Category: ESSAYS

With apologies to Mr. Bunker..

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person standing in front of some water with swans.Boy, the way Glenn Miller played. Songs that made the hit parade.

Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then, girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn’t need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.

Those Were The Days, written by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse

Maybe so, Archie, and yes, we never locked the doors and it was safe to walk the streets at night.  You knew the A person standing in front of some water with swans.neighbors,  people helped each other.  Life was slower, simpler… BUT

Elastic on underwear was not sewn in but only threaded through casings, and if  it broke (and it frequently did), you were literally caught with your pants down!  And then there was hair care.  Curls were the thing, but there were no “home” permanents  Hair was rolled onto rods, and baked on electric rods in beauty shops.  Need I say more?  And hair color?  You might end up with  green or purple hair in an attempt to be blonde.  And it was permanent.  Nice

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.Canning today is cool.  It’s fun to grow your own strawberries and make your own jam.  Or to buy pomegranete/boysenberry jam tied up with a boquet of lavendar at the Farmers’ Market.  But “back in the day,” canning was a necessity.  Home freezers didn’t exist.   Fresh fruits and vegetables were available only in season so they were harvested or purchased  in large quantities,  and canned for the winter.   This had to be done quickly to avoid spoilage.  The entire family participated and the work was frequently  shared among families.  Children washed jars and  peeled, men cut food  into slices and  carried the heavy baskets and jars, ladies cooked and put into jars.  It was dangerous, hard and  tedious work.  And uncomfortable. The weather was almost always hot (no AC).  And it was far from an exact science  It didn’t always work.

But most of all, we forget (or never knew) about laundry.  Almost an afterthought for us, accomplished automatically in the A person standing in front of some water with swans.background while we do other things, laundry for our grandmothers was a day-long, weekly arduous task.  There was no liquid soap or stain remover.  Stains were removed on wash-boards with bar soap, often home-made.  Unlike the pretty bar soap we buy today at boutiques, they contained no oatmeal flakes, rose petals or lavender beads.   It was either lye soap or lard soap, and it didn’t smell good.  There were no dryers;  washing machines had wringers.  Laundry was hand-cranked between  rollers,  the wet soggy mess dropped into laundry baskets,  lugged to clotheslines and  hung with clothespins to dry – unless it rained.  Then laundry was hastily retrieved and draped over everything in the house that was upright.  Today,  although drying laundry on clotheslines in the fresh air has some merit, it’s an alternative to the dryer.  We seldomA person standing in front of some water with swans. iron today. But most clothing and linens were ironed in the “old days.”  Laundry was  soaked in  liquid  starch prepared by dissolving a powder in boiling water,  and then ironed while still damp with a dry iron.  No spray starch, no  “permanent press.”

So, Mister Bunker, you have a point.  But if we’re honest, we don’t really want our grandparents’ lives.  Their lives were harder and their world was far from peaceful.  Most lived through two world wars and a depression.   So instead of pining for the “good old days,” we should be focusing on making these days better ones.  After all, they’re going to be the “good old days” for our grandchildren.

Author’s note:  Inspired by newspaper columns  by Mrs. Juanita Agan in the archives of the Minden Press Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close Reading

Posted on by Louise Canfield


I love Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer.  Here’s her description of Close Reading:

“And as I wrote I discovered that writing, like reading, was done one word at a time, one punctuation mark at a time. It required what a friend calls “putting every word on trial for its life â€: changing an adjective, cutting a phrase, removing a comma, and putting the comma back in.

Prose, Francine (2009-03-17). Reading Like a Writer (P.S.) (p. 3). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

For the most part, this is how I read now and I prefer books that have to be read this way.    But I had not read like this since since high school.  And that because I was required to answer questions from the text.  Unfortunately, I suspect  the questions were designed to make sure we actually read the thing and not that we  understood it.  That would probably have been asking way more than hormone-challenged 17-year olds could manage.

So after graduation,  I put away my classics, or took them to used book stores, and purchased books from  various best-seller lists.  And until  I retired, most of my reading was for entertainment, or escape;  easily digestible, plot-predictable, “chick-lit,”  books that fit into my handbag, could be picked up from where I left off rushing to board the last flight,  coffee alone at Starbucks, etc.   Although for the most part, they had  something to say, I give myself credit for that much discretion, and I usually identified with them, or learned something.  And I enjoyed them; still do.  But their effects were short-lived.  They did not change  the way I thought or saw the world.    Out of guilt, or curiosity, I periodically tried the latest Nobel or Pulitzer prize winner or a  Dickens,  Jane Eyre, Dostoyevsky,  Bronte etc, but usually admitted defeat after a chapter or two.

But now,  re-reading  the same books, I get it.  Although that literature is not for speed-reading should be self-evident,   somehow I missed that as I sped through my revved-up life against a  background of noise around us so pervasive that I no longer heard it.  Speed-reading literature  would be as pointless as  skateboarding through a Van Gogh exhibit or playing Bach on fast-forward.  (Now that I think of it, I think someone actually has recorded a high speed version of Bach’s Inventions!)

So here’s my challenge.  I dare you. Find your favorite literature classic even if the last one you read was in high school.  Even if it’s not your favorite, just the one you disliked the least.  Take ten minutes to read the first page.   Take even five minutes to read the first page.   I think you will be amazed. I certainly was.  But be warned:   It could change the way you read, what you read and what you think.

Who knows what else?

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

Sunrise surprise

Posted on by Louise Canfield


There is a large vine on the fence by the lake that was not there last year. Its roots are buried under a concrete fencepost and it survived the coldest winter in recent history with no care at all. I assumed it was an annoying weed I would have to pull out,  probably two hours’ work. But overnight it opened its blossoms. It is Crossvine (Bignonia Capreolata to the naturalists).  A beautiful reminder that Nature has wonderful surprises in store for us in places we least expect to find them.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

My Favorite Teacher

Posted on by Louise Canfield


 

A person sitting on the ground in front of water. Miss Kuma was my high school Latin teacher. She was my mother’s Latin teacher. She must have been near 80 when I knew her, but her kindly square face was unlined, her arms firm and strong,  her legs sure and sturdy.   She walked ramrod straight,  and quickly.  There was never a hint of any  physical discomfort.  Her dresses, mostly a variation on a single design, chintz print with round collars, buttons down the front, fell straight from her shoulders to where they met her stockings mid calf above black lace-up brogan shoes.

Miss Kuma was an institution. She never married; her entire life was devoted to her teaching.   She lived with her sister in a two-story white house with a big porch and two swings, halfway up the hill to the high school.  She was my favorite teacher; my mother’s, too.  She was everyone’s favorite teacher.  She never asked for respect, it was a given.  Sadly, unlike today,  the  trust and respect  we had for our teachers was a given.  If the teacher meted out punishment, it was generally assumed it was deserved.  We  whispered and giggled behind their backs,  but they had our respect.  It was still “Yes Ma’m” and “No Sir. ”   Even our manic English teacher who was given to fits of skipping about the classroom and the slightly daft sixty-something French teacher who flirted with the football players.  But Miss Kuma was different, a cut above. She was solid, quiet, soft- spoken, authentic.  There was a waiting list for her classes, even though she only taught Latin!   Even at our age, we knew good teaching when we saw it.  She was strict, but fair and kind.  She was an undisputed authority.  Her demeanor was calm, unflappable, almost bovine.  Bovine… Did I think that  because she told us in strict confidence in  our senior year that her name “Kuma†meant “cow†in Latin?  We all laughed when she said that,  smug at being  entrusted with her secret.   We took it for gospel.  Kuma was Latin for “cow.† Miss Kuma said so.  And as for breaking her confidence – well, not an option.

But..I just looked it up in Merriam’s Dictionary on Google and Cuma is actually Japanese for bear!.

Wow!! All these years, one thing I knew for sure was that Kuma was Latin for cow.  I knew that with the same certainty that I knew that you went to church on Sunday,  that you couldn’t trust Yankees or the government, and that one’s virginity must be guarded  at all cost.

What else was Miss Kuma not telling us? What if the stories she told us about her early life on a plantation, her trip to Rome, the time she went to dinner at the Governor’s mansion .. what if they weren’t true after all?  Only  nerds took Latin; (and we took all four years) so..OK we were a select (polite word for it) group, but we never would have questioned her.  No one would have dared ask; “Hey, Miss Kuma, isn’t that word really Latin for “chair†and not “church?†Icy glares from classmates would have stopped such an upstart dead in her tracks.  But in the light of this new knowledge, I have to wonder  – What about all the sentences we painstakingly diagrammed, the painful recitations, the endless conjugations, all in dogged determination to win Miss Kuma’s soft benign smile?  Were we really learning Latin?  What if this was actually Croation? Or Latvian? Or even Greek?  No one would have known, since no one spoke any languages other than English, unless you count Cajun.

What if she really grew up on a ranch in Texas and not a plantation in Louisiana?  Did she have dinner with the governor or was it really his brother-in-law?  And did she really go to Rome – or maybe it was really only to visit her brother in Georgia.  And why did she  break this to us in our senior year and swear us to secrecy?  Who was she, really? And now that I think about it, what about the other teachers?   Or our parents? What if they weren’t who they seemed  to be either?  Were they all in this together?   Can Yankees be trusted after all?  And what about our virginity!  What weren’t they telling us about THAT!!

My faith is shaken; my confusion profound. I’m at a loss.

But before I  resign this  to  my “Things-Are-Not-Always-What-They-Seem†file which grows exponentially with the years, there is one other possibility.  Perhaps Miss Kuma knew very well that Kuma was not Latin for anything at all and was hoping one of us would actually look up the word and challenge her.  That’s the kind of teacher she was, after all.  Over and over she admonished us to think for ourselves.   “Why do you think that?” she would ask.  And even though the subject was Latin, somehow we talked about our plans, our hopes for the future.   Why didn’t we get it?  What does that say about us?  About the times we grew up in?  I’m sad for Miss Kuma if this was the case.   How many students  passed through her classroom doors, how many times had she  hoped  for one student curious enough to risk her disapproval by challenging her kind authority.  How did she manage to renew her hope for each new class?

I hope it’s not the case.  I hope I just got it wrong…

Ironing Day

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.
Woman Ironing, Rik Wouters, 1912

Today is Wednesday, ironing day.  Mother washed on Monday,  folded and starched on Tuesday, and ironed on Wednesday.  I sometimes wonder if I’ve time-travelled; it was such a different world.  She  began her ironing just as  “Our Gal Sunday” came on the radio and ironed on through  “Stella Dallas”, “The Guiding Light” and “The Brighter Day.”  I would sometimes listen with her to these stories of women whose lives were so different from ours, and she would talk about how some day she would travel.  Just go all over the country with no plan in mind.

She sometimes had help with the ironing from Caroline, a black woman whose family sharecropped on my grandfather’s farm, but only if Mother was physically in the house.  Caroline  believed with all her heart that our house was haunted by a Civil War Captain who hated black people.  But he stayed out of sight if white folks werearound.  Today this seems a little alarming, but as a child in those days,  it seemed perfectly sensible.  No one thought the less of Caroline for it.  And certainly we never questioned the reality of ghosts.  Nowadays she would be on medication for panic attacks.  Not to belittle panic attacks; they’re real.  We just had a different way of dealing with them then. Admittedly less effective, but much more colorful.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

 I recently bought a new iron, bringing, I’m embarrassed to say, my iron inventory to six.   The new one is cordless, and made especially for quilting. I use it  for piecing along with its teeny tiny “wand iron” cousin for nooks and crannies.   But  I also have  two big honking steam irons for down and dirty ironing (to be avoided),  an ironing press for large flat items (I don’t think I have any) and my personal favorite, the vertical iron for drapes which has never been out of its box.  Really.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

My mother had one iron and  its cord had been wrapped several times with electrical tape.  The idea of replacing it never came up.   I  had no clue how hard she worked with so little support until long after I left home.  We talked about this after she left the farm and her life became more comfortable.  But she dismissed it as just the way things were.  And her life was so much easier, she reminded me, than my grandmother’s.  Case in point:  Grandmother used a flatiron that she heated on the wood stove.   I also have two of these.  I use them as bookends.

I never remember hearing the women in my family complain.  Maybe they did.  Maybe that’s what their quilting bees were really all about.  But they never complained to the children.   This might seem duplicitous, maybe smack of denial.  But I’m pretty sure it was not delusional but intentional.    They could not have been unaware of the harsh realities of their lives.  Workdays were long and physically demanding.   The livlihood of the family depended on the right mix of sunshine and rain,  heat and cold, to support the crops.    Loss of children to childhood disease was not uncommon.  The closest neighbors were often miles away.  And always there was the threat of losing sons to war.

Maybe these were coping skills,  passed down from their mothers.  Or perhaps they shielded us because they  wanted us  to enjoy childhood free from as much pain as possible.  Or like mothers since time began, maybe they  simply wanted to protect their children.  No matter the reason, I’m amazed at their strength and resiliency.

Oh, and btw,  about my mother – she got her trip across the country.  It lasted 10 years.

Valentimes

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

  “I got FIFTY FOUR Valentimes! 

 That’s what we called them, “Valentimes.”

 I still remember the  heart-shaped box she carried made specially to hold them. 

  “How many  did YOU get?” she chimed, smiling sweetly.  

I didn’t need anything to carry my valentines in.  I may have gotten a dozen or so, if you count the mercy ones from my gramma and my cousins.  Mortified, I could hardly wait for the whole thing to be over.  Unfortunately what  I did not know at the time was that for or the next 11 years of my life, on February 14,  this painful ritual would be repeated.  Keeping score became less obvious, but not less brutal,  when we reached high school.  And if you grew up in a small town as I did, you will know that the little people you hid from in first grade followed you all the way to Graduation.   So as the Senior Valentine’s Day Dance approached, my little nemesis,  now blossomed into a teenage version of her adorable six- year old self,  had a grown-up question,

“Who’s taking YOU to the Valentine’s Ball?”  My only hope for an escort, as she well knew, was my younger cousin whom I could have bullied into going,  but he danced as though he were shoveling hay.   I  stayed home.

 Valentines Day can be brutal.  And not just for kids.  What’s more, it is no longer confined to a day; it lasts at least a month.  This year valentines were on the shelves December 26!  And until February 15,  we will be badgered by advertisers trying to convince men that they will be permanently branded uncivilized jerks if they do not wow their Lady Love with jewelry and chocolate.  And not just any jewelry and chocolate, but EXPENSIVE jewelry and chocolate,  AND jewelry from the “right” kind of jewelry store.   Neither are Samplers from the drugstore or last minute grocery store roses going to do it.  One jewelry store  solves the problem with a one-stop-shop.  You can purchase your jewelry embedded in a box of chocolate— in the shape of a valentine.   Of course.   Ladies, in turn,  are harassed by weight loss plans, fitness gurus and boutiques to shed those last shameful pounds so they can fit into that “little red dress” they need to show off their expensive jewelry at the Valentine’s Day galas.  I have no idea who eats the chocolate.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.I don’t think this is what St. Valentine had in mind.  The details of his life are obscure, but I am pretty sure he did not achieve sainthood by handing around little cards with hearts on them.   In fact since he was a Priest (or Bishop, depending on the source you prefer),  I expect he would be appalled to find his name  associated with little red and white cards and boxes of chocolate and not the Christian faith for which he was stoned!    No one seems to know exactly how this distorted imagery evolved.  But once the greeting card companies came along, well..you know the rest.   And to be fair, greeting cards are not alone; a search for “Valentines” on Amazon will bring up over two million items, among which you may browse for your shopping convenience.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

I don’t remember much about Cupid in those early Valentines Days.  For one thing, since we were a predominantly fundamentalist Protestant community, our primary schools were not known for their expertise in Roman mythology.  And I suspect the teachers considered Cupid’s garb just a little risqué for our six year old eyes.  Nevertheless, Cupid has been around since the 1800s.  History seems to have treated him more fairly than it did St. Valentine.  Son of Venus,  Roman Goddess of Love, Cupid is usually portrayed as a chubby little boy with a bow and a quiver of arrows, poised to shoot his victims,  thereby infusing them with an overwhelming desire for a lover.  So while the imagery has remained more or less intact, the concept seems a bit off for our modern taste.  I don’t think romance would be my first reaction to having been impaled on an arrow.  Perhaps this is the real reason Cupid never came up in those early Valentine Days.  How on earth do you explain this to a first grader?  But if  his reputation has remained pretty much intact,  Cupid, like St. Valentine, has not escaped commercialization.  There is a Cupid dating service,  there are Cupid cocktails,  Cupid sunglasses, Cupid dog collars.  There is a Zombie Cupid, a Spongebob Cupid, and my personal favorite, the Cheese Cupid.

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

But in spite of it all,  I  do celebrate Valentine’s Day —  in a minimalist sort of way.  My husband and I exchange cards, but when the prices hit $6, we seriously considered recycling them every year.  We send cards to the grandchildren, even though the older ones probably discard them after pocketing the money.  We do not buy chocolate, and especially not from jewelry stores. And we NEVER go to Valentines Day galas.  We have had our fill of surfing parking lots, standing in lines,  and eating tepid banquet food.    We open our cards and watch a movie.  It’s wonderful.  And the days of competing for Valentines Day chocolate,  jewelry, and escorts are gone forever.

Meanwhile, back in First Grade, the Valentines Games probably  still go on, human nature being what it is.   Since we live in kinder, gentler times now,  hopefully the ritual has become kinder and gentler as well.  But we didn’t have social media to deal with.  My mind boggles at the thought of my little tormenter, her cell phone at the ready, armed with the information of my valentine deficiencies.   So  I suspect little psyches are once again bruised and little prom queens set into motion in the quest to win the Valentine Games.   I’ll keep sending cards to the little ones,  just in case. 

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