Thursday, August 28, 2014

I had to get my car inspected this week.  I said I'd wait for it since I burned out my knees last week at the fair.   (I used to walk into Red Hook and look around for an hour.)  So for an hour and twenty minutes I sat in Vin's auto window listening to country music playing loud on the radio.  Now anyone who knows me, knows I hate country music.  When I had my MRI, they asked what kind of music would you like piped in? and I answered, "Anything, but country."  And here I was, literally a prisoner of country music.

Timmy once said he was brought up on two kinds of music - his uncles and mother liked country and his father liked polka music, all polka music.  This made me think what we had as music growing up.  My first thought was Spike Jones...his music was classic - horns, hoots, bangs, whistles, all between jokes like:  a bear sleeps in his bear skin, he sleeps very well I am told, last night I slept in my little bear skin, and I got a heck of a cold. I just looked up Spike Jones on youtube and if you watch Cocktails for 2 with the City Slickers in a 1945 movie clip - I dare you not to laugh. 

Anyway, I was listening to the music, and trying to do SUDOKO - and then I heard the song about a man on a plane, it was to be his honeymoon plane trip, but he was alone and the refrain was "getting drunk on a plane",  Well, I started tapping my toe and you know, it wasn't that bad.  I looked that up too on youtube and it is done by Dierks Bently and the video is also worth looking at. I think I am being reborn at the age of 72.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Grandma Burky's birthday. Two pictures received from Beacon for the occasion - one of an old Grandma in front of a birthday cake and one dated 1942 of a young Grandma next to Poppy, holding a shovel.  1942 - Already one son Joe off to war and in the next year, when I was not even one, her other son Eddy at eighteen years to go to war.  I lived upstairs over Grandma, with Bucky, Daddy and Barbara and Bucky's letters to her brother during my first year of life make that time very real to me.  For my first birthday I got a pair of socks and a dollar from Grandma.  But I got a lot more than that.

My first memory is of laying in my carriage, in Grandma's downstairs, and she was reading her prayer book and would pass me pictures of Saints, probably Mass cards.  My first sentence was to Grandma - "Gaga (her) Nana (me) brrrr (cold).  I remember her dancing around the dining room table with an embarrassed Charles Miller at my sister's birthday.  I remember her ironing clothes with an ironing board leaning against that same table.  She taught me how to iron a man's shirt, back first, then both sides of the front and then the sleeves, which she would fold over the front of the shirt, making a flat invisible man.  I remember her home made chili sauce that would send a smell of tomatoes, cinnamon and spices all around the house.  I watched her can, and was amazed when she pulled out a canning jar from boiling water with her bare hands.  She could make a meal out of anything, would come up to 17 Falconer and clean out the refrigerator leftovers for her own meals.  And I remember going to Mass on Good Friday with her, as the wind whipped and she knowingly said "it is 3 0 clock, and Jesus just died". 

I think of Grandma a lot.  I too, have a prayer book next to the bed, stuffed with Mass cards of my family, friends, even people I barely knew.  I look at the picture, turn it over and read the name and the prayer and think a little of the person, their life and their death.  I think of Grandma when I go to church....she would look at my fingernails and if they were dirty, would shake her head in disappointment.  I think of Grandma when I make stuffed cabbage or pick tomatoes out of the garden.  I think of that 14 year old girl, all alone in a steerage boat, coming to America.  I think of Grandma in 1918 with the inflenza that killed millions of people, sick with Bucky in the crib next to her.  She lived over a saloon and sent Poppy down for whiskey, which she said saved her life.  (My fundador might do the same thing).  I think of Grandma when I see those hard Christmas candies, she always had some in a bowl in the dining room.  And I think of Grandma when she used to call to Bucky, "Lillush" time to go shopping.  Wonderful memories of a fantastic wonderful Grandma. 
Happy Birthday Grandma.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Let's talk about the vacation first.  And there were many firsts this vacation.  I will list them:
(1) 1st time we had a dog at Wellfleet.  What a smile to see him come out of the guest house in the morning.
(2) 1st time I rode out alone with just Ava.  Nice conversations.
(3) 1st time we had an animal living with us in the attic...noisy during a thunderstorm and Regina taped him making noise at night. 
(4) 1st time to go to a concert, heard Judy Collins, had tears as she talked about Pete Seeger while singing "Where have all the flowers gone?"
(5) 1st time Ria's bench was right in front of the Preservation Hall, facing Main Street, with a flower garden in front, and a statue of a mother and child to her left.  Nice to sit there every morning with the Cape Cod Times.
(6) 1st time Rachael and Miles and girls had a MANSION with a million dollar view of the gut.  Took my breath away.
(7) 1st time sharing fundador with Chrissy, but like Maureen, the laughs flew.
(8)1st time Zander spend a week with us.  Watching him down clam chowder was like watching a hot dog eating contest.

The rest was pretty much as usual, kids building sand castles, visit from O'Leary family, with an assortment of beers in a cooler, church on Sunday, but again, memories of Maria as the priest said we should "Practice random acts of kindness", the bumper sticker she had on her car for years.  The Wellfleet years blend together, all the same and always different.