Sorghum Cake

Sorghum Cake

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Prepare sour milk by mixing 2 Tbsp vinegar with enough sweet milk to make one cup, or use buttermilk.

Grease 8 x 11 x 3 " baking pan (so says the recipe, however I recall using a 9 x 9" brownie pan and filling it very full).

Mix the following ingredients in a large bowl as if for pie crust. That means throw it all into the bowl, then chop up the shortening very fine with knives in the dry ingredients until shortening is the size of small peas. You can also use a fork or a multi-bladed pie tool. You end up with a mixture which looks like crumbs.

2 cups flour (all-purpose or white whole wheat)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Reserve 1/2 cup of the crumb mixture to sprinkle on top before baking.

To the dry ingredients in the bowl, add and mix until lumps removed, but not too long:

1 egg
2/3 cup molasses
1 cup sour milk (2 Tbsp vinegar mixed with sweet milk you made earlier, or buttermilk)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Pour batter into greased cake pan. Sprinkle reserved crumbs all over top of batter.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit 40 minutes.

Cut into squares and serve.

Rhubarb Cobbler

Rhubarb Cobbler

Bake in 425 degree oven for 25 minutes

4 and ½ cups rhubarb (1 and 1/2 inch pieces)
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. grated orange peel (or cinnamon)
4 and ½ tbsp. flour
¼ tsp. salt

Place the above ingredients in a flat baking dish, Cover with crust from the next ingredients.

Crust (top only)

1 cup flour
1 and ½ tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. shortening
1/3 cup milk

Hot tip: roll the crust out between 2 sheets of wax paper. Less muss and easy to transport!

Hitchhiking through Montana

When I was 18 in 1975, I moved from Rhode Island to Montana to go to the state university in Bozeman. I majored in English and studied Beowulf, the Beat Generation, Montana History and glass blowing. I received a broad education. I also learned how to make deerskin moccasins in an adult ed course. Brought up to be self-sufficient, I didn’t like to ask for anything. But I couldn’t suppress my appetite for travel. Rather than stay put, I started hitchhiking. It began with my friend Lana and me hitchhiking with separate drivers and seeing who’d arrive in Missoula first.

The first weekend I went to Missoula to see my brother Bill, I took the Greyhound bus.
It was expensive and dull. The only time it wasn’t dull is when the bus slipped backwards downhill on an icy street in Butte. That was slightly terrifying. I knew from Montana history class that Butte was a mile high and a mile deep. That had been a long slide backward down the steepest street in town.

Hitchhiking, I found, broadened my education. I learned how to change a tire from a driver with a broken shoulder. One time when I put my thumb out to get to Missoula, 3 guys in a yellow state truck picked me up. Right away, they let me know that they were no threat at all. They were going as fast as they could go to get to a ball game in Spokane at 6 pm. I knew I had nothing to worry about. Then one of the guys asked if I knew what their load was. Well, I hadn’t a clue. It was under wraps. Turns out it was dynamite to blow out the landscape to put in a new highway. It was a beautiful sunny day and the 3 guys let me jump out quickly in Missoula.

I had a good weekend with my brother. We went skinny dipping in the Clark Fork River and rode the cold current upstream, then ran through a path in the bushes to our original spot where our clothes were hanging from a branch and started all over again. Billy said it was perfectly safe. On our 4th or 5th trip back through the shrubbery, a train went by with several workmen hanging out the windows waving and whistling. Oops. I’ve always realized you only live once. You might as well do it with gusto- I waved back!

Sunday about noontime my brother and I walked to the bus station. After he left, I sneaked off to the highway and put my thumb out. A little old lady in a very old Plymouth picked me up. It was such a faded black that it was the color of a plum. The old lady started telling me stories about bad guys, people who were crooked and disrespectful of their fellow men. The most memorable of her bad guy stories was about a lawyer, a very crooked lawyer. He was sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner one night in his home in the foothills of Missoula, watching television and someone shot him dead through the window. One bullet. She said people in Montana had no patience for bad guys.

Well, all of a sudden she takes the exit for Deer Lodge and Warm Springs off of I-90.
I need I-90 the whole 180 miles to get home to Bozeman. What I know about Deer Lodge and Warm Springs is not any good. The 2 main things going on are the state prison and the state mental hospital. She told me she was going to see her sister. I wondered which institution she was in. Then the old lady told me she carried a gun and she asked me to retrieve it from under the seat. It was a big heavy pistol. Her son had given it to her because he knew she picked up hitchhikers.

She didn’t want the gun for herself. She wanted me to know how to use it. We were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a sheep in sight. She told me to aim it up out my window, pull the trigger back and fire it. I obeyed. Never underestimate an old lady. My right shoulder reverberated. That pistol packed a punch.

As we neared Deer Lodge and Warm Springs, I spotted a big sign which read, ‘No Hitchhiking within 15 miles of city limits’. I thought I was sunk. She left me off right in the middle of town. I looked around quickly and put my thumb out again. Within a minute a trucker picked me up and brought me all the way to the supermarket in Bozeman. He was delivering a big load of groceries.

I moved back to Rhode Island in 1981 and hitchhiked one last time, from Vermont back home to Rhode Island. A couple of Boy Scout leaders delivered me almost to my door. I decided that would be last hitchhiking adventure. I’d had a good ride with God on my side.

Cats We've Had

When I was a kid, our family had an orange cat named Orlando. He ruled the house. We’d wanted an orange cat for awhile. One day one showed up in the Sunday paper want ads. My mother and I went to the ‘Point’ section of town to fetch him. I had to pry the poor cat out from under the radiator. It was winter-time. This was not a stupid cat!

Orlando was named after a storybook cat from England. He had a good life in our old farm house and three acres. Five children and one mother doted on him. My father wasn’t at home enough to know Orlando very well. My sister painted an official coat of arms that she posted over his feed bowls. When Orlando heard us pour the dry food into his dish, he came careening around the corner, his nails clicking on the linoleum. He ate with gusto. When I got home from school the cat would be sitting on my mother’s lap while she read.

I’m not sure how long we had Orlando, but the first few years, when my mother was still alive, seemed idyllic, for Orlando and me. We both had plenty of time to roam around outside. There were so many of us that Orlando didn’t need to cling to a radiator. We all wanted him in our lap!

Fast forward about three decades. I’m married and we live in a house with a front porch. The houses are pretty close together. One day after work my husband and I were sitting on the porch. I noticed an orange cat trying to move into my next door neighbor’s house. She was shooing him away. Mrs. Williams was far too busy to have a cat. She played bingo several times a week and hung out with a group called the Recycled Teenagers. She was about a four time cancer survivor and was 92 years old.

“Well”, I said to my husband, Phil, “If that cat comes up on our porch, I want him.” I came home from work at the library about twenty past nine and guess who was in or living room? Phil knew I wanted him so he fed the orange cat salmon scraps. We’ve had Julius for eleven years now. He has some set patterns and I think he has lots of cousins in our neighborhood- there are several orange cats.

The vet told me Julius age was five when we got him. He said he could tell by his teeth. One of his patterns is after dinner about seven each night; he’ll get our attention to get outside to hang with his friends. Phil says he’s in a hub cap gang, that they’re up to no good. We’ve seen the lot of them sitting in a circle in our neighbors’ yard.

We call Julius Kit Kat. The vet asked for a name the first time I brought him in so I quickly named Julius after a boy I liked in elementary school. My friend Kristina calls Julius Caesar.

Julius doesn’t like going to the vet after that first time. But they sure like him. He toughs it out and takes all the shots. A few years ago the vet convinced me to have Kit Kat’s teeth cleaned. It’s a long drawn out process: first they check him ahead of time to make sure he’s all healthy. Then the night before, no food allowed after 9 pm. I asked Phil to make sure he didn’t eat after 9 and to keep him inside. When I got home from work at 9:30 there was no sign of Kit Kat. In the morning he turned up for breakfast. That’s when I quick got him into the pet carrier and to the vet’s by 8 am. They said they’d call when he was ready, that it’d be about 4. About 4 I came off the beach to my car and listened to my phone messages. The lady from the vet tells me on the message that our cat has done something no cat at the Portsmouth Veterinary Clinic has ever done before, and that he’s ready for pick-up. When I get to the vet’s its near closing time. Kit Kat is on the counter in his carrier and the lady behind the counter is bragging about him!

He apparently ate plenty the night before, not inside but out. When the vet went to check on him to make sure the anesthesia was properly taking effect, our mild-mannered Kit Kat was projectile vomiting one mouse after another, three in all.

Always Set an Extra Place

“Always set an extra place at the table for the person from the highways and the byways.”

My mother Joanne always sets an extra place at the dining room table. When she married my father, she gained five instant children, ages 12-22. All of a sudden, there she was- a 33-year-old single mother of a 9-year-old girl who liked McDonald’s hamburgers- thrown into cooking for seven or eight every night of the week. My favorite supper dish was ‘Ranger Casserole’. I think you would call it cowboy gruel these days. It was delicious and its deliciousness emanated throughout the entire rambling ranch house.

My parents met at Easter time at church. I may never know all the specifics but I do know it was a match made in heaven. One friend of my father’s said it would never work; Joanne was too young or too something. Well, 40 years later, 9 grandchildren later, multitudes of meals later, I still ‘drop in’ near mealtime and Joanne quickly ‘enlarges’ the meal. After all, sustenance comes in many forms.

Coffee at Wall Drug

This I Believe:

Manners are Always of Paramount Importance

It’s not like me to turn down an invitation for no good reason. So when a driver who looked to be 8 years old rolled down his window on an early morning in June and asked me if I’d like to have coffee at Wall Drug, I smiled, said yes, and for the next 300 miles we sidled up to each other like ponies going 70 miles per hour. There was no one else on the road.

I was brought up to use good manners on all occasions and with everyone. I believe good manners are always of paramount importance. I can and will talk with anyone. I am not a true New Englander. I don’t avert my eyes to strangers. It is plain rude to act as though another person does not exist.

Now 300 miles is several hours. It was a beautiful blue sky day in South Dakota. There was a new billboard every 15 miles or so announcing how many more miles it would be until we would arrive at Wall Drug. None of the signs really said what Wall Drug was- a town, a little shop or what. I think that was the idea: to pique the customer’s curiosity and lure them on, kind of like the gallant 8 year old boy driving his pony car next to my pony car.

Alas, come about 10:30 in the morning we arrived at our destination, parking side by side. Wall, South Dakota looked like a series of Wild West mini strip malls on one wide street. It was surrounded by vast emptiness.

I had my life possessions in my car, my first car, and I was moving from Rhode Island to Montana. I carefully got out of my car to keep my long skirt intact and watched the 8 year old boy awkwardly clamber out of the drivers’ seat. Funny thing was his legs looked incredibly long next to the rest of him. That’s when I realized that my host was not one person, but two! The tall party whose feet reached the pedals woke up and peeled himself off the seat. He was not just tall, but handsome and swarthy, too.

We picked the storefront that advertised, amongst other things for sale, coffee. A bottomless cup. We made our way past personalized license plates, glasses for shots, glasses for juice, and an electronic bucking bull. This was 1978. I was 21 and always ready for an adventure. They gestured me up on the electronic bull and the little boy hopped up, too, while his dad took a picture. They looked very much alike, so I knew they were father and son. They both had impeccable manners. One pulled my chair out, the other pushed it in.

The man’s name was Salvador and he was an iron worker who worked at great heights on buildings and bridges in Pittsburgh. I can’t remember his son’s name. They were on their way to see friends in California. Salvador had his son for 2 solid weeks and to make the most of it he had taught his son to drive so they could takes turns and not waste time sleeping instead of getting to California. The boy, it turned out, was really 12. He was just still small. What he lacked in stature, he made up for in manners and gallantry. After about ¾ of an hour of shooting the breeze over coffee, we wished each other safe journeys and drove off into the day. I’ve never forgotten these 2. I hope the photo that Salvador took of his son and I on the electronic bull came out well!

If I’d averted my eyes to the boy on the highway, I’d have no story to tell and I’d be a dull girl with no inner resources and poor manners. I believe that good manners are of paramount importance to living a rich life among one’s fellow souls on this earth.

How Rowena got her name

It took me a long time to find out how and why I was named Rowena. I asked my father when I was about 25. He didn’t really remember. I am the fifth child. My mother wasn’t alive to remember. The older kids are named John, Hope, Pamela and William. I know that the oldest 3 kids got to name Billy: they named him for an old beloved pony that belonged to Bob Peckham down the street.

My father went to his files to search for the answer to my question. I get asked pretty often how I got my name. Some people think I picked it myself after unloading a dull name. I tell them I’ve had it all my life. What my father turns up in his ‘R’ file is the hospital menu that my mother checked off everything on the day I was born. I was born at lunchtime on a Saturday. She missed 2 meals on my account and must have been ravenous. Still, that morsel did not answer my question.

I asked both of my older sisters what they remembered. First, I was supposed to be a boy so they only had boys names picked out. My father says you need a baby around at least 2 days to know what to name it. Both sisters said our parents told the older 4 kids that they could name me, too. Pam picked out the name Mrs. Spooner. All 4 kids agreed upon it. Mrs. Spooner was our beloved friend and kindergarten teacher. Well, my father told my brothers and sisters that I could not possibly be named Mrs. Spooner, that you couldn’t call a child Mrs.; it had to be a first name. This presented a problem. No one could settle on an agreeable name. People think I’m named for the character in Ivanhoe. I wasn’t. Apparently, my family worked their way up to the Rs in the baby name book. On the 10th day after I was born I was still without a name. Dr. Brownell called the house and told my parents I needed to be named pronto or I’d be known as Baby M forever more.

So that’s how I was named Rowena. It’s highly unlikely I’ll ever share my name with a hurricane. They don’t usually get up to the Rs in hurricane naming land.

Lunch at Perkins Cake and Steak

My grandfather was 87 years old the last time I saw him, 2 years before he died. It was 1982 and he drove a red mustang. On the day after Thanksgiving, with my sister & I in the car already, we picked up Johanna, my late grandmother’s best friend. Both Johanna and my grandfather had dividend checks to put in the bank. Johanna didn’t drive. Her late husband Raymond had been the driver. My grandmother didn’t drive either. I, on the other hand, had driven 500 miles to see my grandfather. My sister flew to Rochester from Philadelphia. My grandfather had been after Johanna to move in with him so that he wouldn’t have to fetch her across town. I think he had other things in mind, too. Johanna would have none of it. She told him so in the car in her thick German accent.

Johanna and our grandfather kept up a loud banter in the front seats while my sister and I sat quietly in the back, taking it all in. Floyd, my grandfather, had a lot to complain about. He was just like that. He liked to say, “It’s hell to get old!” He was not one to look on the bright side of things. I’m not sure how Johanna or my grandmother could stand him. My grandmother’s brother and sister would not let him into their home anymore. He waited outside, either in or on top of his car. He would actually lie on top of the station wagon.

After Floyd and Johanna deposited their dividend checks at each of their banks, we were in for a rare treat- lunch out. Both Johanna and Floyd were hard of hearing so they talked loudly. Again, my sister and I sat quietly across from them. I was 25, she was 32. Halfway through lunch Johanna announced that lunch was on her. My grandfather said since we were his granddaughters, that lunch was on him. They went back and forth, louder and louder, about who was buying lunch, and who had more money. They named their top earning stocks. Johanna had a great deal of New York Power & Electric. She said since she had more money that she’d buy us lunch. All eyes in Perkins Cake & Steak were on us. My sister was trying to slide onto the floor in embarrassment. I really don’t know who ended up paying for our lunch but I told my sister to sit up straight, that this might be the last time anyone argued over who paid for our lunches! 28 years later, I can testify it was.

Petunia Caper

The petunia caper happened 20 years after the bicycle theft. It was different. My baskets of purple petunias hung from our front porch and were in plain view, clearly unlocked. I knew when I purchased them for way too much money, that there was a risk involved. They were gorgeous and they gave off a heady sweet scent after dusk. My husband and I enjoyed them a lot and so did many passersby who slowed down and complimented us on them.

One morning, July 16th, 2008, to be precise, I woke up hot at 3 am, padded out onto the front porch for some fresh air, and asked my husband if he’d done something with the petunias. He thought I’d done something with them. Clearly, someone had done something with them but it wasn’t us! Before I got too upset, I marched upstairs to the computer and within minutes had emailed a letter to the Newport Daily News. When you live in a small place the most-read parts of the paper are the obits and the letters to the editor.

Then I tried to go back to sleep. About 6 am the phone rang: it was my husband telling me that purple petunia petals were littered all over the sidewalk of our street. 2 blocks of petals, and then he had to catch the bus. I got myself dressed quickly and filled my backpack with my cellphone, a camera, and a pad and pen. Before I was at the end of the trail of petals, my husband telephoned again, telling me that if I spotted our petunias, to call police for help in retrieving them. At the end of our street I saw that the petunia petals went up Broadway. I followed them for a block and a half and then the trail went dead. For some reason I looked up at the sky and I saw our petunias hanging from the front porch of a huge yellow brick house across from Charlie’s 5 & 10, along with about 17 other mismatched flowering plants.

Clearly, we had a plant-loving thief on our hands. I photographed the booty and then walked several houses away before I called the police for their aid in retrieving our petunias. The dispatcher told me the police would get back to me after the shift change at our house. At 7:20 am a policeman drove up and invited me for a ride in his hard plastic back seat. He had already spoken with the petunia thief who had not been quick to answer the door. The thief insisted that he’d purchased the plants at Walmart in January. The policeman told me that he didn’t know much about plants, but he did know you couldn’t purchase flowering outdoor plants at Walmart in January. We parked in front of the house and the officer said to me, “Lady, are these your purple petunias?” I said, “No, officer, those are someone else’s hot pink fuschias.” The police got out of the squad car
And went up the stairs to that yellow brick house and rang the bell. After 5 or 10 minutes without result, he came back down and told me he was calling for backup. In about 2 minutes, 2 policemen went back up the stairs to that front door. The thief was slow to answer the door. About 5 minutes later, each policeman , bearing a basket of purple petunias, came back to the car and asked if these were my plants. They were a little worse for the wear but they were our plants.

The policeman drove me home and hung up the plants for me again. After that, I wired them up with floral wire so they’d be pretty difficult to walk off with again. I also bought some plant food and nursed the poor plants back to health. Now if you ever need help finding something- you know you to call: Rowena D. Burke, Ace Plant detective!

The Bicycle Theft

I learned how to ride a bike when I was 7 years old and shortly afterwards my whole family took a trip to Apex, a big store in Rhode Island. It was before the big bridge was built. We took the long way around. Each of us 5 kids came home with a new bike. Mine was a very pretty bright blue, 3 speed, girls’ Raleigh. It was also 26” high. I grew into it. I had my share of spills.

After school, I rode that bike every day. I usually went over to my friend Beth’s house or to my friend Judy’s house. By the time I was in 11th grade I decided I needed a 10 speed bike and the blue Raleigh gathered dust for a decade. But then when I lived on campus at U.R.I. I needed an easy bike to tool around on. The girls’ bike fit the bill. I dusted it off, filled the tires and brought it over the bridges to Kingston.

I sewed it a special heavy plastic tarp and put Velcro on both ends. The tarp was custom-made to fit the railing of the steps in front of our apartment at Grad Village. One night I was careless and I failed to put the padlock on the bike. I just used the tarp. When I woke up the next morning my husband told me that my bike had been stolen. Sad as I was, I put my pen to paper and wrote up a letter to the editor of the school’s daily newspaper, the 5-cent Cigar. I made a few calls first asking 4 different individuals if I could use their contact information in my letter. All 4 agreed to it. I described the bike clearly and concisely, mentioned that it had been in the same family for 28 years, added in the general location of our apartment building without getting too specific, suggested that the guilty party speak to any of the 4 campus chaplains, and signed off with a short prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my bike you shall not keep.” And then I signed it Winnie McIntyre. Now that is not my name and there was no one I knew with that name. It just sounded good to me. Plus, I was in library school. I had to be serious and keep my name out of the paper.

The first day, I noticed my letter did not appear in the paper. I didn’t think the Cigar juried its’ letters the way I’m sure the New York Times does. I marched straight into the Cigar’s office in the student union building and made a query as to why Winnie McIntyre’s letter didn’t make it in. They didn’t think I was serious. They couldn’t believe there was any chance I might get my blue bike back. I remained optimistic. I pleaded with them and the next day my letter was printed. I mean Winnie McIntyre’s letter was published. Success! I went into the Cigar office again and thanked them profusely.

When I woke up early the next morning, my husband had already been outside on the steps to smoke and he had news for me before I even had my head off the pillow- my bike was back!

I penned a short thank you note as a letter to the editor and it was published the next day. Then I got dressed and took my bike out for a spin!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7668856@N05/559027776/

Honeymooning with Mrs. Spooner

Mrs. Spooner, with hair silver gray, likes to work, but would rather play...

Kindergarten was my absolute favorite year of school because I loved my teacher. Mrs. Spooner made everything an adventure. Her dress-up corner was complete with a fireman’s suit. My favorite science experiment was when Mrs. Spooner lit a candle in a glass and then put a cover on it, snuffing out the flame. Show and tell was an important feature of kindergarten. One day my mother sent me in with a paper fish from Chinatown. We had filled it up with our used Christmas wrapping paper to puff it out. It was a hit. There was always something new and different at show and tell. On Halloween we wore our costumes to school and had our photographs taken.

When I started first grade, it was a disappointment. I longed for kindergarten.

One summer day when I was 9 or 10, I was miffed with my brother and sister, and took off on my bicycle to get as far away as I could. I rode across the highway and behind the town hall to Mrs. Spooner’s house. She was out in her rock garden. Like most runaways, I forgot to pack a lunch. Mrs. Spooner packed us a big lunch, got out her bicycle and we were off on a great adventure! We rode across the highway, behind the shopping center and after about two miles, we arrived at the Cliff Walk in Newport. We had our picnic at Forty Steps,

after we climbed up and down it. Mrs. Spooner told me how the Irish who worked on the estates met a Forty Steps on Sunday afternoons to dance.

The summer I was 11 my mother died. I started sixth grade. By the end of my sixth grade year my father was engaged. I wasn’t sure about the whole arrangement at first. What sealed the deal for me was Mrs. Spooner was to be my grandmother! Plus, I got a younger sister, Deborah. I had always been the youngest, the one who gets forgotten, the fifth wheel.

In August after sixth grade the wedding was coming. So was a move to a new house. We used four cars for about a week, back and forth a mile between the old house and the new house to move our prized possessions. My father hired a moving van for the piano and a few big pieces of furniture.

In the middle of all this, Mrs. Spooner had us kids over for dinner. No parents. She served us ice coffee from a shapely big steel pitcher. I felt so grownup! It was delicious. She decorated the dining table with Santa and the sleigh with twelve reindeer. It was magically Christmas in August!

A week later my father married Mrs. Spooner’s daughter. At the reception at our new house, she proclaimed us her instant grandchildren. Shortly afterwards my parents left on their honeymoon to New Hampshire, while Deb and I stayed close to home and honeymooned with Mrs. Spooner. Mrs. Spooner lived in an old house behind the town hall, where Mr. Spooner was custodian. The house was built with pegs. Mrs. Spooner painted constellations around the cracks in the bedroom walls. She showed Deborah and I how to paint pictures on rocks and glue felt on the bottom for paperweights. Even though it was hot weather, we spent time in the attic looking at the pegs that held the house together.

It was New Year’s Eve 1970. Mrs. Spooner had Deborah and me over for the whole night. We were 9 and 13. After dinner, the three of us got into the car, while Mr. Spooner held down the fort in his comfortable chair, and Mrs. Spooner took us to see the Christmas lights on the Navy ships. There were lots of ships and they were all decorated with lights for the Christmas season. When we got home we had fizzy drinks with cranberry ice cubes in them. We stayed up just past midnight after Guy Lombardo brought in the New Year on TV.

Every cold weather holiday, Mrs. Spooner would bring over her props to play games after the meal. Most of these games we played at her kindergarten. The hardest game was to kneel on a chair and try to drop the clothespin into the glass milk jug. Our favorite was musical hats. We pulled enough chairs for everybody into the living room and Mrs. Spooner put on the record while we sprinted around, each in a different hat, until she stopped the record and we had to pass on the hat to the next person. It was so much fun to see my uncle Ralph Angus Shea wearing a straw hat made to fit a donkey. They were all ancient and silly hats. Mrs. Spooner could get anyone to play!

For the summer holidays we played croquet in her backyard that was next to the airport. It was a well-used set that took a beating every time she took it out. My aunt Gail beat everybody when she and my uncle Richard came up from Virginia. Labor Day was exceptionally festive: my grandfather Richard and my father Richard shared Labor Day weekend birthdays and they each had cakes with lots of candles and ice cream.

When I was twelve, Mrs. Spooner retired and closed up her kindergarten. My twin cousins, Dan and Bob, were in the last class. Once she retired, one thing she did like clockwork every Friday afternoon, was walk down the street to the nursing home nearby and play favorites on the piano and have a sing-a-long. One year on Halloween she went into her special dress-up trunk and got into disguise. Not one soul at the nursing home recognized her. She played their favorite songs on the piano. All the old people thanked her and said they hoped their Josie was OK. Well, Josie pulled off her wig and surprised them all!

I never could get the hang of calling Mrs. Spooner “Grandma”. Sometime in my twenties, I switched from calling her Mrs. Spooner to her first name, Josie.

One time when my sister Deb was about 19, she borrowed a black beaded dress from Josie’s dress-up trunk to wear to a special dance party. It was from the 1920s. It shimmied every time Deborah even breathed.

Josie liked taking Deb and I to the beach in the off-season. Deb collected white rocks. I collected mermaids’ toenail shells, the thin nearly translucent gold shells. When we got home, we arranged and rearranged our shells and rocks on the windowsills and shelves in our room that we shared. I think many of Deb’s white rocks ended up in Josie’s rock garden.

This is what Mrs. Spooner looked like when I was in kindergarten in 1962: Her hair was silver gray and she wore silver metal cat-eye frame glasses. She always wore slacks, sneakers and a blouse and she was partial to blue. She was tall but I never felt overpowered by her size.

Then when Mrs. Spooner became my grandmother and I saw her on holidays, she wore suits and hats, coordinating shoes and a handbag. I especially remember the handbag: Every Christmas she would forget her handbag at our house. She’d telephone over and Deb and I would drive it over to her a whole mile and a half away. It really topped off Christmas.

Mrs. Spooner always looked fine to me. When she got older, maybe she was 75- she went to England with my step mom, Joanne, Aunt Charlotte, and Deborah for a large Coggeshall family reunion. The hotel they were all staying in had a fire alarm before breakfast. Deb and Joanne shared a room and got outside quickly. It took forever for Charlotte and Josie to come downstairs and join them outside. It turned out Josie would not leave the room without her makeup. Luckily, it was not a big fire!

By this time, Josie’s hair was no longer that fetching silver gray. It was white and curled. It turned out the silver gray flip was to conceal the hair she didn’t like.

Everyday Josie and her husband Richard ate breakfast sitting on stools at a counter with a bird feeder and a wildlife action right outside. One day after nearly twenty years of this peaceful existence, someone bought a little chunk of land right across the driveway and built a house. Now they had new wildlife to watch. Before Josie ever met the couple, she knew the husband and wife worked opposite shifts. One summer evening she asked the wife if she’d like to go to the Creamery for an ice cream cone. The lady turned her down. Can you imagine turning Mrs. Spooner down for a cone?!

On the first Sunday afternoon in December Josie hosted an early Christmas party at her house. Did I tell you that her house was where I went to kindergarten? It looked all different from kindergarten times. There was some antique furniture that Josie took excellent care of. She’d reupholstered the loveseat. They’d had a woodstove installed in front of the fireplace. The picture over the fireplace changed with the seasons. To the left of the woodstove on the wall were framed photos of her four curly haired blonde children: Joanne, Edith, Richard and Charlotte. The family that came to the Christmas parties was Josie’s two brothers, Stanley and Tolly, and their families. There’d be a good twenty people in the living room playing kindergarten games.

The state we live in and where Josie lived, Rhode Island, is very partial to low numbered license plates. The lower the number, the more important the person is thought to be. Every time a new plate was issued Mr. Spooner would nail it up the old plate in the garage. The garage was lined with 4858 plates.

I think the last time Josie drove off the island was about 1976. She went to Providence to see Mr. Spooner in the hospital, had a little fender bender on Route 95. When she and her car were reunited, the afghan she was crocheting was gone. So much for my brother’s wedding gift.

One day a man drove in the driveway and bartered with Mr. Spooner for a 4858 porcelain
license plate in exchange for a Vermont plate of no particular distinction. Now fast forward a few years. Josie gets a traffic ticket in the mail from Central Falls, which mystified her. She asked my father for help with this problem. It turned out that the fellow, who got the porcelain 4858 plate, put it on his antique car and parked illegally on the grass in front of the Central Falls town hall. My father got on the phone with a police from Central Falls and explained Josie’s end of the deal, that she’d never been to Central Falls and she didn’t drive off our island anymore.

Who really needs to leave the island when you’re a twelfth generation islander? Josie knew everybody. Now, being Josie’s granddaughter, some of her relatives became my relatives. The boy who sat behind me in math class, Jay, calls me ‘cousin’. I call him ‘cousin’. It’s fun!

Josie made it to 89. Her good friend Natalie, who she used to skate with, made it to 100 in January. Josie would see herself in the mirror and say she didn’t recognize the old person she saw in her reflection. She still felt young inside.

The Quarters from Globe

Sometimes you learn a lot about a person after they die, and I don’t mean from their obituary. After Josie died, I found out that she was an excellent archivist. My aunt Edith from Tucson and I spent three days sorting out Josie’s household possessions: her clothes closets were incredibly tidy. Like were colors were together. The blue section was the biggest. We were sorting out the clothes to go to three different thrift shops. My stepmother said we shouldn’t give her whole wardrobe to one thrift shop so we divvied it up. I made sure to check the pockets on everything before it hit the pile. Well, I hit pay dirt when I got the hanger with the striped robe from the navy blue section: on the same hanger was a basic black swimsuit and in a pocket of the striped robe was a zip-lock bag with $5- worth of quarters with a handwritten note that said “I won these quarters last February in Globe, Arizona.” My Aunt Edith and Uncle Ed had taken Josie for a weekend excursion to Globe. Ede had gotten a deal on the hotel. They had fun eating, swimming and a little bit of gambling.
Now, who’d a thunk Josie was a gambler? You just never know about a person.

 

Growing up Josie

 

Josie grew up with two brothers and a little tiny dreamy mother. She was born in 1910. Her father had gone to Japan when she was pretty young and didn’t come back home. He mailed home gifts once in a while to the kids. He had a Japanese ‘wife’.

Well, Josie and her brothers, Stanley and Tolly, did pretty much whatever they wanted and traveled as far as their bikes could carry them. Josie told me that in the summertime they liked to swim. They went to the one beach that didn’t charge an entrance fee. The ride to the beach was mostly downhill. Piece o’ cake. After getting refreshed in the ocean, it was an uphill excursion home. Josie wore the basic black bathing suit of the day. I think it came below the knees. It was pure wool. When it got wet, it itched up a storm. So by the time she got home again, she was sweaty and itchy all over. Her brothers had it a little better. There was a little less suit to chafe.

Josie’s Mother

The first time I met Josie’s mother was at my parents’ wedding reception in 1969. She was small, wore a hat, and sunk down deep into the chair in our living room. I didn’t know who she was but she caught my attention when she tugged on Josie’s sleeve and asked who the cute young man was. The cute young man was my father. Josie told her mother he was Joanne’s husband. Josie’s mother’s name was Laura, Laura Tolderland.
She was a little senile and she definitely liked my father. It was like Josie was the mother and Laura the daughter. Josie was always a take-charge kind of gal. And from what I’ve gathered, Laura was always kind of dreamy.

I didn’t really know where Laura lived but I know when she broke her hip, she came to stay with Josie for several months. Somehow the bed squeezed into the TV room. One time Deb, Joanne and I went over to see Josie and Josie welcomed us in with her finger over her mouth. She walked us over to the TV room doorway and there was Laura sleeping away sweeping her hands back and forth, up and down over the bedclothes, playing the piano. On holidays Josie and Laura would play duets on my father’s grand piano.

Josie’s Inheritance

After she retired, Josie cleaned a few houses for ‘older’ ladies. To be honest, these ladies were about the same age as Josie. Unlike Josie, they weren’t still riding their bicycles and dressing up for Halloween. I suspected they visited as much as Josie cleaned. Josie often came home with something pretty choice. Deb and I both got necklaces that belonged to one lady on Wyatt Road.
I found out about Josie’s inheritance at Christmas time after she got it. She got $13,000 from an ‘older lady’ she cleaned house for. Now the very first thin she got with it was a Yamaha lap piano. She brought it over on holidays and played requests right in the living room.
That lady must’ve really like Josie- Josie really enjoyed her Yamaha lap piano!

Singing with Josephine

Where I’m from/ Singing with Josephine

I am from Anne and Richard, the fifth child of two Midwesterners who met in Istanbul and then landed in Newport, Rhode Island in 1948. I was born May 4th 1957, Rhode Island Independence day and named Rowena ten days later. My mother died in 1968 and I still have a hard time pronouncing the R of Rowena.

I grew up in a lovely old farmhouse, with three acres on a dead end lane, in Middletown, Rhode Island. Our Portuguese neighbors took good care of us. When five of us kids broke our parents’ four-poster bed one Saturday morning, Manny from next door built an unbreakable built-in master bed the very same day. Though the bed was unbreakable, my mother was not.

We moved from that home on Peckham Lane, one short mile away one year after my mother died. I had a new mother and I’d gained a little sister finally, my lovely blonde stepsister, Deborah. She was eight, I was twelve. She told me the facts of life when I had no idea what was happening to my body. I knew from Readers Digest that bleeding from any orifice of the body was deadly and when I told my stepsister I was dying of cancer, she, the daughter of a nurse, reassured me that all was well, that I’d survive. She held my hand, told my older sister to go purchase the necessary supplies and indeed, I survived. I have survived the wreckage of many catastrophes, including cancer last fall.

Life is always an adventure to Deborah and me. We swam through drainage pipes in strong rains, in the nursery behind our house, while our parents honeymooned for the next decade of our at-home lives. We lived life to the hilt and our grandmother Josephine kept us in line sometimes and had us over for sleepovers on New Years Eve. The three of us rode bikes, swam, ate ice cream, and went to see the Christmas lights on the ships at midnight on New Years Eve. Life truly was grand with our grandmother Josie, who my four older siblings loved and selected her name to be mine, Mrs. Spooner. She had been our kindergarten teacher.

Last Thursday night I spent at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital with my friend Mary, her harp music, and my lovely blonde stepsister, Deborah,

who is now in hospice care at home, preparing to take a journey her young son and husband are helping her with-a send-off to parts unknown. Now soon, Deborah, will be singing with Josie again.

Bugs

I hate bugs. I love bugs. I am a nature girl, but I am deathly afraid of Lyme disease and equine encephalitis. I work at the public library reference desk. I have heard too many tales of woe and my imagination is altogether too vivid.

About 6 or 8 Friday mornings ago, I had the morning off work for some reason. I think my boss had set me off the afternoon before and I was still reeling from some inane insult or another. They stream out of her unedited mouth at all of us.

I was heading towards third beach in Middletown to swim my craziness and sillies out;
http://www.middletownri.com/government/6/188/middletown-parks
when I decided I needed to stop at Dunlap Wheeler Park, my mother’s waterfront memorial park on the Middletown/Newport line. I saw a man picking up trash and I thanked him. It turned out he had been the brother-in-law of the man I had had a brief disastrous marriage to in the early ‘80s. I had met this kind man on a bicycle once before when I had been in emergency mode; delivering my 11-year-old stepson so I could disappear to New Hampshire on the bus to the comfort of my dear friend Virginia.

Soon five more people trickled in to the park to do Tai chi. The free tai chi class was wonderful. The deed for Dunlap Wheeler Park stipulated that the park is for public use, no profit could ever be derived from it. The tai chi class used to be held close by at the Norman Bird Sanctuary and it cost money, but bugs plagued the participants so they moved to bug-free Dunlap Wheeler Park. I mentioned a small bit of the park history to them. They invited me to join them. We took deep breaths of the early morning ocean air, saluted the sea and the sky with our feet, our arms, our feet, and our entire bodies.
They all invited me to come back any Friday morning at 8 am to practice more tai chi with them. It was a real charge. I felt like I had struck gold in my mother’s park in Middletown, Rhode Island. I had missed my swim, forgotten about my dreaded boss and risen above the crud of everyday life.

My mother’s 9/10 of an acre big park catches a constant ocean breeze and is bug-free. In 1970, the town of Middletown, Rhode Island dedicated this park to Anne Slater Dunlap, an early and unpopular environmentalist, who was labeled as an instigator in her obituary. My mother loved trees. She had degrees in both botany and biology, and had studied with Richard Goodwin, the granddaddy of the environmental movement of this country. Her garden club planted five small Japanese black pines near the three corners of this park so we could remember her good deeds for the town. Now, nearly 40 years later, these are some of the only Japanese black pines left on Aquidneck Island. It is because the constant breeze scares away the bugs and the bug that carries the germ that killed the rest of them.

I hate bugs but I could not live without them.

Photo by Philip R. Hopper

1957

I think my life began at 3rd Beach. I suppose I made my debut at 2 months of age on the 4th of July. I don’t know how early on I got dipped into the Atlantic. 4 older siblings were known to toss twirl spin and occasionally bodily harm me once necessitating multi-digit stitches across my tiny head when gravity overruled the situation. Head to concrete, this happens. But not at the beach. Most harm happens at home.

So let me tell you about 3rd Beach. There are 3 beaches between points of land on Aquidneck Island. 1st beach is in Newport, Rhode Island. 2nd Beach is in Middletown and 3rd Beach is also in Middletown, Rhode Island. When you hear the phrase ‘good for young and old’, that describes 3rd Beach. The in betweens go to 2nd with their radios. The singles scene is at 1st in Newport. The young and old are quietly enjoying the glassiness, the pastoral qualities of 3rd Beach. There comes a point in life when the crest of a wave is no longer the peak of one’s existence. Happy with oneself, you’re at 3rd. It’s a way of life.

We rented a small piece of real estate at 3rd Beach from Mrs. Peabody. Each day, one by one, we changed into our swimsuits and hung up our clothes on pegs in our changing room. Mrs. Peabody also ran a small concession stand. About once a week my mother gave us money to buy ice cream bars. Otherwise, only money found on the beach was spent at Mrs. Peabody’s. Mrs. Peabody wore a housedress and a very large hat. She lived in a house several hundred yards across the road from the beach. I never saw her except for June, July or August. I have no idea what became of her cash flow or if she had a husband. I believe her house was willed to the bird sanctuary up the road. It needed some serious work to be habitable for the young bird sanctuary director and his wife. Anyway, Mrs. Peabody was a fixture. She hired people to collect money for parking cars and to sell ice cream bars at her concession stand. She spent her days walking between her cash flow operations and greeting her customers by name.

Now we’ve gotten past Mrs. Peabody, and that was no mean feat, we’ve found our ‘spot’ at the beach. Just like homeroom, everyone has a designated piece of the beach. You know people by where they sit on the beach. Just a few people walk the beach during the summer sunlight hours. Leatherman is the memorable exception. I hope he to God that Leatherman never required any kind of surgery because scalpels woulda broken on his shoe leather hide. He basted. He sunned. He strutted. 8 hours a day. I don’t know what he did in winter, either.

Summer is a whole way of life on the island. And 3rd beach is a very, very pleasant state of mind, much better, much more intoxicating than any alcoholic buzz.

On Memorial Day weekend I spent $70 on a beach pass to park at 2nd and 3rd beaches for the season. A few weeks ago I received a letter from my church stating my annual donations for tax claiming purposes. So I went to church 4 times this year and gave $60 in total. I agree, it’s a little shameful. But I can’t see rectifying it. I worship water. I worship the beach. 3rd beach is my place of worship.

4 bathing suits are kept busy all summer long. Pink, purple, green, and turquoise, depending on my mood. I usually feel turquoise. Not many bikinis are spotted at 3rd beach. Mostly on toddlers. 3rd beach is for serious swimmers. Long distance swimmers, people swimming religiously, like myself, and people swimming to strengthen their heart muscles. This is the 3rd beach that I love and know.