So I wrote and aborted two entries on Sunday. I realized I’m serious about this being a “project” — if the thread doesn’t bring up something almost forgotten (my parents’ special crab mallets), or a sharp, almost physical sensation, then it’s not working. I wrote about the boulders in my family backyard, but it was static, an Official Version rehearsed into lifelessness. Interesting, though. I don’t know many people who grew up with a backyard full of boulders.
The crab mallets, however, reminded me of my family’s napkin rings. Wood — oak or pine, I’m guessing — carved into the shapes of Scotties (for Susan and me) a rabbit (for my father) and a turtle. Or the “Tortoise and the Hare,” if you will. They were flat silhouettes, nothing grand. Susan and I had to have identical ones to avoid squabbling, I suppose, while I’m sure it’s my mother who decided to assign the turtle to herself, the rabbit to my father.
And for some reason, this makes me think of cool fall nights, after choir practice at the Dickeyville Presbyterian Church at the top of the hill. It was a distance of no more than a quarter-mile, if even that, and the neighborhood was super-safe, but for some reason we had to be fetched by car, or perhaps we were just awaiting chaperones to walk us home. I swear we could see the TV Hill tower (a television tower that flashed “T” and “V.”) But that doesn’t gibe with what I know of Baltimore geography today.
Finally, I’m curious if these tiny detailed memories evoke memories in the people who read them. What household objects fascinated you as a child? Here’s a partial list: my father’s egg cup, the bottle my mother used to sprinkle the ironing, my grandmother’s porcelain duck, my grandfather’s push-button radio. Anyone want to chime in?
First, what part did you sing in choir? Being a singing geek and all…
Anyway, objects: a weird, almost cubist-looking clock that my parents received as a wedding gift from a ne’er do well cousin. The clock never worked, no matter how hard they tried, and it just stayed on the wall as an almost forlorn work of art.
Also a figurine of a praying man wearing a shawl (tallis) that still sits on the dresser drawer in my parents’ bedroom. For some reason, I always associated it with my late maternal grandfather (I think it was a present from him) even though they looked nothing alike. But it represented a pious, gentle man, which described my grandfather to a tee.
My paternal grandfather had a small skull on the
table in the foyer of his home. Scared me! Every
year for my birthday, he gave me a shiny new penny
for each year. He passed away when he was 88
(1866-1954). I wish I had kept the last 8 shiny
pennies he gave me.
Still puzzled why he had that skull!
The shiny new pennies remind me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, when Franny receives 10 pennies that have been gilded by her Aunt Sissy, so they look like gold. The family has a bank, and the children are very dutiful about contributing to it,so Franny puts her pennies in it. Years later, when they take the bank apart, the pennies have turned black.
A latecomer to this site and reading previous entries. Anyhoo, my mother has a cranberry server that we use every year on Thanksgiving. A long, rectangular tray with a matching server spoon. The head of the serving spoon is the exact shape and size of a can of cranberry sauce. It serves no other purpose. I’ve always been fascinated with this piece and have never know anyone else who has one. A couple of years ago, my mother and I were in an antiques shop on Main St. in Reisterstown when we spotted one for sale. I immediately purchased it for myself.
Walking up Colborne Road to Walnut at night in the snow with my father. No wind and fat slow snow flakes falling. The way lighted by the old globe style street lamps. Past the church that had the rocks from all over the world incorporated in the cross that stands sentry before the churches entry. Mementoes from pre-children trips to Haiti and Cuba, masks, a drum and a carving a of a beret wearing very french looking gentleman whose hand once held a tiny pipe that hasn’t been seen in years. The painting of the lady or umm more likely farmer’s wife as she adjusts her waistband resting an old wooden hay rake across her left shoulder a huge hay pile before her, the dark forest behind her. The crazy coffee maker which sits in my kitchen that I still use to brew the extra strong coffee to make my yearly batch of kaluha. Two stainless steel rounded vessels the top more of a wide mouth funnel married by a rubber ring with a stainless steel filter device that hooked via a chain to the bottom of a tube that runs into the base of the coffee maker. The whole deal operates on the vauumn principle.