More Growth

From the initial spurt of growth, the amaryllis has settled into a bit more each day. I forgot how tall these things get. The ones you can get at the dollar store are not as big as the ones from the plant stores. That I remember. I shall explain the stuff surrounding the amaryllis as it's in the photos. These things sort of describe who I am.

Thursday, January 10th.

 My 365 Word-a-day calendar.

I love words. I love language. I've been buying this calendar since 1980, yes, 1980. I cannot imagine my living room without it. I used to save the pages and try to use as many words as possible in sentences when I wrote my friends. Eventually, because some words, like "hydromancy" shown here, are not words I could fit into a reasonable sentence, the stack got to be years deep. Sensing frustration, I tossed the lot and haven't looked back. Some words make it into my vernacular. Some, I just acknowledge when I tear off the page in the morning. Normally, this calendar has a back stand but, in trying to pop that open, I broke it off. I'm going to have to prop this year's calendar against something. Oh well.

Friday, January 11th.

The pitcher behind the amaryllis is from one of my favorite antique pottery sets, Jewel Tea's Autumn Leaf. Jewel Tea used to be sold by door-to-door salesmen in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Think of it as similar to the Peapod or Schwan's service available in some places. The Autumn Leaf pattern was hugely popular in the 1930's and 1940's. What is visible is a water pitcher from my collection.

I've never had a house where the collection could be properly displayed or used. I've always wanted to give a party where everything I have could be properly utilized from the plates and cups to the covered baking dishes and the coffeepot (assuming I can remember how to make coffee in the thing).

I haven't collected anything in years. I used to ask for something every year. Storage is the problem and the boxes of Jewel Tea sit on shelves in the basement. Maybe some day...

Saturday, January 12th.

The milk glass cat dish that sits on a Jewel Tea covered casserole dish was a Christmas gift from my late best friend, Rita. It's a small candy dish. It really has no antique value and the lid is rather wobbly. She got it at a garage sale and it was a Christmas gift to me.

Why save it? Rita passed away in June of 2001. I don't have anything to remember her by other than the things she gave me and photographs. Time has blurred the memories of her and the things we shared. I keep the candy dish even though it's superfluous to my existence because it reminds me of her. "I saw this and I knew you had to have it," I remember her saying. I've never used it, but it sits there, reminding me of a time in my life when we called each other once a week, just to talk.

Sunday, January 13th.

Now that the amaryllis is getting taller, I have to step back to photograph it. That brings more of the background, the things on the walls, into the photo. I don't have enough wall space. Does anyone, really? I also haven't changed in decades what hangs on the walls.

The framed cat plate was given to me by a woman I used to know who lived in Canada. We met in an online book chat room and because fast friends. She went through a series of jobs before becoming a professional framer. This plate, with a cat asleep amongst books, was one of her first attempts at framing something different than a square.

I keep it because of the subject matter. A cat asleep amongst books. That sort of describes me. Cats and books. Life is good. The piece also reminds me of Margaret. She was vivacious, willing to take chances, gregarious. I am, by nature, reticent and quiet. It takes me a bit to become comfortable with new people. Margaret was not that way and I gravitated to her like a moth to flame. We drifted apart in 2003. I sometimes wonder what she's doing now.

Monday, January 14th.

Here's what it looked like this morning. I'm going to have to turn the container again. I also should water it tonight when I get home. It seems exceptionally happy in this location.

Beverage:  Darjeeling tea

Deb

I Can't Read

When faced with the stress of not knowing, there are many ways one can alleviate the wear and tear on the mind. Some people eat. Some people drink. Some people practice meditation. I discovered this weekend, for sure, what I probably knew all along this year, I stitch.

Remember at the end of last month, when the last cross-stitch was finished? I wasn't going to pick up another project until January 1st. December was about taking stock, sitting back and relaxing and NOT stitching. I have mountains of books and a smaller stack of magazines to read. I was going to read the magazines, get them recycled so the only ones on the ottoman were the current issues. I did read 5 magazines over the past 4 days. I picked up a book, started it and realized, after a time, that I'd read the 3rd page three times. My mind wasn't interested in reading. It was interested in financial doomsday scenarios. (Memo to self: Saturday afternoon PBS hours are filled with Suze Orman. Not a good thing.)

"You can skip breakfast on weekends to make the ends meet. They can't, by law, stop your utilities, so you don't have to pay them if you need the money." My mind raced on ahead of my reality. There's a great line from The Simpson's which would pop up the minute the doom and gloom voice would start in. "Shut up brain, or I'll poke you with a Q tip," says Homer Simpson. All it took was one paragraph of, "And in order to further the goal of [insert cause], we need your help" and my brain was off to the races.

In order to calm down and enjoy the weekend, I spent Saturday morning cleaning the area of the basement below the bathroom plumbing. When that was done, I wandered over to the chest of drawers where I keep my sewing patterns and crafting supplies. There are a bunch of kits in one of the drawers so I started going through them. One caught my eye. I could do this.

I discovered, as I started in on the first color, that cross-stitch is my preferred method of relaxation. It was reasonably simple to throw my energies and my brain into the x's and graphs and colors of a new project. As much as I love to read, it wasn't enough to keep me from setting down the book and pondering the future. Here, I have to look at the grid, look at the colors and then look at the fabric. I found the stress slid away. There really isn't anything I can do about the money troubles I face other than do what I can when they surface. Sitting in the recliner on a Saturday night complaining to the world won't solve them either. Putting that energy into something, that does work.

It sort of snowballs then. I turned on the TV or popped in a DvD and just stitched. I don't know who gave me this kit. It was something they had opened and prepared but never got past step 1. I think I see why.

The first flower I chose to do was the purple one. You are given two colors of purple, a light and a medium purple, no dark purple. The colored graph clearly shows dark purple as part of the design, but that's not a color in the batch you're given. In fact, it's not even listed on the color chart. There is a maroon shown but not a dark purple, where it's clearly shown on the chart.

The kit was bought at a discount. Originally $30, there is a sticker on it for $10. I'm sure that's the price the person who bought this paid. I have no idea how old this is either as I haven't seen it for sale on any of my crafting supplies sites. Whoever bought this must have tried to start this, looked at the problem and then decided it wasn't something they wanted to deal with. My late mother-in-law did some stitching so I wonder if I got it from her during one of her house cleanings.

Never fear. I, who have boxes of DMC floss also have a sewing basket full of floss bits.

This is my original sewing basket. I believe my mother's father gave this to me when I was, perhaps, 9 or 10. I use it now to keep my cross-stitching needles in the underside of the lid, which is a large pin cushion. It also contains non-DMC floss in plastic bags organized by color. I simply went through the bags to find the purple and, viola, I happened to have a dark purple of indeterminate origin that fit the bill perfectly. I have just enough of the dark purple on hand to do this project and whatever is left from this will go into these bags.

Sometimes, however, I look at these bags and think I should find something to use this stuff up. I gravitate towards DMC colors, the numbers and those kinds of charted designs and I rarely delve into this basket for floss. What would I use the basket for if it didn't contain remnants of past projects? Who knows.

So, I'm off stitching again. There is a vast wasteland on TV during the afternoon hours and I don't rightly care for the offerings in the evening, either. I want my computer back. In the meantime, I know exactly who is going to get this NEXT Christmas and I feel my stress melt away with each stitch.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Would It Work Today?

There is a huge market for "vintage" items now. A couple of the blogs I follow to the right; Smile and Wave and Thompson Family-Life; are penned by women who worship vintage, thrift relentlessly to find just the right piece that I look at and think, "I remember when that was new". It's amusing, in a way, to see my childhood now held up as a pinnacle of design or color or kitsch. But then, I remember cruising antique stores for the right chair or end table. My collection of Jewel Tea china, as an example, was once something  given away in oatmeal boxes. Hence I guess our view of what's called "vintage" or "antique" varies as the years separate us from when the item was new.

Where am I going with all this? Well, today's old photograph is of the gas station where my dad worked for a time. Yes, I grew up on a farm but I really think dad never wanted to be a farmer. It was the only way of life he knew, however, and he was sort of expected to farm. His father helped my parents buy the farm where I lived my life from age 3 to age 20, when they moved into town. Grandpa spent a lot of time with us, helping with everything a working farm does. It's not an easy life. It wasn't when I spent my years pitching hay nor is it now. I think my dad would have rather been a man working in a factory than a man on a tractor.

After grandpa passed away, farming became less and less what dad wanted to do. He started looking outside the farm, with its spotty income, and took a factory job. He worked that until the factory closed and then did a number of other jobs in and around my hometown. One of them was at this gas station.

I don't have the photo in front of me where I could read what I scribbled on the back for the identifying year. This was an open house at the station. For a 3-day weekend in the summer, the station had contests and discounted items. I remember a watermelon seed spitting contest, water balloons, a jar filled with marbles to guess how many, gift certificates to local businesses and discounted food and soda pop in the mechanic bay.

I can still hear the ding when you pulled into the station and ran over the line that activated the bell. Self-service was unheard of. Oh, in a small town, you could get by with it if the station owner knew you. I can remember my dad pulling into Smitty's and pumping gas because Smitty was busy with another customer, but usually, you waited. The oil was checked. Your windshield and back window cleaned. I remember the sound of the pump bell when you hit a dollar's worth of gas. I remember when gas was a quarter a gallon and the uproar of that. And I remember these small stations.

On the left was the retail area with a small office and a restroom tucked behind it. Unlike the markets that are attached to gas stations now, dad sold candy, gum, road maps, soda and small car aids like key chains, those trees that freshen the air and tire gauges. There wasn't much room and the soda machine took up a lot of it so retail was limited. Road maps HAD to be provided. It was just expected that if you wanted a road map, you went to a gas station. Given where we lived, he had maps of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

To the right was a mechanic's bay. This would be unthinkable nowdays, to have your mechanic at the same place where you get your gas. Dad knew quite a bit about repairing cars but he learned a lot from the guy who owned this station. I don't remember his name. They sold tires and paid one of the local farmers to come take the old tires. Occasionally, they had one or two cars awaiting parts for repairs sitting next to the station, but this guy's mantra was to finish repairing one car before taking on another because he didn't like having a bunch of "broken down" cars around his station.

These small stations are pretty much gone, only a memory. The building above still stands and the concrete islands where the pumps are in the photo were still there when I passed by a year or so ago. It was a repair shop with a lot of broken down cars surrounding it.

This gas company represents another era. Midland, Sinclair, DX, Texaco all those names of gas companies who serviced small town America are gone, gobbled up in the 1980's and 1990's.

Our lives are different. Dad opened the station at 7 a.m. Sometimes, he'd close it at 6 p.m. This station was located in a town west of Monona, named Luana. If you needed gas after 6, you had to either call up the guy who owned the station and have him open a pump for you (It was a key that turned the pumps on and off and it hung under the counter below the cash register.) or you had to drive to Monona where the Shell station was open until 9, 10 on home football or basketball nights. If the Mrs. was expecting, you'd best make sure you had gas for the drive to Waukon, Postville or Elkader because there wasn't anyone open after 10 p.m.

These places were also hang-outs for the men of the town. Yeah, you could go to the Corner Tap, but people generally frowned on that. So, if there wasn't a car needing repair, men would gather in the empty bay, drink coffee or soda and shoot the breeze. On a Saturday afternoon in the summer, it wasn't unusual to see 8-10 guys just sitting around talking about the crops or fishing or hunting or the Cubs or the Twins. You certainly don't see that in the larger cities anymore. I wonder if they do it still in small towns.

And I wonder, would people frequent a place like this if someone decided to try to resurrect it or has the time passed where this would be profitable? Full-service gas pumping with the amenities. I know my grandmother refused to go to a self-service station. She went to the same guy for decades. His son took over when he became too old to run the business. I remember she was distraught when the son had to close the station because he couldn't compete with the self-serve that opened up the street.

I don't remember when dad left this place or if he helped close it down. The relocation of highway 18 was a contributing factor. The traffic didn't go through Luana anymore so you didn't get people deciding to stop on the spur of the moment. Would they drive out of their way now for a chance at nostalgia? Would they pay 10 cents more per gallon to have a pump boy, for lack of a better description, come pump their gas, wash their windshields and check their oil? I have read that margins are razor thin for those who franchise a gas station with a convenience store. Could you make the ends meet if you provided car repairs with your gas pumping or do you need to offer beer, soda, a deli, aspirin, newspapers, chips and day old pizza?

Vintage or nostalgia? We thought we were cutting edge at the time. Is there a market for this kind of experience?

Beverage:  African Rooibos tea

Deb

Boy Toy

I was standing on the corner with a bunch of guys next to Michigan Avenue on Thursday. We were discussing this project and what Doug and I needed to get done. One of the guys said, "Oh man. Take a look at that," and then he rattled off the make, model and year of the above vehicle.

I'm impressed by how good it looks just because the owner obviously gives it a bath more than I wash my Jeep. And I do like the color. I've always been dismayed that car colors aren't "colorful". I remember Henry Ford's comment, "They can have any color so long as it's black." As our cars tend to be extensions of our psyche, the fact that the predominant colors on the road seem to be black, white and silver doesn't, to me, say much about us.

Soooo, okay, it's a red car and it's an older model that's been cared for. To me, it's not drool-worthy, but I present this photo for those for whom it is drool-worthy. I would imagine the owner would want you to drool from the sidewalk and not next to the car.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Something Borrowed

My pearls.

Now, I don't know if these are real. My mother's father gave these to me because "every girl should have pearls". I honestly don't remember when. It seems like I've always had them. I'm thinking I was about 6 years-old. Maybe my mom, who reads the blog, remembers. And did my sister get a set? It might have been the year she was born. These have passed into what might be considered "antique" status, I've had them so long.

This is the original clasp and stringing. I just don't find an occasion where I need to wear pearls.

Carole is going to wear them for her "blessing of the vows" ceremony. I am honored and I know my grandfather would be, too.

Beverage:  hot cocoa

Deb