting for Grandpa to finish churning the crank on his bucket of vanilla bean ice cream.  My grandma is cleaning up from frying chicken legs in an electric skillet and serving up some potato salad.

Who needs a DeLorean  when there is line-dried laundry?  My mind’s eye can see strings of sun kissed bed sheets that snap, crackle and pop in the wind  stretched out beside pinned up bath towels so stiff you could sand the fur right off a dog, and blue jeans standing on their own volition.  I’m so small I can run under the sheets and smack them with arms splayed out overhead.  I hear the ch-ch-ch-ch of a rotary sprinkler head in the neighbor’s yard and then I see an enormous white belly fill the sky (and my eyes)  so close you could touch it, as an airplane zooms just above our rooftops, reaching and climbing into the clouds while window panes rattle for blocks all around and I cover my ears until it vanishes.  Midway Airport, Chicago, 63rd & Cicero, White Castles on the corner…I’m there!

Time travel is as easy when you put your mind to it…a bucket of fresh popped popcorn or being overwhelmed by the strength of a peeled orange and off I go… off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz.

I’m “bursting” over here!

More often than I would like to admit, I get hooked on something.  Lately, I can’t stop collecting pictures of mid-century starburst clocks.  “They have withstood the test of time,” she said with a smile.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave…

The other night I was invited out for a night with “the girls” and I told my husband that I would be home by midnight:

“I promise!”  Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easily.  Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home (in a cab) and just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hallway started up and cuckooed 3 times.

Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times.  I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution!  (Even when totally smashed…3 cuckoos plus 9 cuckoos totals 12 cuckoos which is MIDNIGHT).  Perfect!

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in and I told him “MIDNIGHT”…and he bought it hook, line and sinker.  Whew, I got away with that one!

Then he said, “We need a new cuckoo clock.”  When I asked him why, he said, “Well, last night our clock cuckooed 3 times, then said, “oh shit” and cuckooed 4 more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, cuckooed twice more and then tripped over the coffee table and farted.

The Best Thing About Fishing

1946 – My Grandpa (center) on the Michigamme Reservoir

Spinning a fish tale is akin to being an artist or painter. You’ve got to know how to layer it. Once you’ve caught your limit and filled your head with memories to last until next time, the lying comes in. It is a sin to call it lying because it isn’t really LYING. It is taking a piece of nice fabric and sewing a little design on it. You sit around a campfire and gradually you swindle yourself into believing a rogue fish ran on you three times and was so big you had to grab an oar and slap him silly to get him in the boat. You might have even noticed a bear on the shore threatening to take your keep. Why, I’ve even caught the same fish twice once and reeled in a lure I lost last year.

You don’t just catch a fish once. There are certain ones you catch over and over again as you fall asleep at night. With closed eyes, you tighten the drag as the line spins off–with adrenaline at each end. Remembering the details of the day many times will eclipse the fish itself: the mist on the water at daybreak or seeing a doe and fawn at the water’s edge. Maybe you spotted an eagle perched on a crooked branch. Now throw in the taste of a sack lunch sandwich when your belly is growling, bug bites, and the things you forgot to bring and all the ways you made do. All of this makes the actual fishing of the fish a secondary thing.

When we are grown up and too old for fairy tales, a fish tale is a healthy thing. Without these fabrications, life is mostly a matter of adult things like work, taking out the trash, and thinking about the bills you haven’t got the money to pay. A fisherman who won’t toy with the truth is the kind of person who will do you one in the eye on a deal, kick his dog, or peek in your medicine cabinet. Can’t trust ‘em.

 Three blondes are sitting by the side of a river holding fishing poles with the lines in the water. A Game Warden comes up behind them, taps them on the shoulder and says, “Excuse me, ladies, I’d like to see your fishing licenses.” We don’t have any.” replied the first blonde.

“Well, if you’re going to fish, you need fishing licenses.” said the Game Warden. “But officer,” replied the second blonde, “we aren’t fishing. We all have magnets at the end of our lines and we’re collecting debris off the bottom of the river.”  The Game Warden lifted up all the lines and, sure enough, there were horseshoe magnets tied on the end of each line. “Well, I know of no law against it,” said the Game Warden, “take all the debris you want.” And with that, the Game Warden left.

As soon as the Game Warden was out of sight, the three blondes started laughing hysterically. “What a dumb Fish Cop,” the second blonde said to the other two, “doesn’t he know that there are steelhead in this river?!”