Archives

Something Blue

May10

This is a vintage ‘Forget Me Not’ earring and brooch set made by Krementz. I wish they were in my jewelry box! I only have the posts that I wore on my wedding day. I’d bought them from Zweck’s Jewelry story in Marshfield.

I leaned forward to look closely at my reflection in the mirror. There were just a few more things for me to do to be ready. White wedding dress lace spilled from my lap to the bedroom’s wooden floorboards. Gazing down at the pretty design, I marveled, “I’m getting married today!” As the baby of my family, I’d watched all four of my big sisters get married. Finally, it was my turn to walk down that aisle.

Smiling, I picked up the earrings I’d wear on my special day and thought about the old Victorian wedding rhyme, “Brides should always wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” My jewelry was little ‘forget-me-not’ flower posts by Krementz. Gold petals painted blue surrounded a pearl standing in the place of a stamen for the blue in my trousseau.

Several things qualified for the borrowed item in my wedding. For instance, I couldn’t remember buying the Muguet Des Bois perfume by Coty. A small vial labeled with a spray of tiny white flowers enclosed the cherished scent of a pure, sweet little flower called ‘lily in the valley’. I dabbed some of the precious fragrance behind my ear lobes.

Earlier this morning, Mom had given me one of her old, lacy handkerchiefs for my ‘something old’ bridal goods. Everything else I wore for the day fit in the category of ‘something new’.

 Nervously glancing around, I wondered, “Am I ready? Have I done everything I planned to do?” The pink bedroom I was sitting in had been my sister Betty’s room. When Mom and my sister painted the room pink, the dressing table and mirror frame had been painted pink also. The stool I sat on was nothing more than a small oil can covered with a pale-pink gathered skirt to hide its common origins and topped with a soft cushion for comfort.

Continue reading →

Advertisement

Dark Anniversaries

Mar29

The sound of the ringing phone dragged me out of a deep sleep. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet and stumbling in the dark mobile home hallway toward the living room to answer the phone. I felt heavy with a strange nagging dread. Arnie, my young husband was two steps behind me.

Two months earlier, I had given birth to a baby girl named Christy, who had a rare birth defect. We brought her home twice but were forced to return her to the hospital within days. Having no childcare experience and feeling terrified by her special needs, I felt like a failure as a mother. Yesterday evening Arnie and I had visited our little girl at the hospital. Reaching through the bars of her crib, I gently patted her back. I didn’t know what else to do.

The voice on the other end of the line was Christy’s pediatrician. He said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your daughter has just passed away.” Handing the phone to Arnie, I sank onto the sofa and cried. Christy’s death was our first experience with losing someone dear to us. My husband and I had celebrated out 20th birthdays a few months earlier.

The call from Christy’s doctor at 2 a.m. on April 2nd, 1971, introduced me to days that I have come to call dark anniversaries. Unlike a birthday where you celebrate the person’s birth, the death date is a day you remember them and miss what might have been. Dark anniversaries are seared into your memory forever.

Continue reading →

Chemist in the Kitchen

Feb15

I scanned the hundreds of spices and other baking ingredients in mom’s kitchen cupboard and wondered what a scientist would want in her laboratory. Reaching up, I took down the cinnamon box and tapped some into a shot glass. I had two more shot glasses to fill and several doll-sized teacups. I regretted not having more scientific looking equipment, but that couldn’t be helped.

Slowly and methodically, small samples of baking soda, salt, the entire contents of a cherry flavored Kool-Aid packet, sugar, tap water and vinegar filled the various small containers. Several trips to the laboratory (living room) moved the supplies where I planned to experiment.

Satisfied that I had everything I needed, I sank down onto the floor next to the child-sized kitchen cupboard that Daddy had made for my big sisters when they were little. The off-white cupboard with small clusters of flowers painted on each cabinet door and the shelves painted red, didn’t look much like a laboratory for a scientist, but it would do. Empty paint-by-number vials would serve as test tubes.

Hosting imaginary tea parties didn’t interest me when I was nine years old. I wanted to grow up to be a scientist. I wanted to be someone who did experiments and discovered amazing things. For the next hour I happily mixed various powders and liquids in the small vials.

My final experiment for the afternoon had me tapping Kool-Aid powder, salt, sugar, and flour into one of the little vials. Topping it off with several drops of vinegar, I snapped its airtight cap on and began to shake it. Suddenly the little capsule’s top blew open and red Kool-Aid splattered everywhere. Amazed, I sat with my mouth hanging open for a few moments. I had just discovered chemicals that exploded!

Continue reading →

Roomis Igloomis

Feb8

Mom was nowhere to be seen, but I smelled beef roasting in the oven when I peeked into the kitchen. On the counter next to the stove was a quart jar of mushrooms.  Mom canned many jars of them during the fall. When the jars were cool, we placed them on shelves in the basement root cellar. It looked as though mushrooms were on the menu for tonight.

Last autumn Mom and I had picked the mushrooms we were going to have for supper. We had walked down the hill behind our farm buildings. Once we reached our back 40, we crossed over into the neighbor’s cow pasture, which was dotted with the stumps of trees cut down many years before.  Each fall, mushrooms grew thickly around those stumps.

We picked mushrooms many times during the week or two that they were in season, each time we filled the wicker picnic-sized basket my mother carried. We never felt chilly as we walked back uphill to the farmyard despite having the wind in our face. I loved the way mom looked in her brown-plaid wool shirt jacket with the basket on her arm and her gray curly hair. I felt like all was well in the world when I was with her.

The aroma of roasting beef evoked images of slices of tender, browned roast on my supper plate, topped with creamy mushroom gravy. My mouth watered. I loved mushrooms. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t share my love of mushrooms. Billy wouldn’t complain at the supper table, because that would be rude to Mom about the food she prepared. He would just quietly pass the gravy bowl to the person sitting next to him. When not at the table though, Billy had often called mushrooms, “slimy toadstools.”

Usually everyone in my family ate and liked all that was set before us. For Billy to be repulsed by mushrooms seemed strange to me.

Continue reading →

Night Shift

Nov2

Arnie’s 1966 navy Impala pulled into the driveway. Slipping into a jacket, I picked up my purse and ran out the back door of my rent-a-room house. A crisp fall wind swirled colorful leaves from the tree overhead through the air.  In the car, Arnie greeted me with a kiss. Before backing out of the driveway, he asked, “How was your first day working for Saint Joseph’s Hospital?”

“Amazing. I got to see a baby born!” I excitedly responded. “The mother had medical problems, so it was a high-risk pregnancy. Evelyn and I got to observe everything from start to finish.”

“Evelyn?” my boyfriend questioned.

“I wasn’t the only new employee to start working on the obstetrics unit today.” I explained, “Evelyn is older and has worked on other units at the hospital in the past.”

My boyfriend and I had met in June, the same month I moved to Wausau to work at Hospital North. We soon began seeing each other each day. Between his job and visiting me, Arnie was driving over 100 miles a day. By September we knew we were headed for marriage, so I applied for a job at Saint Joseph’s Hospital and we both moved to Marshfield. Arnie found a rooming house for himself, while I rented a bedroom from Alma, a widow who lived two blocks from the hospital. My first day of work was on September 29th, 1969.

Continue reading →

Secondhand Memories

Sep14
Grandpa Jacob Altmann Senior with Mary and Betty and Casper in the background.

One of my sisters reminisced, “Grandpa kept a pint jar filled with hard candies on a shelf by the door. Whenever we visited him, he’d give us a candy.”

Another sister chimed-in, “I remember going to his apartment in the garage that summer after he died. I took one of the candies from the jar and it was chewy!”

Younger than my sisters by more than a decade, I volunteered, “I remember Grandpa falling when he came into our house. I was standing in the kitchen watching Daddy hold the door open for him.”

“You couldn’t possibly remember that!” scoffed one of my older brothers. “You were just barely two-years-old, too little to remember. What you do remember, is what we’ve told you.”

Continue reading →

Moments of Grace

Aug10

The hostess politely inquired, “Would you like to dine inside the restaurant or out on the patio?” I hesitated because I dislike sitting in full sun. As if reading my mind, the hostess quickly put my fears to rest. “Most of the patio is in shade.”

 I confirmed my preference with a smile. “I’d love a table in the shade.”

A tall pergola shaded one half of the patio and most of the other half of the remaining area enjoyed the shade of a sapling tree. Placing a glass of water on the table, the hostess promised that a waiter would take my order after I had a chance to look at the menu. 

While waiting for my order to be filled, I glanced around. Flowerboxes placed on the top of the patio walls were full of flowers and herbs. Healthy vining plants cascaded their tendrils down and swayed in a gentle breeze.

I overheard one woman at a nearby table telling her companion, “I miss Phillip so much. Mornings are especially hard, but today something happened that made me feel better. From the kitchen window I saw a beautiful cardinal perched in the tree Phillip had planted before his illness. Seeing it gave me a feeling of peace. I felt like Phillip was there checking on me.”

Continue reading →

(I’m) The Beast

May25

The two, peanut butter-loaded mouse traps that I put in the brick farmhouse’s old-fashioned back porch last night were nowhere to be seen. Arnie, my husband was in the house. I yelled, “Honey, did you get rid of the mouse traps I put out here yesterday?”

Arnie’s bellowed answer, “No I didn’t” made me closely examine the green indoor-outdoor carpet. The traps were gone, and there wasn’t even an oily smear left behind on the artificial grass.

Yesterday, I’d noticed chew marks on the outdoor toys stored in a box below one of the porch windows. Today, the toys looked even worse. I assumed mice were doing the damage. Our farmhouse had a long history of rodent visitors.  

My husband stepped into the porch with a half-eaten sandwich in his hands. He looked in the toy box and exclaimed, “Mice can’t do that kind of damage! I think a rat has been getting into the porch.”

Continue reading →

All About Me, Me, Me!

May4
A band from the days country western music had a genuine country western sound!

Potatoes on the oven rack beside the roasting pan were not soft in the center yet. Poking a fork into the browning chuck roast revealed juicy meat that would melt-in-our-mouths after another hour of slow baking. While closing the oven door, the kitchen light dimmed for a few moments. Tossing the potholders onto a counter next to the stove, I left the kitchen.

My husband Arnie was in our Quonset shed working on one of his special projects. I knew that when he used the welder, the power it drew made the lights in the house dim for a few seconds. Curious to see his work and needing to tell him supper would be ready soon gave me a good reason to leave the house. The chilly morning had turned into a pleasantly warm spring afternoon.

The Quonset shed was one hundred yards from the house, but I took the scenic route that took me around the house, past a flowerbed, a bed of chives and rhubarb. A radio in the shed was tuned to a country western music station could be heard all over the yard.

Arnie had just finished laying down a new bead with the welder and pushed up his eye shield to inspect the work. Spotting me at the door of the shed, he smiled and took off his welding gloves and helmet. He proudly questioned, What do you think?”, motioning to the metal frame he’d made.

Continue reading →

April Showers

Apr6

I peered out of our family car’s mud-splashed backseat window. A passing milk truck had showered our car with a gritty mixture of mud, water, gravel and ice crystals shortly after we’d pulled out of our farmyard. Dirty snowbanks slumped in the roadside ditches. Brilliant sunshine and 40-degree springtime air was making them melt. I was amazed at how much the huge banks had already shrunk. Their sodden mess filled the ditches, so the melt water had nowhere to go but on the road, making it look like a mucky cow yard.

Arriving at my school, Daddy drove into the parking lot where dozens of other parents were dropping their children off. The blacktop lot, covered with a thick layer of hard ice all winter, was now covered with slush. I stomped my way to the school door, taking delight in the way my footsteps splashed. It didn’t matter to me that my brown stockings were getting drenched.

I had noticed that there were times when I arrived at school and found the building filled with the air of excitement and happy expectations. This especially was felt on snowy winter mornings. The halls buzzed with quiet murmurs of, “Do you think they’ll call off school and send us home early?” Hope, happiness and exhilaration could almost be smelled, touched, tasted.  Today, the excitement was due to the sudden arrival of spring weather during the weekend.

Sister Florence had put up a new bulletin board in my classroom over the weekend. Amid clouds of colorful flowers cut-out from construction paper, it proclaimed, “April showers bring May flowers!”  One of my classmates proudly offered Sister a bouquet of pussy willow twigs. Her wrinkled face was transformed by a big smile as she accepted the gift with genuine delight. Everyone was ready for spring.

Continue reading →