Games We Play

When computers were just taking off, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), created one game which, above all others from that era, gets looked back on with incredible fondness. It was called "Oregon Trail". It was based on the Oregon Trail, the route settlers took from Independence, Missouri, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. You could join the westward migration from many different points but Missouri to Oregon was the most popular and, given the privations of that time, there was safety and security in numbers.

If you had a computer in the 1990's, you probably had Oregon Trail. The premise was to get your wagon and family to the valley. Along the way, you had to ford rivers, deal with cholera, measles, dysentery, food shortages. You would restock at towns and forts along the way. In real life, if you left too early, your wagon and oxen were bogged down by spring rains. If you left too late, you'd have to cross the Rocky Mountains in snow storms. The infamous Donner party headed along the trail but turned, as some did, to head southwest toward California.

I know we had Oregon Trail on our first computer. The graphics were pixels, square boxes which depicted everything. There was a mini-game where, if you had bullets, and you could run out of those, you could go hunting when you would stop. It was such a fun game and the insidious "learning" that came with it made the game even more special. I know the computer lab at Carole's grade and middle schools had Oregon Trail for kids to play who did not own computers. I spent hours playing it, trying different times of the year to leave, and how long can I go without hunting before someone starves.

Last year, Pressman Toy Company released a card game version of Oregon Trail. It is hilarious.

The graphics on the card are pixelated and are fairly close to what you remember from the game. The challenge is the same; stay alive and get your party from Independence to Oregon. Along the way, you encounter the same challenges as the computer game gave you. The difference here is that you are working together to get at least one member of the party to Oregon. You lose if everyone dies.

Everyone gets "Supply" cards. These are the various things, like food, clothing, medicine, you'd need to ameliorate the "Calamity" from those red cards. The trail is the green snaky line and look. There are rivers to ford. You do that with a roll of the dice. When someone has to draw a calamity, the group pitches in to, you hope, stave off death for another few rounds.

Ah yes, death. Some things, like measles or cholera, can be fought with supply cards; medicine and clean water. But there are something things you have no hope to survive.

I have died of dysentery. The other instant death is snake bite. My friend, Lance, almost didn't want to play a third game because the first two games, he died, early on, of snake bite. He lasted a fair amount of time in game 3 but died of dysentery. I followed two rounds later.

Some of the instructions are a bit hazy. The game lends itself to "house rules" and can be played by any age from 10 up. It's for 6 people and does not work very well with 3 or less. The best hands were with 5 and 6 people.

It's also not very expensive. Target was, for a time, the only retail outlet carrying it. When released, last September, there was a rush to get it and, for a month, you couldn't find it anywhere. By Christmas, it was in ample supply. I think Target is still the cheapest place for purchase. I gave it to Carole for her birthday and to April and Perry for Christmas. I don't have a copy. I should get one.

If your kids don't know about the Oregon Trail, this would be a good way to start the conversation. Ruts from the wagons are still to be seen in Kansas and Nebraska. We have no concept of what it took to move a family of 4 across a country people knew nothing about. It's a fun game and, just like the old computer game, educational. *Gasp

Beverage:  Water

Deb

It's Not Godzilla But...

I was on the phone with my daughter while still at the office and I happened to notice an image on my office window.

It really was quite large, probably 2 inches long.

I remember these from my youth. Oh lordy are they one of the insects I dislike. While riding home on the school bus from picture day in early September of the 4th grade, one of the boys grabbed one, crunched it just enough to disable it and dropped it down the back of my dress expecting me to scream like a...well...girl. (I dislike that phrase immensely. Some of the biggest scaredy cats I've ever met have been men. Why isn't it, "Scream like a guy" as if women have a lock on screaming?) When we got home, mom insisted on photos on the front porch. Somewhere, I have that photo. I sit, all prim and proper, in my light green seersucker dress all the while this grasshopper in the throes of death is squirming on my back.

I remember bursting into tears when she was done and peeling off the top, ripping the armholes in the process. Mom was friends with the guy's mother so she took the offending grasshopper to Katie and demanded an apology. I think I got one, half-hearted. He was a small in stature guy and I'm sure he was bullied about his height or lack thereof. His way of dealing with it was to move the bullying down the line. He was already disappointed that I didn't scream or squeal when he dropped it down my back. Being forced to stand in front of all of us, his and my parents, and apologize was a huge humiliation. But, he never picked on any of us again. I never, ever liked him, but I really liked his parents.

Locusts are bigger than this. My dad would tell stories about watching them come in clouds at the end of summer. It seems to me that these 'clouds' weren't like the ones the Plains states had during the Dust Bowl years. But I'm fairly certain there would have been clouds, more like a bulbous group, coming and settling into the fields and eating anything they could. I also remember dad saying grasshoppers were great fishing lures. I don't remember what liked them, but I do remember him spearing the hook and tossing the still wiggling insect into the Mississippi.

I was scared of them for many years after the bus incident. They are wholly unpredictable. One insect might engage you in a staring contest. Another might hop straight up as you approach and then there are the ones hidden that fly off as you walk by. How many times have I been startled by a hopper that happens to share his air space with my body? That's when I scream simply because it's large and it startled me.

It took awhile, but they don't scare me anymore. They are quite fascinating when you get down at their level and look at them. Compound eyes and leg muscles which, if translated to humans would allow us to jump almost to the moon. Still, they should keep their distance from me. I can yelp, only don't tell me I sound like a girl.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

50 Years

I don't remember. As the month has creeped towards this date, I have tried to remember anything other than the few scraps that run through my mind. I have nothing.

I was in first grade. In 4 days, it would be my 7th birthday. In 6 days, it would be Thanksgiving. There was much to be excited about.

He would be shot at 12:30 and pronounced dead 30 minutes later. The school day began, I think, around 8:30, with lunch being taken in staggered shifts starting at 11:00. We got out at 3:00 p.m. and, because I lived on a farm, had to find my school bus to take me home. I don't remember any announcement and, if there was one, would I have understood what was being said?

I do remember getting out of school early that day. It was chilly and overcast. At that time, girls had to wear dresses or skirts to school. Boys, even farm boys, were not allowed to wear jeans. I have a memory of a red and blue plaid dress, a brand new dress, sent to me by my grandmother for me to wear before my birthday. I think I was wearing it that day. That's the impression I have.

I remember stone-faced adults helping us onto our busses for an early ride home. I remember, vaguely, a stone-faced bus driver, a normally jovial fellow, not saying, "Hello" as he usually did when we got on the bus. I'm sure the behavior change was unnoticed by me.

I have no recollection of my parents' reaction when I arrived home. I remember being angry the next day, because the usual Saturday morning cartoons, which my brother and I were allowed to watch in our pajamas while eating a bowl of cereal in the living room, were pre-empted for some stuff. There were all these talking heads, all these men, in hushed, deliberate tones, talking about something bad happening. What it was, I didn't know. I am very certain the television would have been on when Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald. I have no memory of seeing it. Perhaps we weren't allowed to watch TV that day. Most likely, we didn't care about the talking heads and went elsewhere to eat breakfast and to play. My sister was almost 10 months old, too, and probably crawling all over. If my parents wept over this, they didn't do it in front of us.

I have a vague memory of a funeral cortege, the black horses and the men without hats following solemnly behind it, walking for a long ways. There is a memory of an image of a flag-draped coffin. I see the video of John saluting his father's coffin and I do remember seeing that. I don't know if we had school the next week. Perhaps it was cancelled on Monday, as that was the day of the funeral and this new medium, television, was going to bring that event into people's homes. I don't remember school the day before Thanksgiving so that would have left just Tuesday for classes. My feeling is that we didn't go to school until the following week.

I also don't have any memory of my birthday or Thanksgiving of that year. Did we celebrate either event or did the trauma of the assassination of a president, something we were suddenly privy to, diminish all degree of happiness? I don't remember.

I think Oswald acted alone. I do not think there was a second shooter. Leaders of countries tend to be targets for people who want to make a name of themselves or who assign blame for the ills of their life or who think they will bring about whatever change they have latched onto. There tends to be a mental instability about the person doing the plotting. Although John Wilkes Booth had a small group of like-minded people supporting him, he was not a part of a grand, over-arching plot to destabilize and change the government. I think the same is true of Oswald.

I also think we like to wrap our heads around the idea of a conspiracy because one man, acting on his own thoughts, couldn't plan this, couldn't execute it. We had a young man with a beautiful wife, two delightful children, and a glamor that equaled any royalty anywhere else. Never mind the rumors of infidelity. Never mind the wheeling and dealing. Never mind bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. We liked the outward sheen. To have that so violently taken from us by one man, we can't get our heads around it.

Was Oswald influenced by things? Of course he was, just as any person is. His beliefs governed his actions. He probably blamed President Kennedy for some ill we don't know of, real or imaginary. I don't think he was coerced or directed by someone else to fire those shots, nor do I think there was anyone other than him with a gun aimed at the president. In his mind, removing Kennedy was the only rational step to take. I find the conspiracy theories interesting and we should always question what we know, but we should also accept that we will never, ever know, for sure, why. The answer to that question died on November 23rd when Jack Ruby shot Oswald.

We changed that day, all of us. There's a before November 22, 1963 and an after. Nine presidents prior to Kennedy had attempts made on their life. Three of those attempts were successful. The events surrounding these attempts were covered extensively, but we didn't see them unfold before us. We read about it the next day or, in the middle of the last century, heard about it on the radio. Here, we saw things as they were happening. The immediacy of this television medium allowed us to be angry together, to grieve together. For a few days, 50 years ago, we were united in a way we'd never been before. Kennedy's death was, I believe, the start of our desire to know and for media to bring everything to us. That is the biggest change.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

Yesteryear

I've mentioned, in previous posts, how pieces for quilts were taken from clothing that has been worn out. When it ceased to be fixable, it went into the pile to be cut apart for quilting.

I'm going through the latest box of fabric and out comes this.

I remember this. I remember wearing this. I believe I wore this in kindergarten as, at the time, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school except in the winter and then, we had to take them off when we got to school. Oh my. I remember. 

The skirt is not attached to the back bodice anymore. I think it can be repaired, however. A gentle hand washing and a check of the seams and I think it could be worn again. I didn't see anything else wrong with it. 

Another dress was in the box.

This is not something I wore. I have no idea who would have worn this. It's in much more serious condition with parts of the front missing. This is definitely a candidate for the quilt pieces bin.

But my dress? I don't have a granddaughter, yet. I may never have a granddaughter. I can't bear to put this in the quilt pile. I remember feeling wonderful when I wore this dress. I don't think anyone made it. I'm fairly certain it was purchased. I don't remember my sister wearing it, although hand-me-downs weren't uncommon in my family. I'm going to fix it, clean it and keep it. No, it really serves no purpose to keep it other than to hold onto a time when life was wide open and I wore pants to school under my dress.

Beverage: Dr Pepper

Deb

Why That Memory?

Memory is such a fickle thing. I can't remember where I put my car keys, but I had a memory spring into mind, totally unbidden, and fresh as if I'd had it happen yesterday.

There is an anniversary approaching. One year ago, my friend, April, was involved in a car accident. She hit black ice on her way to work and then hit a retaining wall. Had it not been for the airbags in her car, she would have been seriously injured. Her husband, Perry, took to Facebook to announce her accident. There was silence for hours for those of us too far away to be contacted quickly. It was evening before we learned she was shaken and bruised and very sore, but okay.

Why remember that? It came, like a flash, through my mind over the weekend; totally unbidden and quite unexpected. I wasn't really thinking about them. I think about my friends daily, offering a silent, "Hope you have a good day" to the ether in desire to send them good wishes. But actually thinking about them? No, I wasn't consciously. Suddenly, the event was just there, in the forefront of my memory and I could see, in my mind's eye, the photos Perry posted of the car.

Other memories came sweeping back last weekend. We got 6 inches of snow from Friday mid-morning to Saturday early morning. We were sent home around 2:45 so that those with longer drives would make it home in decent time. There is a school bus stop just north of the house. I heard the bus come by and stop.

I took the bus to school all my years from kindergarten to senior year. I did get a car in my senior year but sometimes it was needed by a parent so I would wind up taking the bus. We had a garage out by the road. It was strategically placed, I realized in later years, so that if you had to shovel to get out, you didn't have to shovel the long, long drive from the house to the road. We never used the garage as anything but storage so we still wound up shoveling.

You would stand in the garage, which faced north, to watch for the school bus as it headed up the road to the house. In the spring and fall, you'd stand out by the road unless it was raining. In the winter, the garage was a very necessary shelter from the cold.

As I watched the few kids who do ride the bus (This bus is for middle school kids.) get off, I remembered the cold. I remembered getting off as a storm was bearing down on us and I could feel the sting of wind-driven snow. I went to school during the last vestiges of my public school requiring female students to wear skirts or dresses. In the winter, we could wear pants under our skirts but those had to be removed when you got to school. I can remember times where we'd just grab our pants and go to the bus, either putting them on after we took our seats or carrying them home. It was such a hassle. If you chose not to put your pants on, your bare legs would be ice cold from the walk to the house after getting off the bus.

I haven't thought of my elementary school winters in decades. I don't know what the trigger was for April's memory. The trigger for my grade school past was hearing and seeing the bus stop in the storm. I don't know that the memories mean anything overarching, like dreams do. They were just called up from the great filing cabinet that is my brain.

As I get older and I have days where I can't remember anything, I worry, as perhaps most of us my age do, that the demon of dementia is creeping up on me. I can't find my car keys. I leave my carefully prepared lunch on the stove. I do a load of wash and forget it's in the machine. I don't know where I put my slippers. I take a message because someone is on another call and forget to give it to them until 2 hours later. My doctor said several years ago when I voiced my concerns to him about memory loss, that I have reached the age where there is a lot to remember in my life. If I really stopped to think about the things I do and all the years I have of things I've done, I have much more to remember than a college student. Therefore, it stands to reason that in all the processing my brain does, some things are going to get lost.

What we suddenly remember, what suddenly springs to mind totally unbidden, is quite interesting. I can remember, with vivid detail, something I'd truly like to forget and the surprise birthday party my parents threw me on my 18th birthday is nowhere to be found other than, yeah, it happened. Today is my sister's birthday. I can remember a rather loud argument we had during preparations for her wedding. I'm trying to remember times when we had fun together in spite of the 6 year age difference. Those memories, rather than the yelling at each other, are what I long to remember. I've had my brother ask me, "Remember when x happened?" and I haven't a clue. How can he remember something like that when I can't remember, some days, what I had for breakfast?

So, I'm back to why remember that April's car accident anniversary is close? April is well, hale and hearty and has spent the past year in physical transformation. She's an incredible inspiration, "brave", for those who get the inside joke. Maybe this memory popping in the conscious is a mini reminder to tell her how much she means to those of us who know her, how what she's done this past year is nothing short of remarkable.

Now that I've done that, do you know what I did with that list of things I needed to get done today?

Beverage:  Darjeeling tea

Deb

Day 10- The first novel you remember reading

Today's book challenge post is much easier than yesterday's. I was even quite surprised that one of the books I chose is still available and I could find a photo of the cover.

My mother is a voracious reader. I don't remember a time when she didn't read. I don't have memories of her reading to me, but I do have memories of being taken to the Monona Public Library, sitting at the kids table and being allowed to page through books with incredible pictures while she went to the left, into those dark stacks and came out with two or three books that didn't have pictures. Why would you want to read something that just had words on the page? Pictures make the words come alive.

I believe mom was encouraged to read by her parents. My grandmother received, probably, 6-8 different magazines every month and read each one of them. She read the newspaper, all of it, ads and everything. I don't remember my grandfather having books around, but he was a numismatist, an antique's dealer and a philatelist, and I remember magazines devoted to those hobbies lying around. My grandfather's parents had a few books in their home.

Reading was encouraged in all of us kids. My brothers don't read as my sister and I do. My ex-husband came from a family of readers so it would be natural to hand down the love of reading and the love of books to Carole. She's a couple days ahead of me on this challenge and her answer to this theme was her father's Hardy Boys books.

As I aged, the public library became a more wondrous place. Girl Scouts was in the basement of this building, the town hall. The library was just beyond the town clerk and the mayor's office. I can smell the smell that greeted you when you scampered up the stairs, across the lobby to the large wooden doors that said "Public Library" on them. The librarians were two ladies everyone knew and they made it their business to recommend books.

I think, the summer between 3rd and 4th grade is when I made the transition to non-illustrated chapter books. We went to the library and the librarian suggested I start reading Nancy Drew. She said the beauty of these books was that there were more of them in this series, meaning Nancy and her friends, these characters I could get to know, would have more adventures. Well, okay, I'll give it a try.

I don't know if I read The Secret of the Old Clock first. That is the first one in the series. I do know that once I started reading these, I was hooked.

At the time I was reading them, new books were showing up in the library every 6-10 weeks. I wasn't the only 4th grader reading Nancy Drew and 3 of us would, before Girl Scouts, go to the library to see if a new book was in. We had read all the others so a new one was a treasure. But, we did have arguments over who had checked out the last new book so whose "turn" it was to check the newest book out first.

That's when the librarian stepped in and said she would start a list. She would keep tabs on who checked out the book first and rotate it between the three of us. It was a good system. If one of us came in and found the newest book on the shelf but it wasn't our "turn" to check it out, she would call and find out if we were going to come in soon or could she let someone else check it out. I think this lasted a year before we moved on to other books.

In the back of my mind, there is the idea that there was a series I read before Nancy Drew, but Nancy Drew is the chapter book I remember most clearly.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Happy Birthday, Sis!

Today is my sister's birthday. I'm having fun with the scanner in the office since my home scanner doesn't want to work.

First week of September 1970, before school.

I can't seem to get the photos square, however.

Spitting watermelon seeds at the gas station where dad worked. That's him in the background. They were having an open house event over July 4th, 1976. You had to get the seeds into a box and you won a prize.

 

And finally, on a merry-go-round at Paul Bunyan State Park in Bemidji, Minnesota in 1973.

Hope your birthday is special.



Beverage:  Blackberry Sage Tea


Deb

My mother was cleaning.

Mom has been going through stored boxes lately. The next visit will have boxes of things for me to look through and decide if I wish to save the contents. But she sent a letter and inside was this.

I think this is the earliest example of my writing. It's got to be from around 3rd grade since it's not in cursive and I don't think I learned cursive handwriting until 3rd grade. It's also possible it's from 2nd grade.

I don't remember the context for this poem. What were we studying at the time? Was this a unit on poetry so we were asked to create our own. Was it a unit on the desert and we were asked to create something about the desert? I don't remember.

What is striking is that this survives at all. Several years ago, mom handed us box with stuff she'd saved from our grade school years. There was a lot from my sister and youngest brother, but very little from the brother closest to my age or from me. I have a "hand-print" turkey from Kindergarten I need to frame and there may be a couple other art pieces but that's about it. Mom didn't know why she didn't save more when Steve and I were in school.

I'm thrilled that written material survives, not just a hand-print turkey. I've always wanted to be a writer when I "grew up". Whether I have "grown up" or not is debatable but here is proof that I've been writing since I could hold a pencil and make the words. Thanks mom.

Beverage: Scottish Blend Tea

Deb

So When Did They Start Doing This?

Yes, it's a stick of butter. I was making "Ultimate Brownies" over the weekend and needed 2/3rd cup of butter or margarine. I don't cook with margarine anymore. If I'm going to consume fats, I might as well consume real ones, not "fake" ones.

I remember making butter in grade school. You get cow's milk of a high butterfat content. Usually Brown Swiss, Jersey or Guernsey was used. Holsteins give the most by volume but it's not usually high in butterfat. Put the milk, a quart was used, into a mason jar with a snug fitting lid, and shake. Generally, a child sat in a chair at the front of the classroom and shook the jar for 30 minutes. They passed the task off to the next child. The shaking of the jar congealed the butterfat into solid butter. This process took hours. I'm thinking it took us the better part of a class day. You could not stop the process once you started so kids who got the lunch hour got to eat late and in the classroom. Someone was assigned as their "lunch buddy" and they got to bring the lunches back to the classroom and eat with them. I remember doing this 3, maybe 4 times while in grade school and once at home.

Butter varies in color. It's dependent upon what the cow consumes. Spring, summer and fall cows who forage will produce butterfat that is deeper yellow than cows fed a grain or hay diet in the winter. The beta-carotene in grass gives the butterfat the resulting yellow color. For uniformity sake, food coloring is added to commercial butter so one box from one herd doesn't look any different from another herd. Salt is also added. Real butter is not salty. Depending upon the cow's diet, however, it can have an earthy or, we used to call it, grassy taste.

Oleomargarine is solid fat. It is white in color. I remember when it came onto the market. Stores would advertise this new fat that holds up to the high heat of frying and leaves baked goods moist. They also advertised "Colored" Oleo. As this was around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, I could not understand why, as we wanted to not use pejoratives when describing each other, stores would heavily advertise margarine that seemed aimed at a certain segment of the population. I'm grateful that my mother, very kindly said, "That's in reference to the addition of food coloring. Oleo without food coloring is white and people don't like that." Ohhhhhhhh.

In Home Economics, we learned that one stick is a half cup of shortening. My mother insisted that we know how to cook. We started on Jell-O and moved up to chocolate chip cookies and then on to deviled eggs and potato salad before being allowed to make hamburgers and pot roast. I remember when the tablespoon marks were put on a stick of butter. For years, you couldn't buy butter in quarters. You bought the pound, took it home and quartered it yourself. It was hugely convenient to have it wrapped in sticks. It certainly made for easier baking.

Measuring 2/3rd of a cup of shortening has always been a hit or miss affair. A third of a cup is 5 and a third tablespoons. That third has always been up to the cook to eyeball. I need 2/3rds which means either two sticks will be cut in pieces or I'll have to figure out, once I cut the one, how to utilize the remaining 2 2/3rds chunk left. I got out my knife and prepared to slice. That's when I noticed the printing on the package. Wow. Finally, after all these years, someone has decided to help us and eliminate the eyeballing. I still wound up with two chunks of butter sliced off two sticks, but I know exactly how much is left and I used it for other things. This is a great day.

Yes, I'm fully aware that, perhaps, this has been printed on butter sticks for several years now. But I'll swear that the butter I used over Christmas did not have this measurement on the label. When you have reached the age where you sometimes have to take off your bifocals to read, a graphic line like this is major news.

Beverage: Water

Deb