Open Writing

A 7" x 9" cardboard 3-ring binder, covered with blue plastic. A barely legible once fake-gold label, "Telephone Messages" on the dog-eared cover. Maybe an inch thick, at most.

Thirty years of family history. Add to that some pages tucked away in a plastic freezer bag somewhere, and a couple of even smaller and more disreputable looking 'list finders,' and you have a record going back more than fifty years.

Names, addresses, phone numbers. Family, friends, businesses, neighbors. Co-workers, school officials, doctors.

The oldest are from the time before the phone companies had automated their systems. You picked up your phone, and a human operator said, 'Number, please.' Those numbers are in my handwriting, or more often in Avie's.

As our kids reached the age of literacy, many more or less legible entries begin to appear in an ever-changing parade of penmanship samples. Some offer just a nickname for identification. And that probably misspelled. Some we remember, many are no longer in our memories, or maybe we never knew them.

'Who the heck is this Klinkett guy.'

'Oh, don't you remember?' asks Ave. 'He was the Republican precinct committeeman after Mary Waltz quit.'

'Ah, now I remember. He was that pompous blowhard who did a really bad job. That must be at least 30 years ago, when we lived in Indianapolis.'

Here's an address and phone number for my brother Chuck in Melrose Park, a Chicago suburb. I'd forgotten he ever lived there. That must have been back about 1960 or so. He's been living out in the desert country of eastern Oregon since he took early retirement back in the seventies.

'Isn't this a lady who worked with you at the school cafeteria?'

'Yes, and here's one who was a Cub Scout Den Mother when the boys were starting in Scouting.'

Lot of these people are dead. Others we've lost track of. Some we could probably locate, but I sort of hate to try. Some have lost spouses, or had troubled kids, or illness. It doesn't reflect well on me, but I'd rather remember them as they were.

'Let me test your memory. What was our phone number when we lived on Elm Swamp Road? You can't? Well how about West 36th Street? We only had that number from 1959 through most of 1977. You're right. I can't remember them myself.'

Quality control

'Going somewhere?'

'Well, I have to get my hair done.'

'Guess I'll have to send this in without having you read it.'

'I don't have to leave for another half hour or so.'

'Yeah, but I ain't got it all thunk up yet.'

'Oh.'

Things you might not want to know

Are you getting what you're worth? Asks the heading on one of the many junk email items I deleted this morning?

Good question. But I don't much like my answer. An honest answer from me would be, yes, I probably am. Or maybe more than I'm worth, in some folks opinion.

I'm occupied with writing two columns this morning. And I don't get any money for either of them. But at least the publishers don't charge me for the space.

How about you? Are you only getting what you're worth? Sorry to hear it. But maybe it's better than getting what you deserve.