Yesterday I was up digging through a drawer from Mother’s and found a few things. It kind of seems appropriate to post pictures today since, if you look at the two posts below, it is down memory lane day.

Great-Great Aunt Sara(h)

This is the envelope sent to Sarah who had married Sherman Malcolm, a travelling Encyclopedia Britannica salesman – I kid you not. He met her when she was teaching in Michigan. My grandmother thought he was a very nice man and gave her son Malcolm as a middle name. Sherman used to go out and ice fish on Aldrich Lake when he and Sara(h) visited  Grandma where she lived in the first decade of the century . . . and somewhat longer. That was the house that had been unoccupied for awhile and there was a rattlesnake nest in the basement.

And this is what came in the envelope from Bloomington – Sarah Wisler’s transcript from IU. She still had the “h” then. I guess as long as her father was paying her tuition, she had the “h” and dropped it later. I don’t know exactly when, but she did.

Here she is when she was older and on her second husband; at least I think this is Lloyd Dennis -she called him L.D. and so everyone else did as well. They liked to travel but came back a couple of times to stay with Grandma when I was little. L.D. and Aunt Sara where there off and on from when I was about one to four or five. I have a copy of “A Christmas Carol” she sent me from England in 1953. My dad said L.D. told him that he and Aunt Sara each thought the other one had money.

This is the front of a Christmas card LD. gave Aunt Sara and the inside is below . . . Beware.

I think L.D. had a different style than Sherman did.

Okie dokie, this plate did not come out of the drawer, but it was here and I took  pictures of it front and back; there are five others in the set. Great-great Aunt Sara(h) got them in Washington D.C. when she lived there and worked in the Veterans’ Administration. Don’t know where I’ll put them, but somewhere. Oh, my friends at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse are grumbling, not to mention my foes. I’ve got plates from Grandma Lydia too. Once when I was showing LZP the sugar jar, I lifted the lid and found a Fisher-Price man Quentin had dropped inside.

Okay, here’s the situation: LZP sent some photos and newspaper clippings to Der Bingle and I posted the clippings but they ate into the sidebar so I am moving them down by putting these pictures in a separate post. Because that is all I can figure out how to do – 0ther than making the clipping teeny tiny at first look . . . before you click on them.

Anyway, here’s LZP and Der Bingle’s dad . . . and there Grandma, who has the same first name as out piano player her at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse.

William A. Vance Jr. Graduated high school 1944. Passed away July, 2006

Maybe at Biloxi at end of training or in Italy. We will update this question after batting it back and forth.

My personal favorite. Learning to fly while still in Carthage High School. I’m going to see if I can find an old post that links to that letterman’s sweater.

Lydia Akers Vance. Our piano player has her first name and Quentin has her maiden name as his middle name.

LZP sent some photos from newspapers to my email and I am going to see if I can get them to post.

Here’s a post about William Vance of the Keokuk Chiefs and his reason for doing this: HERE

Every now and then, someone will drop a  pizza pan or a pie tin or a pan lid on the floor of the kitchen here in The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse and, of course, it sets up a reverberating metallic clatter that elicits an alarm clock response – you pounce on it to stop the vibrating echo. Sort of like soldiers throwing themselves on grenades for their buddies. No, that’s wrong. You throw yourself on the alarm clock or dropped pan because the continuing noise is driving you instantly insane. it is a totally selfish act and if others benefit, well, that’s okay.

This morning the melted and refrozen snow on the driveway was molded into continues waves of ice – rogue waves popping up here and there – and when i got out to scrape the windshield I slipped and went down on hands and knees that slid outward until I was sprawled out flat on gray wavy humps of cold ice in front of car. Cars look really big, by the way, when you are lying on the pavement in front of them.

It didn’t really hurt that much, but it vibrated me. Every bone and joint took a jolt and passed it on until it reached my head where vibration rhythmically bounced around like a cymbal that has been walloped. Cameron was soon looming over me, asking if I had broken anything. No, no. Nothing broken, and, thank heavens, the vibration in my body did not produce sound waves that caused him to throw himself on me.

The temperature is supposed to get above freezing and I am buying ice melter and maybe together, those conditions will make the driveway safe for the Weeble Who Can Fall Down.

I painted yesterday – not pictures, mind you – doors and walls. Light-hued first coats over dark surfaces look really bad, but you can always say, “It’s the first coat.” I could just leave it like that, the way I used to leave the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the room . . . “Oh, hi, you caught me while I was housecleaning.” HA! I’m not much into this great-looking house thing since I have to do it myself. On the other hand, I don’t want to live in a house that looks like a model home – nothing in those places but a bit of furniture and throw pillows. And not always the pillows. If you got locked in that house, you could go crazy trying to find one thing to read or one thing that gave you any other feeling than that of being locked in a sterile box.

I want things – usually my things –  about me, but things avalanche and dust bunnies hide behind them and it takes TIME to be constantly wiping up the kitchen counter and herding everything back into place. I am not the border collie of housekeepers.  I am the junkyard dog – on a good day.

So, I don’t know if I am going to paint today. Maybe I should get a Wagner power paint spray thing and go at it like a commando. I have actually pictured that. Unfortunately, the fantasy involves a prior step – getting everything out of the room. So I have to log in to the scenario of a line of people walking through, each picking up one thing and exiting. They stand outside until I am done and then they come back in in reverse order.

If I could get over my squeamishness about crawling things, I would imagine a horde of housecleaning army ants marching in each night and taking care of things. I tried imagining little elves or the creatures in “Batteries not Included” but they took one look at the place and stepped right into my fantasy and gave me “the look of you’ve got to be kidding”. It is disheartening to realize you have pushed elves to that point; they really don’t like to have to throw in the towel. Well, actually and technically, they do . . . like into the laundry and so forth. I am speaking in what we call “just an expression” and they have to, throw up their little elf hands and throw in the towel when they come face to face with my world. Usually they are sorry to have to do so and most times just gently drape it over my face and quietly file out with their little heads lowered in pity. I, AmeliaJake, gave  their lingo the expression “to drape the towel”.

I may put out the dropcloth again today; I am going to think about it for a while. And I think I’ll just lie back while I think so hard.

To be accurate, I have been up since I took Alison to work and I am still up, although sitting. On these cold winter nights I have taken to visualizing myself in a rustic cabin out in the woods with a big fire going (in the fireplace). Yes, I realize you have to suspend disbelief. Who started the fire? Who is keeping it going? Do fire nymphs really exist?

But, anyway, I’m lying there under my blanket which I see as two or three piled-up quilts  and the fire is going  . . . and I think of switching my mind channel from that scene to the car waiting for me in the driveway. Oh, you should hear the gears smash against each other.

Come to think of it, though, indoor plumbing helps the transition somewhat.

Some people have dual citizenship -and I am swallowing the pun about the duel in may cause in a family, oops, choked on it instead. Anyway, I believe Summer would like to have the option to attend whichever school she preferred on a particular day. For instance, we are north of the snow and Der Bingle struggled back to Fairborn in a strong snowstorm. The interstate was a mess and other roads were horrible and at times, his tires were making tracks in snow that was falling so fast it kept the roadway looking white and untravelled.

He called when he arrived and said there were about 150 school delays and closings. Summer would like to claim his school district tomorrow. But, alas, it is school for her here. However, I know there will be schools closed when Fort Wayne runs its regional list tomorrow morning. Will I hear, “Why does the south get all the snow?” Probably.

A few years ago – very few by my 61 year gauge – she announced everyday: “This is the worst day of my life.” I’d say that phase and phrase period lasted longer than the hostages were in Iran. Well, brace yourself for the morning; the school delay/closing envy phase is going strong.

It’s not bad weather, at least not yet, but tomorrow is President’s Day and the kids have it off and there’s no getting ready for the morning. So, at 6 pm I have decided I am going to call it a day and put my jammies on. When I was little, very little, I called them “matt-jies” and sometimes I still think of them that way. Just a while ago, I asked Der Bingle, “Did you know when I was little, I called my pajamas matt-jies?” And he said he hadn’t known that and I told him well, now he did.

Here’s a pair of Land’s End pj pants that Alison got for me. Get your sunglasses on . . .

We are planning goulash tonight – we being Der Bingle, Cameron and I. They may be adding many, many spices so this could be an adventure for me. I remember once, a long time ago, Der Bingle sprinkled a pizza with really hot peppers and I spent most of the time at the table with my tongue in a glass of iced soda.

Other memories have been popping up of late. When I was young, something would trigger a thought in my father’s mind and he would cite a quote of piece of poetry. Once, in the summer, when I was in my late teen, we were in the warm weather eating area that looked to the east. He was still seated and I was getting up and I can still see him and hear him citing William Wordsworth:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
          The earth, and every common sight,
                    To me did seem
                  Apparelled in celestial light,
          The glory and the freshness of a dream.
          It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
                  Turn wheresoe'er I may,
                    By night or day,
          The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Perhaps it was me getting older but still not of an age to realize things would not always be the way they were; perhaps it was him remembering his years before the war; perhaps it was some of both.

I hear those words again now in my head . . . and I remember that evening . . . and I understand more.

I have to smile – I thought everyone had fathers who quoted poetry at the dinner table. I guess I was pretty lucky.

So what will distinguish this goulash meal for Cameron – perhaps the quote for the movie Housesitter with Goldy Hawn and Steve Martin.  (Der Bingle has been working to give him a foundation in cultural reference movies.)  Actually, it’s a quote I already used when the subject of goulash came up; you know, this one: “I punched a totally innocent Hungarian.”

Yes,  I know, it’s not Wordsworth.

Cameron and I are here alone; I think he is upstairs; I know I am on the porch. Alison, Robert and Summer left to go to Indianapolis to visit Colin and they are staying both tonight and tomorrow night. So, right now, it is quiet – quiet in the way that in times past I would have considered normal. Oh, the TV is on because I saw Marlon Brando in The Freshman was being shown. This is the quiet such as I knew when Der Bingle was overseas and Robert William was sleeping in pajamas with feet in them. That was a long time ago.

Der Bingle is on his way and Sydney will be all excited and I suppose there will be Netflix streaming movies watched by grandpa and grandson. Right now I am going to sit and enjoy Tea with Mussolini.

I just heard the car door. And it will still be a good quiet, just a little more sound mixed in.