Open Writing

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Three Cheers for Avie

If you see a small, maturing, person of the female persuasion, pushing her shopping cart down the aisle with determination, if not speed, that is probably Avie. Or if you see her in her little red Chevy, in or around her usual haunts at the Rehab facility at Witham, or at Kroger or CVS, that's her too. Last week I helped her get up her courage to drive the van, with me as passenger.

This Thursday morning she drove to Lebanon by herself, did some shopping, and made it home with no mishaps.

I wouldn't suggest a pat on the back, just yet. She isn't all that confident with nothing but a cane.

A friendly "Attagirl" would be nice.

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Average

I don't want to participate in setting any weather records. Hot, cold, wet, or dry. What I like is good old average. I don't care to sit in the front row, much less stand at the podium. I am one of those old guys the news people talk about who don't take hot weather well. Or cold weather either. Now that I'm paying for all those years of smoking, heat and humidity are even harder than ever to take.

I remember the summer of 1936. Even some things about the dust bowl summer of 1934.
Memories are good enough for me. I don't need to relive the experience.

Avie is having a tough time this summer, too. I hope we have an average fall and winter.

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Some folks are lucky

It has been almost fifty-seven years since Avie and I signed the papers and said the words that began our partnership. I told her a while ago, "You know, the luckiest thing I ever did in my life was to team up with you. But I think I sure got the best end of the deal."

Looking back over time, there have been occasions when we each wished we'd never heard of each other. But not many, and not long, and never beyond repair. Thank you, Avonelle. I hope you can put up with me for another 20 years.

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Cooking in hot weather

We used to do quite a bit of canning and freezing and other food preservation this time of year.
Tough enough with modern kitchen tools, But imagine doing it with not tools except a potato peeler, paring knife, butcher knife and a couple of kitchen spoons. And no utensils but a frying pan, a wash basin, a lard kettle and some fire tools. And plenty of wood or corncobs. For your wood stove.

That is why many older places have 'summer kitchens'. That's what I call our milkhouse, or at least the part of it I use for feeding coons. Sometimes they called it a wash house, used the same way. For heavy, hot, and tiring jobs that were mostly 'women's work,' back in the good old days. Usually three closed, or partly closed sides and an open end. Often the stove was a small laundry-stove, low to the ground to make lifting hot and heavy tubs of water, or tomatoes, or whatever. Would be happy burning corncobs, which burn hot but which don't smoke so much.

Avie and I do as little cooking as possible in this weather. As we get older we don't eat as much anyway, and if we can make a good balanced meal using nothing but the microwave, it's a winner.

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Quick research

I got an email Thursday morning from my brother in law Jerry, who lives near Dayton, Ohio.
His son, Dennis, who lives near Toledo, was asking about the pedigree of a well-made and detailed ship model of a sailing vessel. It is mounted, but if there was a nameplate it is gone. The model had lived in Dennis' folks house for many years, before Dennis, an ex Naval Officer, as was his Dad a long time ago, became it's keeper some time after he was grown. I gather a museum has expressed an interest in acquiring it.

Jerry, and my sister Jean, his wife, remembered they brought it home from my parents house in Lafayette, and my Mom said it was given to our younger brother Dave, by a customer when he was carrying newspapers about 1950 or so.

I don't recall seeing the boat at all, but the customer was the mother of one of Avie's girl friends in high school and when we were at Purdue.

Dave did some researching on the internet, and came up with a name and address, right in good old Lafayette, which looks as if it is the boy, (Ave's friends' younger brother), who almost completely assembled the model from a kit, which must have been purchased in the 1940's. The young man's older sister was a classmate of sister Jean.

Dave and Dennis seem to think the ship may have some connection to Admiral Farragut,
Now all that remains is to see what the erstwhile boat builder remembers, if anything.
And all of this info was assembled, about a ship model well over fifty years old, by people living several hundred miles apart.

The Internet is an amazing tool, even in the hands of amateurs.