Alaska

 

                 National Geographic magazine opened a world to me when I was a child. I didn't read the articles in print, yet the photographs were articles enough .  The photographs taught me about cultures and people and different places.  Two places especially captivated me---Alaska and Africa.  I wanted to visit these places.  The animals of Africa fascinated me in their different habitats.  The scenery of Alaska drew me to it in a way I didn't understand.  

               Although I wanted to go on Safari in Africa, I realized this was less likely than going to Alaska which, after all, was at least on the same continent where I lived.  When I learned a transAlaskan highway existed, I dreamed of driving it from my home in California. As life took me on this path and that, the dream of going to Alaska changed from driving the highway to "someday going to Alaska" in an unspecified way.  Time passed and passed and still, no specific plan to go to Alaska.  

          My son encouraged me to map my way on the Alaska Ferry system from Seattle.  While this seemed feasible, I was by then at an age where I was not excited about sleeping on deck nor sharing a room with someone I didn't know for the adventure.  Time passed and passed.  My 75th birthday was approaching. And still, no specific plan.

         My birthday card from my daughter was a 5 page print out of clues in clip art pictures.  As I went through them it became more and more apparent what she was saying.  She and my granddaughter and I were going to Alaska for my 75th birthday.  A specific plan. Even though she'd made reservations on a certain date with a specific ship, fate had other plans.  Original plans were cancelled, but rescheduled for the next year.

        And this year, the three of us flew to Seattle and cruised to Alaska. What a remarkable adventure.  A dream came true because my daughter remembered what was important to me since I was a child.  The memories of that trip are still settling in.  I remember the Naturalist on our ship in a presentation he was giving said, it may take you some time to process what Alaska has given to you.  I discover bits of it each day.  The solitude amongst thousands of people as we floated into Glacier Bay.  The mountains that each wore different personalities, each wove different stories. The air so pure I wanted to bottle it and bring it home.  The water calm and deep. The bluest of blue skies in the morning giving way to the clouds and rain of the afternoon.  The colors of the sunset.  The whales, the seals, the sea otters. Bits of glaciers floating by.  Collectively they speak to my soul in language I have not yet transcribed.  Thank you, Alaska, I knew I needed you.  I plan to return. I have a new specific plan.  Next year. We're already booked.  Perhaps by then I'll understand Alaska more.

Baseball Games at the Little League Field

 

                                               Fenway Park

      Baseball games at the Little League field.  I'd get on my bike and ride the two miles or so to the Little League fields.  I'd pass the tract houses with their similar differences and come to the gates of the piece of undeveloped property at the end of the road where two little league fields, complete with backstop, bleachers, and wooden fences sat as sentinels waiting for the games to begin. 

      When I got to the gates it became more difficult to ride my bike through the ruts and gravel of the parking lot. I'd make my way past the grandstand to the snack bar and ask the question, "Do you have anyone to announce or keep score yet?"  While the pay was the same to work in the snack shack--25 cents worth of whatever I wanted , the prestige was more in the booth behind home plate where I could announce the players and occasionally give some commentary or even keep score.  

     I'd perch on a bench behind chain link fence behind the plate where I could see how inconsistent the calls from the umpire actually were.  I couldn't say a thing.  I'd turn to my partner and widen my eyes or shake my head.  All the commentary that was needed.

    I loved to sit in the aerie and watch the game.  Most often I would keep official score for the game.  I didn't mind the tedious nature of marking the balls and strikes and sitting and observing.  I didn't worry about saying the wrong thing or having laughter erupt from the bleachers when an errant commentary filtered through the microphone.  I actually found it intimidating, though powerful, to have the microphone in front of me.  And in those times, I announced the names loudly, listening to my voice echo throughout the ballpark. 

    From up in the scoring box, six feet above the field, I easily observed the crowd.  Whole families cheered on their players. Sometimes the crowded shouted with excitement or grew silent as if a single entity. Up there I could see how straight the chalk lines were and see that the right fielder concentrated more than I thought he would.  Little escaped me.  The sights, the sounds, the smells of the ballpark.

    Around the outfield fence advertisements of sponsor's were posted.  Legend had it that if you hit a home run over a particular advertiser, you'd get something from them.  All eyes focused when the power hitters came to bat, hoping to see one of them knock a homer over the dead center field sign--Baskin Robbins.

    If I couldn't work in the broadcast booth where I could borrow phrases from Vin Sculley from time to time, I worked the scoreboard.  I did not want to ever work in the snack shack, stuck inside for the whole game!  To work the scoreboard I'd hang out on the other side of the centerfield fence and climb up to the catwalk on the scoreboard to put up runs for the inning.  Standing in center field and working the scoreboard was not prestigious at all. In fact, it was isolated.  Besides being so far from the action, there was no one to talk with, and it was often hot, hot, hot.  Sometimes, if the scoreboard was all that was available, I'd work half the game and then go to the snack shack and tell them I needed to leave.  Usually, my pay was then 10 cents worth of candy.  My choices were sheets of Dots and some Lick 'em Aid.  10 cents was not enough for a chocolate bar too.

     Whenever I think of being at the baseball field and keeping score, I smile.  I loved watching the guys play.  Wishing I could be out there with them like I was in pick up games at the park.  But, I felt important because I felt like I was watching over them.  The sky was always blue there, the grass was always green, the clouds were always white and puffy.  At least that's how it was in my memories.  And me? I was queen of the world.  No other girls allowed.  I was the queen of baseball.  A diamond was this girl's best friend.

     **not too messy for a first draft. I recognize a few clean revisions would be helpful---getting rid of all of the conditional verbs, for instance.  I think changing it all to present tense would be of benefit as well.  And yes, what a difference in the world to be able to buy all of that candy for 25 cents! 

   

Riding my Bike

                                           Yosemite, Half Dome and me : )
 1/14/06

               Riding my bike made me feel so free.  For a bit of an effort peddling, I'd go places in a flash.  The block I lived on growing up had curbs that sloped down to the gutter rather than being built up where I had to either get off my bike or thump down hard on my tires to get into the street.  My whole street was like a driveway!  Or, now I would think it was all handicap accessible for wheelchairs. I don't know why it was that way, it was the only block in the area that was. Maybe it was the first curb made and they didn't know how to do it, or the last curb and there wasn't enough concrete left.  But whatever, it was unique.  Kids from blocks on either side would come to ride their bikes or skate up and down wherever they wanted.  After a while, I stopped paying attention to our special curb, because I preferred to ride other places.

            Sometimes I'd go for a long bike ride and then go climbing in the hills.  Sometimes I'd go up to local stores and look through the window displays.  Sometimes I'd go to the park or the little league fields and check out the games.  My bike took me to freedom.

         I could ride my bike with no hands (frequently).  Sometimes I'd go fast and stand on the seat and hold onto the handlebars.  But that was very tricky.  One time I filled my tire too full and watched a huge bubble emerge on the wall of the tire.  As I continued to ride it the bubble grew larger and burst and instantly the tire went flat.  I flipped over the handlebars and fortunately landed in the grass. I was oh so cautious after that about putting air in my tires.  

        My bike sped me away from barking dogs that chased me.  I rode fast, put my legs up and coasted. The dogs finally gave up and I peddled on.

        My bike had a kickstand.  Using the kickstand was an art.  Balancing the turn of the front tire against the fulcrum of the kickstand was a necessity.  In soft dirt or sand it was nearly impossible not to lay my bike down and feel defeated.  I did always try for a few times before I gave up,

       Changing the tire of a bike was both more and less complicated than it is now.  More because the tires didn't pop off with the flick of a holder.  Less because there were not so many complicated gears.  Even if the bike was 3 speed, the chain wasn't so complicated. 

      It was important though to make sure the back wheel was oiled.  I didn't know why.  Maybe this kept the chain oiled? There was a small cap on the hub of the back wheel that periodically needed to be opened and some oil put in.  The oil came in a small can with a long tube.  Bike tires today don't have this.  Still am wondering what that was all about back then.

      One of the regular runs my bike took me on was to Thrifty Drugs to read the new magazines and comic books when they came out.  Thrifty's  was another library for me.  I'd sit on the stacks and read all the new issues and remarkably no one ever said anything to me.  My blue Schwinn bike would be parked by the door where I could keep an eye on it.  The front wheel was turned and the bike leaned into the kickstand. 

      Sometimes several bikes would be parked in front of a store.  All would be unlocked.  They'd be leaning gracefully against their kickstands, reminding me of horses parked at a hitching post.  And sometimes I'd pretend my bike was a horse.

      At other times I'd flip my bike over to balance on the handlebars and seat. I'd use the front wheel as the wheel of a ship as I imagined sailing away.  At other times that same configuration led me to be a popcorn maker.  I'd turn the peddles and the back wheel would spin.  With the baseball cards secured in the spokes with clothes pins, the sound was of popcorn.  Mickey Mantle? Why did I ever think you sounded like popcorn? If I left you in my card stack, today I'd be able to make quite a few dollars on you!

**Talk about wandering.  Welcome to my mind.  To revise it, likely I would make at least a couple of memories out of it and delve deeper into each.  There seems to be stories about the joy of the bike and stories about the practical nature of my bike.  But then there's that one about putting the oil into the back tire.  What's that all about?   Writing is definitely a work in progress and a process.

The Mush Pot

 1/12/06

Time passes.  Ideas come and go and I am now in need of a boundary.  Somehow 100 seemed right.  So, I'm attempting to write about 100 things or people I remember in my lifetime and write about each one in a day.  This will be in addition to my daily journal writing.  This is a writing experiment because right now, today, I don't feel like much of a writer--rather, someone who may have some stories to tell.  I'll start with this challenge to myself.  100 stories in 100 days. Kind of like the photographer who took one picture a day from Winter to Summer.  A challenge.  Let's see where it takes me.  Where to begin? So much calls to me now...

     The mush pot was a place no one wanted to be. For to be in the mush pot was a penalty.  It was isolation. You couldn't follow the gang and see the fun. What was dared was not seen.  To stay out of the mush pot you had to accept, and carry out the dare.

     The mush pot existed in a garage at my next door neighbor's house.  The gang of us would sit in a circle on the cold floor of the garage that felt comforting on a hot summer day or night.  Too hot to play baseball or hide and go seek.  Too hot to go to the park or ride our bikes.  Just the right temperature to play mush pot. Especially in the warm SF Valley evenings.

     Whoever successfully completed the last task got to call out the dare for the next person.  Some were relatively easy--run down the block and back, ask the ice cream man for free gum for all of us, kiss the girl or boy across the circle.  

      One time I was dared to knock on "old lady Retinger's" door and ask if she could come out to play.  The group hid behind the bushes, in front of the redwood fence that bordered her lawn.  For some reason Mrs. Retinger was a fearsome person to us.  There was some thought that she was a witch.  Her house was always dark and the porch light never on.  I cautiously made my way to the door knowing unseen eyes were watching me from both within and outside.  My heart pounded against my chest and exploded in my ears. My palms clammed up.  My mouth dried and my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth.  I hesitated.

      I wanted to turn and run.  The mush pot beckoned.  I had never been there before.  Maybe this one time wouldn't hurt. I looked across the street and there sat Phillip on the front floor of the lighted garage.  A forlorn glance in my direction beamed, "Coward".  I heard giggles in the bushes. The porch light flashed on. I froze in a strobe light of shadow.  The door opened a crack. "Who's out there?"

     I turned toward the light slowly.  "It's me, Mrs. Retinger. Teri."

     The door opened wider.  Mrs. Retinger stood before me wearing her blue housecoat.  "Well, what do you want dear?"

     Dear? Had I heard this correctly? Dear?  I was in! My destiny was sealed. A collective gasp from the bushes.  I had to follow through but I could add a twist. "I'm supposed to ask you if you can come out and play, Mrs. Retinger."

    "You want to know if old lady Retinger can come out to play?"

    I looked down.  She knew what we called her.  I felt embarrassed and ashamed and wished I were in the mush pot right now.  I'd just volunteer.  "Just you. Mrs. Retinger. Can you come out to play?"

    She laughed.  "My mommy won't let me."  She shut the door.

    I turned and skipped down the walkway and over to Phillip.  I heard the bushes rustling behind me as I passed.

    "Did you do it?" Phillip asked.

     "Yeah, Phillip, you're free.  But don't call her Old Lady any more.  She's got a mother, too."

     I sort of lost my enthusiasm for playing mush pot after that.  Hide and seek was a much more fun game. Or hit the bat. Or dodgeball. Or baseball.  Yeah, baseball, now there's a game.

**Not bad for a first draft.  So difficult not to revise as I went.  I did add one line for consistency in the story which took place at night.  "Especially in the warm SF Valley evenings".  With this addition I added place and time, helping the reader to more center the piece.

Television Tubes

                                Golf ball Couch (Boston Children's Museum)

1/12/06

     Who's going to tell them about the old days the television tubes that you had to test one by one at a tester at Thrifty Drugs?  Different configurations on the bottom of the tube that you had to puzzle and figure out to put in which plug.  Once you did that, you'd press the tester button.  It was like a geiger counter needle.  The needle would shoot up into the green 'good' or stay in the red.  In red, the tube needed replacing.  The tubes came in little boxes that you'd carry home and then replace in the back of your tv.  Sometimes all the tubes would be good and then..uh,oh...you'd have to replace the picture tube which was the mother of all tubes but the size of the father of all tubes.  You couldn't do that yourself, you'd have to send for a tv repair man or, send your tv away where it would mysteriously be repaired.

    Then you could watch the 10 or so channels that existed until the UHF stations were added which required a special antenna on your tv, not the huge V antennas on the roof of your house.  You could watch the channel until it went off at midnight or sometime in the night when a test pattern would appear.  The test pattern was a picture of an Indian Chief with some lines radiating from his head. In this current day of political correctness an Indian would never be used because somehow someone would figure out that was discriminatory. So, it's fortunate there are no longer test patterns and also fortunate that there's 100's of channels that never go off the air.  Gives us a huge variety of viewing pleasure.  I think tubes and the Indian pattern may have served a better purposes.

**This is a story in need of a revision for certain.  I was cringing as I typed it.    The immediacy of the "I" was replaced by the "you".  "you" doesn't work here because it's clear I mean "I".   Yet the bones of the story, about the differences in televisions then and now is important.  Below is a quick revision.

   One of my jobs was to ride my bike to Thrifty Drugs to test the television tubes when they needed to be replaced.  Thrifty, besides having a soda fountain where you could buy and eat apple cobbler with ice cream, also had a tube tester.  I rode around to the front entrance where the tube tester sat next to the cashier.  The first part of tube testing was to figure out which  socket to place the tube in.  Each tube had a different configuration on the bottom.  The tube tester had the female version of the configuration.  I liked puzzles, so I usually found the match quickly.

   I'd insert the tube into the proper place and push the tester button.  The machine reminded me of a geiger counter with a long needle that zoomed from stationary to someplace along a scaled spectrum.  If the needle stayed in the red zone, it would need to be replaced.  If it zoomed to the green zone, the tube was working properly.  To replace a tube I called the cashier who would unlock the cabinet and sell me the new tube in a small box I'd take home.  I'd replace the old one by pushing the new into the back of the tv.

   When all tested tubes were green, the picture tube was the problem.  The picture tube was massive and needed to be replaced by a tv repairman either in house or taken to a tv repair shop and returned.  The picture tubes were the most expensive, but not as costly as a new tv.  And, no same day service, meaning there would be no tv for several days.

   Once the tv was repaired, I could once again watch the 10 or so channels the tv carried.  To change the channel, I would stand in front of the tv and turn the channel switch until I found something I liked.  No remotes.  Several new channels were added with UHF.  This had a separate channel changer and a different antenna.  The UHF antenna sat on top of the tv, different from the huge V shaped antenna that sat on the roof for the regular stations.

   All tv stations didn't broadcast after a certain time at night.  If I turned on the tv in the middle of the night, all of the stations were broadcasting test patterns.  The test pattern was a profile picture of an Indian Chief with lines radiating from his head. There was a steady tone associated with a test pattern.

  Just as new understandings exist for many ideas previously not identified as discriminatory, the wrong headed use of the Indian Chief test pattern is a thing of the past. Another nod to forward movement through education?  Bye, bye tubes and test patterns, hello hundreds of channels that rarely stop broadcasting. Bye, bye Thrifty Drugs, but not bye bye to apple cobbler.  Anyone know where to get some?  

**Improvement, but still needs a bit of work, but I no longer cringe.

     

 

In the Rearview : )

      I don't want to live life in the rearview, but sometimes the view is better from that direction.  Grass is always greener in the future.  Past and future.  But what about the present?  This is creative nonfiction, memoir writing if you will.  Recollecting the past, anticipating the future, and the writer is in the middle.  The past gives us material, reflection in the present can lead to understanding in the future.  

     Each of us have our past which shapes us, our present which defines us, and our future, the dreaded or deeply anticipated unknown.  What lingers longest is the past.  We remember what we remember how we remember it today.  Writing our memories is a way of making meaning of our lives.  Writing our memories is what connects us to universal themes.  I haven't lived your life, but I have lived mine and I have my own stories of love and loss, triumph and learning, doing this and that, feeling joy, sadness, possibilities.  Through our memories we not only connect with ourselves, but share with others in what we do and don't understand about life.  Often it is  easier to comprehend life when we visit through the lens of someone else--  as evidenced in literature, spoken stories, movies, art.  I and Thou.  

   I want to peek in the rearview so I don't miss the sunsets in unanticipated places.  I want to take the material I have gathered over decades of writing and flesh it out and place it in public view.  I offering to Thou.  What do we have in common? What makes one life unique?  

   In 2006 I was emerging from a deep depression triggered by the sudden death of my beloved.  I knew writing to be my helpmate, and I wrote and wrote in journals, filling them with fingernail grips on each day.  But journal writing, while necessary, was not what I longed to do.  My creative spark lie dormant.  Where was the kindling?

    As a way of holding myself accountable to blend past with present, I decided to write about one person or thing or idea from my childhood for 100 days.  I was inspired by an artist's exhibition I wandered into in Wyoming when we were looking for a bathroom break on the way back from Yellowstone.  Jim Brandenburg took one photograph a day from the Spring to the Winter's Equinox.  I thought writing one short piece a day would be easier than CHASING THE LIGHT. Some days it may have been, other days not so.

   I'll challenge myself again.  I'll put those ideas to work in this blog.  One a day.  I'll write them down as I did, and in current time.  From the far past, to the near past, to the present.  I'll be eager to explore what I knew then, and what I know now.  And, how all of this may help for the future.  For my writer self.

Emerging from the Pandemic

 

       Time, here it is, there it goes, now it's here.  Pandemic time.  Two years of hard shut down, cautious reawakening, tentative emergence.  Mask always in my back pocket even now.  Shots up to date, one new one pending to boost for variants.  And yet, I'm finding my way back.  I weigh the odds that the CDC espouses.  Outdoors, not crowded, indoors, no longer than 15 minutes, mask stays in pocket. Variations to the rules depend on who I'm with, where I'm at.  If we all need to be vaccinated to be in there, I'll stay longer without a mask.  Senior Center.

      I've flown to Boston and back from Los Angeles, mask never removed except for sips of water.  I've flown from Burbank to Phoenix and back, same scenario.  Was I lucky or not exposed, or were my antibodies working?  I was safe in any event.

     Point is, last year at this time, I wouldn't have even ventured anywhere without a mask.  Still wear one now in the grocery store.  So, I'm a cautious emerger, but it's about time.  I use my hand sanitizer whenever I go somewhere and get back into my car.  When I get home, I wash my hands.  

     My way of thinking has changed.  I'm going to be wary, but not fearful.  So far, it's worked.  As flu and Covid seasons intertwine this Fall/Winter, I'll be in a mask more than out, I suspect.  Still don't want to tempt fate with either illness.  I don't want to play on the freeway.  I don't mind staying home.

     It's been two years to get to this point.  I'll make it a soft landing.  One day soon I'll write about how the pandemic changed my life, and society in general.  Stay tuned, I'm back!