I bought winter squash this week, first time it has gone "down" to $.99.  I used to buy it by the bushel from Mr. Rockefeller, when a bushel cost $5.00 and you had enough acorn and butternut squash to last a whole winter.  Mr. Rockefeller was a local farmer, an old guy that stopped his truck in front of our house the first summer we were living here.  He sold his vegetables freshly picked and at prices you would kill for today. 

I was used to this kind of sales, in Beacon we had Mr. Stanton, who drove a red truck with a loud horn.  He would park his truck, blow the horn, and the ladies of the neighborhood would come out to see what he had in his truck.  This was especially good for me when we lived at Beacon Street.  I had three little kids, and I didn't drive.  Mr. Stanton was a good businessman and kept candy and candy bars in the front seat to sell to children, so they would look out the window with joy when they heard his horn.  He also was kind to my downstairs neighbor, Helen, who suffered from a disease not yet named then....she couldn't leave the house.  He would even have a six pack of beer for her in the front seat.  Talk about convenience.  One year Helen and I bought a whole bushel of tomatoes from him to can....most of them were good, but the few bad ones made us leery when the jars exploded.  We complained to Mr. Stanton who just said, "You ladies must have done something wrong."

Anyway, I was glad to see a farmer at our new address and he told me I was one of his best customers.  I not only bought the two bushels of squash, but five bushels of potatoes for us, a bushel for Aunt Lillian and I always gave my sister Barbara a bushel of potatoes for her anniversary in October.  All winter long I would send one of the kids down to the cellar to get five potatoes and to pick out the squash I would cook for supper.

Time passed and Mr. Rockefeller began to show his age and then his weekly visits stopped.  When he died my kids were afraid to tell me, they thought it would be too depressing for me, and I did miss him.  Years have changed how we live, the store Adams is the closest thing I can place next to Mr. Stanton and Mr. Rockefeller.  But, it's not half, not a quarter as good as facing the man who grew the vegetables that you were buying to feed your family.  Farmer Markets are fun, but not as exciting as hearing that horn, looking out the window, and seeing the back of the truck loaded with freshly picked vegetables.

Labor Day weekend, the end of summer, how does it happen so fast?  Back from Cape Cod, the wisteria on the Bird's Nest has grown tendrils three feet long, Maria's grave is a mixture of flowers, sunflowers that are tall as I am, cosmos, pink and white, also tall, zinnias -large and small, marigolds, the same, large and small.  The plants are so thick that today a rabbit was hiding among the flowers and I didn't see him until he ran out when I watered.

Cape Cod's two weeks flew by - the first week with Sabra and family, Maureen there until Wednesday.  O'Leary's yearly visit, the girls prettier than ever, John and Debbie carrying cases of beer for us.  This year Samuel Adams, Maureen favored the blueberry summer mixture and both Maureen and I enjoyed the fundador in bed so much that the bottle was emptied way too soon.  The second week Diane, Kathy, Sarah and year old Orson filled the cabin - Orson exploring every corner but my bedroom.  Considering that he might feel the presence of a ghost, I tried to coax him in, and after I did, it became his favorite spot to explore, finding the Anisette [fundador replacement], opening it and spilling it on his shirt.  Just like licorice.  Like every kid he loved the beach, sand and waves.  We all did.

The water was wonderful, warm and very swimmable, we had a full moon, and the first night there we had fireworks as Wellfleet celebrated its 250 birthday.  Beautiful fireworks sitting on the beach, right in front of the cabin.  Lots of seafood from Hatches, lobsters, clams, steamers, smoked bluefish and the big scallop surrounded with roe.  Also, Sushi and really good pizzas, and clam chowder from the Lighthouse that got an A+ from Diane, Kathy and me.  But back to reality.  People three days this weekend as Bard's students return, another sign of the passing of summer.  In less than a week I'll be on Sabra's porch watching Henry get on the school bus.  Well, I do have Oysterfest to look forward to in October.  The way things are going, it will be here before I know it.

Just back from a trip to the Tivoli thrift shop.  Stressful, completely different from what it used to be, even a few months back.  Years ago, the thrift shop was a fun place to go - most of the people in Tivoli were on tight budgets so it was a great place to find kids' clothes, a really nice, cheap dress for a wedding, tablecloths, and more than once, Christmas gifts.  We all knew each other, and would hold up an unusually ugly item, or a sexy item, and everyone would laugh and comment on it.  It was leisurely, you took time, going through the clothes, books and toys.  No more.  Now it is filled with dealers, frantically making piles to resell, examining labels, not worried about size, it's not for them, it's all for how little can I pay for this, and then, how much can I resell it for.  It doesn't matter that the thrift shop is run by the church, it's all money, money, money.  The ladies that used to work the desk knew everyone by name, and if you held up a shirt with missing buttons, or a stain, it could be repriced.  No more, shirts and blouses are identified in some unknown way to me.  I thought it was a shirt I held in my hand, she called it a blouse, and the price doubled.  However, the dealers are welcomed warmly and they can get the prices down.  Sabra says bag day is worth while, but I think the greed would overwhelm me, people cramming things tightly in overstuffed bags.

It's like what happened at the yard sale we had last week.  Every year Tivoli has a yard sale day, the whole town fills their yard with everything imaginable.  Our piles were like everyone else, clothes no longer fitting, toys out grown, dishes from the cellar, you name it.  Most of the people wandered through, picking up some things.  And then three men came into the yard.  They went through a box of books, one pulling out a device that he checked each of the books with.  Then they went to the toys, again checking the hand held device.  "What are they doing?",  I asked Sabra, and she explained that that device was telling them the value of the book, or the toy.  "You see them all the time at book sales, Ma", she said.  "They're dealers and they're looking for buys."  One game had them really excited and it was on the free table.  One looked a little embarrassed when he picked it up and said, "Now I will have to buy something".  They were most interested in the games and I heard one say, that is was missing only three pieces and they could find another game that had those three pieces and it would be worth....try as I could I couldn't hear the amount.

Later that night I was thinking about the device, technology, how in a yard in Tivoli you were connected with the internet and could find a resale value on E-Bay. Years ago Maria had found a Beatles game at the Red Hook thrift shop.  It was a colorform, you remember, they would stick on a page, and could be rearranged over and over again.  Well, after she bought it, she looked on Ebay and one like it was selling for hundreds of dollars.  She did sell it at a nice profit (I  think it cost her a dollar) but she donated money to the thrift shop after she was paid.  That was the joy of it.  You didn't really know what was the worth of what you were buying, so you bought it and then looked it up.  What a shame we've lost it.  What a shame the thrift shop changed.

The Murphy's lost their last uncle, Uncle Joe, on Monday.  No obituary yet, but you could fill a whole newspaper with Uncle Joe's life and stories.  I first remember Uncle Joe (or it could have been Uncle Eddy) coming home from war.  I was a little kid, and Grandma scared me as she screamed with joy and ran up and embraced her son.  Joe married Rosie, and we would sing a song, "Rose, Rose, I love you, with an aching heart, glory is the future, now we have to part..." as we walked up Falconer Street toward our house, under their upstairs window.  Rose and Joe and her family, would take Barbara and me to Sylvan Lake with them, early in the day, and the grown ups sat around the picnic tables, eating all kinds of delicious Italian food, while the kids would swim, just going back to get lunch.  Then Joe and Rose moved out of Grandma's house to their own place, a few miles away, but they visited often.

I remember one Christmas morning, when they came to see us, the house was a mess, six kids opening presents, wrapping paper all over the place.  Uncle Joe sat down, took out a cigar, unwrapped it, looked around and threw the wrapper on the floor with the rest of the mess, without a second delay.  That was Uncle Joe.  In later years he would enter saying, "It's Uncle Dum here", would give the finger to the O'Leary kids (they loved that), called my son, Paul, "Peter, Paul and Mary".  He would make some off color remark, and Aunt Rose would just say, "Oh, Joe".  They were a cute couple and had a son Brian that agewise was the same as the older O'Leary's.

When Sabra was born I asked Joe and Rose to be her God parents, and they agreed, and came to Tivoli to St. Sylvia's for the baptism.  After that, each Christmas, Sabra got a special gift from them, always one of her favorites and the other kids would watch just as excited to see what it was.

When Sabra got married, I rented a limo to drive the Judge, his wife, Uncle Joe, and Rose and Aunt Lillian and Bucky up to Germantown for the wedding.  It was a long ride and I didn't want those old folks driving so far.  Bucky cancelled, so she missed the fun.  I had told the bartender at the wedding, "Don't serve any drinks until after the ceremony", but I didn't realize the limo was equipped with a bar.  I did as soon as I heard Uncle Joe yell to Bucky, "Buck, you shitted out".  Uncle Joe and the Judge were ripped.  The Judge slurring his words, Uncle Joe standing in front of them, swaying back and forth, in his Uncle Joe dance - a dance he did upon completing a race.

That's another thing, Uncle Joe's running.  Apparently, years back, he was doing the Bridge Run, but walking it, and as people ran past him, he started to run.  And then he was hooked.  Race after race, he would run in, arms over his head, yelling something like "I'm not dead yet".  He ran with another older guy, and they would hold hands, coming in at the same time.  Sweet to see.  The Rhinebeck race was one of his favorites, and Timmy and I and Aunt Rose would go for breakfast, right after the race started.  "We have an hour before he comes in", Aunt Rose would say, and off we would go. Joe was a race favorite, winning trophy after trophy, sometimes the only one running in his age group.

Uncle Joe loved Bucky and even after her death, would address the couch as if she were sitting in her favorite place.  Sometimes he would ask for a hug, and once Maria gave him a good one and he commented "There's a lot of woman there", which made us all laugh.

Laugh we did, Uncle Joe was a comic, we're lucky to have had him.  Rest in Peace Uncle Joe.

Back from a vacation with Paul's family to Niagara Falls, Canada and five days at the cabin in Black Lake.  What a difference when I got home - no cicadas, no noise, and the blue jays and cardinals who have been dining on a cicada buffet are back at the feeders.  This morning there were two mother turkeys eating the corn, one with four babies, pretty small, and the other had three bigger babies. 

Niagara Falls is amazing, a real international destination, as there were people from all over the world there.  Not much English being spoken.  To ride a boat right into the falls, you board an elevator and go down several hundred feet.  Then you put on a blue raincoat  complete with hood, and you realize soon that you really needed to wear this as you head into the mist of the falls.  The steep banks are lined with seabirds, they looked like gulls and you can see people wearing yellow raincoats walking on a trail that actually takes them behind the falls. We didn't do this.  As you get closer to the falls, the boat, that is loaded with people, starts to roll and shift and everyone has out cameras that are getting wet.  I had my usual throw away camera, and the Japanese were very interested in it - pointing at it and speaking to each other in their language, so I don't know if they were impressed or laughing at me.  Anyway, it was fun, exciting and something to see.  The next day we went over the Rainbow bridge to Canada's side of the falls, which was in some ways even more visibly exciting, as you were on the top of the falls. 

Anyway, I am back to reality, B&B business, and a month away from my next destination vacation, Cape Cod.

An update on the cicadas:  the brighter the sun, the louder the noise.  Today is bright and the noise is terrific, hard to even be outdoors in.  And it is affecting the other animals.  Last week we had a squirrel that got in the garage and refused to leave.  For two days we left the garage door wide open, and nothing doing.  Usually, a trapped animal will make a beeline for any opening, especially a car garage door. You can't miss that.  Finally, he left, or he is just hiding better.

Then, this morning, a chipmunk came into our bedroom.  Timmy, still in bed yelled, "Squirrel, squirrel in the bedroom".  But it was only a chipmunk.  He had found a screen that I had not secured tightly yesterday.  That's another story- I was ironing the Bird's Nest tablecloth, had it doubled up on the ironing board, when I hit a bump, and at the same second, heard the cicada's scream.  Yes, I had ironed one of my friends that I have been saving lives of for the last two weeks.  Anyway, I opened the screen to throw out the dead bug, and couldn't close it right.  So that's how Mr. Munkchip (that's what Atticus used to call them) got into the bedroom.

We opened the windows, took out the screen, shut the bedroom door, and thought he would just jump back out.  But no, he stayed in the open window, watching Timmy mowing the lawn for two hours.  He was calm and collected, just like the squirrel in the garage, he liked it inside...the noise was a lot lower.

I don't know if he is still in there or not, but my theory is the local animals can't take the noise anymore than we can.  Rain tomorrow, so it will be quieter, but then when the sun returns, there will be more noise than ever.  I think we have a billion cicadas on Clay Hill Road alone.

2013 welcomes the cicadas.  They started to come out last week in small bunches, then the cold stretch of weather, but now in the heat they are coming out in groves.  Sabra has been taking pictures of them in  every stage - coming out of the shell, hanging upside down all white except for two black dots like eyes, and then the red eyes.  Yes, the little girl that used to capture wooly bears in her big purse, now captures them on film.  The Kingston Freeman printed two of her pictures of the cicadas right on the front page "photo by Sabra Ciancanelli".

But she doesn't stop there - when ants were attacking one still in the shell, she threw her coffee on them and moved him to safety.  When she read that they need high grass or something to climb up to rid themselves of the shell, she put sticks in the grass for them to climb up.  She even helps some of the struggling ones get out of their shells - a regular cicada midwife.

They ARE amazing - I myself can't get enough of them or am tired of seeing them hanging upside down in the early morning - that's when they emerge.  The trees are full of them at seven or eight in the morning, and then in a few hours, they are the black cicadas, starting to fly.  Birds are having a field day, especially cedar waxwings, waiting in the trees, and when they see one fluttering by, as if in a drunk stupor, swoop down and easily pick them off. 

So it's a regular jungle out there  - as in the song that starts the Monk show....I myself think of them as religious symbols - rebirth, souls leaving their old shell of a body, to go to a better place, mate, die, eggs go underground for SEVENTEEN years, and then the cycle repeats. Why don't I remember this from the past 5 times this has happened since I have been with them on earth?