Taking a Break...

Some of you, dear Readers, have commented that you wanted me to "keep 'em coming" (stories from my life). I am thinking about temporarily taking a break from posting to this blog, but before I do, I would like some feedback from you who have read my posts.

I began this blog as an avenue to write down my memories before I forget them. I've had a tremendous response to this blog, over two thousand page views in less than five months. I've been thinking a lot about putting these stories into a book. Many of the people who might be interested in reading about the way it was in the fifties and sixties are old folks like me, but a majority of them never go online. They would much rather have a physical (good old-fashioned) book they can hold in their hand while rocking in their favorite comfy chair with some quiet time to read. There are some who have electronic books such as Kindle or Nook, who would like to read that way, but most still read regular books.

So I am taking a break from writing this blog in order to make a book out of what I've written so far. I'm finding time-consuming editing is required to put all these stories in book form. I'm not yet sure whether to go with a publisher and sell on Amazon, or just self-publish enough books to give to my family and sell to others...

I'm not much of a seller. I would greatly appreciate the thoughts, wishes, and advice from readers of "Grannie's Memories." Should I publish a book through a publisher? What should be the price of such a book?  Would you recommend "Grannie's Memories" to your friends and family?

You could respond by 1) posting a comment on this blog, or 2) commenting on Facebook, or 3) email your response to me (granniegoins@yahoo.com). I would love to receive your suggestions, tips, ideas, experience, even your criticism if it could be construed as constructive... (I'm smiling.)

Homeless

Here are my thoughts about a homeless woman I’ve befriended…

Lee

I saw you often on the street

Pushing your cart. I noticed your feet.

Dirty… in flip flops, I noticed your feet.

Clothes were not ragged, but fancy and filmy,

Long ruffled skirts, hanging way low,

But not long enough, for still they would show

Those thick, dirty flip flops and crusty brown feet.

Waist length gray hair. In days long ago

It prob’ly was pretty. How do I know?

Now it just hangs there, not curly, not straight,

In no current fashion, just all out of date…

Seems to me it’d be hot when the sun’s pouring down,

Or cold and all sticky when it rains on your crown.

That long, dirty hair, hanging, tied with a bow.

Pushing your cart; it’s always piled high.

When not being pushed, it’s waiting nearby.

All your life is in there; boxes, bags, and a coat.

Do you fear losing all to some druggie cut-throat?

Do you sleep by that cart? Where do you sleep?

Ever lean on that cart, exhausted, and weep?

I’ve seen you push your cart.. I’ve never seen you cry.

One day you were sitting on the curb in the shade,

Your cart nearby… Now, could I persuade

You to tell me your name, if I told you mine?

“Lee,” you said softly, your mouth a straight line,

Looking down at your feet. “So, Lee, How can I pray for you?”

“However you pray… Whoever you pray to…

I need Hope,” you said. So that’s what I prayed.

Jesus offers you hope. He doesn’t mind

Those crusty brown feet. He always is kind.

That dirty gray hair, the cart full of stuff…

He sees beyond that, through the attitude tough…

“Dear Jesus,” I’m praying, “give hope to this Lee…

The same measure of hope You have given to me.

It’s You, Yourself, Lord, that Lee needs to find.”

Norma Jean Thomas

2008

The Cost of Things...

My husband, Jack, is a Cabinet Maker, or Woodworker, or Carpenter. Call it what you will, he works with wood. He is retired, but has done “side work” from time to time since I have been married to him (about six years). He repairs cabinet doors, drawers, and bread boards for some old apartments in El Cajon. He does the work here at our home, out in his work area in front of the garage. 

He has not been doing much of that kind of work for a few years, but just picked up a few items to repair last week. We were talking about those particular apartments as we are thinking how unusual it is for more modern apartments to have built in bread boards. 

“How old do you think those apartments are,” I asked him.

“Oh, I’m sure they’re at least fifty years old,” he replied. 

“That would mean they were built in the fifties, or sixties, “ I told him.  

“They are all two-bedroom units,” he said, “one bathroom, a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, a hall. That’s all. And they rent for I think about eight hundred a month.”

“Typical size rental units for back then,” I said. “But I bet when they were new, they rented for about sixty dollars a month.”

We discussed how “low” rent was when we rented houses and apartments in the sixties in different places.  (As it happens, both of us with our former spouses rented on the same street in Spring Valley back in the sixties, even though we didn't know each other.) We agreed that two bedroom units rented for sixty to eighty dollars a month. Some even put down payments on houses and their payments were less than a hundred dollars a month; they were, in fact, about the same as rent. 

Food has increased in price, too. Imagine milk in a (ten-quart) “cowtainer” for $2.10. That’s what it was in San Diego in 1969. That’s eighty-four cents a gallon.

When Dave and I moved to Alaska in 1969, we bought gas at a bulk plant in Los Angeles for twenty-one cents a gallon. But even in the highest priced gas stations it was about thirty cents a gallon in those days. 

Before we moved to Alaska, our weekly grocery budget was thirty-five dollars. That was generous, too; I didn’t have to be careful or frugal. I bought lots of meat, even really nice steaks and roasts. We dined out (not fast foods because there were very few of them then) usually once or twice a week. 

I have to say wages were lower in those days, too. My first job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber in Los Angeles as a Clerk Typist garnered $350 a month. Dave’s high construction wages were $5 an hour. Had he worked all year long (he didn’t) we would have earned  $14,620 in combined wages in a year. That was about the price of a house in those days. A new car with all the bells and whistles could be had for four or five thousand dollars, unless you bought a Cadillac. That would be maybe six or seven thousand. Of course any of those cars would only get about seven miles to a gallon of gas, but who cares if gas is less than thirty cents a gallon? You can fill the tank for six or seven dollars. 

In the big cities it was easy to get a job. Besides at Goodyear, I worked in a lock factory assembling doorknobs, at American Honda Motor Company as a secretary, at HITCO (a fiberglass company) in research and development in the first five years I was married to Dave Goins. It seemed to me anyone who really wanted to work could find a job. I don’t think I knew anyone who couldn’t find a job if they wanted to work. 

It’s a different world today, isn’t it?

Old Friends...A Story

Yesterday we were guests at a party. It was the Golden Wedding Anniversary Party of my very best long-time friend, Jean. She and I have the same middle name and have been friends since 1964. Jean is a first cousin of my first husband, Dave. Jean's husband, Bobby, was best friends with Dave from childhood.

This is the story of Dave and Bobby's friendship.

They met when they were kids. Both families had moved from the South to California in the early 1940's. I think they first met in Riverside, California where they worked (the whole families) in the orchards and fields, harvesting the crops. They attended the same church. During the War (WWII) they moved to the San Diego area where Bobby's dad worked in the aircraft industry and Dave's dad, who was blind, became a buyer and seller of used cars. He could listen to a car running and tell what was wrong with it.

At age twelve, Bobby and Dave spent a lot of time together riding their bikes all over the San Diego area and East County. They would pick up cigarette "ducks" on the sidewalk and smoke them. (They both became addicted. Fortunately, Bobby quit in his thirties, but Dave continued to smoke throughout his life.)

In 1949 when they were fourteen, they had a nearly fatal adventure that they both remembered and talked about the rest of their lives. It started when Bobby found a five by forty-five-foot plywood canoe that had been abandoned, washed up on a beach at the San Diego Bay. Bobby drug it home and stole some tar from a nearby house that was being re-roofed. He heated up the tar and poured it into all the holes he could see around the rim. He made it water proof enough to row on a calm lake. The trouble was that there was no calm lake nearby to row around on.

On a nice Sunday morning in October, Bobby and Dave took off right after church and put the canoe on top of a little wagon, and pulled it out to the Bay. Their plan was to row it across the Bay at about 32nd Street. Bear in mind this was in 1949 long before all the streets and buildings were in the area.

They pushed off the canoe into the water and began to row. When they got out in the middle, they found themselves in deep trouble. The waves coming in kept breaking over the shallow sides of the canoe. Soon they were swamped and would have sunk had they stayed in the boat. They got out and began to swim along side the boat which would stay just barely under the surface as long as only one boy was holding to it. The waves kept breaking on them and if both held to the boat it would go down deeper. So they took turns "resting" and holding to the boat, one boy swimming, the other resting, back and forth.

They struggled for several hours before anyone saw them. Even though it's not normally cold in October in San Diego, the sea water was mighty cold. They soon were so exhausted with their struggle that they were thinking they were not going to survive. Bobby told Dave, "I never have prayed before, but I'm praying now..." And Dave replied, "Me, too."

After they had been in the water about three hours or so, a couple of sailors came out on the pier and noticed them. The sailors were about two to three blocks distance from the boys, but could see they were in trouble. They started trying to flag boats to go and help them, but with no cell phones or megaphones or other means of communication that we take for granted in this day, it was about two and a half more hours until the sailors finally got the word to the Navy Fire Boat, which came out to rescue them.

By then, Bobby told me, he had swallowed so much salt water he was vomiting. When they were taken onto the Navy boat, they were so weak and exhausted and cold, they couldn't walk. The crew had to pull them up and wrap them up.

The sailors transported them to the nearby Naval facility on 32nd Street and put them on cots, wrapped them in warm blankets, offered them hot, black coffee. Bobby was astonished that Dave asked for sugar and cream. Bobby was just glad to be alive and have something hot to drink. Neither of them realized Dave's troubles were not yet finished.

Parents were called.

Bobby's parents came for him and thanked God that he hadn't drowned.

Dave's parents came for him and took him home and gave him a whuppin'.

Now, I believe in spanking, though not necessarily in every situation. I think age fourteen is quite a bit past the age when spanking is appropriate. I feel bad for Dave in that situation, though, because I feel the experience in the water had already "spanked" him. I suppose Dave's parents were not sure their hard-headed son had learned his lesson about how big, cold, and unforgiving the ocean can be. When I first heard this story, I confess I judged Dave's parents harshly for their decision on that particular discipline. That was before I found myself raising Dave's (and my) hard-headed son, though. In raising Jon, I learned that boys can be so hard-headed that they sometimes don't learn lessons just from a bad experience.

What do you think?

Book Burning in Bakersfield... a Story

Remember Dick and Jane, Spot and Puff?

They were the chief characters in my first grade reading books in Pine Bluff, Arkansas when I was six years old. Instead of learning phonics, I learned to read by recognizing the whole word at once.

"See Spot run..."

"Jane will not play..."

"Where is Dick?"

"This is Puff. She is a kitten..."

By the time I was in fourth grade, I was devouring whole books. I would get lost in them. I often got in trouble because I didn't quickly respond to Mama's summons to come to dinner, so lost was I in a story.

I began to collect books at an early age. This activity was somewhat curtailed in my childhood since we moved so much, but since in moving I didn't have to be responsible for the whole household's boxes, I was able to keep track of my own books and other treasures without giving up any of them.

Not so after I married Dave. We moved several times before we made the monumental move to Alaska, but during those five years I bought a number of books. I was a member of a book club, and therefore added regularly to my collection. Dave learned early on that while books are not heavy individually, a whole box of them can nearly break your back. He complained loudly, but I ignored him. It never occurred to me to reduce the number of books somehow... Some of them I felt I could not bear to part with; they were like old friends. Some of them I had not read, but intended to some day. Some of them, like the dictionaries, a person would probably never read the whole thing through, but certainly would like to look up a word from time to time. I just let Dave grumble.

After we moved to Alaska in 1969, Rachel grew from a babe-in-arms to a curious toddler. Then we returned to San Diego for about a year, hauling a covered trailer with our basic belongings, like clothes, dishes, tools, sewing machine in cabinet, pictures, and, of course, books. Lots of books. Heavy books.

Then after a few months of no work in San Diego, Dave decided he could surely get a North Slope job, so we moved back to Alaska again. That time he bought a big truck and packed... yes, you guessed it, our furniture, plus our basic belongings, like clothes, dishes, tools, sewing machine in cabinet, pictures, and, of course, books. Lots of books. Heavy books.

By then Rachel was talking ninety miles a minute. She loved being read to. I started collecting Dr. Seuss books, from ABC to Green Eggs and Ham. I read them to her all the time, and she adored them. After a few times of hearing the same ones over and over, she could quote them verbatim. So I was always buying more and more of them, plus other chlidren's books. I bought them at bookstores. I bought them at thrift stores. I bought them at garage sales. Our collection of books was probably doubled or tripled by the time the Cat In the Hat came to our house.

After Jon was born in 1975, we moved back down to the Lower Forty-Eight, so we could be near my parents while Dave worked on the North Slope. The children and I flew down after Dave had bought a forty-acre farm near Bakersfield. Dave hauled all our stuff in a big truck he bought at an auction. He brought all those books along with everything else, complaining all the way. He didn't complain about clothes or shoes or dishes or tools. All those things he considered useful. He just did not see the value in having a whole library of books, when he was not really into reading, but he was the one who had to pack them and lift the heavy boxes, and figure out where to put them after hauling them forty-four-hundred miles several times.

We stayed in Bakersfield only a few months. My parents briefly enjoyed their grandchildren until Jon was ten months old and Rachel finished the first grade. Dave worked on the North Slope, on the Pipeline, during those ten months. He finally decided it was not worth it to be gone from family so far away and so long at a time. He quit the high paying job on the North Slope and returned to Anchorage, to three side-by-side vacant lots we had bought during our previous years in Alaska. We had stored a couple of eight by forty trailers there as well as an old camp trailer. He lived in the camp trailer while he set up one of the bigger trailers with water and septic tank, and then started building a house on one of the lots. He lived on one meal a day (at McDonald's) for a couple of months until he had the trailer (sort of) ready for the family to live in it.

In June, 1976, I flew back to Anchorage, bringing Rachel who had just finished first grade, and Jon, ten months old. Dave settled us in the eight-by-forty trailer and finished building the house during the fall and winter. In the spring of 1977, we moved into the house with hardly any furniture, except the necessary things which we bought at an auction in Anchorage.

Dave returned to Bakersfield, rented out the farm, and with that big truck and brought our stuff back up the Alcan, forty-four hundred miles.When we unpacked the truck, I could not find our books.

When I asked Dave where were the books, he half turned away, shrugging his shoulders.

"Didn't you pack them?" I asked. I couldn't imagine that we had zero books. There should have been at least six or eight boxes of them.

"No."

"What?!" I just knew he was kidding.

"I burned them," he said, again facing me squarely. "I was tired of hauling all those books up and down the west coast. I tried to sell them with the furniture and stuff, but nobody wanted them. So I burned them."

I was devastated. I wondered why he didn't give them to a thrift store or something.

He said in order to do that he would have had to pack them, in which case he might as well have put them in the truck and brought them to Alaska. "We're gonna live right here from now on, and I'm not hauling books anywhere else if we move."

So that was that.

I began collecting again, though. I ended up with a huge collection of Dr. Seuss books by the time Jon was old enough to enjoy them. All my children could quote a lot of those books...

Never Forget

These days I often forget what I'm doing right in the middle of doing it. If there is something I need to remember, I must put a visual reminder. Sometimes, even with the reminder, I stare at it and think, "Now why did I put this here?"

Growing up, I used to hear grown-ups talk about where they were on Pearl Harbor Day. My parents knew all about the hardships and sorrows of world war. They experienced the Great Depression of the 1930's firsthand. Mama used to talk about how certain items were rationed "during the war" such as sugar and other commodities. Most people I knew were very patriotic and glad to sacrifice for the American Cause.

Since I was born about six months before the end of World War II, I don't remember any of that, except for the black and white movies I saw about the Depression or the War. It was totally normal to me to love my country and be honored to stand and salute Old Glory. It was not joked about nor was disrespect tolerated.

After I grew up, being just a little older than the Hippie Generation of the '70's, I was astonished at the attitudes of disrespect for our great country that "cropped up." When President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, I mourned for a long time. Everyone I knew could tell you exactly what they were doing when the news of his assassination came on television.

We are about to arrive at the ten year anniversary of the saddest event in recent American history... Nine One One. Like the assassination of the President, it was an event most every American adult could tell you where they were and what they thought when they first became aware of it. With all the media available to all of us that day, countless millions of Americans witnessed those horrific plane crashes that forever changed the way we travel in this country.

I was at work at the landscape company in my little office, when a co-worker, his cell phone to his ear, said, "The World Trade Center has been bombed..." In a nearby room there was a television set normally used for training classes. As I passed that room, I noticed the set was on and showing a huge plume of smoke coming from one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. Just like the time when Kennedy was shot, there was nothing else on television with any significant number of viewers, for days, probably weeks.

My daughter, Beth, had been looking for a job around that time. She had applied for and been hired at the San Diego Airport. That was to have been her first day of training. She had arrived early, and was sitting in her car in the parking lot waiting to go inside. She was listening to music from a CD player in the car, not the radio. Foot traffic was flowing around her normally, not particularly heavy. Suddenly, a huge crowd of people poured out of the terminal building, and spilled into all the parking lot. At first she thought it must have been some big flight had arrived and all the people were leaving, but it was a far greater crowd than that would have generated. They just kept coming and kept coming. When she did get inside the terminal and reported to the proper place for her orientation, she found out what had happened and that the airport was being evacuated.

Beth's job never did materialize. Air travel has never been the same since that day. America has never been the same since that day. Most everyone remembers where he or she was that day when they heard the news. Some say they will never forget...

 I may forget. That's one reason I'm writing this all down. I want my grandchildren to know about that point in history from my perspective. Even if I'm around for quite a while to tell them about it, I'm finding that these days sometimes my Rememberer is broken while my Forgetter is getting better. (I'm smiling.)

There is one historical event I never want to forget. It is the most important event that ever happened in human history. It happened when God Almighty, the Creator of the universe became a human (on purpose!) and walked among us. Particularly, it happened when He laid down His life for His friends. He gave up His life so His friends (you and I) could live in eternity with Him. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the pivotal event in history (His Story).

The world today is a different world for my grandchildren than it was for me. It's more complicated, it seems. There is more hatred and violence and ... well, SIN than ever before. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just seeing more from my perspective of a Grannie. The bottom line is this: Christ died for the ungodly. There will never be so much ungodliness that His bloody death will not be enough to redeem us from. He paid for our sins. If we accept that, we're His. Forever.

Oh, yes! I like it. I tell you, I really like it.