It has taken a while for winter to arrive, but the winds have blown winter in. It is definitely here today… at least for the rest of the week.
We have had many days in the 40s and 50s. Not too many of those frigid below freezing days. The big story has been the rains. Full days of rain and cloudy skies. Inches of rain. I don’t know how much rain we have received but it has wiped out those dry summer months and we are now above average in the rain department.
Although it has been warmer and wetter than most, the winter of 2024 is finally here.
Now bundle up and choose a book and enjoy the quiet repose.
Before you know it the skies will clear and daffodils and forsythia will be starting the cycle all over again.
Overwhelmed with stuff and not only my own, but caretaker of family photographs, old High School diplomas from the 30s, travel journals, carbon copies of letters, note books, holy cards from extended family funerals, and bits of family mementos that go back over 100 years.
So many memories which brings me to the tuxedo. My father’s tuxedo, or should I say the last one that he actually wore; as he wore many over the years. Many styles…narrow collar, wide collar, velvet ties, red ties, plaid cummerbunds and of course bell bottoms. Being a musician, he wore his tux a couple of times a week until he stopped playing regular in his 80s. I have this, his last Tuxedo or at least I still have his tux jacket, the pants met their demise by moth and only recently I put them into the trash bin. I did cut off the buttons, as you just never know, and removed the label on the inside of the waist band.
The waist band says it was from Masters in Washington, D.C. Googling Masters, they are still in business after 80 years on M Street in NW. A tailor shop and supplier of tuxedos. I remember going into a tailor shop as a child with my father numerous times for a fitting or to pick up a new jacket. This must have been the place. My father was always specific about the number of buttons and vent slits in the back, whether it was a center vent, two side vents or no vent at all.
He always looked nice in his suits and tuxedos. He really did not start to wear more casual clothes until he retired, but I don’t think I ever saw my father in a pair of jeans and shorts only occasionally. As my mother used to say, “Your father always looked nice.”
The current purge was necessitated by some renovations and changing the function of some rooms in the house. I have had to go through some of my family archives and my own personal items so I am pleased that I at least managed to dispose of one pair of moth-eaten tuxedo pants and to collect a few bags of stuff of my personal stuff to donate.
I will go through some other items and memories another day.
I found this photo recently at an antique/junk store. It reminded me of when I was a child and we would travel to the beach and stay in weathered hotels or musty smelling beach apartments for a few days.
I remember one time we had stayed at a beach apartment and my mother was pissed. She was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. “This is no vacation for me!” she said. I think we ate out the rest of our trip. It seems there was one large living room where the kids slept on the floor and couches and one bedroom with a door my parents stayed in. We would usually leave home on a Sunday after church driving east on Rt. 50 to the ocean. We typically stayed only 4 nights. Coming home Thursday. I remember only one time when I was 12 when we stayed an entire week at Ocean City, Maryland. Probably my favorite vacation, but it was the last one we took as a family. I am not sure why. We were getting older and then my oldest sister got married and shortly after that my brother got married. Suddenly there were a lot fewer of us at home and our own lives did not center around family as much.
But this photo of the cars in the blaring sunlight at the shore brought me back to Ocean City, Maryland almost 60 years ago as we prepare to travel to the North Carolina coast to have another adventure at the sea shore.
A Chevy wagon on the left and a Ford on the right.
Today, this sunny mild January day in the 50s reminds me of a day when I was about 5 years old. The last day of winter over 60 years ago.
I was outside playing on the concrete stairs that led from the basement to our backyard. The stairs had a sturdy railing painted black that protected one from falling into the well of the stairs as well as helped steady oneself when going up and down the steep stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a drain. Where it led to was a mystery, but whenever it rained my mother rushed to the stairwell and cleared it out, sweeping away the leaves and grass clippings so that water would not seep into the basement under the door. Clearing the drain for my mother was a constant worry for her well into her 90s when she finally had to move from the house she lived in for 60 years.
On that last day of winter, I remember that it was so beautiful and bright. The kind of light that you only see in the winter. When the sun can stream through the branches on the trees that have yet to sprout their new buds.
I was playing alone on the stairs with my soldiers. Which war I was reenacting I can’t remember. I had so many soldiers. But it easily could have been WWII as at this point the end of that horrible war had only been over less than 15 years. It still lived in the front of everyone’s mind, even those who had not actually gone to war.
Such a beautiful day that last day of winter.
The other part of this memory was that the next day, the first day of spring, was cold and windy with snow flurries. Looking out the big picture window from our living room this reality was so confusing to my 5-year-old mind. It just seemed impossible that this very cold day was the first day of spring when the last day of winter was so warm and welcoming.
I continue to look forward to the first day of spring and this year I hope for no snow flurries.
Photos, comments or captions and sometimes poems. Should I read it straight through? Or one page for each corresponding day? What about February 29? Wait for a leap year to read it? I think there’s one next year.
I don’t want to read the entire book at one sitting.
I want to savor it. Read it slowly.
I am thinking of reading a month of days at a time on the first day of each month.
If I want to I can reread the current month as many times as I want over the course of the month.
This will give me something to look forward to on the first of each month.
A much more pleasurable task along with paying bills and the mortgage and cleaning the kitchen drain with baking soda and vinegar.
One month at a time. To make it last all year.
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The first Patti Smith book I purchased was Seventh Heaven. I purchased it in August 1977.
Here is a catalog card when they were manually created. This card was typed, stamped, corrected with white out, and added to in pencil. You can see the hole at the bottom of the card where a rod went through all of the cards in a drawer so that if you dropped the whole drawer you would not have to resort the entire thing. A library nightmare.
It looks like the library had this Business Reference title starting in 1973 and stopped updating this card in 1988. Or maybe stopped in 1986 with volume 14, number 1. Perhaps they stopped carrying it or got the resource on CD-Rom instead.
Without manually creating a catalog card it would have been very hard to locate a resource for your research. A book would typically have multiple cards, one for title, one for subject, and one for author. You can look at catalog cards as an early analog form of google which everyone who visited a library would need to use.
Now these library cards are used to make notes, create art, and to remember how we used to find books in the library.
I had a dream that Amy and I were staying on the second-floor of a small hotel that reminded me of an old rooming house. I believe we were on vacation and it was by the sea someplace down south.
We ran into Robin, a very old friend, as she lived in town near by and coincidentally Danny stopped by to stay hi. He was just passing through. As I was looking out the window at the sea two stories below, Robin asked which direction did I think North was. I said, well I think it is that way, pointing towards the way in my brain north must be. Robin was amused as she said, “It was the other way.” I was pretty sure I was correct so it was a bit disorienting, now feeling I did not know where I was.
Robin who I had not seen in over 40 years still had her youthful face, but her eyes were clouded over, so much so that I was not sure how she could see. She would not tell us where she lived and soon slipped out of the room not knowing if I would ever see her again.
Kozmicdogz Breaks Loose 