Stories

Hubknuckles

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hubknuckles

A sweet book from a simpler time

When they were in elementary school, this was a favorite book for both my girls, especially around this time of year. It has some lovely black and white, soft-edged illustrations by Deborah Kogan Ray, and it was originally published in 1985, purporting to be based upon a slightly spooky but also sweet and ultimately positive experience had by the author, Emily Herman, when she was little.

My younger daughter so enjoyed the details and descriptions in the story, that from the very first time I read it to her, she begged for us to have “spaghetti and meatballs” for supper that Halloween, since that’s what the narrator and her family have in the story on that night.

We’ve been having spaghetti and meatballs for Halloween supper ever since. 🙂

Here’s the book’s description:

“Every Halloween, Hubknuckles pays a visit to Lee and her younger sisters and baby brother. The children watch the ghostly figure from the safety of their warm kitchen, experiencing delicious little tickles of fear.
But this year, Lee has decided that Hubknuckles isn’t real. “Hubknuckles is just a sheet and a flashlight,” she tells her sisters. “Either Ma or Pa makes him dance.” And she is determined to prove it.
What Lee discovers after an eerie dance on the lawn with her silent, shadowy partner is sure to delight young readers, who will be enchanted by the softly glowing illustrations of this unusual Halloween happening.”

I recommend it highly if you have or know of young children who enjoy reading or being read to, say from kindergarten age to age 9 or so. It remains one of my older daughter’s favorite stories. And my younger daughter, who is a decade older than she was on that long-ago Halloween when we first read Hubknuckles together, is now an avid reader in own right, in large part due to the way books like it triggered her imagination. This story is available for kindle or in hardcover (though the link I’ve provided in the title here leads to the hardcover version at amazon.com).

One of the things I miss, now that my girls are no longer so little, is the loss of those opportunities to read to them like I used to. Seeing this book brings back many happy memories of times together, snuggled up and enjoying a good tale. But I’ve ordered copies for both of them, so they maybe they will be able to recreate that magic when they read it to their children one day.

Halloween, 1970’s Style

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Halloween circa 1975 edited framed

At the Homestead, circa 1975

So, I was going through some old photos recently and stumbled upon this photo –  one of the few I have of the epic Halloween parties we used to have when I was in elementary school.

Everyone is sitting around the big kitchen table at the Homestead, chowing down on the homemade pizza, cupcakes and popcorn, along with bowls of chips and corn curls, all while dressed in their costumes.

One of the cool things about this picture to me is that none of the people sitting around the table are me or members of my family: They’re all friends from school or up the road.

See, this was the only occasion all year when I and my two closest-in-age sisters (who were the only ones young enough to have this kind of party, still, since we were the youngest three of the seven girls) could invite several friends each to the house for a “big blow-out” party.  Oh, we had friends over all the time, and there was always enough food for another three or four plates, but this was one time when we could have up to 14-15 guests AT ONCE. It was an event planned by us and anticipated by our friends all year.

Most of our friends lived in the small city nearby, where our schools were. We were in the country, and that made a huge difference for a Halloween celebration, much of which could still take place outside, in beautiful mid-October weather.

We’d set up a “Haunted House” in the one-room camp that Pa had built years before out in the woods behind the garage, and some of my older sisters would “man” it. Big, black tarps were strung throughout to make “rooms” and in each room was a different “spooky” tableau…some with moving characters who would jump and frighten those touring it.

We’d have games, like “Guess the object” where the players had their eyes blindfolded and had to guess what was in the bowls…peeled warm grapes for eyeballs, a turned out jello-mold for brains, warmed pasta with sauce for “guts” – you get the idea) 🙂 Of course we’d also play “kick-the-can” and other running-around-in-the-yard-and-woods kind of games. Loads of fun.

It was a great opportunity to be creative, in this simpler time before technology and our addiction to it made everything more accessible and therefore less mysterious and exciting.

Halloween Mary framed

Me in the costume my mother made me to be a “Scheherazade”-type princess

Halloween framed 1

One of my sisters as an “Executioner”, complete with a “bloody” axe with which she cut off my head, LOL

I never realized how much work it must have been for Ma, though, preparing all that food. And of course, we almost always had homemade costumes, not just because they were “cooler” than anything we could find in the store, but also, I learned later, because they were more economical. My parents were frugal in all the right ways, so that I never experienced a sense of “want” other than the healthy kind. 🙂

It was an innocent time filled with great memories, when Halloween was centered on fun instead of “evil” connotations, and living in the country made for some rousing good times.

Anyone else have any memories of old time Halloweens to share? Please do in the comments!

 

The Old Button Tin

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My mother’s old button tin (a reused, 1950’s Christmas cookie tin), a box of threads and some old “Bondex” iron-on material from the 1960’s

When I was little, I was always fascinated, watching my mother sew. She could hand sew or sew on the machine.

To me it was magic. I learned in later years, that it was necessity. With seven kids to raise on just my father’s salary (at least until I was a teen and my mother started a second career in the insurance industry and worked her way up to a CPCU license), it was more economical for my mother to craft many of our clothes and other items by hand than it was to buy them ready-made. Continue Reading…

An Old Adirondack Hermit

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water pump (2)

The picture here is of the rusty old water pump on the “shallow well” in the backyard at the Homestead…Pa found it in an old Adirondack dump back in the 1950’s and we’ve used it “decoratively” ever since 🙂

When I was just a little kid (before kindergarten-age), there was an old Adirondack hermit living in the woods up and around our area. He had a grizzly beard and looked around 75 or older; he walked with a sort of stooped gait, wearing a cap of some sort over his white hair.

For quite a while he had a “shelter” built deep in the woods, and he camped out there pretty much all year round. We didn’t know his name, but continue reading…

The Difference A Day Makes

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Sunshine outside my window this morning

Yesterday I posted about Rainy Days. Today, the landscape is entirely different, as you can see from the picture above, taken from the same vantage point as yesterday’s photo. The trees, decked in all their autumnal glory, seem almost to glow in the sunlight today, backed by robin egg skies and puffy white clouds.

But the change isn’t only in the outside world.

Today, my spirits are lighter. I’m making a concerted effort to focus on the positive around me and inside me, and to take baby steps toward keeping that balance I spoke of before. I, like many busy people who work full time at fulfilling but demanding careers (in my case two separate careers: teaching and writing), while also trying to be good spouses, parents, children, siblings, and friends, have times of feeling overwhelmed and unable to climb from beneath the pile of responsibilities, pressures, and even sadness or sense of helplessness. Lately, I seem to be having too many of those times.

But just as the world outside my window changes, so can I. Not much around us is truly in our control, but that much is.

My dear late father used to tell all us girls that, while we couldn’t control what happened to or around us, we could control our reaction to it. And therein lies a wealth of wisdom. In the years since his passing, I’ve found myself shifting away from remembering that like I should. I continue to miss his common-sense support, his unconditional love, and his wisdom-filled reminders. Sometimes I let the cares and worries overwhelm my days.

Today is a new day. Each day is a new day: a fresh page to fill with the writings of our own stories. Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery captured the essence of this wonderfully when she said, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

I’ve had a version of that quote posted on the wall of my classroom for 26 years. It is nice. And I’m going to try to remember that whether the rain comes down in torrents, the ice and snow blow and bluster, or the sun shines down…life – and each day in it – is what we decide to make of it. 🙂

A Gift from the Heart

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Pa sewn art

I stumbled upon this piece of “sewn art” in the attic recently. It’s something I made when I was around seven years old. My sweet mother had recently taught me a bit of hand-sewing, beginning with showing me how to thread a needle and complete simple tasks (like replacing buttons or making hems).

I’m not ashamed to say that as a child I adored both of my parents (and I still do). However, I’m not saying I never got angry or frustrated with them; I did so pretty regularly, all the way into young adulthood. But I kept my frustrations to myself 99.9% of the time, because I respected and loved them. Unlike in the world today, where many young people (whether on TV, in the classroom, or in one’s own family) often seem to have little compunction about speaking whatever they feel at a given moment without any kind of “respect” filter in place, I always tried to treat Pa or Ma with deference for who they were and are as people and the role they play(ed) in my life.

Maybe I was helped in that by being a pretty sensitive kid; the only thing a teacher, the elementary school principal (another story I’ll share soon), or my parents had to do to make me contrite (and sometimes even burst into tears with regret over whatever naughty thing I’d done), was to look stern and tell me they were disappointed in me. I never wanted Pa or Ma to feel that way about me, and so perhaps that’s why I wasn’t much of a rebellious child, teen, or even adult. Oh, I knew how to have a good time, and I did my share of stupid and even risky things in my youth, but the ways I tended to push the boundaries were pretty mild compared to some of my peers in the 80’s.

Anyway, back to this piece of “art”. I can distinctly remember sewing it as a present for my father for either his birthday or Father’s Day in the early 1970’s. I remember the effort the project took, but that I didn’t mind working really hard at it, coming up with the idea and then picking through Ma’s bags of fabric scraps to find just the right colors (regal, dark red and sparkly gold, so it would look important and wonderful when it was finished).

I painstakingly cut out the golden letters and “border” and then sewed it all together, placing a golden bow at the top. This was it: a most elegant and fitting gift for my beloved “Pa”. Looking at it from a more mature perspective, its drawbacks are clear, including how asymmetrical and ragged it is around the edges. But when Pa opened it, he reacted as if it was sewn perfectly and expertly from the finest fabrics…treating it like something precious and even doing me the honor of having it professionally matted and framed, and hanging it on the wall next to his bed.

It hung on that wall for more than four decades, staying exactly where he had placed it, until nearly a year after his death. At that time, my mother decided (with all of her children’s encouragement) that it was time to move forward and redecorate their bedroom. When work commenced and the framed piece was removed from the wall, I received it gratefully. But getting it back marked  the end of an emotional era for me – a time of innocence, love, and respect, both given and received. I cried a little when I got it home…and when the time is right, I can still cry a few bittersweet tears now for all it represents to me of the stern, exacting but also patient man who loved me so unconditionally and taught me so much.

As a child, I made this little banner as a true gift of the heart. As an adult, I realize that as imperfect, flawed, inexpensive, and silly as such gifts might be, they are indeed worth more than all the jewels and gold the world has to offer, and we should cherish them and the memories they evoke forever.

The “Attack” Cows

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Cow

A cow in an autumn field near my current home, looking far more placid than the “wild” cows of my story!

Let me preface this little story by saying that 1. I was raised in the country but not on a farm, and 2. If you’ve ever been close to a cow (or a whole herd of them!), you know that they’re large, solid animals.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, here’s my (funny and embarrassing) story. I was probably around 14 years old. I’d spent the entirety of my life until then with cows as my favorite animal. Horses were a close second, but there was something about the calm, peaceful, placid sight of cows in the field, chewing grass or their cud that made me happy every time I saw them (and still does).

It was a hot day near the end of a long, dry summer, and I was home alone – an unexpected treat in my rather large family. My mother was at work and my sisters were all elsewhere. My father was due home for lunch soon, but for that hour or so the house was all mine. It was a first taste of independence, and I was reveling in it…until I heard a thumping sound and looked out the window in the kitchen door. A big black and white head blocked out the sun and the creature’s  large, dark eye rolled as it lifted its nose and bawled out a cry. There was a full grown cow standing on the back steps of the house as if it was asking to come in! Suddenly, the cow shifted and banged its head against the window a few times in succession, making me shriek and run back into the living room.

What was I supposed to do? And why was the cow acting like that? Was it scared or angry or…rabid? Tingles went up my spine and the awareness that I was completely alone here shot through me. Before I could gather my wits together, a blur of movement outside the big picture window in the living room caught my attention. Then another out the side windows, looking over the garage. I snuck over to take a peek and almost shrieked again. There was a whole HERD of cows in the yards surrounding the Homestead and coming out of the woods on all sides. They were running, mooing, sometimes banging into the fence or the house like crazed beasts. Large, surprisingly fast-moving crazed beasts.

My heart was in my throat, and I tried to force myself to calm down to figure out what I could do. Should I call the police or what? Something was clearly wrong with the cows; they weren’t acting anything like the gentle animals I’d come to know over my 14 years of loving their peaceful, placid ways. What if one of them actually broke through a window and got in the house?

They’d shifted around into the back yard by now, away from the driveway, and the thought crossed my mind that I should try to make a run for it and see if I could get to the neighbor’s before the cows “got me”.

Just then I heard a motor and some tires on the driveway. Pa was home! He made his way slowly up the driveway, and a new fear swept through me. Oh, no! Pa would be crushed by these stampeding cows! I had to warn him before he got out of his car.

Yanking up the window, I leaned into the screen, waving my hands and shouting as I saw the driver’s side door open. “No, Pa!!  Watch out! Get back in your car! There are cows loose all over the place, and they’ll charge at you!”

Pa turned to look at me, and I could see he was holding back laughter. “It’s all right” he called out to me, before proceeding to grab a stick from along the driveway and walking calmly and steadily in the direction of the “herd”, calling out a sharp “Hiya!” several times as he tapped lightly on one cow or another to guide them back toward the woods from which they’d come.

When they were all gone, he came back into the house, laughing so hard he almost couldn’t catch his breath – thanking me for trying to “save” him, but explaining that cows don’t “attack”. He said that they were probably just thirsty from the hot summer day and had likely broken through the fence of the farmer’s field on the other side of the woods. The knocked over buckets in the yard seemed to attest to that likelihood.

I know my cheeks got red, but I got a good laugh out of it, too, once I got over my mortification. And from that day onward, my family has had some fun ribbing me about the time I tried to save Pa from the “Attack Cows”. 🙂

The Infamous Lemon Meringue Pie

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It was 1986, the second  full summer my husband and I were dating, and I’d recently learned that one of his favorite pies was lemon meringue. My mother always made a wonderful lemon meringue, with flaky, tender crust, tangy-sweet lemon filling, and a shiny, billowy and perfectly-browned meringue heaped on top. I’d watched her bake all sorts of creations from scratch many times and thought how difficult could it be?

My mother was busy with other cooking and going up and down the cellar stairs with the laundry, so I just went ahead and read her recipe card of instructions as I completed the process of mixing and rolling the pie crust dough. After the first roll-out, it didn’t look right, so I scooped it all into a ball and rolled it out again. Then a third time. I wanted this pie to be perfect for my new boyfriend!

The rest of the pie-making went splendidly. The filling looked good and the meringue top turned out fluffy and pretty. I hovered over the oven as it browned, pulling it out when just the right shade of caramel touched the tips. Into the fridge went the pie, to await the moment of glory after supper at the Homestead that night with my boyfriend in attendance.

When the time came, I was wreathed in smiles, seeing how happy my boyfriend was at the effort I’d gone through to make one of his favorite desserts. We gave him the honors of cutting the first piece of pie. I felt a tingle of apprehension as he cut into the center…and then had to push down pretty hard to cut through (and he was a college football player with plenty of arm muscle to spare). He was still smiling, though, and I tried to keep a brave face – but it all came to a screeching halt when he put the piece of pie on his plate and tried to use his fork to get a bite.

His fork wouldn’t cut through the bottom of the crust.

He paused, a little flustered, and my heart fell. My mother looked at me and whispered, “Did you have any trouble when you were making the crust?”

I shrugged. “Well, I had to roll it out three times to get it just right.”

She started to chuckle. Anyone who has worked with pastry knows that it has to be handled lightly and as little as possible to be tender and flaky. The more it’s handled the tougher it gets. My boyfriend, who had a good sense of humor said, “Well, I can just eat it like this…” and he picked up the slice of pie by the fluted edge, lifting it from the plate and intending to take a bite that way.

Except the pie didn’t shift. The crust was like a rock, preventing the filling or meringue from moving even a fraction. If he’d tried to bite it, he’d probably have broken a tooth.

Everyone burst out laughing at that point, including me. In my quest for perfection, I’d created an inedible crust. But as my boyfriend reassured me, the lemon filling and the meringue tasted good!

Rituals: The Lady in the Red Dress

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When I was little, I was like most kids: I didn’t like to go to bed. However, I was unlike other kids, perhaps, in that I was almost always happy: Singing, playing, occasionally getting into mischief, and just general loving life. Like really loving it, from the moment I woke up, smiling and raring to go every morning, according to my parents (yes, I agree, that might be supremely annoying in an adult, but don’t worry; although I’m generally an optimist, I outgrew the constant sunniness by my 20’s for the most part. The way I see it, Giselle in Enchanted could only get away with it because she was…well, a princess).

Anyway, as a child, I never wanted to waste precious time sleeping.

If I wasn’t running around having fun inside our little house, I was playing outside in the yard or in the woods with the two sisters closest in age to me, often while at least one of my other, older sisters watched over us. Pa was at work during the day of course. Ma was never far away, but she was busy doing two loads of laundry a day (timing it so the well wouldn’t run dry), cleaning, and cooking for nine – or 11 when we had two “Fresh Air” sisters living with us each summer.

You’d think I would be tired out by the time 7:30pm rolled around.

I suppose I was, but I just didn’t want to give up and hit the sack.

Pa, who ruled the roost with a wonderful combination of military-style strictness and indulgent soft-heartedness (in my eyes anyway), liked to invent games of all kinds, sometimes as a way of connecting playfully with his kids but often also teaching us something important in the process, too (like logical reasoning, persuasion, or sharing etc). In this case, he invented a game by which I could feel I had some control over my bedtime (and therefore never need to dissolve into a tantrum, which would need to be dealt with sternly), but through which I was still following the rules. It was the “Goodnight” game….made popular in our family long before any of us ever knew there was a book called “Goodnight Moon”.

It went like this: when it was time for me to go to bed, Pa would let me say goodnight to everyone in the house (which meant at least eight other people, so that took a while), plus the dog (Lassie), the cats (Dominique, Gigi, and Marmalade), any other pets we might have at the time (there were birds and fish and even turtles at one point or another) and various objects around the house. When I got to the “Lady in the Red Dress” I knew time for bed was really near. I said goodnight to her and then with a big sigh, I let my Mama walk me (and my younger sister) upstairs to bed.

Several years ago, I inherited our family’s (very inexpensive) print of the Lady  – the official name of which I later learned is “Sonata” by M. Ditlef –  and I will always treasure it for the happy memories of times gone by. “Goodnight Lady in the Red Dress!” Anyone have any bedtime rituals you did as children (or do now with your own kids) to share?

Sonata M-DITLEF

“Sonata” by M. Ditlef