Labor Pains

      My brother, Clark, was born when our Dad was the president of the local union that he and his co-workers belonged to. And it just so happened that Dad and the rest of the union were on strike! There were no paychecks coming into the house as Mom did not work

Clark and his big sister

either, at least not full time, because she was home taking care of me.

      I must have been in my late teens when Mom told me this, and I was shocked. Dad and Mom always gave the appearance of having a sure grip on life. It wasn't that they had a lot of money, just that they were careful, and we were always comfortable. The thought that their finances were so precarious when they brought another life into this world was such a surprise – my parents would have had a plan, a safety net. They would not have sailed upon the sea of a labor strike without first knowing how they would pay the bills!

      Mom said that one of my grandfather's paychecks was given to her and Dad after Clark was born to cover bills, like the mortgage, and stress a little less and focus on the new baby.       It was my grandmother who had given the check. That seemed foreign to me too! My grandparents were not stingy by any means, but they did seem the type to believe that we should take the lumps that fate dishes out and be all the better for having done so. Yet they provided this lifeline that Mom never forgot, and then I never did either!

      I have an article about the strike somewhere. Whatever the workers were demanding back then could not have ultimately been as life-changing as what the strike brought about inside our little house on Heinrich Road!

120 20150430 Labor Pains

Clark's Birthday

 

Ultra Hamburg High Class of '74

   Today is my brother Clark's birthday. If you have noticed, my brother, Eric, was also born in April. Dad used to say that two of his children were born in April because my mother could not afford to buy Dad a gift on his birthday the July before! 

      Sigh...

      My parents wanted their children to have names that weren't as common as their names, Jim and Mary. Clark is a name that is not often heard and yet it is not too rare either - you do hear it from time to time, even with young ones these days. Clark is also the name of my mother's father – I think Mom picked it more because it was a cool name than that she was trying to honor her father – but still a neat gesture.

      Clark's main nickname when he was growing up was Toby. I do not know how it came about – but I still call him Toby. When he was in high school, some of his friends called Clark Ultra – maybe someday Ultra can tell us the story behind that one! These days, Eric and his family call Clark Bones – Mom thought that was cute – but again, she and I did not know the origins.

       Mom used to say that when I was a baby, she did not know how good she had it! I would eat and sleep, and I rarely fussed. When company came, Mom would wake me up to show me off! – the guests would cringe at the thought of waking up a sleeping baby – yet I would just lie back down again and go back to sleep afterward.

       When Clark came along, things were a little different. At first Clark seemed to be fussing all the time. But then Mom discovered that all of his crying was from a voracious, nearly insatiable appetite. As long as Mom fed him,Clark was as wonderful a baby as I had been, and he smiled lots more than I ever did. Mom said that Clark was on baby cereal at about two weeks old! This seems incredible, but Mom forever stuck with that time-frame. Surprisingly with all that food,  Clark did not grow into a chubby baby or overweight toddler - just a happy kid.

       And then Eric came along. Mom said that with Eric, she finally found out out what a normal baby was really like! Eric could be fed and burped, have a clean diaper, wear clothing that was neither too hot nor too cold, and still he would fuss. After having two contented babies, Mom was at wits end trying to comfort such a fussy one! And that is when Mom learned why one does not wake a sleeping baby! 

        May your day today, Clark, be filled with fine dining, comfortable surroundings, and a good nap - and may you give to the world in return, your happy smiles!

        Happy 59^th Birthday Toby!

119 20150429 Clark's Birthday

Naked Dead Man

     Okay, well speaking of really white nudes in the winter time, I'm not sure if I have ever told anyone this story before – it was so bizarre. In September of 1977, I started my lab job at Roswell Park which is just off Main Street in Buffalo – near the West Ferry bus stop, if I recall correctly. There was a bank on the next corner where I opened an account and deposited my paycheck every two weeks.

       Well, it was during that first winter I was walking to the bank in the middle of the day. It was snowing and there was snow on the sidewalks – I don't think the sun was out. As I turned the corner from Carlton to Main Street, I saw an object on the sidewalk near the bus-stop. It was deathly white and looked to be a human form. There were a couple of people standing over it.

       As I got closer, I could see it was a naked dead man. He was lying on his back. His eyes were shut. I looked up at the nearby building to see which window he had jumped out of. It was only a two-story building, and there were no open windows. The sidewalk did not look like someone had just splattered there. And he couldn't have been walking down the street and suddenly died – not naked like that – not lying there so peaceful-looking like that.

      A police car arrived, and they began making arrangements to move the body. I continued on to the bank. All I could figure is that the man had been murdered and dumped there.

      For the next few days I checked the newspaper for a story about the naked dead man lying on the sidewalk in the middle of the day. But the story never appeared.

118 20150428 Naked Dead Man

The Nude Bills Game

    The nude beach makes me think about other nude stories - like the memorable incident of a Buffalo Bills game one December. This was probably December of 1976 – the Bills were playing at the fairly new Rich Stadium in Orchard Park – not too far from home, and in fact, it is on the same street and within walking distance of the building where I went to kindergarten. I was at the game with some of my college friends, and it was snowing. There was snow on the ground before the game that day. It was cold. Very cold.

     The Bills weren't doing well, and the fans, those bestest, most loyal fans in all the world – got disgruntled. Yelling was not enough. Not when there are snowballs within reach! Players, referees, cheerleaders were getting pelted. It was dangerous! The snowballs were keeping Security busy down on the field and in the lower levels of the stands.

      Security did not notice the man who stood up in the level of the stands where we were sitting. He was not near us; he was to our left – if we were at the 50 yard line, he was more like at the 80.

       It was about the second quarter when we saw him. We noticed because this fan was not only standing up, he was totally naked! He stood there like a statue – no movements or noises, but he was getting whiter by the minute - more from lack of blood near the surface of his skin than from the falling snow! 

       We did not gawk at him because it made us shiver just to even know he was there – standing in the nude. No one seemed to be making a fuss about the nude man in the crowd – the snowballs and the Bills were getting all the attention.

       Was he just really drunk? Perhaps insane? 

       We decided that he had probably lost a bet of some kind. At the end of the quarter, he was no longer standing there – maybe the bet was for him to stand nude for an entire quarter of the game – or maybe Security finally got to him, or perhaps he froze to death and fell over. Who knows?

       Cold is of course, relative. And we can each define it by our own experiences. My definition of cold is a naked man stoically standing whiter and whiter amongst the snowy seats of a populated football stadium with more snow falling and bitter winds blowing and a mind going numb waiting for the quarter to be over!

117 20150427 Nude Bills Game

The Bare Truth

      So in Martinique Jenny, my room-mate, and I went to the beach every day. For the swimming and the sun and the warmth, of course.

boat ride in Martinique!

      The scene at the beach, however, was very much like a singles bar only with less clothes and a lot more desperation. There were only so many days in each person's vacation. And there were goals in mind, most of which involved sex. Time was of the essence – there was none to spare. Guys, mostly about our age, approached us, introduced themselves, and started small talk. But we were quick to let them know that just because we were engaging in social intercourse, it did not mean that sexual intercourse would follow. This was actually a favor to the guys – we did not want to waste their time when they could be chatting up more willing females.

      Some of the guys were friendly enough to continue to talk to us even after we made our non-intentions clear and their intentions were still quite evident. And we usually got around to asking them why they didn't just go over to the nude beach and approach the women there – Wouldn't those women be easier? They were already naked ? And the guys would all respond the same way when given that suggestion. Their voices would go soft, almost to a whisper, and they would say, “Oh I could never do the nude beach. My parts might get sunburned.”

      One morning toward the end of my stay at Martinique, Jenny and I were walking down the trail to the beach when we came to the, by then, familiar fork in the path. We always took the one to the left which led to the regular beach. But on that particular morning, we looked at each other and reasoned that it would be a shame to have come so far from home without experiencing, at least for a little bit, what was at the end of the other path – in fact it was our duty to go there so we could then go home and let others know exactly what it was all about!

      We took the other trail that day – the one that went to the nude beach.

      After the craziness of the first beach, I was expecting pure chaos at the nude beach – the fewer the clothes, the greater the decadence, right? But as the sand and the water appeared through the trees at the end of the path, what I saw was absolute paradise! It was peaceful and beautiful.

      Three middle-aged men speaking a foreign language had just gotten out of the water and were walking across the sand – they were naked and their bodies were not in the best of shape, but when their eyes met ours, the men smiled, and their smiles were real – no lasciviousness, just genuine delight at our presence. And we had not even taken off our bathing suits yet! 

      People were sunbathing, and there were personal boundaries being observed – we stretched out on our towels with no one disturbing us or breaking the spell of this luxurious Eden.

      Near our towels was a guy perhaps a couple of years older than we were. He was tanned bronze from head to toe, from front to back. He was gorgeous! I was glad our eyes did not make contact, or he might have seen lasciviousness in mine – and then I would have been the one breaking the spell!

      A couple of days later, when it was time for my planeload of people to be leaving Martinique, we were gathered in the main lobby all packed up and dressed to fly home. The guys who had been so crazy all week were in their cut-off jeans still seeming to have that air of desperation about them even though I was fairly sure each of them had gotten what they thought they had wanted from their week in Martinique.

      And the Adonis from the nude beach? Oh my gosh, he was standing at the bar! He had been on my plane from Toronto! He was standing there with almost all of his bronze completely covered with the three piece white suit he was wearing. He looked like a blond Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island!

      While I stood there staring at him with my mouth a-gape, the cut-off jeans guys were scoffing and laughing at him – one of the guys said, “I guess some people just don't know how to have a good time!”

      And that is when I learned the wisdom of Martinique: the nude beach is that which separates the men from the boys!

116 20150426 The nude beach

A Walk on the Beach in the Moonlight

      After dinner that first night in Martinique, I went by myself to the open air theater, where the earlier orientation had been, to see the promised nightly entertainment. There was a comedian pretending to be a bad magician – really lame.

Mimi - resort Fireman?

      I was standing in the back, and the crowd and the heat suddenly were too much for me – my ears started ringing and I was seeing spots before my eyes. I found a nearby planter and sat down on the edge of it hoping to recover enough to walk back to my room.

      Harvey, a Canadian from my plane, came running over and told me I needed to get some air.

      A minute later, we were strolling on the beach!

      As addled as my hearing and vision were right then, I was not too out-of-it to think to myself, “Oh my gosh! My first night in Martinique, and here I am walking on the beach..... in the moonlight..... with a guy!”

      Harvey was thinking the same thing. Well, almost the same thing.

      What Harvey was thinking was, “My first night in Martinique, and I'm going to score!”

      I know that is what he was thinking, because the next words Harvey said out loud were, “Let's go to my room.”

      Really Harvey?!!!!!

      I managed a polite no and extricated myself from the scene walking hurriedly, if somewhat foggily, back to the crowd and the heat and the bad magician.

      The next morning, my assigned room-mate arrived. Jenny was from Washington, D.C. via the New York City plane. Jenny said all she wanted from her vacation was to lie on the beach and get warm....and maybe, just maybe, take a walk on the beach in the moonlight with a guy just one night. Was that too much to ask?

      I told her the dream was much better than the reality.

      But we could both still hope.

115 20150425 Walk on the beach in the moonlight

Smile of the Day

Jacquie showing off his swimwear

     Jacques, who wanted to be called Jacquie (like Jacky only Jacques-y), was on the stage wearing nothing but a flower in his hair and a wrap that was tied not around his waist, nor around his hips, but the wrap was tied much, much lower.

     He mentioned a French phrase which translated to smile of the day which then further translated to the butt crack .  The wrap was supposed to tie in such a way that as much of one's smile of the day was as visible as possible!

     Jacquie was the chief GO – gentle one – in charge of the entire Martinique resort, and he was providing orientation for the latest arrival of vacationers, a plane-load of folks from Toronto.

    I was twenty-five, unattached in every way, and all I had said to the travel agent was that I wanted to go someplace warm – I needed a break from the cold cruel Buffalo winter. It was not until the plane landed that I heard of this particular resort's reputation as a hot spot for wild swinging singles!

    Jacquie's orientation was in the open air theater just off of the main patio/lobby/bar.

    Just past the theater in one direction were the rooms we would be staying in – there were no single rooms – if we did not come with a room-mate, we would be assigned one of the same sex and language; the rooms had no locks or keys – but there had never been an instance, Jacquie  insisted, of theft or molestation.

    In another direction was the dining room – tables of 8 were seated every breakfast and dinner – a forced meeting, for me, of 14 strangers every day – which turned out to be entertaining and allowed me to meet people from all over the world; lunch was served on the patio buffet style and we could take the food wherever to eat – our dishes and utensils could be left anywhere and picked up by the staff.

     The beach was in another direction, and a little further off was a smaller, private, nude beach.

      Every night there would be entertainment in the small theater, and at midnight, a nightclub at the far end of the resort would play music and have dancing and alcohol until dawn. It was not unusual to have people from the nightclub walking to their rooms to go to sleep when the sun was rising passing folks who were already up and heading to the beach!

     There were also all kinds of sports available – for lessons and/or participation – from snorkeling and sailing to biking and tennis – there were beach games, competitions, and singles get-togethers that involved silly drinking-game icebreakers.

      Jacquie said that in spite of all the opportunities for fun, there were also a few rules – no drugs were allowed in the resort, “Just look at the beauty of this place! Why would anyone need drugs to get high?” I agreed with him there, but doubted his sincerity – I was soon to find out that there were plenty of drugs of all kinds accessible throughout the resort.

       Another rule, was no nudity – except at the nude beach – but I was sure that if Jacquie's wrap had slipped off at that moment – down beyond the last of his smile of the day – he would have enjoyed that immensely.

       And the final rule – no sex on the beach! This is actually more difficult than it sounds what with the place's reputation for swinging singles and yet forced room-mates in each room – if you can't have privacy, might as well do it on the beach. However, during my stay, I did not observe anyone breaking the no nudity except on the nude beach rule or the no sex on the beach rule.

      After orientation, it was too late in the day for sunbathing. The sun sets early and quickly on that Caribbean island. My assigned room-mate had not arrived as yet, so I went for a walk and approached a couple I recognized from the plane – they were about my age – Pete and Diana. I asked if I could hang around with them until dinner since I did not know anyone else. They said sure. Diana looked like a Barbie Doll while Pete was not quite a Ken. He wore socks with his sandals. 

      Pete asked me if I was eager to try some of the marijuana that was rumored to be so good there? I replied that I did not do drugs. Mmmm, he thought for a moment and then asked if I would be partaking of the island alcohol, also rumored to be quite good? Again, I replied in the negative – I was not an abstainer at home, but it seemed wise, based on my newly acquired info about the island's reputation, to choose not to drink in Martinique. Pete did not ask me any more questions.

      The three of us went to dinner together and sat with five strangers, We introduced ourselves and told where we were from.

       I quickly picked up on the fact that asking folks what do you do for a living? is an American inquiry which is frowned upon by other cultures – people are so much more than their jobs! – I try to remember that even now, decades later, when being introduced to someone new.

       A young American woman who was sitting directly across the table from me had already been at the resort for a few days. She had her shirt open to the waist, and although you could see that there were bare feminine attributes inside the shirt, she was not exactly exposing herself. Pete commented to Diana that he'd like her to try wearing her shirts that way.

      Sometimes nowadays I wear my shirt like that - but only in the house - and when I look in the mirror - the effect is not at all like that of the young woman at the table that first night in Martinique.

114 20150424 Smile of the Day, Martinique

Egg Painting

Mom's ceramic centerpiece

    In ninth grade I signed up for a personal typing class. And it was a great class – but it was only for one semester. I did not know what to fill that time with the second semester, and the choices came down to study hall or home ec. The lesser of those two evils was home ec.

      I don't recall too much about that class other than that we learned how to make starch ball Christmas tree ornaments – blow up a balloon and tie it, dip it in a starch solution and then wrap it with colored string; let the starch dry, pop the balloon, and what remained was a hollow sphere with a string coat – it was a neat activity at the time – I'm probably missing a step, because when I tried to do it with the girls years later, it did not work. And the unused starch is still in my laundry room!

      Another thing we learned was how to blow out Easter eggs – real, uncooked eggs emptied out – and then the shells are painted, and with care and luck, they can last for many Easter seasons! Over the years since then, I have blown out eggs from time to time. I don't do it artfully – some people can make the yolk come out intact through an itty bitty hole in the shell – I can make some of the egg white dribble out, and then after getting red in the face and dizzy from blowing, I'll put some kind of poker into the hole and break the yolk – and after more getting red in the face and dizzy – eventually the entire contents of the egg will have seeped out.

      After the first of the year each year I kind of tell myself that I'll blow out every egg I use for cooking or baking until just before Easter – and then I'll have a nice new batch of eggs to paint – but I haven't actually followed through and blown out any eggs probably since the late 90's when the girls would do them with me.

      Once the contents of the eggs are removed, there is the task of cleaning the inside so that nothing starts to grow and nothing starts to smell – rotten egg smell takes away from the beauty of a decorated shell real quick. I never found the directions for cleaning the inside of the egg to be adequate enough – often picking up a faint odor after a couple of days. Usually, I resorted to a little bleach – not enough to hurt the shell, but enough to clean out whatever might have been wanting to grow. Then I set the shells out to dry.

      There was one Christmas, in the midst of my Mom's ceramics and painting phase, that she brought unpainted ornaments to our house. The whole family sat around the kitchen table decorating the ornaments – many of which still adorn our tree every yuletide. I do have to admit here that I was not much fun during this event – just too fidgety to sit still and do the detail work – so mostly I watched while everyone else had a great bonding time with the paints and each other.

     And so there were leftover Christmas ceramics paints and the next spring, Sarah and Amanda used the paints to color the blown out Easter eggs – I think I might have even done one or two myself. The results were beautiful – and they still are. We gave some away, and the rest, we kept for ourselves!

113 20150423 Egg Painting

Bunnies and Pillows

   

Watership Down on the Wine Hutch

  Upon getting the Easter decorations ready to put away this past week, I realized that some of their stories should be told.

     There are two collections of ceramic bunnies – both of which were gifts from my Mom. There is an almost complete set of Watership Down rabbits – a new bunny would come in the mail every spring, this was back in the early '80's. I put them on the hutch which is where rabbits are supposed to be – but in our instance, it is a wine hutch! I read the book Watership Down when I was a kid and enjoyed it – I guess that is what inspired Mom to get the figurines for me.

 

Mom's painted Easter rabbits

    Many years later, Mom took a ceramics class, maybe even a few, in Florida. And she painted many lovely objects, including Easter rabbits. Mom always put her initials somewhere on her works of art and sometimes the date too. I now have the rabbits that she gave to me, and the one she kept for herself, and the one that Mom painted for my grandmother. They brighten up the house after a long winter and remind me of other Easters and family gatherings.

Mom's initials on the feet!

      My sister-in-law, Michelle, who is Eric's wife, has many hobbies including gardening, needlepoint, and sewing. Over the years she has sewn pillows and bunnies for Easter. As Sarah and Amanda moved out of their mother's hutch and into their own places, the pillows and rabbits with their names on them went along with them. So my own collection diminished – but now I have Mom's and my Grandmother's Easter pillows – and again, when I put them out, I feel like I am channeling the whole family into the room with me!

Aunt Michelle's Pillows and Bunnies

      This week I purchased some pretty boxes to store the Easter decorations in between seasons – the decorations have always been carefully wrapped and nothing has broken – but the festive boxes give them even more respect!

112 20150422 Bunnies and Pillows

Black Tee Shirts and Kevin Kline

Here are a couple of quotes I have always attributed to my brother Eric:

      You can never have too many black tee shirts. Eric is a huge fan of rock bands and has regularly attended concerts since the late seventies. Along the way, he has accummulated many a rock band tee shirt – most of which have a black background. And I heard Eric say one time, “You can never have too many black tee shirts.” Whenever I see someone in a black tee shirt with a band on the front, I have to smile, and I wonder how many more black tee shirts are hanging in his/her closet? Because, you know, you can never have too many.

      You can't go wrong with a Kevin Kline movie - Eric gave me this advice over the phone one day about twenty years ago when I mentioned to Eric that I was on my way to the video store to rent a movie but did not know which one to get. And this advice has never steered me wrong! French Kiss and Grand Canyon are two of my favorite movies, and I might have overlooked them if not for the fact that I saw Kevin Kline was in them!

111 20150421 Black Tee Shirts and Kevin Kline

Pubert!

 

Eric at 14

    In his early teen years, my brother, Eric, like most kids, rode his bicycle around town and beyond. Living in North Boston, it was a few miles to ride to the other hamlets – Patchin or Boston, to hang out with friends; and it was a couple of more miles in the other direction to pedal to Hamburg and meet up with other friends. And Eric often used the bike for his paper route which was just down Heinrich Road and around Valley Circle Lane. The bike was a practical and respectable form of transportation.

     A respectable form of transportation until, apparently, one got one's driver's license.

     Eric got his driver's license, some time during high school. And Mom and Dad had a 1963 Ford Fairlane that no one else was driving, and so Eric was soon using the Fairlane to motor about town running errands, going to school activities, and of course, meeting up with his friends. Eric's buddies got their licenses that same year too – and they were all riding around in old cars, new cars, any kind of car.

      But not bikes.

      After the acquiring of drivers' licenses, a new pastime came into play. I wouldn't say that Eric and his friends went looking for people on bikes – but it would just happen that they would, while driving along, see someone riding a bike. Now, if it was a little kid, I think he or she was exempt – but a teenager, adult, or senior citizen, male or female, were the targets of my brother and his friends. As the car passed the bike rider, the driver and any passengers who were present would yell out an open window “Pu-bert!”

      I did not understand this new attitude and pointed out to Eric that he was the boy on the bike not too many months earlier. But they all thought it was great sport.

      Of course, that was a long time ago now. Eric's own children are grown and have had their own driver's licenses for years – notably skipping right over the “Pubert!” stage.

Present Day Pubert

      This spring, Eric got his bike out as soon as winter subsided. On weekend mornings, he takes the path along the Ellicot Creek Trailway. Eric often rides with friends, and they have breakfast at a restaurant just off the path – their reward for all the great physical activity. Eric has a goal each year of a thousand miles or so to ride on the bike. With the reputation for bad weather that Western New York is known for , he sometimes has to race to get the miles in before winter – and yet sometimes Eric sneaks in a bike ride during a thaw, a few miles one day, a few miles another, and he finds it very satisfying.

    Pu-bert indeed.

110 20150420 Pubert

Happy Birthday Eric!

Eric & his big sister Chestnut Ridge 2009

      Today is my brother's birthday. Eric is the younger of my two brothers. A few months ago Eric was shocked to learn that I have told one story of our brother, Clark, at storytelling events in town, - the infamous family tale about the letter to Spencer Gifts - but not one story about Eric! Well today is day 109 of my memory-a-day blog, and there have been a couple of stories about Eric so far – the icicle story comes to mind, and the first Sears parking lot story. There will be more. Honestly, Eric is every bit as colorful as our brother Clark!

      In honor of Eric's birthday today, I'd like to relate this brief anecdote:

      One time, I was probably high school age, I was complaining about a headache. From the pain, it was most likely a sinus headache.

      Eric said, “Does your face hurt?”

      Impressed with his concern, I thought about the question for a moment and realized that my face did hurt.

      “Why, yes it does!” I answered.

      “I'm not surprised, because - it's killing me!”

      And he had a very good laugh.

      In the many decades since then, we have all gotten a lot of mileage out of that joke. I ask everyone who mentions having a headache if his/her face hurts – Mike does it too! - surprisingly, very few folks take the bait. But we laugh anyway.

      And I don't think that Eric has gotten as much of a laugh out of this quip as he did that day when he pulled it on me!

      Happy Birthday Eric!

109 20150419 Eric's birthday

Bartlesville OB

       After arriving in Oklahoma, one of the first things I needed to do was make an appointment with the obstetrician who had been recommended to us and who had already received my medical history from the ob back home.

      I was sitting in the examining room when the doctor walked in, saw me, and with a look of surprise said, “Oh, so you do exist!”

      “Excuse me?”

      “When your file arrived in the mail, I thought my med school buddies were playing a prank on me!”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Come on! Look at this file! You have to admit the names are very strange!”

      I glared at him.

      “First of all, the file says it came from Two naw a da?”

      “Tonawanda – it is a suburb of Buffalo and a Native American word.” Oh my gosh, I thought, how can the man not know how to say Tonawanda – and here we are in the midst of Oklahoma, the state with the highest concentration of Native Americans in the country – does this guy make fun of all of their names?

      “And then the doctor's name – Oxcar Boxcar?”

      “Dr. Aschar – he is from India, and he was wonderful.”

      “And then your name, how do you say it? I'm not even going to try.”

I pronounced my last name – which is was as simple to say as Tonawanda – even though it has a couple more letters and is Italian.

      “Yeah, so you can see why I thought this was all a prank!”

      All I could see was that this guy seemed to think everyone should have as common a name as he did. Okay, I won't put his name in print – but I'll tell anyone who might ask!

      Then he went on to say that we needed to schedule a sonogram to get an updated due date; and after that we can schedule the C-section.

      “No, I was told after Sarah was born that I could have natural delivery for my second child.”

      “Ma'am, you aren't in Buffalo anymore.”

      Clearly.

      “I am not the one who sewed you up after your C-section with your first child. So I do not know how well the surgery was done. Our hospital here in town has a small emergency room. You come in here in labor and your uterus ruptures and you will have to go to the emergency room. Then, if there's a car accident out there somewhere – the ER can't handle both emergencies. So we can't risk a ruptured uterus – we have to schedule a C-section.”

      My brain was spinning.

      “Now if you absolutely have your heart set on natural delivery, this is what you will have to do: when you go into labor, get into your car, drive the fifty miles to Tulsa, check yourself into the hospital there which is bigger, and have another doctor help you with natural childbirth. But you and your ruptured uterus are not coming here!”

      Months later I actually met a woman who went to Tulsa to have her baby, bless her! But I was not that dedicated to natural childbirth or the thought of driving 50 miles while in labor.       So the sonogram was scheduled – the due date was set at December 12^th, a Friday. The doctor asked which Thursday in December did I want to do the surgery? Thursdays were when he did C-sections. I said how about the 18^th, since the baby probably would not adhere to the due date. He said how about December 11^th?

      The receptionist at the obstetrician's office was similar in attitude to the doctor. One day at check-out, she asked what it was like living in a suburb of New York City?

      I said, “I'm from Buffalo.”

      “Isn't all of New York State a suburb of New York City?”

      “Um, Buffalo is 500 miles from New York City.”

      She stared at me as if I had not answered her question.

      A pang of homesickness went through me. Buffalo is connected to New York City, kind of, via the New York Thruway. When you drive on the New York Thruway, you see the most beautiful country scenery you can imagine – farmland, hills, gorges, colors, cows and corn and tractors! Not urban sprawl! Gosh I missed it!

      Another time at checkout, the receptionist looked up from her computer and asked, “Was your maiden name any better than your married name?”

      “How do you mean better?”

      “Well, your married name has so many letters in it!”

      “My married name has eleven letters. My maiden name has only seven letters. But you know what? The fourth letter in my maiden name, the letter smack dab in the middle of the name, is capitalized!”

      The receptionist's eyes got big and she said, “Oh!”

      She probably did not deserve that even though it was a crappy question to ask. And I had promised myself to never say, “Back where I come from” but I sure was thinking it that day, “Back where I come from there are people with with much more difficult names than mine! Some have no vowels in them! And we try, out of respect, to pronounce those names, and we listen as the people correct us, and then we try harder to pronounce them the right way.” And of course, that's an exaggerration – it was not until I myself was the target of this bigotry in the doctor's office in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, that I vowed from that day forward to always treat a person's name with respect.

      When December came along, the C-section was rescheduled for December 4^th – it was more convenient for the doctor. So Amanda was born a week and a day before her due date. She did have a little look of surprise on her face when she emerged – but otherwise Amanda was just fine. So we all survived this adventure – even the doctor and his receptionist.

108 20150418 The Bartlesville OB

Oklahoma is OK

    Right about the time we realized we were expecting our second child, in the spring of 1986, my husband accepted a job offer in the newly created biotechnology department at Phillips 66.

     In Oklahoma!

     Literally, the very first thought that ran through my head when Hubby first mentioned a job opportunity in Oklahoma was “some night something alive is going to run over my foot as I walk through the house in the dark!” What did I know of Oklahoma? Tornadoes and tumbleweeds! The flora and fauna and culture would be all so very different from everything I knew. Unfamiliar wildlife could somehow get into the house?

     One Sunday, before our move, I looked out the window of our living room in Alden, New York. Staring at the trees and again wondering what Oklahoma was going to be like, my eyes moved to something in the grass. There was a snake - a huge snake, bigger than any I'd ever seen in the wild before! It was slow and majestic as it made serpentine progress across the yard. I gaped in amazement – it was just the sort of wildlife I had imagined I would be seeing in Oklahoma, and yet here it was – parading itself before me just as I was leaving Western New York!

     Movers arrived from Bartlesville. What a great perk for us! They had boxes and a huge truck – and they assured us as they started filling boxes that the contents of our entire house would fit into half of the truck. (They would be packing another house somewhere else into the other half of the truck before meeting us in Oklahoma to unload!)

     Sarah, who had just turned two years old, and I stayed out of the way of the movers, mostly hanging around in the living room with the television and some toys. One of the workers asked, “Ma'am? Are you taking the foam?”

     Oh my gosh! Foam did not make sense, so that meant I was not understanding her accent! I had not anticipated that Oklahoma was going to be this strange! “Pardon me?” I asked.

     “The foam. Are you taking the foam?”

     I pleaded with my brain to figure out what she was really saying!

     “Does the foam belong to you or the foam company?”

     Oh the phone!

    “Yes, the phone is ours, it can be packed, thank you!”

     I put my head in my hands, what am I going to do – not even in Oklahoma yet, and the adventure already felt like a fail.

     A young man who was with the packers and did not appear to be older than high school age, put a box together, grabbed our record albums, put them into the box, taped it, and then wrote with a marker across the top Ricords.

     I admit to being a spelling snob, and I will also admit that there have actually been occasions when I myself have spelled a word or two incorrectly. But ricords? Really? I worried that this young man was a reflection of the educational system of the entire state of Oklahoma.

     Having ricords stuck in my brain instead of giving the state, and even the young man, the benefit of the doubt would eventually cost us some big bucks.

     In July of 1986, we got into our Toyota Tercel and began the trek to Oklahoma. We were mostly on highways, and every time the iconic golden arches came into view, Sarah would proclaim from her car-seat in the back, “Mac Don alds!” Fortunately she did not pitch a fit when we did not stop at every single one!

     It was not too long after we left town, that a bad storm hit Western New York, and an actual tornado touched down damaging a restaurant in a familiar suburb! Tornado? No! Western New York only gets snow! Not hurricanes, not earthquakes, not floods, and certainly not tornadoes! We were on our way to a place nicknamed Tornado Ally – so what was up with a tornado in Cheektowaga? Nothing less than the irony, I guess.

     Bartlesville is in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, an area called Green Country. And it is green – I did not see a tumbleweed the whole time we lived there!

     As we drove into the downtown area, the sign on the bank said it was 115 degrees. Just what a pregnant lady who has spent her whole life in Western New York needed to see!

     Along another street downtown, there was a marquee to a theater saying Louise Mandrell was coming! I thought perhaps cultural/entertainment events would be more affordable in Bartlesville than in Buffalo – but that turned out to be wrong – we did not see Louise Mandrell nor did we even step foot inside the theater during our time in Oklahoma.

     This reminds me of a comment from a graduate student who was in the lab at Roswell Park when I worked there – he was from India – and one day he asked me how much tickets were for something that was going on downtown; and when I answered him, he said, “So here in America, culture is reserved for the upper class?”

     There was a marker in downtown Bartlesville, I can't remember now if it was on a pole or the side of a building, but the marker was about 18 feet up from street level. A plaque, at eye level, explained that the mark was the highest spot that the Flood of the Century had reached! Floods? We were in Tornado Ally – and now we were finding out that there are floods?

     The Caney River flows through Bartlesville. And apparently it overflows from time to time. My thought when reading the plaque was that if the area has so-called Floods of the Century, then based on the date on the plaque, we were probably due for one soon!

     Yikes! What more surprises were we going to encounter?

107 20150417 Oklahoma is OK

The Eye of the Needle

      In Oklahoma Sarah and Amanda and I attended First Presbyterian Church in Bartlesville. We had several adventures there – gosh, lots that I can think of – and we lived in Oklahoma for such a short time!

      One of the most colorful things I ever heard a pastor say was by the First Presbyterian preacher – in essence it was - you have heard that Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven, but Jesus did not say it was impossible for a camel to get through the eye of a needle – it is just that the camel won't look much like a camel once it gets through to the other side!

      The congregation groaned in unison at the image of a camel actually squeezing through the eye of a needle! I still feel the rumble when I remember it now!

      And yes, we know that the eye of a needle was an expression back in Biblical days that meant the narrow opening into the walled city that a camel cannot get through (especially if there are too many of the rich man's packs on his back). And I think there are those who say that that explanation is incorrect, and the eye of the needle meant something else entirely in Biblical days – but still the expression itself is not to be taken literally.

      But the pastor that day in Oklahoma expressed it in as literal a picture as he could – squeezed that real camel through a little tiny hole in the everyday sewing needle with which we are all familiar.

       And we got the message.

      The camel has to shed and sacrifice, bend and morph; the camel has to give up “I” to such an extent that it is unrecognizable as “I” when it is finally worthy to enter heaven.

      That's a lot to ask of us pitiful fat rich mortals.

       Even if one does not believe in the Good Book, or the Word as delivered by whatever prophet – one most likely believes we are capable of being decent human beings. But to give up “I” to do it – to morph into something unrecognizable to do what is right all the time – it is probably easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

        But not impossible!

106 20150416 Eye of the Needle

Clark A. Junkin

   

Naturalization Papers 1941

    On this date in the year 1900, my grandfather was born. His name was Clark Alexander Junkin. I'll mention one of the memories I have of my grandfather, and one story that my grandmother told me.

      When I was a kid, I was enthralled with adult conversation – mainly because I was usually banned from it – told to leave the room and go play with my brothers or cousins. And that made me more curious – what did big people talk about – and why was the subject matter not for my ears?

      If we were visiting my grandparents on a Sunday night, my Mom and grandmother would be in the kitchen gossiping mainly about the different neighbors who Mom still knew. I always wanted to be in the kitchen with them – listening, watching their eyes light up with the conversation – I never knew who they were talking about, but I felt I could learn something from their kitchen-talk examples.

      Invariably however, whenever I was in the kitchen with the women, my grandfather would call from the living room, “Denny! Come see who Ed Sullivan has on!” I did not want to see who Ed Sullivan had on – probably some boring circus act - I wanted to listen to Mom and Granny in the kitchen! But I couldn't ignore my grandfather, so I would reluctantly drag myself to the living room. Grandpa would give a slight point of the finger to the television as I approached, and his face would be smiling with humor at the Sullivan show and also with delight in sharing it with me.

      The groan I wanted to utter stayed inside as a man spinning plates on poles was the act I mostly remember on the Sullivan show on those nights when I was called to watch. How could grown people find plate spinners amusing?

      Now that I am a grandparent, plates twirling on poles and kept from falling by a frantic performer are scenes I would love to share with my own beloved grandchildren!

      Clark Junkin was born and raised in Ontario, Canada; Dolly moved to Ontario from England when she was 11 years old. As a young woman, Dolly got a job as a switchboard operator at a hotel.

      She had three suitors.

      One was a son from a wealthy family.

      One was a student in medical school.

      And one was poor.

      The poor one had a job working on the construction of the Welland Canal – but when the Canal was finished, Clark had to find new work.

my grandparents 1946

       As you might guess, Clark was the beau Dolly liked the best. They got engaged – but almost immediately they realized that neither family would approve.

       So they eloped! They were married in Niagara Falls, Ontario. 

       The year was 1925. And the new married couple decided to move to Buffalo, temporarily, – just the other side of the border, in the US – because they heard jobs were more plentiful there.

       Well, that's Dolly's story. Just think, the existence of their children, and grandchildren, and the two generations after them, is all thanks to Dolly;s picking of beau number three and their choice to move to Buffalo, just across the border!

105 20150415 Clark A. Junkin

MAS at 22

   

Mike, me, Kevin, Bill E., Anthony - at MAS 2010

  Tomorrow is the 22^nd anniversary of my first day on the job at MAS. The blog last week about my grandmother getting the job at the flower shop in Buffalo merely because she was Canadian got me to thinking about how most jobs are actually obtained. And I've concluded that we are offered a jobs based on qualifications, who you know, and just plain dumb luck, with qualifications coming in third, if you think about it hard enough.

      After Amanda started kindergarten, I was looking for a lab-related job with flexible hours such that I could be home when the girls got out of school in the afternoons. For months there were no leads. MAS had an ad in the paper, and I sent my resume, but heard nothing from the company.

      One day the phone rang and I ran to answer. It was someone from the church we attended. My heart sank when I heard her voice – I was thinking, “I'm looking for a job! Why is the church calling?” But the woman was not only someone from church, but someone who had worked for a few months in the lab my ex had been at when we first moved to Georgia. And the ex was at church one Christmas Eve, and they saw each other, and we were introduced. And since then she and I would say hi when we happened to cross paths at church. And one time I mentioned I was looking for a job at a lab.

      That was why she called on the phone! She was at that time working at MAS and thought I should reapply for the position that was available, and she would tell them to look at the resume and give me an interview! They were having a tough time finding qualified candidates.

      So, after a rough start – the interview was scheduled during the March snowstorm of 1993 – school was closed, and I packed up the girls, and we attempted to drive to MAS. After a couple of miles I turned around and went back home. I called and asked to reschedule, and the receptionist said that no one was expecting me to show up that day – heck! A couple of the folks who were going to interview me were not even there!

      But finally I was able to meet with everyone, and things, at least to me, looked very promising. The hours were flexible enough – part-time that might work into full time. A few weeks went by without hearing back from MAS, and I was beginning to lose all confidence in myself – why did they not want me?

      And then the call came, and my first day was April 15^th, 1993. Part-time lasted, I think, all of one week – and then I was full time but still with flexible hours, usually 5am to 2 or 3pm depending on what Sarah or Amanda had going on after school on any given day, such as piano lessons.

      When I started at MAS, Amanda was in kindergarten and Sarah was in third grade. Today Amanda has a husband, a Masters degree in music pedagogy and a piano studio. Sarah has a husband, a Masters in library science and two children – one of whom will be in kindergarten this August. I will always be grateful to MAS for giving me the opportunity to spend the kind of time I wanted with my daughters.

      It was not too many years ago that I heard a different version of my being hired at MAS. Here is a paragraph written in 2009 for my story-a-day letters -

Last Thursday our department was sitting around the conference table, and Mike was giving the new guy a brief history of each of us. When he got to me, I added, "today, April 15th, just happens to be the 17th anniversary of the day I started work here at MAS." Bill E., sitting next to me at the lab meeting, said, "I'm the one who interviewed her, and she was not my first choice. I offered the job to another woman who had some asbestos experience. Denise didn't have any. But the first woman refused to take the obligatory drug test in order to get hired. So Denise was offered the job by default. Maybe drugs was the reason the first candidate was so effervescent."

     You could say that I was hired at MAS because of my qualifications; and you could say it was due to a case of who you know - very clearly illustrated here with the woman I knew from church who my ex knew from another lab. But when it comes right down to it, dang – it really and truly was just dumb luck, pure and simple.

104 20150414 MAS at 22

Mike at 56

Mike at Hermanos 2015

      Today, April 13^th, is Mike's birthday! He does not seem any older, and then again, he seems to have aged a whole bunch since hanging around with me! Oh well.

Looking good for the hunt! 2010

Emceeing at Storytelling

      What story or memory can I write down for Mike's birthday? There's the one about the time Mittens brought a live rodent into the house which took up residence for the next few months. I'll save that for another day. Or the time his truck would not start – that's the story I always have ready to tell should an event be short of tellers some evening. There is the year we were at the company Christmas party and had neglected to discuss ahead of time the designated driver, and we each got a separate ride home that night. Of course, there was Mike's fiftieth birthday where we had a big party at the house – his sisters came from Alabama and Florida – and there were oysters and kegs of beer and the oysters were gone long before the beer – a week later, Mike was still trying valiantly to empty the kegs, but alas, we sacrificed some to the backyard.

where's the beer?

      One thing that stands out most of all about Mike is how supportive he has been with my pursuit of storytelling. In fact he has dived in and has become a gifted teller himself! Mike often talks of Brantley, Alabama, and he paints a picture such that we can see Main Street and the shelves in the hardware store, and the human touch he puts on all the people in town – making us want to know more!

      And he is so danged cute! I can post info on facebook about upcoming storytelling events, and I can be clever, full of puns, poetic, sometimes bordering on shocking – just to get folks' attention – and the post gets no attention at all. BUT if I post just one picture of Mike – usually any picture of him with a glass of beer at any bar – I swear, people start clicking the like button, and it continues for days!

I'm the luckiest woman in the world!

Cheers!

      So I blatantly use pictures of Mike now to promote my postings.

He is one of the Good Guys – romantic, strong, generous, funny, smart,....and cute.

Our first anniversary 2010

103 20150413 Mike and 56

Gomez Philosophy

      Not too long after we moved to the old farm house on Zimmerman – we got a pair of kittens from a litter that neighbors back in Valley Circle Lane had weaned. They were half Persian, and we were only going to get one, but somehow we got a brother and sister. Gomez was black with some white markings on paws and face. Morticia was grey with white fur in the same places as Gomez. Of course, they were named after the main characters on the tv show The Addams Family.

       Morticia was only with us a few months – both cats were indoor/outdoor, and one day Tish did not come back. I heard years and years later that my brothers had found her at the time dead, probably hit by a car, in the gully across from the school which was not that far away.

      But Gomez was with us for ten years. We never had a cat before, not really any pets at all – a turtle that Eric can tell you about who only lived a couple of days, and a dog named Duke and a dog named Buster who did not stay long either because they did not get along with us children and were subsequently given away. So with our lack of experience, Gomez had us thinking he was a normal cat.

      He hunted and brought home birds and mice, sometimes eating them, sometimes leaving parts by the back door. There was a hole in the basement window where the old dryer vent used to be, and Gomez would come and go through that hole – sometimes bringing friends with him.

      One morning I got up and started walking down the stairs in the dark. On the landing, I could hear a commotion, and when my eyes got used to the dark, I was shocked to see a wounded rabbit and Gomez on the landing with me, ignoring me, and glaring at each other!

      When Gomez was hungry, he meowed. He meowed incessantly until he got fed. This is the part that we thought was normal - and it was not until Gomez was long gone and we had all grown up and had other cats of our own and my folks had other cats, that we discovered other cats do meow, but they don't do it non-stop.

      The cat Mike and I have now, Mittens, will cry once to let you know she is on the bed, or perhaps she thinks it is time for us to wake up, or she wants to go out, or maybe she is hungry – but she cries once, and when she knows we have heard her, she stops. Gomez did not do that – when he was hungry he meowed and continued - especially if he knew you had heard him.

      Sunday mornings, Gomez would sit outside our closed bedroom doors and start to cry. Each of us would pretend to be asleep, hoping someone else would wake up and go feed him. No one wanted to get up. And so the meowing continued. Our doors had louvers in them – after a while, Gomez would meow and then strum his paws over the wood louvers. If he was not strumming on my door, I could see his shadow in the morning sun coming through the louvers strumming on Clark's closed bedroom door. I think it was Clark who usually caved first on those mornings – he would be mad, but he would not make any noise himself in the off-chance that everyone else really was still sleeping and not just lying there faking it.

      Well, once we fed Gomez, he would eat everything in the bowl so fast that he often chucked it all back up again. And we did not know any better – just thought that all cats did that!

      So on school days, I was the first one home from school – my folks were both at work. Gomez would meow and meow insistently for food. He was such a pest! He did not appreciate that I did not use the bathroom at school at all all day, and I really needed my first few minutes at home to have some peace in the bathroom. So the noise continued. Finally I would feed him, and the house would be quiet for a while.

It was not too much longer that my brothers would arrive home from school, and it was about this time that the tell-tale sound of Gomez making heaving noises could be heard. I would stop what I was doing to figure out what room of the house the cat was upchucking in and make a mental note to find it and clean it up before Mom got home.

      One day I heard the cat heaving, and I thought it was coming from the basement. Clark and Eric had been going up and down the stairs - so I figured they would take care of the upchuck in their travels. And I forgot about it. About a half an hour later, I was walking down the stairs to the basement, when I saw the pile on one of the steps! I turned around and stomped my feet back up the stairs – yelling the whole time “how can you two walk past this cat puke and ignore it over and over again?”

      I went to the kitchen to get some paper towels, “why is it okay to walk past cat puke and think that it is okay to just let someone else clean it up instead of you?”

      Returning to the step and bending over to clean up the mess, “are you really going to pretend that you have not seen this, or even heard it happen, and just walk right by it over and over again? Because you aren't fooling me into thinking you did not know it was here!”

Both brothers were staring at me as I finished cleaning up the cat puke and I made one more rant, “why didn't you take care of this yourself?” One brother calmly responded, “we both know that you will make a lot of noise, and then you will clean it up.”

      You have to admit, it is a pretty good deal! Most of the time, having to hear all that noise is a small price to pay to have someone else do the chore!

      Over the course of my long work history, the Gomez upchuck story has come to my mind many times – I make a lot of noise, but I'm pitching the fit while doing the work that I'm complaining that someone else should have been doing! One co-worker even asked me one time if I could eliminate the noise and just do what everyone knows I'm going to do anyway!

      And I have also come to realize that I am the one being petty in cases like this (especially in light of the Sunday morning Gomez antics mentioned above, that I usually don't include when talking about the puke on the stairs after school story!) So nowadays, I tend to be a little quieter about it – but every once in a while Mike asks if something or other is bothering me, usually in the workplace, and I'll say, “No, it's just cat puke.”

102 20150412 Cat Puke 

Rats of Words

     Until recently, Mike and I shared the same office at the lab. Our desks were back to back, and often when we were trying to talk to each other, our necks stretched so we could see over the top of our monitors. And our co-workers thought that was so cute! How wonderful that we spent every minute of every day together without trying to tear out each other's throats. Yeah – well, we'll just go with that rather than spoil everyone's idyllic illusion.

Mike in the office he shared with me

     Anyway, one day Mike was typing an email, and he asked me how to spell separate. My brain went to automatic, and instead of spelling it for him, I said, “separate is a rat of a word to spell.” Mike said, “do you know how to spell it or not?” I repeated, “separate is a rat of a word to spell – get it?” Yeah, then he got it. “Did your teachers not give you little tricks like that to help you spell certain words?” Not any that he had remembered all these years later.

     Well!

     The principal is my pal.

     We all want a piece of the pie.

     Do not mar your grammar with poor speech.

     Connecticut is connect I cut, which makes no sense at all, but you don't forget it!

     I guess those are all the ones I remember.

     At the beginning of this year, Mike moved to his own private office in another corner of the building - a place that better reflects his status in the company – no more looking over each other's monitor by day. I don't know who will help him now with his rats of words to spell!

101 20150411 Rats of Words