Season to Season

When I was a child in the 1950s, the downtown square and it’s many stores were the focal point of our community.  On harsh winter days, old men gathered around the wood stove at the local train depot to play a heated game of dominoes.  During fishing and hunting seasons, men found their fishing and hunting supplies at Roach Feed and Seed. Relief from the summertime heat came in the form of a homemade milkshake from the soda fountain at McKnight’s Drug Store.  When families needed new furniture, Baker’s Furniture offered an easy-payment purchase plan.  Come September, back-to-school clothes and shoes were purchased at Cole’s Dry Goods. Our downtown square had everything a 50’s family needed including a two-screen movie theater and an A&P Grocery Store. When Mother shopped for our groceries at the A&P, my brother and I were each given a quarter and permitted to cross the street and, unsupervised, browse through Nicholson’ Variety Store.  My brother immed...

            Though landline phones may be on the endangered species list, in the 1950s and before, they were the lifeline of communities—and a teenager’s life.   For nearly a hundred years, the landline was the way we talked with someone who wasn’t in the room with us.   The telephone wire plugged into the wall jack, and the phone line ran from our house to the perfectly named telephone pole in front of our house.   From that pole and all its cousins standing along our streets, those wires magically found the people we talked with on what was called the telephone.           We had only one telephone, a black rotary one, that sat on a built-in phone cubby in the hallway.   There was no digital caller ID, no robocalls or tele-marketers intruding in our lives.   So when the phone rang, we were excited and curious, not knowing who the caller might be.   The caller could’ve b...

       Grammy’s cookie jar holds special memories for me.   It was a rather big pig, a   Shawnee Pottery Smiley Pig, she named Sweetie-Pig.   It sat in a corner cabinet, a bit out of my reach.   I always tried sneaking into her kitchen to get some cookies, but the lid was so heavy and cumbersome that she would show up like black lightening when I tried.                     Inside were generous sugar cookies with sparkly sprinkles of sugar on top, soft and moist—precious gifts that didn’t even have a handwritten recipe—made straight from her heart. Grammy was the same way, no printed directions with her.   What you saw was what you got, with those special touches like sugar cookie sprinkles on top—she used to add to everything from family gatherings to fresh homemade bread with melty butter and cinnamon sugar on top to teaching me how to apprec...

I was all too familiar with the dark, soupy cocktail of my predawn commute with its precipitous, endless sea of headlights that seemed like lighthouses—beacons of hope illuminating a safe path for me during my morning commute.   I was hopelessly lost, however, on a ritualistic, tempestuous sea never questioning either the distance or the destination.   But one January morning, traffic congestion forced me to exit the well-lit freeway.   By happenstance, I ventured down a poorly-lit, meandering country road.   At each turn I marveled as my headlights reached out in the darkness making the snowflakes look like stars moving faster than the speed of light.   I slowed my car and embraced the subtle privacy of driving through the countryside with its longer, quieter stretches of road where I savored belonging to myself.   At one turn I glanced east just as a subdued sun cast its gentle light upon the snowflakes swirling around my car.   I pulled ove...

The luxurious, time-worn building located at 1618 Main Street was like a majestic Paramount Movies studio set.   I lingered at its front doors and pretended that perhaps Gina Lollabrigida, Ann Margaret, or even Rock Hudson would emerge from the set onto the street where I stood.             “Are you coming?” Grammy tugged on my shirt sleeve.   “We musn’t be late for the fashion show!”   As we walked through the picturesque lobby, I stopped and—like a tourist—gawked at the exquisite crystal chandelier above me.   I even imagined Grace Kelly wearing a glamorous floor-length gown, mink stole, and elbow-length gloves slowly descending the department store’s signature double staircase.           “Little Lady, would you like to sample some perfume?” asked a woman carrying a perfume tray.   “Yes ma’am,” I said my eyes skimming over the tray. “Shali...