Archive for the ‘Memory Monday’ Category

What's your Story?

March 9, 2009

Manlius, New York 1986. I'm the one holding the squirt gun. Jenny's the one on the far right.

Everyone has at least one.

A story.

A story that they can’t live down.

A story that resurfaces at every family gathering.

A story that’s infamous in its embarassment.

A story that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to shake.

Everyone has one.

Even me.

It was the summer of 1985. I was entering my sophomore year. I lived in a little town in upstate New York, a suburb of Syracuse. Jenny was my BFF. She and I had both moved to Manlius during our awkward middle school years. From day one we were inseparable.

Sleepovers were a common occurrence in my growing up years. This summer was no exception. A typical sleepover evening would consist of eating Pizza flavored Combos and peanut M&Ms and drinking lots of Mountain Dew. Sometimes we listened to music and danced around like teenage girls. Prank calling our friends wasn’t unheard of. On one occasion I recall tape recording ourselves singing along to John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane”.

On this particular night we were staying over at Jenny’s house. And apparently the typical sleepover activities weren’t enough to peak our interest because we hatched a plan, the execution of which would go down in (our) history as the dumbest, most moronic thing we ever did as kids.

It was a slow night in our sleepy little town. We were bored. We called some of our friends. Who just happened to be boys. And who just happened to be bored too. We must have just happened to be hungry (after all those Combos and M&Ms) because we agreed to meet these boys at the Burger King just after midnight. Now let me emphasize, for the sakes of our mothers and our daughters, we had no other intentions than to have a couple of fries and hang out with our friends. I was in the midst of a long distance letter writing campaign with my first real love and Jenny… just had a hankering for a strawberry milkshake.

Since neither of us had a driver’s license, or the guts to “borrow” a car, or access to said car, we were left with our own two feet. This wouldn’t have been a problem had we been close to Burger King. But as it was, we were in the next town and had about 2 1/2 miles to walk. Apparently this didn’t deter us. After we thought Jenny’s parents were good and tucked in for the night, we snuck downstairs, past the golden retriever, and out the back door into the cricket-filled summer night.

From Jenny’s house after a quick turn down Salt Springs Rd. it was a pretty straight shot down Duguld to town. If you’ve ever been to upsate New York, you know “densely forested” describes it well. Without many street lights, we were left to “feel” our way down the road. I think our paranoia antennae was on overload because at the slightest sound of a car engine, we jumped off the road and into the bushes. All the Mountain Dew didn’t help either. We kept creating scenarios of what would happen if we got caught. I remember the terms “so dead” and “so grounded” well.

We finally made it into town and to our designated meeting spot, Burger King. But, no fries or shakes were to be had because, apparently, Burger King did not remain open all night. I guess it never dawned on our 15 year-old brains that the world would not be waiting up for us at all hours of the early morning to cater to our 15 year-old whims.

So, with just two 15 year-old boys with two BMX bikes and no place for a burger, we were left with just one option. We proceeded to hop on the backs of those bikes with those two boys and ride around the town. Well, even though our little town was not waiting up for us at all hours of the early morning to cater to our 15 year-old whims, there was somebody else willing to. The Town of Manlius Police Department. What our 15 year-old brains were not aware of was that our town had a curfew. All kids were to be home and anxiously engaged in something productive after 11 PM. Even on weekends.

By this time it was well after midnight and we were anxiously engaged in some very nonproductive tandem bike riding. Our late night escapades were cut short at the first sign of flashing red lights approaching from behind. Jenny and her tandem partner did what any good sane citizen should do. They stopped and got off their bike. My partner and I, on the other hand, must have still been sporting our paranoia antennaes because, instead of stopping, we shot off into the night on a mission to “outrun the law”.

This is where the story gets a little hazy on my part. When I “put it all behind me” I blocked out much of the “running from the law” part. I do know that at one point we ditched the bike and began a foot chase. Foot chase meaning he and I were running around willy-nilly with no plan or distination in mind. I don’t think the policeman ever got out of his vehicle to pursue us. I found out later that Jenny was in the squad car with the policeman offering her best guesses as to where we might have run. They drove around slowly together for close to an hour while I ran my rear off trying to escape whatever trouble I was destined to be in.

The chase ended when I saw the squad car sitting at the side of the road and I “gave myself up” because I was just too darned tired of running and wanted to go to bed. ( Maybe that’s why, to this day, I hate running so much) I reluctantly slid in next to Jenny and we proceeded to try our hand at “sweet talking” the officer into not telling our parents about this little incident. Yes, our 15 year-old brains thought we had a chance at this.

As we pulled into Jenny’s driveway, the officer said to her, “kindly wake up your parents and ask them to come down and speak to me”. WHAT!?! He wanted Jenny to do the dirty work? Didn’t he want to bang on the door and have them open it to the dramatic scene of their teenage daughter and her best friend in the custody of the local police in the wee hours of the morning, just like in the movies? Nope. Jenny reluctantly interrupted her snoozing parents and gave them a quick summary of our sequence of stupidity and invited them to converse with the kind officer.

Needless to say, both of our parents were … shall we say… livid! Those scenarios that we created earlier while traveling down Duguld Road were realized. I can’t remember what fate belied Jenny, but my hopes of sleeping over, hanging out, phone calling or any other form of socializing were put on hold for an entire month.

My 15 year-old brain learned some very valuable lessons that night.

Manlius, New York has a strict police-enforced curfew
Burger King isn’t open after midnight
Sneaking out requires careful planning and thorough research
Police officers are impossible to sweet talk
Parents have a hard time seeing the humor in some things

My now 38 year-old brain is now realizing some things from that night:

All homes with 15 year-old girls should be armed with an alarm system
As the parent of a teenage girl, I’m not a big fan of the “sleepover”
My parents were more lenient than I would be in the same situation
Mountain Dew does not mix well with 15 year-old brains
Memories like these are priceless
So are childhood friendships

Now, what’s YOUR story???

Tags: Burger King, Manlius, New York, sleepovers, sneaking out, upstate New York
Posted in Fun, Me, Memory Monday | No Comments »

Memory Monday – Now Smell This…

January 12, 2009

nose I found myself in Walmart this morning in the cleaning aisle with my nose pressed to all the different fabric softener sheet selections. I’m sure I elicited a few strange and curious stares. But I didn’t care. I was out of sheets and my laundry was suffering from some serious static cling.

Why not just grab a box of Bounce and be on my way? Well, you see, I have a super sensitive nose. The smell goes in and makes a bee-line to the memory part of my brain and pounds on the door. And the smell of Bounce makes my stomach churn and nausea washes all over me.

Have you ever been going about your day, minding your own business when, WHAM! you’re hit with a smell that triggers a memory and you’re transported back in time to a certain experience and you have to take a moment just to remember? Details come back to you and you can just picture the setting, hear the sounds, see the people, and remember how you felt. That happens to me all the time.

Perhaps I have control issues but I have to smell products before I buy them. Like shampoo. Once, I switched shampoos without an initial sniff test only to be transported back to my junior high swim team locker room. I could smell the chlorine, feel my aching muscles, see my portly mustached coach and prepubescent teammates, and hear the whistles and hollers from the parents in the stands. Please, give me back my Nexxus.

Some other smells that elicit a serious case of memories are:

Bounce and garlic – Not necessarily together. Can you imagine? Shoot me on the spot if that happens! Let me explain. Pregnancy. Nausea. Morning Sickness. I equate Bounce and garlic breath with early pregnancy. To this day, both smells trigger the gag reflex. If we’ve been out of town and have done laundry where Bounce has been used, I have a really hard time loving on the kids. I have to go home and rewash everything to get rid of the horrid stench of Bounce! And garlic? Well let’s just say, if one person eats it, we all have to indulge.

Coffee - Reminds me of my very first “real job at East Side Manor in Fayetteville, New York, an assisted living home where I helped in the kitchen. I can see those cute old people sitting around in the lobby waiting for some excitement. I can see the head cook’s massive calves sticking out of her nylon socks and white medical shoes. I can hear “They Built This City on Rock and Roll” playing Every.Single. Night as we were clearing and resetting the tables, washing the dishes, and refilling the creamers. The memory of ginger snaps and ginger ale comes into play here as well. Nightcap anyone?

Lysol Disinfectant Spray original scent - When we finally brought Jack home at 4 weeks-old, after his first open heart surgery, we were ultra paranoid about germs, understandably. A trip to Costco resulted in an entire case of this spray. We spent the day before he came home spraying every inch of our house. Gone were smells of potpourri, last night’s meal, bubble bath, baby powder, laundry detergent. All you could smell when stepping foot in our house was Lysol. We used every last drop of that spray for the first couple months we had Jack and a couple months after his second surgery. To this day, the smell of that stuff reminds me of fear, newfound love, late night medicating, little Maddy in pigtails, playing hour after hour of Memory with her while we were stuck in the house, trips to and from Oakland Children’s Hospital, beeping from the O2 monitor, feeding pump, and apnea monitor. Jack’s heart issues have been relegated to the back burner, thankfully, as has the Lysol. I now buy anything BUT Lysol.

The Trifecta of green peppers, onions, and ground beef cooking - takes me back to my childhood. My sister and I sitting in front of the TV in our cozy tudor in Kalamazoo, Michigan watching The Brady Bunch while my mom makes dinner in the kitchen waiting for my dad to get home from work. That scene flashes in my memory every time I cook those things together now. I equate that smell with home and comfort.

Moth balls and wet dog – Reminds me of my childhood friend Katie Burns’ house. We spent hours playing school and house there. Her basement always smelled of moth balls. She had a black scottish terrier with skin issues. He had scratched patches of fur off his hide leaving bald patches of skin. He must have required lots of baths because I remember often smelling wet dog when I was over. These days wet dog can be smelled here as well since Molly makes the unfortunate choice of frequenting the cow pasture at least once a week. Oh how I love dogs…

As I was laying in bed the other night I was making a mental list of smells that trigger distinct and strong memories. I could go on and on in detail but I’ll leave that for nonpublic writing venues. But here’s a brief list:

Seaweed
Old Spice
cigarette smoke masked with Airwick
Mustela baby products
hospitals
spray adhesive
Big Red gum
Anais Anais and Lauren perfume

OK. Your turn. What smells elicit a serious memory jog for you?

Tags: bounce, East Side Manor, garlic, Lauren, lysol, memory, Old Spice, smell
Posted in Me, Memory Monday | 87 Comments »

Memory Monday

January 5, 2009

Well, it’s back to school, back to the gym, back to the routine. So it would only make sense to get back to Memory Monday posts.

When I heard this story, I was so fascinated and hope one day to be able to visit this building. Apparently it still exists and has been made into a museum of sorts? (Correct me if I’m wrong Charlotte).

charlotte-peter-gardening1

Here’s the story from my mother-in-law Charlotte:

This picture, taken around 1950, shows me and my brother Peter tending the garden at our parents’ apartment.
In 1948, soon after WWII ended, my parents needed a place to live. What they had was very primitive, and way out in the country, impossible for my father to go to work every day. But living space was scarce, since Vienna and surroundings was bombed out by the Russians, and rebuilding had not begun yet. So, my father heard about the abandoned beautiful spa in a village called Kaltenleutgeben, right outside of Vienna. Nobody had time or money to attend a spa, and the mayor of the town let people, for a small fee, choose a couple of rooms to adapt to living space. And that’s what they did. Their apartment included the big reception hall, fancy with wooden, inlaid ceiling and parket flooring, a smaller room which they made into a kitchen, and, across the hall, a smaller room which ended up serving as the kids’ room. They had to partition the whole thing off the main staircase, install a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, which served as heat source as well
as for cooking, a sink in the kitchen, and a stove in the living room for heating. The toilet was across the hall and shared with the neighbor, and there was no bathroom. Every Friday, the bath tub (stored in a room outside the apartment) was carried into the kitchen, so that every one could take a bath. On the other days, you had to wash at the sink. The laundry room was in the basement, and the clothes had to be washed by hand.
Although there were not many modern amenities, we were better off than most of the other people. My dad was very handy, and we kids did not feel any hardship. For a while, we had chickens, and, of course, we had a garden. We lived there for ten years before my parents bought the house they lived in till they died.
For me, it was a special time for growing up surrounded by nature and without any city stress. For the whole family, it was a very happy time.

Happy Memory Monday and welcome back to … routine.

Tags: Kaltenleutgeben, Russians, Vienna
Posted in Memory Monday | 6 Comments »

Memory Monday

December 22, 2008

kids-in-front-of-gate

Charlotte and I figured that this is the oldest picture in the stack, dating back to about 1895. Just to give you a little perspective, here are a few things that happened in 1895:

Volleyball was invented by W. G. Morgan in Massachusetts
George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile
World’s 1st movie theater opens in Paris
1st cartoon comic strip is printed in a newspaper
Frederick E. Blaisdell patents the pencil
America’s 1st auto race starts; 6 cars, 55 miles, winner avg 7 MPH
The first professional American football game is played, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club (Latrobe wins 12-0)

While all that was going on, in a tiny town near Vienna, these scrappy looking kids posed for this photo. Here’s the story:

The five children are my grandmother and her siblings around 1895 in front of their house in a tiny village south of Vienna, Austria. From left to right are: Ferdinand, who later emigrated to Milwaukee, USA; Karola, the oldest girl, who never married, although I was told she had an unhappy love affair in her youth; Emil was the oldest, and he joined the military and became a lieutnant as far as I know; he got married, and his daughter married an American soldier after WWII and moved to Los Angeles; next is Marie (or Mitzi), who married a rich older banker who died soon and left her all his money; and, finally, Josefine, my grandmother, the practical one. Two other siblings, Laura and Paula, were born after the picture was taken.

So, it turns out that the Mitzi in this picture is the very same Mitzi in last week’s post. Remember her? The one in the wedding photo (the one preparing to board the Titanic – not really but doesn’t she looked like she could’ve been?) with the gigantic hat on. Turns out she was able to snag the richest guy around, help out her siblings, and live out a comfortable life with her only daughter.

Happy Memory Monday!

We are loving all the snow that blew in over the weekend and are so happy to be done with school for two whole weeks! Just one more trip to Target and WinCo and Santa will be welcome with open arms! How about you. Are ready???

Tags: Christmas, Memory Monday, Titanic, Vienna
Posted in Memory Monday | No Comments »

Memory Monday

December 15, 2008

wedding-1909

Ralf’s parents were here this weekend for a pre Christmas celebration. Charlotte and I went through the bag of old photos collected from Ralf’s grandmother in Vienna. Holy Toldeo, there are a lot of fascinating stories to be told!

I affectionately refer to these people as “the boat people” because they look to me like they’re getting ready to board the Titanic. This is actually a 1909 wedding photo. Here’s the story behind it:

This has to be a wedding photo of my grand-aunt Mitzi. She was one of seven children raised in a very small town near Vienna. The family was not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, and all the daughters had to go into service with well-to-do families in Vienna. She was the prettiest of all of them, and found a rather rich, though much older husband, who, in turn, ended up helping out all the other sisters when they came to seek their luck in the big city. At least, that’s the saga I heard growing up. The husband died rather soon, leaving Mitzi with a sizable pension. Her only daughter married a lawyer and lived a comfortable life also.

Next week I’ll post a picture of some of those siblings as children. We figured out that the picture is from about 1895. It’s the oldest picture in the bunch.

Winter came to Idaho this weekend in the form some lazy flakes dusting the landscape. I guess we live in the “banana belt” of the state and it snows very little. So the kids were thrilled with what little snow we did manage to collect.

snow

The kids had a Christmas piano concert at my fellow blogger/friend/piano teacher’s house. Every one did a great job. Will only had to be taken out once. And there were even brownies afterwards. Always a bonus.

erik-piano