LIGHTS OUT Kate’s Journal

The final goodbye always comes as an unpleasant gut-wrenching surprise no matter how long its approach. I knew that at my father’s passing the mournful sound of “Taps” would echo over the hills of Southern Oregon. What better place to say goodbye to this son of the Rogue River, surrounded by his long-gone family, and sheltered by lichen-covered maple trees with leaves just tinged with the blotchy blood red of imminent goodbye.

Though expected, the intrusion of the bugler and two other Navy personnel, snapped me out of memories of this strong and proud man. He was an Oregon country boy, but he was Navy through and through. Therefore, we were also Navy, moving as we were sent and staying at their pleasure. It was his life, and the love of the sea never left him.

As the bugler raised his instrument to his lips, I wondered where this familiar twenty-four note melody came from. It signals soldiers to prepare for the day’s final roll call. In use since 1835 it was known as “Scott’s Tatoo” and named for army chief Winfield Scott.

The tune was a said to be a revision of a French bugle signal called tatoo, which notified soldiers to cease their evening drinking and return to their barracks. The word was an alteration of “tapto” which was derived from Dutch “tap-toe” or to shut the tap of a keg.

In the Civil War Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield thought the sound of the tatoo was too harsh, so he ordered his 23 year old bugler to polish it up and make it softer and more melodious. It is also known as Butterfield’s Lullaby.

The echo of the last note hung in the air, the sound of a volley of shots rang out over the valley, and roll call was over.

“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.”

Requium poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

FRAGRANCES OF MEMORY Kate’s Journal

Episode 4
Long Beach 1934

I blame it on the neighbor who had a grand mal seizure on my bedroom floor. Was she contagious? Among all the other vaccinations, I didn’t have that one either.

Grandma had discovered Christian Science in the body of Mary Baker Eddy, and we did not believe in doctors or vaccinations. She took my mother and aunt Corrine into the fold, but not my father and me.

I was a silent rebel, dutifully attending church services three times a week, wearing my shiny black Mary Jane’s and hat with streamers down the back. When I was sent to Auntie’s the shoes were exchanged for brown high top Buster Browns, a Dutch cut and no church.

Grandma and me about 1935

We lived a few blocks from the beach and there was always the smell of the ocean along with the acrid smell of oil from the derricks on the north side of town. But on warm silent evenings the perfume of orange blossoms filled most of Southern California. I believe it was the beaches and the orange blossoms which drew so many people to California in those days. The promise of jobs didn’t hurt either.

Along with other aromas flickering through my memory, the water in early Long Beach was undrinkable due to its smell and its color. Yellow sulfurous liquid poured from the spigots reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. Everyone had a large bottle of water delivered to the house for drinking purposes but the bathtub was filled with deep cadmium yellow which fortunately did not stain the body.

Auntie and Uncle Phil had an avocado tree with climbable branches and Grandma had a fig tree shaped appropriately as well. I liked them both and spent a great deal of time up the fig tree. From its top one could see directly into the dentist’s office next door which gave good entertainment when he was working on a patient’s open mouth.

I could have made a lot of money inviting the neighborhood kids to climb as well, charging a nickel apiece. You could buy a lot of candy from the penny candy store around the corner in those days. The dentist was a nice man who gave me free tubes of Ipana toothpaste which I saved and gave to my teacher at Betty’s Dance Studio, where I was a primo tapper.

The movie star Laraine Day lived around the block, and I always hoped she could get me a job in the movies, but obviously it didn’t happen. Nancy Joy Peterson was a fellow tapper, whose pushy mother curled her hair high on her head and let her wear lipstick, didn’t make it either.

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The Great Depression was a terrible time for the country. We were among the lucky ones. My father had a job and grandma had her renters, plus she and my mother and Aunt Corrine often were able to get a short term job. Grandma knew about the restaurant business from helping at her father’s summer resort, and there was always a need for a good waitress. My mother also once worked in a hair salon giving what was called a “marcell”; pressing the hair into waves with a hot iron. Grandma was also a great seamstress, and sometimes worked in a nearby factory sewing. None were high paying jobs, but people took what they could.

Though I was too young to understand the magnitude of its impact on our society, I retain memories of the Depression which I realize are due to the hardships we endured. My mother told me of the times we had no food in the house and so she did not call me in for dinner hoping the neighbors would invite me in to share theirs. I was often sent to Auntie’s at those times.

Many people rose late in the day to eliminate an extra meal. Coffee grounds were used more than once and then put on plants in the garden. Occasionally I went with Grandma to a place where we were given paper bags of vegetables for soup or stew. My dear aunt Corrine used to cringe with guilt to remember once stealing some empty milk bottles, because you could get a nickel apiece and three bottles could buy enough vegetables for a pot of soup.

Long Beach was a beach town and a navy town with plenty of suitable entertainment for those hoping for a respite from Depression blues. More about that later.

CHRISTMAS PAST

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy” clay sculpture by kayti sweetland Rasmussen

As Christmases go, the 2013 version was exceptionally nice. Stretched over a three day period, it was delightfully non-stressful, with plenty of time to enjoy family, food and friends. The clan gathered on the 22nd, (that is, the half which did not enjoy the Thanksgiving turkey). I have friends who sent out the parental command for each holiday or special occasion, and it worked wonders for them. My own mother-in-law who lived around the corner, assumed that we would all be present each Sunday as the dinner bell rang, and most of the time we complied.

The only sour note on the big day was the sudden realization that the date was Charlie’s 7th birthday and no one gave him a gift or sang happy birthday. I have a friend who has a charming little black poodle named Penelope, for whom she throws an actual party on each natal day. To be perfectly honest, Penelope is quiet and polite, lying on her human “mother’s” lap, nibbling on a tidbit here and there, while Charlie, by virtue of his Jack Russell heritage and an obscene amount of bonhomie, simply wants to chase a ball through the house.

It’s true that holiday celebrations change as you grow older. As a child in Long Beach, we often spent Thanksgiving with my great-aunt and uncle, but we stayed home on Christmas. I remember thinking that Auntie’s Christmas tree was not a friendly happy tree all dressed in blue and silver, while ours had lots of colored lights, and old ornaments from years past. I was a strong believer in the Santa myth, and was suitably surprised to find that he had delivered the tree all decorated on Christmas Eve after we were all asleep. How he got our old ornaments I never figured out. I was a believer until the age of eight, when I was awakened by a walnut being dropped on my head by my father as he was filling my stocking on the headboard of my bed.

I was a Navy child, and we spent a few of those early Christmas days alone in another port. Some were better than others, and one was definitely not a festive celebration. Our orders had come through and we were packed and ready to leave on the day after Christmas, so there was no tree, no big dinner, and the few gifts we exchanged were simply handed to one another with no particular ceremony. Strangely enough, I remember my gift, which is not always the case. It was a gold locket engraved with my initials, KLS, and opened to hold pictures. I have it still in an old jewelry box, and it contains small photos of my parents, who were approximately 30 years old that Christmas.

Christmas 1941 was somber, since the United States had just gone to War, but it would have been much more painful had we been aware that my father was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during the attack. In fact, his ship, the U.S.S. Bagley, was moored across the channel from the Arizona, which took such a dreadful pounding from the Japanese.

As the years passed, and children arrived, we used new tricks every year to convince them of Santas’s existence. One year, Dr. Advice tracked ashes on the carpet in front of the fireplace. If there was snow, we tracked flour on the hearth. I wonder if it really ever fooled the kids, or if they simply humored us.

The thing about Christmas Past, is that it prepares us for the New Year and all that Resolution thing. I refuse to make any guarantees about life style changes, since people usually make the same promises every year, and have broken each one by the end of January.

However you choose to approach the New Year, I wish you the very best of health, with enough wealth to get you through the month with a little left over for a rainy day!

THE FRAGRANCE OF MEMORY

Long Beach, California in my childhood was a beach town, an oil town, and a sailor town. The memory of odors is very rich.

We lived a few blocks from the beach, within easy walking distance for a child, and the smell of the ocean is like perfume to me. The Pike was an esplanade with rollercoaster, merry-go-round, and all sorts of shops, etc. which led onto the beach, and the smells of hamburgers, cotton candy and salt water taffy beckoned a hungry kid with a dime in her pocket. It was the time of the Great Depression, and if you couldn’t scrape up a dime, you took a tuna sandwich made with lots of pickle relish in your pocket.

Oil had been discovered on Signal Hill and aside from the oil derricks decorating the top of the hill, it gave off an unmistakeable scent.

The Port of Long Beach has always been an important one, and home to the Navy, and the place from which my father departed and returned frequently. On the occasions when we dined aboard my father’s ship on a Sunday afternoon, I was allowed to steer the shore boat.

In our small neighborhood the ice man delivered, and the man who tarred the many cracks in the street came with his smelly hot oil, which if you waited till it hardened, you might steal a piece to chew on. The Red train ran straight up the middle of American Ave. where we lived, and took you to Los Angeles, where my Great-Aunt picked us up. In their great wisdom, someone tore it out some years ago. I always thought it had a distinctive and exciting odor. Maybe it was the smell of anticipation.

There were always fresh fragrant oranges, ripe figs off the tree, and a penny candy store which smelled divine. A nickel bought a lot of candy, and there was a dentist right there who gave out sample tubes of Ipana toothpaste, which if you never smelled it, consider yourself lucky.

Each morning after my mother tortured my straight hair into Shirley Temple curls with a curling iron heated on the gas stove, and with the smell of hot hair still in my nostrils, I ate breakfast alone and went off to school. My only friend in the neighborhood was Gail Hollandsteiner, whose father was a banker, and who I thought must have been rich because her mother slept late every day, thus allowing Gail to trick the maid into thinking she had actually eaten her breakfast. I tried it at home, but my mother got up early, so it didn’t work.

Larraine Day was an early movie star who lived next door to Gail, and we always hoped she could get us jobs in the movies. That didn’t work either.

The Long Beach of today has nearly half a million people in its confines, the neighborhood I grew up in is mostly industrial now, and the Pike has been replaced by the Queen Mary as a tourist attraction. Whoever coined the phrase “You can’t go back” was right.

EGG WHITE OMELETTES

Today I finally hit my weight goal of 100# and the barista at our local Starbuck’s was flummoxed when I switched to a ‘small skinny vanilla latte, no whip or caramel ‘, which has only 100 calories.  For 4 months I have been eating everything I could find to make up for the 20# weight loss.  Thin is good, scraggly is not.

I have always thought those people who order an egg white omelette, or who announce to the waiter to ‘put the dressing on the side’, or ‘no mayo on the sandwich’, are missing half the fun of eating.  Every newsstand has a dozen magazines telling the virtues of a new diet.  Having been on the other side of thin several times in my long adult life, I do know how difficult it can be to lose unwanted pounds, but trust me, it is just as hard to gain them back.  Funny thing, those pounds.  They just seem to have a mind of their  own.

According to my grandmother, you can never have too much butter.  When I was very young and we were living in Grandma’s boarding  house, we didn’t get much butter.  It was expensive to feed all those extra people during the Depression, but when she got rid of the boarders and switched to simply renting rooms, we got into the good stuff.

My father was a Navy man, and when he was home with us, we occasionally ate steak., and this is how he cooked it:  first you put a layer of salt into a very hot cast iron frying pan.  Put the steak in and when it’s done, you throw a huge pat of butter on top of it.  You don’t need any of those meat sauces.  I don’t think they knew about barbecue grills in those days.

Which brings me to the point of this: the egg white omelette.  I have seen people order this and I can’t imagine why.  In the first place , they are tasteless so why would you eat them?   Omelettes need an extra yolk in not out.  A truly great omelette has three whole eggs and an extra yolk.  Scrambled eggs improve the same way.    If you’re worried, just don’t eat eggs.

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“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money”.  Jules Renard

TIME KEEPS RUNNING

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?   KSR

I don’t wear a watch.  What is the point, because they are either fast or slow, and does anybody really know what time it is anyway?  We have a collection of old clocks, and they each have their own opinion as to the correct time of day.  We have silenced most of their voices so as to sleep in peaceful quiet.  Two of the more pleasant songsters dutifully chime out the half hours.  Our friend Bill,  is a clock man and has an extraordinary collection of antique timepieces, and allows them all their happy jingles, some on the quarter, some on the half and three-quarter as well as the one important hour.  It was a disconcerting cacophony when we first met at their pleasant dinner table some years ago.  I’m sure it takes some time and thought to wind and/or stop them all before an extended trip, but they are lovely.

Each of our clocks has a story of course, some more interesting than others.  My favorite rests upon my living room mantle, and I have loved it all my life.  It first belonged to my great uncle’s family and was given to him and my aunt for their wedding and decorated their mantle all their lives.  As a homesick child, when I was sent to live with them on so many occasions, I lay in my bed and listened to it chiming the hours.  It became a constant comfort to me then, but I no longer keep it wound since it is quite heavy and sits too high for my short stature to reach any longer.  It sits  beside a smaller English clock and the two of them quietly convene throughout the hours.

One of the two which are kept running belonged to my grandmother’s husband, and has a lovely Westminster chime.  It passed down to my parents and then into my care some years ago.  Another antique wall clock was discovered hiding in a charming old shop in Edmond, WA. a very long time ago too, and caused some excitement to our clock friend when he first saw it as it was missing an ornament on its top.  He immediately went online and found the correct piece which was duly implemented.  There are a couple of annoying cuckoo clocks, one of which actually came from a trip to Germany in my suitcase.   Another Navy clock reminds Dr. Advice that he once sailed the seas, and keeps it as his responsibility to readjust it according to whether it is Daylight Savings Time or Real time.  A small Early American kitchen shelf/mantle clock which probably sold for a very small price from a catalogue when new, and for which we lightened our wallets a bit, was meant for a granddaughter, but alas, at this time, she hasn’t a mantle or a shelf on which to put it.

There is one uniform time-keeper  which keeps all the rest honest; and that is the computer which keeps track of the time and the date, so that we can all rest easily.

LOOKING BACK

No, don’t look back.  Things were never as good as they seemed at the time.  Some of the friends you chose in high school did not continue to be the friends you would keep or would choose to keep after you became a “thinking” human being.  However, in contrast, some people you chose to overlook at the time became dear as the time passed.

Class reunions give occasions to reevaluate your friendship scale.  Being easily impressed, one friend I chose because she was voted the prettiest girl in my senior class, and I thought the glamour would rub off on me.  It didn’t.  We were both military “brats” which gave a certain point of departure, she being army and I proudly proclaiming my navy heritage.  Her chin was permanently pointed toward the sky, and she obviously saw her father as at least a 3-star general instead of his lower rank.  I on the other hand, was well aware that I was not the admiral’s daughter.  However, I did choose her as my maid of honor when I married, and she certainly dressed up the receiving line.

We corresponded from time to time throughout the years, and I was delighted to see her across the room at a subsequent reunion.  But when I approached to greet her she looked uncomprehendingly at me, checked out my name tag, and effused “Oh Kayti!  I didn’t recognize you!”  I didn’t know whether to be insulted or pleased to think that I had perhaps changed for the better in her eyes.

Some high school friendships do continue and become more precious as time goes by.  Dr. Advice was fortunate and blessed to have a number of that sort.  He made the acquaintance of his dearest friend at the tender age of 5 when they shared a naptime mat in kindergarten.  They were also neighbors a few houses apart.

  They shared their affection and confidences throughout their lives until sadly, fate decreed otherwise.  His longtime friend departed too soon, and left gaping holes in the hearts of his family and friends.

At reunions, you table hop, laugh and compare notes from the years in between–it’s compulsory behavior.  As the years pass you’re afraid to ask the inevitable question: “whatever happened to…..? ”  You realize that though the stories you tell may begin on a jaunty note, in spite of your good intentions, can turn a little sad at the end.  You only think you have control of the story you’re telling.