Kay's Hair

Kay had a routine:  once a month she went to the Vocational school and had her hair cut by a high school cosmetology student.  By age ninety, she kept it very simple, to go with her basic sweatshirt and jeans.

Kay had been a career teacher of lucky second graders, wife and helpmate to a veterinarian, who left her a widow twenty-five years earlier.  The leftover evidence of her former life was the stainless steel surgery table in the kitchen, used as a counter for creating sandwiches and such like.  Kay’s life was not without humor.

One day I swung by on my bike to visit Kay and find out the latest neighborhood news.  This day she regaled me with the recent day that she served as a final exam model for her cosmetology student.  Being extremely agreeable, Kay had said yes to the student, though she had no idea what it would entail and how long it would take.  It took a whole school day.  Kay had pin curls.  Kay had platinum hair.  Kay had red hair.  Every time she saw herself in the mirror, she had a new look.  It made her dizzy!  Finally, the student brought her back to being simply Kay.

That is the story of Kay’s hair.

Rowena

July 2016

The Rejected Shoes

The Rejected Shoes

When I was twelve years old, my Aunt Betty gave me a formal framed portrait of my father, taken by Bachrach Studios in Boston about 1940.  I have kept it on my bureau ever since.  In this photo, my father looks young and sultry, as I had never seen him look before.  I am the fifth child, born when he was nearly forty years old.  I remember him with wrinkles, so many wrinkles that he had to stretch the skin on his face to shave every morning.

One day when he was having coffee at my house, I brought out the photo to show him.  He was in his late eighties by this time.  He told me the photographer was looking for business and hoping for MIT students to order and pay for lots of prints.  This was my father’s only copy.  It was free.  He sent it home to his mother in Missouri.  He said the photographer asked him to lower his eyelids, which successfully gave the look of ‘bedroom eyes’.

Then my old wrinkled father told me a story:  He had to work whenever he could.  He took work on contract with New England Candy Company, next door to MIT, where they wanted the wafers to dry more quickly.  From his description, it sounded like he invented the microwave oven. 

However, the real story here is the consulting work he took in the shoe factory to improve the operation of equipment.  First, the owner showed him the room where the men worked making the soles.  Then he brought my father to the floor where the women worked on the uppers.  My father told me the room became very quiet and then a low but very audible whistle of admiration came from the factory women for a rare handsome and observant young man on the factory floor.

My father consulted with the shoe factory most of that summer.  At the end of the summer, the factory owner asked him what size shoes he wore.  “Eleven B.”, he told him. At this answer, the owner brought out a brand new pair of handmade shoes, made for and rejected by the bishop of Michigan.  The leather and workmanship were exquisite. 

The shoes were his parting gift to my father.  How my father loved those shoes!  Then he said, the bishop of Michigan was an antiSemitic radio host who did not deserve those shoes.

Richard Morris Dunlap 1940

Sonnet

It’s been

forty nine years

since Granddaddy gave me written

Instructions by post,

“You must write a sonnet.”

I was ten years old.

Now I promise to get on it.

The man from Missouri did not

coax or cajole me.

He simply died.

Two weeks before that 

he telephoned,

reciting to me the Ides of March.

I am still not off the hook

on this sonnet.

Get on it!

Rowena Dunlap Burke

July 2016

Caging the Impossible

Caging the Impossible

Bonnie and Clyde are two capybaras who, in May of this year, took a long and arduous journey from Texas to Toronto, for the sole purpose of mating with a capybara in Toronto’s zoo.
They, quite possibly, did not know the intent of their journey. All they knew is they wanted OUT, and out they got in Toronto and toured on their own for several weeks.
People claimed capybara sightings and sent in wondrously photoshopped capybaras relaxing in kidney shaped swimming pools.
By the end of June, the capybaras were finally reunited. That is the story as far as I know it now.

Caging the Impossible #2
On the Selection of Intimates

I took my annual excursion to the department store, allotting myself one hour only, to select a new brassiere. Wire or no wire? My brother the electrical engineer says bra wire can and has caused electrocution.
Straps? Strapless? Widgets in the back or the front? Black, beige, white, taupe, pink, teal, smurf blue or magenta? I am confronted with a mind boggling array of quick decisions here. Like speed dating, I try on thirty brassieres in thirty minutes. Still, no dice. How quickly can I remove a brassiere? I went home and fastidiously soaked and hand washed my two old brassieres and hung them up to dry over the kitchen sink. Back to intimates another day…meanwhile, I try to conduct a bit of consumer research on my aborted purchases at the library, but alas, brassieres have been blocked. Block the brassiere! Block the brassiere!

Rowena
July 2016