If you wonder why my letter was a day late last week, it was because I got my nose stuck in a book, and that was the end of that.
The look of things on this Forty-Second Avenue of ours will never be the same again. As you read this letter, you will see why...
The church now owns two houses on our side of the street, too. The newer little white house, third house from the Boulevard, will be our Kindergarten room if the city approves. This would be nice, because we could use the extra space in our school; it is getting a bit tight.
Unfortunately, the lady who lives next to the little white house, who has lived there since before I was ever born, along with her parents, who are deceased, has taken opposition, and is trotting about the neighborhood collecting signatures to try to keep us from using the house for a schoolroom. Luckily, there are not many neighbors, so she might not have her way. She didn’t want her neighbors to sell their houses to us, either.
We are wondering what in the world, because this lady and her family have been our friends for over forty-five years, and we’ve never had any problems at all. Our small class of kindergartners would not cause her any trouble; our school children are kept quiet, except for when they are on the playground; and the playground is some distance from her house, right where it’s always been.
The little old house behind my mother’s house is gone now, and has been made into a parking lot, of which we have been in dire need. We also bought another house behind the church. The man who is renting will continue to rent, for now. (No, we don’t knock down houses while the residents are still inside them.)
The children played outside almost all day Monday, and ended up with cherry red sunburns, the first of the year. I never, ever think of that in time to protect them with suntan lotion. It was in the low 80s, and would have been a completely pleasant day, had not the wind been blowing so hard.
Soon it will be time to plant flowers in my flower gardens again. I’m afraid my Virginia bluebells, lily-of-the-valley, and maybe even my bleeding hearts, died out and are no more. We’ll soon see. Larry has all the gardens cleared of leaves and dried flower stems, so planting will be a breeze.
Tuesday afternoon, Joseph helped with some of the projects along the Avenue. He began digging up sod along the edges of the sidewalks and alley so that something on the order of footings can be poured, into which will be placed the fence poles. He said it was the easiest digging he’d ever done. That, because it rained the night before--but Tuesday was not Monday, and it was only in the 30s, and there was a strong enough north wind that it took one’s breath away.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Joseph baked some fish. Now, fish smells fishy enough when you are right there in the kitchen with it while it bakes. But fish smells really fishy after you’ve gone off to church and sat in a sanctuary full of all sorts of good smells, including the Easter lilies that were still on the altar, then walked home in the fresh springtime air. Whew! Some fish is fishier than fishy! I hoped to goodness that our clothes hadn’t picked up the bouquet and carried it with us to church.
That night after the service, as I was sewing, Victoria got a few of the children’s encyclopedias from the bookcase, then proceeded to ‘read’ them to me as she sat on my bed while I sewed. Finding a picture of a fireman spraying water on a small brush fire, she launched into her narrative.
“There was once a great big fireman,” began Victoria, “and he’d been a fireman ever since he was 31.” She turned the page and continued. “Now he was 35, so he’d been a fireman for a long, looong time.” She looked up, ascertaining that I was listening, and wouldn’t miss the next part of the drama. “Now, the thing he liked worst of all to do, was to put out fires!” She nodded for emphasis and turned another page. “So he wanted to get out,” she went on, “but all the people told him he should be a fireman because he was so big.” She tipped her head and intoned sadly, “So the great big fireman got sadder...and sadder...and sadder...”
She stopped and stared at me sternly, while I valiantly attempted to keep a straight face.
Late that night, I was nearly done with Hester’s Fourth-of-July dress...but, as sometimes happens with my patterns and made-up conglomerations, the collar didn’t fit the dress, and those sorts of things seem doubled in complexity when viewed on the dark side of the moon; so I gave up and went to bed.
[Aaarrrggghhh! I just went into the kitchen to refill my coffee cup and discovered a melted rainbow creme bar lying on a tea towel on the table. Wonder what brainless urchin did that?? Ewwww.]
Teddy came home at noon on Thursday with a badly chipped tooth, top front. He’d tried cleaning a pry bar on his buffer while it was spinning madly, something he says he has often done before, and the pry bar came flying around and hit him in the mouth. He couldn’t get in to see any of the dentists we could contact in Columbus (can’t they tell an emergency when they hear of one??!). His tooth and mouth were hurting so, he could hardly stand to open it. I finally found a dentist in Schuyler who could see him at 3:00, so that’s where he went. The dentist filled in the tooth, building it back up till it doesn’t look like anything ever happened to it, which cost $108, and told him he needed a cap on it, which will be about $800. Good grief. I need to be a dentist, if for no other good reason, then just to treat my kids.
Teddy didn’t go back to work that afternoon, telling you right there that his mouth must have really been hurting; because Teddy usually goes to work, no matter what.
In the meanwhile, Victoria went outside to play. Before long, she was coming slowly in the front door, nearly in tears, looking something on the order of a long-legged snipe--because her skirt had been left behind, stuck in the sprocket of her bike, which had been left behind somewhere around the corner on the sidewalks of 17th Street.
So out the door went Joseph on a Humanitarian Expedition.
With some difficulty, he extracted skirt from bike, and came in with the skirt a bit the worse for wear, sporting gear grease here and there upon it, and with the hem southbound. And, for some reason, the bike wouldn’t pedal, and Joseph could not discover why. So he got out another bike for her to ride, hoping she’d be able to manage the bigger red one okay, since she’d been riding the smaller black and silver so well.
That done, Joseph went off to roll up burlap and pull up stakes from the lot entryways that were poured yesterday.
I spent the afternoon finishing Hester’s dress. Victoria wants me to sew a matching doll dress for her for the Fourth of July. Aarrgghh....I wanted to sew baby clothes, not doll clothes. But I didn’t exactly say no...
Several members of the Tucker family were working hard to get a garage down the avenue moved before nightfall. Once, there was a bit of excitement when they set the garage down on long boards on a flatbed truck--and one of the boards broke. They hastily hoisted the garage back up while several men ran for more support, then carefully lowered the garage again, part of it resting on the truck, and part on a flat trailer hitched to the truck.
Later that evening, as we returned from a jaunt to the grocery store and the library, we saw that the Tuckers had made it to 19th Street, and then west one block before things went willy wong. The garage was off the pickup bed and nearly on the ground, while somebody was trying to get it onto a trailer. We hurried home with the groceries, and then Teddy, Larry, and Joseph went to help them.
The trouble was, with the garage resting partly on the truck and partly on a trailer, when they went around corners, the trailer and truck would swivel, while the garage stubbornly refused to bend in the middle. One man brought David’s big forklift then, and helped support the garage and turn it where it needed to turn all the way to its destination. Everyone was relieved when the garage arrived safely.
The menfolk came home, and Larry looked at Victoria’s bike to see what its trouble was. Turns out, the sprocket is badly bent. Fortunately, she’s doing fine on the bigger red bike...and it’s a Schwinn, into the bargain.
Friday afternoon, I heard a loud noise, looked out, and saw that one of the Kochs was in their huge loader, and had already taken a monstrous bite out of the house north of Penny’s house. I ran--I did not trot; I ran--for shoes, sweater, and camcorder. Out the door I dashed, turning on the camcorder as I went.
Too late.
The house was flat.
The Kochs are no slough-offs when it comes to flattening houses, let me tell you. I went on down the street and videotaped the house’s last gasps, and then took pictures as the man running the loader dumped bucket after bucket into dump trucks and their accompanying dumping trailers.
Hannah and Aaron came, with Hannah pushing Aaron in his stroller. She saw me down the block, and walked down to watch, too. Aaron was ever so intrigued with all that big, noisy machinery. I took pictures of him watching all the happenings...and that, I think, was the best part of the whole film. He’s awfully cute, you know!
That night, I cut out a medium-bright olive green boy’s outfit in size one. The pants are green, the shorts are green plaid, the shirt is green plaid, and the vest is reversible. I also cut out a little sailor hat with a green crown and a plaid brim. The brim wasn’t really supposed to be plaid, as I fear it may look a wee bit garish; but I used up all the plain green cutting out both crown and lining by accident, so there was no choice but to make the brim from the coordinating fabric.
I plan to make a quantity of baby clothes, and then see if I can sell them at craft shows and such like. I don’t imagine I’ll make quite as much as Teddy’s dentist does.
While I was cutting out material, Victoria, as usual, was begging scraps from me. Then she wanted me to sew together a few scraps, as I did for her a couple of nights ago, and I told her she could do it herself, with a needle and thread. So she gleefully rushed off to my sewing cabinet, where she got the necessary rig and tackle. I threaded the needle for her, tied a knot, and she was off and running.
“Isn’t this fun,” she asked merrily, pulling the needle through the fabric. “I really like to needle things!” she told me.
“You call it ‘hand-sewing’,” I informed her.
“Oh,” said she, just as Teddy walked into the kitchen. “Look, Teddy!” she exclaimed exultantly, holding up her handiwork for inspection, “I’m needling this material!”
It brought to mind one of her elder sisters, Hester, perhaps, who thought the pursuit was called ‘threading’.
Saturday, I cut out a little dress in size one. The three-tiered skirt is pink gingham check, the sleeves and side fronts and backs are fuchsia, and the collar, belt, and sash are of dusty blue with tiny pink and fuchsia flowers.
Victoria sat by, waiting for scraps of material, holding a big needle threaded and ready. Teddy came home from work, observed the scene, and decided that what his little sister needed was a big plastic canvas needle, and he knew right where one was. Then Dorcas came home from Mama’s house and gave Victoria one of her pieces of plastic canvas. Victoria got her yarn, and she has been happily ‘plastic canvassing’, as she says, ever since.
Several of the children have had fevers for the last two or three days. Yesterday, I started checking their temperatures, then decided to see how accurate the digital thermometer is, compared to the very accurate mercury thermometer I’ve had for many years. I popped one into my mouth. Lo and behold, I had a fever! No wonder my head and eyes hurt, and I was going back and forth between hot and cold.
I’d no sooner discovered this, than I immediately felt ill, quite a lot like Dagwood Bumstead when he thought he hadn’t eaten breakfast, called home from the office all in a panic to tell Blondie he was starving...
“Yesirree,” she told him, “You did eat. You ate ham and eggs and sausage and hashbrowns and Post Toasties and biscuits and gravy and French toast and oatmeal and Cream of Rice and orange juice and milk.”
He hung up the phone. “Bleah,” he groaned, holding his stomach, “I don’t feel at all well. I ate too much.”
Here is something I recently learned, that you might find useful knowledge someday, just in case: dueling in Paraguay is legal--as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
As I type, Victoria is sitting beside me, practicing writing the names of all the family members, including middle names. She can spell quite a few of them without asking for help. As she printed her own middle name, ‘Maurine’, I told her that her Grandma Swiney’s middle name is the same as hers.
She raised her eyebrows and queried, “Grandma Maurine?”
And now, those newly-cut-out little clothes are calling me.
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