Monthly Archives: August 2012

Spring came early to the Midwest. And we got cocky and planted-up the slope next to the lake house. The one we’ve been prepping for the last few years. Yup, by the end of May, we’d planted 110 prairie perennials + 1 annual that I couldn’t resist (a corkscrew plant, which Laura has in her Mobile courtyard as an perennial). And weren’t we so smart to get a head start on the season. Outsmarted — outstarted? —  is what we were. To keep the wee plantings alive through the many, many droughted and 100+ degree days, we drove the four hours to the lake house house in the country every. single. weekend.

Except for that weekend when we went to Mobile and I got jealous about Laura’s perennial corkscrew plant.

Anyway, this weekend, we think we have a guest who will take over the watering.

Isaac! Where ya been?

All summer, we’ve invited him to visit. Stay a few days, just once in a while. Nope. Busy. But this weekend, he’s planning to blow into town for a couple of days, so we gave him the keys and said to stay as long as he likes.

Sorry, Gulf Coast, but…

When I first moved to Chicago in the very-early 1980s, and worked at Rand McNally & Company in Skokie, this was the Hyatt. And it was lovely. A juicy purple on the outside, and snazzy and stylish on the inside. When I was lucky enough to be invited to a business or author luncheon, we dined on white tablecloths and were served by smooth waiters. The bar was handsome. And wedding receptions, the one or two we enjoyed, were gorgeous.

In its heyday, the hotel hosted the famous and the infamous. One day back in 1983, our printer’s rep had just arrived from Italy, and was having a bite of lunch before coming to see us at Rand. From the dining room window, he saw a man gunned down in the parking lot — a mob hit! I can’t remember the rep’s name, but I will tell you he took himself right back to O’Hare and flew home. “Where’s [name goes here]?” we all wondered. He eventually called to say that he’d seen enough of Chicago and its tommy-gun mobsters, and wouldn’t be back anytime soon. Hit or alleged-hit, it really did happen, I’ve since come to learn.

Mob hits notwithstanding, it was a sad day in the neighborhood when the Hyatt signs came off this mid-century gem. And who knows when it was tackily renamed Purple Hotel. I guess that happened sometime in the early to mid 1990s. And since then, it has just gone more and more depressingly to seed. Now it stands practically gutted. Its parking lots are more weed and broken glass than blacktop. And broken blinds cringe in its windows. But maybe, the wait for its fate will have been worth it.

Rather than razing it and putting another strip mall in its place, a Skokie-based investor has enlisted a disciple of the hotel’s original architect to breathe stylish new life into our quirky and beloved Lincolnwood landmark!

A plum assignment, I’d say.

If we’d stopped the truck so that I could get out and take a photo of the two boys walking barefoot down their gravel road toward home, we’d evermore live in their memories as the creepy old couple who gave them a ride.

A little way on down the road, I did jump out. But only to take this photo to prove there’s only one ear on a stalk. (Told ya so.)

But back to the real story…

While Bill was having coffee on the deck last Saturday morning, two sweaty barefoot boys walked up from the puddle lake towards the house. They didn’t see Bill up on the Crow’s Nest, but he could hear them: “Let me do the talkin’,” said the smaller one with sandy-blond hair to the taller one. Sandy-hair carried an old rope.

It was really early, like 9:30, so I was still snoozing. But when I heard kids talking in my house, I got dressed real fast and went to find two stinky boys in my kitchen, gulping water and talking to Bill about their lost dog.

I cannot tell you how hard it was to not do this: Walk into the kitchen like a crone and cackle, “Well, who do we have here, dear? Staying for dinner, boys?”

But I quickly played that out. And the ending wasn’t happy.

Instead, I asked about their runaway dog. “He’s mine. He don’t leave my side, ‘cept for today,” said sandy-hair. “His name is Shama. I’m takin’ him with me to college.”

And what’s your name?

“William.”

Of course its was.

“And this is Jonah. He’s the funny one.” Really?

We offered them a ride home, as they’d walked a long way. They declined, even though I pointed out they weren’t wearing shoes.

“I don’t wear shoes, ‘cept to school.” William said. And off they went, calling for Shama.

Twenty minutes later, Bill and I headed out to the Amish farm to buy tomatoes. And there were William and Jonah, ooching and ouching up our gravel road. Yes, they’d appreciate a ride after all. And so we ferried them, with promises to tell Dave if we saw their dog. (“Dave knows me. I fish a lot.”) William was very polite and full of yessirs and yessums, and thanksomuches.

When they were out of the truck, my husband said, “Well, if that wasn’t Dennis the Menace!”

Nope. It was yet another 11-year-old Little Billy.

I’d rather be showing you a photo of our little band of entrepreneurs, on that July day back in 1969, but we were in so much trouble that no one thought to grab a camera. I was just glad no one grabbed a switch, truth be told.

The night before, we had watched men walking on the moon! I was 11, Bucky was 9, and Monty was going on 6. And the next day, wanting very badly to do something to celebrate, we set up a lemonade stand at Mar Mar and Granddaddy’s house on Maple Avenue. Let me remember: Of course, Melissa was in on it, but I think Reidy Nichols was there, too. (Grown-ups all thought Reidy was so sweet and quiet. Ha! She taught us the song about “the place in France where the nekked people dance, but the men don’t care ’cause they smoke their underwear.”)

What does a lemonade stand have to do with men walking on the moon? We named it Home-Made Moon-Maid Lemonade and Kool-Aid! And we made space helmets and Dick Tracy Moon Maid antennae out of tin foil! And we gave away cups of lemonade and Kool-Aid for free! Because it was a party! In those days, people pulled their cars over to children’s lemonade stands, so we happily gave away a lot!

And when Mar Mar saw we’d used all of her sugar, all of her lemons, all of her Kool-Aid mix, all of her Dixie cups, and worst, all of her tin foil…well, let’s just say she was a party pooper.

Tonight, I did step down into the basement. Not to photograph the laundry, but to see what other treasures might inspire a few words. (I found a few. That’s what basements and attics are for.)

This is my childhood piggy bank, sitting on a shelf, trying really hard not to disintegrate. As a child, I thought he was creepy. But now I wear a pair of vintage-glasses, through which he looks kinda cute.

Great-Grandmother and Great-Granddaddy Colvin gave us silver dollars for Christmas. The Tooth Fairy left us Kennedy half-dollars. My Christmas dollars and magic money are secure in this feller, along with some silver certificates, which I think were deposits made by Mar Mar and Granddaddy.

As fat as this little piggy bank is, wee wee wee can’t quit our day job.

A blogstress I follow says that even if you don’t have anything pithy to write, you should try to write just a little something. (My words, not hers, because she also says to write in your own voice.) She admitted that she has actually blogged about her laundry, rather than end her day sans pith. (Again, my words. And no smart-aleck remarks about “pith,” please.)

I decided not to go to the basement to photograph laundry. There probably isn’t any. But if there was, I’d have to pony up and run a load. And because it’s kinda late, I’d go to bed and leave wet clothes in the washing-machine. For days. And then I’d have to throw away otherwise perfectly good clothes, because I’d always smell a whiff of mildew on them. And that means I’d have to go shopping. And the injustice of that is…now that I can finally afford to shop, I now hate shopping. So no laundry blog for you. Not tonight, anyway.

Let’s check out the bookshelves instead. Oh look, here’s a little nun wearing a sequined habit! Given to me by Kate. (Hi, Kate.) Her arms are fuzzy pipe-cleaners with teeny little hands attached. (The nun’s, not Kate’s. Kate has lovely, human arms, with normal hands attached.) And the nun’s skirt is made from black sequins that are stuck into styrofoam with straight pins. Her wimple is also held in place by straight pins, which are stabbed into her temples. Kate was correct in assuming that I’d find this little curiosity completely puzzling and entertaining.

Because you just have to laugh: When the volcano buries us all in molten lava, and the archeologists dig us up a billion years from now, what will they make of little Sister Disco?

When Bill called me to “come here!” I thought he’d found a baby snake or something. Something that would sneak away really fast. So I hurried. But this is what he called me to spy: A perfect little mushroom, next to the rotting tree, next to the well-water pump.

I had to get down on one knee, in the squishy squelch, to get a good peep at it.

And I have to tell you, that even in my very grown-up stage of life, I held my breath and thought, “Oh, please, let there be a bitty wee fairy shading herself!”

When we got home from the lake today, in the pile of junk mail was a Do Not Bend envelope addressed to me, from Harvey! This Korn CD was in it. Let me tell you why.

A buncha years ago, our friends Harvey and Rita went on a road trip with us, to Lake Shelbyville. As we drove and drove and drove through miles and miles and miles of corn, corn, corn, we argued about the number of ears on a stalk of corn. Rita was adamant that there’s more than one. In her opinion, three ears would be worth the effort of a single stalk. But I’d always heard that one good ear is all a farmer hoped for. Maybe one and a half.

(This was BG. Before Google. Bi. Before iPhone.)

On our way home, and in the middle of Cornfield, Illinois, we stopped for gas and stuff at a Casey’s. And the only other car in the lot had an Illinois vanity plate that read “Korn.”

So while Rita and I were waiting our turn to pay for our Diet Cokes, she asked the young man in front of us: “Is that your car with the license plate Korn?”

“Yup.”

“Well then, you must know a lot about corn, with a plate like that. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How many ears are on a stalk of corn?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m just the drummer for the band Korn.”

I can hardly remember a time when my mother didn’t have a screened porch. In fact, I don’t think she’s been without one my whole life. We even had a teeny-tiny one over on Fifth Street, barely big enough for the ice-cream table and chairs. But by gum, she tricked it out with a hibachi and a candelabra and it was darn cute.

Oh, and way up in New Hampshire, Miss Gigi had the yankees scratching their heads when she directed construction of the first screened porch in Rockingham County. (The yankees also scratched mosquito bites, so you’d think they’d have seen the genius of screening sooner.)

Mama moved to this house last summer, and said goodbye to the wonderful, comfortable, big screened-in back porch that she and George shared for so long. And even though my mother’s new home has charm on top of more charm, and is her perfectly sized “Wendy house,” I worried that it lacked the natural ability of a screened porch to gather our generations into a warm and spirited circle.

And to think — for all these years, I’ve been giving all the credit to the screened porch.

While we were down in Mobile, we enjoyed a cool couple of hours in the Cotton City Antiques Mall.

I found some wonderfully hideous black-velvet paint-by-numbers of deer in the wilderness, a replacement butter dish in my favored Criss-Cross pattern (Laura actually found it), and an old book of Ghastly Ghost Stories, to broaden my campfire-stories repertoire.

But the best antique in the place was Dr. Sidney Phillips, aka Sid Phillips of Ken Burns’s The War and HBO’s The Pacific. He’s delightedly showing Laura where he is, in the photo on the title page of his book, You’ll Be Sor-ree! (He’s peeing in a bush, with his back to the camera! Right there, under the Y.) The photo was taken in 1942, while the U.S. Marines were resting in the field during the Guadalcanal campaign. Sid was only 17 years old.

Dr. Phillips also walked us through a vintage photo of his band of brothers, which was in the newspaper earlier that that week: “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s mostly dead. Hell, they’re all dead,” he laughed. Yes, he laughed.

And he signed a copy of his book for our nephew Rollie, who is on an unwavering course for the Marines, as soon as he finishes college.

Can you read his inscription?

To Rollie — An American Patriot — 2 Timothy 1:7.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Semper Fi, Rollie.