Sunday Dinner in the Twilight Zone

A few nights ago, I dreamed I was at an upscale restaurant celebrating something with several people, none of whom I recognized. The place was so upscale that prices weren’t printed on the menu. Not surprising; however, the meal choices weren’t printed on the menu either.

I woke up at 3:22 a.m. wondering where that dream came from.

I think I’ve figured it out.

That afternoon, a woman posting on an online forum mentioned she had grown up in Connecticut. Maybe my dream was a subconscious flashback to a strange restaurant experience during a family trip to that state sometime in the early 1970s.

One Sunday morning after church, my parents and my dad’s Massachusetts cousins, whom I’ll call “Fred” and “Ethel,” made a spur of the moment decision. They decided to just drop in on the Connecticut cousins without first calling to see if the cousins would be home. Three related families lived close to one another. Dad and Fred figured someone would be home. I had nothing planned, so I went along for the ride.

We knew the cousins would offer us a snack. However, before then, we needed something more substantial than coffee and cake or cookies. We intended to stop for dinner at a Friendly’s restaurant along the way. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find one during our two hour drive through what seemed like an endless trail of small towns.

We also passed several Mom and Pop restaurants, but they were closed. Finally, about three or four miles from our destination, Dad spotted a restaurant that looked open. I’ve forgotten the name of the place; I’ll call it the “Country Café.”

The flashing green OPEN sign in the window looked promising, the dining room did not. The lights were dimed, and we were the only customers in the place.

“Where is everyone?” Ethel asked.

“Maybe someone forgot to turn off the sign and lock the door when they closed yesterday,” I said.

We were about to leave when a woman popped out of the kitchen. The presumed hostess seemed surprised to see customers, but she led us to a table before scurrying back to the kitchen.

Fred and Ethel rolled their eyes. “I think she’s cross eyed or something,” Ethel said.

Mom frowned and looked around. “Well, at least the place seems clean.”

I thought the place seemed creepy. “Maybe we should just leave now.”

Dad vetoed my suggestion. He pointed out that this might be our last chance to get something other than coffee and cake or cookies until we were on our way home.

When the hostess returned, Ethel asked to see a menu. The woman frowned, mumbled something I’ve forgotten, and retreated to the kitchen. A few minutes later she reappeared, trailed by a tall, beefy man whom she introduced as the cook. He asked us what we wanted for dinner.

“Well, what do you have?” I asked. After a brief discussion, we decided on ham steak with mashed potatoes and carrots.

Thirty minutes later, our meals were delivered by another person who apparently had been lurking in the kitchen. We had no complaints about the food. However, the hostess hovered around while we ate. I wondered if she thought we were going to walk out with the silverware. Or maybe one of the employees noticed the out of state license plates on our car and thought we might walk out without paying.

That afternoon, we described our Country Café dining experience to several Connecticut relatives. None of them could place the restaurant, even though it was located within a few miles of their homes. I figured, being retired, they might not get around much, but then . . .

Postscript: Now I wonder if the restaurant possibly was a front for some illegal activity. That dining experience was one I didn’t care to repeat. Sad to say, I did, more or less, almost thirty years later on the other side of the country. And, maybe someday, but not too soon, I will blog about the place I often refer to as the Slug Café.

My Fridge Does the Shimmy Shake

Yes, my fridge does the shimmy shake.

There is a logical reason for that.

The floor in my current apartment is very uneven. I have no idea why. Maybe the ground under the building is sinking. And it seems to be getting worse. A few months ago, I only felt the slope of the floor under my feet. Now I can see it.

Based on my current and past experiences, sloping floors are annoying.

Every time the compressor hums, my refrigerator shimmies closer to the stove. When it gets too close, I shove it back where it belongs.

Once upon a time, in the nineties, we lived in an apartment house that had an uneven floor. I figured that floor sloped because the house had been built on a stone foundation in 1886. I was making a lot of beaded jewelry then. I worked on the kitchen table, and every time I dropped a bead, it rolled under the fridge or stove and was lost forever. Well, until we moved out, and someone had to pull out the fridge and stove to clean behind them.

The cleaning crew must have discovered quite a stash back there. I hope someone was able use those beads.

Am I Asking Too Much?

I eat breakfast out a few times a week. Perhaps I’m being unreasonable, or asking too much, but I like to relax while I’m eating.

This is what I look for when choosing a restaurant or café: a clean place with good food, good service, and fair prices. What I do NOT want to see are inciting TV newscasts or programs featuring a couple of shrieking individuals who are (verbally) slugging it out during a rabid political debate with each other.

Fortunately, with a TV it’s always possible to ask the-powers-that-be to switch channels.

Unfortunately, one place I sometimes go to features an “armchair political analyst," a regular customer who thinks he knows everything about everything. He sits at the counter and insists upon letting everyone in the place know everything, too. I have tried tuning him out by sitting far away from him, but it hasn’t worked. Yes, he’s that loud. For the last several weeks, I’ve been able to avoid him by going to breakfast later in the morning.

Is it too much to want to spend 45 minutes eating breakfast in peace without being reminded that the whole world seems to be falling apart?

I Am Not A Crazed Corporate Lackey

I recently read a social media thread in which the original poster (OP) complained about “crazed corporate lackeys” (CCL). According to the OP, in this instance a CCL is a person who refuses to let volunteers for political candidates enter the lackey’s home or property or the property of a condo/retirement community where the lackey resides.

Here’s the other side of the coin, so to speak. And just to let you know, I am not a crazed corporate lackey. I am not paranoid. I am not a hermit. And to shut down potential trolls, I am not a fan of either Trump or Hillary. However, I am a private person who was the target of a crazy individual back in the Late Jurassic Period. Having to put up with a prowler, busted window panes, and strange phone calls was not a pleasant experience.

Although I love getting together with people I know and like, I do not love strangers knocking on my door for any reason, especially strangers from the Nielsen organization (long, weird story). Fortunately, I live in a gated complex, and I also have a sign in the window, written in two languages, that reads Writer/Editor at Work. Please Do Not Disturb. (Unless it is an emergency. Then please DO disturb.)

I respect the right of political volunteers to solicit votes for their candidates. Yes, that is democracy in action, as the OP pointed out. At the same time, please respect my right to choose to NOT respond to the knock on my door. That, too, is democracy in action.

I Confess That I Once Worked at Walmart

I belong to a Facebook group that is focused on the county where I grew up. Having left that area (for the second and last time) almost twenty years ago, I don’t think I’m qualified to comment on the current lack of job opportunities there. I don’t want to jump in on what is essentially a local debate about the pros and cons of building a new Walmart Supercenter in the largest city and closing the existing smaller store.

I confess that I worked part time at a Walmart store in that county for several years in the 1990s.

I was employed there while I (finally) finished the requirements for my bachelor’s degree. Working as a Walmart fabrics and crafts associate wasn’t my idea of a dream job, but employment opportunities were slim in the college town where I attended classes.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of online complaints about Walmart. Two of the major complaints that got my attention were 1) Walmart jobs pay so little that employees often must apply for public assistance in order to support themselves and their families, and 2) Walmart jobs are “soul killing.”

I agree that low paying, associate level big-box store jobs generally are not great jobs for the long run. However, I think those jobs can be good temporary jobs for students or retirement jobs for people who want or need to keep working after retiring. And retail jobs worked for me as “interim jobs” three times while I looked for a better job.

Apparently, I was one of the more fortunate Walmart associates. Unlike some employees, I didn’t need any sort of public assistance while working there. Nope, not even food stamps. I had the resources to pay for my education, personal expenses, and share of the household expenses without help from anyone else.

I didn’t find the job to be soul killing, probably because I knew I wouldn’t be working at Walmart for almost forever. At that time, my hobby was making handcrafted beaded jewelry, so I was working in the department that was the best fit for me. I also had a rudimentary knowledge of sewing, thanks to a few years in 4-H and six months of home economics in the ninth grade. Although I sometimes had to deal with annoying customers, most of the time I enjoyed helping people with their craft or sewing projects.

I did find the job boring at times, usually on a Monday evening when business was slow. During those times, I tried to sneak over to the bargain fabric tables and reorganize the way too high displays of what seemed like a half-zillion bolts of material. That chore was a never-ending battle and a losing one, especially on the busy weekends. That’s when customers managed to destroy the displays within 15 minutes after I had reorganized them.

Coworkers sometimes asked if I intended to apply for a full-time job at Walmart after graduating from college. I was tempted to laugh and say, “Are you crazy, why would I want to do that?” But I was brought up to be nice, so I explained that I was working toward a degree in English with concentrations in writing and literature, and I hoped to find a job where I could use my writing and editing skills.

Trouble was, I knew that job probably didn’t exist in the area where I currently lived.

And I was right. In order to find any job that was even remotely connected to my major, I had to move. I moved back to the Southwest, to a larger city where I had an employment history and where I knew I could find better opportunities.

After working as a document analyst/quality checker at the company I refer to as The Zoo, I was hired as a staff assistant at a nonprofit organization. I was promoted to an editing position fifteen months later. I worked at that organization for almost eight years before I decided to retire from full-time brick and mortar employment.

In hindsight, working at Walmart wasn’t my best job, but it wasn’t my worst job, either.

Would I ever want to work at Walmart again? Honestly? No, but I was grateful to have that job when I needed it. And I met some very nice people there, both customers and co-workers.

Meet My Beach Buddy, Oceanside Trenchcoat Guy

If you go to the beach in Oceanside, California, you probably will see the man who walks along the Strand wearing a long, dark woolen coat. Sometimes he splashes in the water; at other times, he sits on the rocks and lets the water splash him. Over the years, he’s become a well-known beach personality. His picture has appeared in Oceanside publications, including the Osider magazine and the OsideNews.com. Writers have written blog posts about him. And people often take photos or film videos of him and post them on the Internet.

Bruce is a native of California, and he has lived in Oceanside since 1995. He has spent a lot of time at the beach for most of his life. I made his acquaintance on a Facebook group page in March 2015. I commented on a comment he had made about cats. Later, I learned that he was the fellow people call Trench Coat Man.

I’ve always been interested in interesting people, at times incurring my parents’ disapproval. After seeing a few pictures of him that were posted on the group page, I wanted to meet him. I saw him walking either on the beach or on the Strand for a couple of weeks before I got up the courage to approach him and introduce myself. I often tell people I ambushed him.

Over the past year we have become friends. A couple of times a week, we hang out at the beach, where I often use his camera to take photos and film videos of him. He posts both the photos and videos on the Facebook group page and also posts some of the videos on his YouTube channel.

When people ask me about him, I tell them he’s my beach buddy. He has been very kind to me, and I enjoy his company.

He may be considered a bit eccentric, but he’s also a very nice, humble, intelligent man who enjoys talking to people and making new friends. He’s not homeless, as people often assume. He has a home, a 1931 Model A Ford, and three sweet cats.

He has no intention of ending it all, either. But that’s what some individuals, mostly tourists, think he has in mind when they first see him sitting on the rocks or walking into the water. Sometimes concerned tourists talk to him or to the lifeguards instead of making assumptions. Sometimes tourists try to rescue him. Sometimes they just call 9-1-1. The lifeguards and the police officers stationed on the Strand know him well. When asked about him, they usually say “That’s Bruce. He's here every day. He’s okay.”

Oceanside residents like him and are respectful of him. Beachgoers enjoy talking with him on the Strand. People look forward to seeing the photos and videos he posts on the group page and on his YouTube channel, Oceanside Trenchcoat Guy.

He has his reasons for wearing a trench coat. One of them is that hanging out at the beach so often puts him at risk for serious skin cancer. His doctor told him either to cover up or to stop hanging out at the beach. He doesn't like wetsuits, but he did have a long, black, woolen coat available.

You can ask him about his other reasons. Google Oceanside Trenchcoat Guy and go to his YouTube channel. Or talk to him when you’re at the beach. Bruce likes meeting new friends, in person and online.

 

Excerpt From Adventures in Working (a work in progress)

When I was seventeen, I got the bright idea to get a job.

A new discount department store had opened in the city where I went to high school. Although I had never worked before, I figured I could get a job doing something there. I planned to save money, buy a car, and get my ex-boyfriend back.

He liked cars.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned.

For one thing, being a student, I most likely would have had to work evenings. And, oh yeah, I didn’t have a driver’s license. And the buses stopped traveling through our small town after 6 p.m. Even if I had been hired and was able to find transportation to and from work, I never would have been able to save enough money to buy a car.

And my boyfriend wouldn’t be coming back, either. He already was back with the girl he had been dating since what seemed like the beginning of time. She had a job—and a car.

So I forgot about going to work until I was twenty.

Maybe I Shouldn't Have Abandoned This Project

In 1995, I wrote a rough draft of what probably would have become the longest personal essay in the history of the written word. I titled it *Al, the Prowler, and the Siege at Dodge Boulevard*. The project was a memoir recounting “events” that I either, willingly or unwillingly, had participated in or had witnessed between 1961 and 1978. The time frame stretched from my first semester in college to the years when lived in an apartment complex off Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona.

A lot of memorable and sometimes crazy things happened during those times. There were days when I felt as if my friends and I were characters in some weird sitcom. Today, many of those things would be fodder for blog posts (and probably will be), and a few of them would be fodder for a reality show. Happenings included (but were not limited to) ditzy teenagers, local bad boys, a phantom prowler, a real prowler, crank phone calls, police reports, a couple of subpoenas, and a busted window.

I abandoned the project about a month after I started it.

I had completed the first draft when a man who had once been a good friend of mine died. I put the essay away and didn’t look at it again until a few years ago. Once in a while, I take it out, thinking that maybe I should finish the story.

I woke up about 3 a.m. today and started thinking about why I wanted to write that essay. In 1995, the message I wanted to get across is this: Sometimes things (and people) are not what they seem to be on the surface—or what you dearly or desperately want them to be. Sometimes the people who are supposed to love and protect you are the ones who are trying to hurt you. And sometimes, someone you don’t think cares about you at all really does give a hoot about you in their (the new gender-neutral *their*) own weird way.

Not Really Plagiarism

I hate plagiarism. However, I did not hear or read the recent speech by Mrs. Trump or the previous one by Mrs. Obama. So I can’t comment about the current plagiarism accusations and explanations regarding those speeches that are floating around the media.

But the kerfuffle did remind of something. Of course you knew it would.

Way back when I was a participant in an article writing workshop at the University of Arizona, a classmate “borrowed” a few of my ideas from an article I wrote for the class. She included them in an article that she had published in the student paper. Some of the words she used in her article were similar to the words I used in mine.

What a coincidence. A couple of friends who read both articles wondered how she could do that. They urged me to bring the similarities to the professor’s attention.

How could she borrow my ideas from a class assignment? Well, every participant in the workshop had received a copy of every other student’s article to critique. That’s how it’s done in university-level writing workshops.

I was upset at first, then angry, then amused. I mean, isn’t imitation the greatest form of flattery?

In hindsight, the considerate thing for her to do would have been to tell me she liked some of my ideas and planned to include them in her news feature. She really didn’t have to ask if she could use them. Ideas are up for grabs.

I let it go and didn’t bring the similarities to the professor’s attention. After all, it wasn’t as if she had published my entire article word for word under her byline. If that had happened, I would have gone to the professor—and to the director of the creative writing program.

Fast forward ten years.

I moved across the country, to an economically depressed area. I found a job at a big box store that was about to celebrate its grand opening. In order to drum up enthusiasm for the event, the store held a poetry contest for its employees.

I wrote a parody of the Night Before Christmas and won first prize. After I won, I learned that another employee had parodied the same poem. Although I didn’t know that until after I won the contest, I felt bad about it. If I had known the man wrote his poem based on that work, I would have chosen another theme for my poem.

I apologized to him saying, “If I had realized you did that, I would have written something else.”

He said, “No apologies are necessary. You deserved to win.”

Bus Lines: Adventures in Riding Public Transportation

I started using public transportation in the Mid-Jurassic Period. Riding a bus in a rural county was generally boring, but necessary, when I was a teenager without a driver’s license.

Now I take notes.

Buses seem to be getting more crowded, not necessarily with passengers, but definitely with their paraphernalia. I suspect that buses eventually will have to be redesigned to accommodate the many riders who board while wrestling with their walkers, personal shopping carts, and rolling suitcases the size of Montana. Baby carriages also fit this category, although they sometimes don’t fit very well on buses. Too often, passengers are offended when drivers ask them to fold their walkers, personal carts, or carriages or tell them to move their rolling suitcases to a safer spot.

Riding the bus every day can get a little expensive. The lack of cash or a bus pass often encourages people to be creative. At least a couple of times a week, I see people trying their best to convince the bus driver that they should be allowed to ride without paying. Some prospective passengers claim they forgot their bus passes. Others confess that they have no money, but tell drivers they are desperate to get somewhere because of a really, really important appointment, a job interview, or a family emergency. Then there are the passengers who climb on the bus, wave a bill around, and ask, “Does anyone have change for a twenty?” Of course, no one ever does.

Usually, the nicer bus drivers allow the non-payers to ride, but tell them not to do it again. Of course, some of them probably do.

Sometimes riding public transportation seems like a bizarre form of entertainment.

Several years ago, a woman sitting behind me announced to her seatmate, “My sister killed her husband. She shot him six times.” Well, that woke up everyone. The woman went on to elaborate on the details, which, mercifully, I’ve forgotten.

Oddly enough, on the same bus route a couple of days later, I heard a woman say, “My sister murdered her husband.” The same woman had to be telling the story again. There couldn’t be two of them, could there?

During another bus trip, I tried my best not to listen as a woman sitting in front of me gossiped on her cell phone. She neglected to use her “library voice” when she told her friend, “You’ll never guess who I slept with last night.” Apparently, he or she guessed wrong. All heads swiveled in the woman’s direction as she enlightened the friend. “No, not him. The other one.”

When she looked up, the woman realized she had shared that news with a busload of people. “Well, I guess I said that too loud.”

“Yes, you did,” the fellow sitting across from her said.

Last week, a twenty-something woman with disheveled gray and purple shoulder length hair boarded an Escondido bus at 8 a.m. She wore a low cut, purple micro-mini dress. A spaghetti strap hung off her left shoulder, and a black net stocking threatened to head south on her left leg. The black lace garter on her right leg kept that stocking from slipping.

Not wanting to be judgmental, I gave the young woman the benefit of the doubt. She carried a notebook, so I thought she might have worked all night as a hostess at a 24 hour restaurant. And now she was heading to an early morning class at the local community college.

Sometimes the things you see on the bus, or off the bus in this case, are sort of shocking and sad.

Toward the end of a long, boring ride, I was on automatic pilot when the bus stopped a block north of the County Complex campus. A few seconds later, I noticed passengers gawking out the window. They seemed captivated by something happening near the bus bench. The bus driver muttered to herself and grabbed her cell phone.

I looked, blinked, looked again, gasped, and turned away.

A woman was dancing around on the sidewalk, shedding her clothes from the waist down. I think the two fellows sitting on the bus bench were trying not to look because they were staring at the bus instead of ogling the woman. A young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller approached the area. She hesitated and then kept her eyes on the street as she raced past the stripper.

I felt embarrassed for the woman. I asked the bus driver to call the police, but she ignored me. Maybe she had called it in already. I don’t know how the performance ended. The two fellows boarded the bus, and the driver went on her way.

Maybe people disrobe in public every day in places like Los Angeles and New York City. I had never seen anything like that anywhere before, and I don’t ever want to see anything like it again.

And I hope the stripper eventually got some help. I would guess that she really needed it.

I Never Could Do Anything Wrong Right

[This essay originally was published on the late, but unlamented, Themestream site in July 2000.]

I can't do anything wrong right. I discovered this glitch in my character at the age of fifteen, on the day that I decided to skip my afternoon classes.

I should have spent the previous evening reviewing the plot and structure of Silas Marner. Instead, I stayed up way past midnight reading Murder on the Orient Express. I paid for it the next day.

By 10 a.m., I almost had dozed off in a couple of classes. And I knew what was going to happen that afternoon. I was going to flunk the literature test. I already had a C- average in the class, and report cards were due to come out in a couple of weeks. My parents would have a fit if I flunked English, and I wouldn't be too thrilled about it either. At that point in my high school career, it was my best subject.

By noon, I wished I had stayed home, like my best friend did. According to her sister, Kate had developed a mysterious allergy overnight. She didn't like Agatha Christie, and she wasn't in the same English class. I figured she was allergic to history class. I knew she had a report due that day.

Instead of going to lunch, I rooted around in my purse, dug up a dime, and called Kate. "I can't afford to get another bad mark," I told her. "I've got to get out of here, but I can't go home until school gets out."

"My dad won't be home for lunch," Kate said. "He has a meeting or something. Take the bus up here," she suggested between sneezes. "If you hang around downtown, you'll get caught."

I got on the bus and checked out the other passengers; none of them looked familiar. I decided that skipping school was easy. I changed my mind a couple of stops down the road when my forty-something cousin climbed aboard. The smile she flashed at the bus driver turned into a frown when she noticed me.

"Not feeling well?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, staring at the bald spot on the back of the bus driver's head. "I feel sort of queasy. I think I'm allergic to shepherd’s pie or something."

My cousin joined a woman sitting a few seats behind me. I could hear them chattering away, and although I really couldn't catch what they were saying, I thought I heard my name mentioned a couple of times. However, my cousin minded her own business when I got off the bus more than a mile down the road from my house.

I hiked up to Kate’s house and walked in without ringing the doorbell. I figured she probably wouldn't hear me anyway, not with the radio blasting away. Kate sat hunched over the kitchen table. She was wearing red pajamas that coordinated nicely with her nose. Her hair stuck out like quills on a porcupine.

"You've got to help me," she said, pawing through the books, papers, and tissue boxes strewn all over the table. "I think I lost my notes, and this report was due today. It’s supposed to be about someone named Maria Theresa who was the queen of some place I can't remember. She had a famous kid, but I can't remember who that was either."

"Austria," I said. "She was Marie Antoinette's mother. I think she diffused some sort of military unrest by reviewing her troops with a baby in her ar. . ."

"Forget that," Kate snapped, handing me a pencil and a notebook. "I need help with the paper today; save the test review for next week."

I chose the thinnest book from Kate's pile and settled down at dining room table. Twenty minutes later, I had worked up a rough outline that she could use in writing a bare-bones report. "At least Mom was smarter than her daughter," I shouted over the sound of the Everly brothers. "She kept her head. She never said to her people. . ."

"What are you doing here!" a voice boomed behind me.

Uh, I got out of school early." I figured that was the truth, sort of, but I could feel my face burning. "I just stopped by to see if Kate needed any help with her homework."

Kate's dad didn't hang around, he grabbed some papers he needed for a meeting and left, saying he was already late. On his way out, he turned down the radio and said, "Don't stay long. Kate has to rest."

As soon as he drove away, Kate turned up the radio. "I can't rest until I get this stupid thing done," she wailed, bouncing a tissue box across the table. She stuck a pencil in her mouth and chomped down on it like a snapping turtle.

"Don't do that, "I said, "You'll ruin your OHMYGOSH! I FORGOT!"Kate yanked the pencil out of her mouth and turned down the radio. "Forgot what?"

"I have a dentist appointment after school."

"So skip it. You skipped school."

"But I can't skip this," I told her. My dentist had a tight schedule, a short temper, and a large vocabulary of four-letter words. If I skipped the appointment, he probably would call the house and cuss out my mother.

Back in town, I hopped off the bus and landed in front of my history teacher. Oops! I had skipped her class too. I thought she would holler at me, but she just smiled and kept walking.

I raced up the steps to the dentist's office and checked in with the receptionist. As I searched  for a magazine that wasn't older than the dentist, I glanced into the hallway and saw a familiar face pop up from the stairwell. It was my English teacher.

I ducked behind the Saturday Evening Post, but that didn't fool her. Maybe it was because I was holding the magazine upside down. "Where were you this afternoon?" she asked, glaring at me. I stared at the grease stain on the rug and mumbled something about not feeling well. "Where were you?" she repeated.

That's when the dentist walked into the room, figured out what had happened, and offered his opinion on the situation, “Damned kids today have no sense of responsibility.”

I guess Kate was contagious because a few hours later, I didn’t feel so good. I didn’t go to school on Friday. On Monday, I got called to the principal’s office. Someone had ratted me out. I got two days detention and the principal, who had been a classmate of my mother’s, called my mother. I was grounded for a week.

I never skipped another class. Well, not until I went to college. [Read I Torpedoed My Academic Career, posted on this site on August 20, 2015.]                   ]

I Grew up on the Appalachian Trail

The Appalachian Trail crosses the main street of the town where I grew up. As a child living a rather sheltered life, that geographic knowledge was a bit confusing to me. I confused the Appalachian Trail with the cultural region known as Appalachia. The Appalachian Trail winds from Georgia to Maine. However, the cultural region known as Appalachia ends at the southern tier of New York State.

Thanks to my limited access to information in the pre-internet age, whenever I read or heard the word Appalachia, I pictured Ma and Pa Kettle stereotypes living in shacks that lacked the comfort of indoor plumbing. Their favorite pastimes seemed to be engaging in violent family feuds and/or churning out barrels of moonshine and dodging revenuers.

Of course, I now realize that the majority of people living in Appalachia do not live like the Beverly Hillbillies lived before Jeb struck it rich.

However, as a ten-year old in the Early Jurassic Period, I was confused because I figured if our town was part of the Appalachian Trail, it surely must be part of Appalachia. And my perception of the Appalachia lifestyle did not describe the lifestyle of the residents of our town.

Everyone I knew had indoor plumbing. Family feuds were fought with words and sometimes settled in court, but they never were settled with violence. And no one in town had ever made moonshine.

Well, actually, not since the end of prohibition.

Fun Times with the Family Cars

I’ve had a driver’s license since I was 18, but I’ve never actually owned a car. When I lived with my parents, I drove one of my dad’s cars. Years later, Ken was the one who bought the vehicles (usually every couple of years), and he was the one who drove them.

It’s probably just as well that I never had the urge to buy a car. Given my history, I don’t think I would have had much luck with one of my own. Whenever the family cars had a problem, I was the one driving them.

Dad bought a new Chevy Bel Air when I was 17. A year later, I was driving the car when the driver of a pickup truck made a left turn into my side of the Bel Air. The collision sent the car into a tree. The impact with the tree threw the car into reverse and sent the vehicle crashing back into the truck.

End of Chevy Bel Air. Dad then bought a Tempest, a little, blue four-cylinder Pontiac.

The Tempest conked out on me one day on the way to work. I was in another town, about five miles from home. I had to have the car pushed to a local repair shop where our wonderful small town mechanics later picked it up and hauled it to their shop.

Of course, I was in the driver’s seat while the Tempest was pushed to the local shop. I had never been pushed before. I was a nervous wreck before we got there.

The Tempest had no park gear; I had to put the car in neutral when I parked it. Dad decided to get rid of the Tempest after it re-parked itself one evening while I was shopping at a big box store. I came out of the store to find that the car had backed into the aisle and was blocking traffic.

Shortly after that, Dad bought a blue Dodge Dart (BDD).

Let me count the ways.

BDD lost power the middle of rush hour. Fortunately, I was on a less-traveled side street in Nearby City when that happened. I left the car in the middle of the street, with the emergency flashers blinking, while I found a pay phone and called home for further instructions.

BDD lost the transmission. I confess that this might have been triggered by my trying to rock the car out of a fairly deep mud puddle. Yeah, I know, my bad.

BDD lost the radiator hose on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I was somewhere between Worcester and Springfield when I noticed that the heat gauge was registering hot. I pulled off the highway and found a repair shop that fixed the problem for me in about ninety minutes and for a reasonable price. Later, Dad checked in with wonderful small town mechanics to make sure everything had been done right.

A year later, on my way to Springfield early in the evening, BDD lost the brakes in Lee, about two minutes before I reached the Massachusetts Turnpike. Trying not to panic, I drove into a used car lot, turned off the ignition, put on the emergency brake, and sat there hyperventilating until the man who owned the business came over to find out what I was doing there.

I’ve always wondered what our wonderful small town mechanics thought when they heard about the brake issue. I visualize one turning to the other and saying, “It’s her again. Every time something goes wrong with one of that family’s cars, she’s the one driving it.”

I love public transportation.

OMG, I Used to Live There

Recently, I read an online news report about a man who threatened his neighbor with a sawed-off shotgun. Shortly thereafter, the man barricaded himself in his studio apartment, with the shotgun, of course. Shortly after that, a law enforcement contingent composed of several state troopers and local police officers converged on the scene. Fortunately, the man surrendered without a shot being fired by either side.

This scary event took place at an apartment complex in Massachusetts. When I saw a picture of the complex, I thought OMG, I used to live there.

Yes, I certainly did. In the mid-seventies.

My very first apartment was on the first floor of that complex. Had I noticed the bullet holes in the window of another first floor apartment before I signed the rental agreement, I might have turned around and looked elsewhere. But then, I never would have met Ken and later had the good fortune to escape from the cold New England winters.

Ken soon convinced me to move—no, not in with him—to an apartment on the second floor. He didn’t think it was safe for a woman to be living on the first floor. I guess he thought I was pretty naïve or something, because, hey, I grew up in rural Berkshire County. But I had heard about the break-ins on the first floor. According to a gossipy tenant, feral teens from the not-so-nice neighborhood to the north made a habit of jumping the complex fence after sunset in search of open windows and easy pickings.

I took Ken’s advice seriously. Really I did. I intended to ask about moving. Sometime. But I wasn’t in a hurry. I figured I would be safe as long as I kept my window closed and locked. However, when I came home from work one afternoon, I found a note from Ken saying I could move up to a second floor apartment. Guess someone in the complex office had ESP. Or something.

The next day, I moved to the second floor, into an apartment two doors down the hall from the local illegal immigrant. Incidentally, she was from England.

 

Some Family Reunions Just Aren't Meant to Be

One afternoon, back in the Early Jurassic Period, Mom took my four-year-old brother and went to the next door neighbor’s house for coffee and conversation. She left nine-year-old me and my seven-year-old brother at home. Although leaving us alone today would probably result in a visit from a CPS employee, it wasn’t a big deal then. And Mom was probably gone for only thirty minutes.

Long enough.

I was sitting on the couch in the breezeway, doing nothing, when I spotted a familiar yellow tabby cat slinking across the meadow in search of a snack. A year ago, Taffy and our cat had been litter mates, two cute little fuzz balls cuddling together in a cardboard box under the cellar stairs.

They must really miss each other, I thought. I went to the basement where my brother was playing with the model train set up. “We’re going to reunite Tippy with his brother,” I told him. “Taffy’s out back. Go get him.”

I snatched Tippy from his snooze on top of the washing machine. I managed to haul him up to the breezeway before he clawed my arm, wiggled free, and jumped on the couch. Several minutes later, my brother returned, dangling the equally reluctant Taffy. Brother dumped Taffy on the couch.

I guess I was waiting for the cats to rub noses in a friendly greeting, like I’d seen dogs do. Instead, the cats arched their backs, fluffed their fur, and hissed at each other. Tippy lunged at Taffy. Taffy clawed Tippy’s nose. Tippy leaped off the couch. Taffy made a break for the back door, bounced off the glass, and crash landed on top of Tippy. Uh, oh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought as Tippy backed his sibling into a corner.

At nine, I was too young to understand the nature of cats. All I understood was that the cats were siblings. And siblings were supposed to love and be nice to each other. They weren’t supposed to growl and hiss at each other. Or beat up each other.

My brother assessed the situation and disappeared.

I scrambled onto the couch as the snarling ball of fur careened from one end of the breezeway to the other. I knew I had to get those cats out of there before Mom came home. I hopped off the couch, grabbed a broom, and jabbed the nearest cat. Taffy clawed the broom. Tippy jumped onto the window sill. I inched around to the back door, yanked it open, and swept Taffy onto the patio. Before I could slam the door, Tippy raced after him.

I watched the two cats disappear into the tall grass and decided that, unlike people, cats had no family loyalty.

[The original version of this essay was published in the Great Barrington, MA, The Women's Times in December 1996. About 14 years ago, I posted that version on the Themestream site with permission from the publisher of The Women's Times.]

I Torpedoed My Academic Career

During my senior year in high school, the first community college in the state (BCC) was established in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. I was accepted into the first class of 150 students. In hindsight, that was a real achievement (and a real surprise) because I was competing with students from all over the state.

At the time, I was about as academically motivated as a chipmunk. I applied for admission only because my dad thought it was a great opportunity for me.

I had been taking business classes during my junior and senior years, so I assumed I would be placed in the two year business education program at BCC. I was doing well in the high school classes, and I actually enjoyed the one class I took in bookkeeping. However, I wasn’t looking forward to sitting through two more years of typing, shorthand, and business math. I thought those classes were beyond boring.

My acceptance letter came with a string attached. I had to take the SAT that summer. I didn’t think the SAT was required in order to enroll in what was essentially a secretarial training program. I wasn’t happy about having to take the test, but, of course, I took it. And, as I recall, I was a nervous wreck during the test. Way too many of the SAT questions seemed over my head. I took a chance and answered most of them, anyway—unless they involved advanced math.

I really thought I had done badly on the SAT. I never looked at my scores. To this day, I don’t know what they were.

During orientation, I learned that I had not been placed in the business education program. Instead, I had been placed in the liberal arts transfer program. My counselor advised me to take classes that would get me into the University of Massachusetts in two years.

What?

Although I hadn’t been looking forward to two more years of typing and shorthand, I knew darn well I belonged in the business education program. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to change someone’s mind about that, and my parents didn’t ask questions.

My first semester went well. After a short adjustment period, I settled down and ended the semester with decent grades. And, with the exception of the F in French, my second semester grades weren’t too bad either. Unfortunately, the F was reflected in my cumulative average. However, my other grades were high enough to keep me from being put on academic probation.

By the beginning of the third semester, my mind was on my social life, the "old" guy I had stopped seeing, and the new guy I currently was dating. I had started slacking off on studying, and sometimes I skipped a class just because I didn’t feel like going to it that day. When grades came out in December, I had squeaked by, but just barely. I don’t remember what my cumulative average was, but I do remember that I was put on academic probation.

If, by some miracle, I eventually completed the liberal arts transfer program, I knew I was not going to get into the state university or any other four year college. My overall cumulative average was too low.

At that point, I figured my academic career was heading south fast. And, to tell the truth, I didn’t particularly care.

But I did care enough to want to quit while I was ahead. I had no idea as to what I would do if I left school. I knew I would have to get a job, but what kind of job? None of my classes in the liberal arts program had prepared me for a job in the real world. During the past eighteen months, my typing skills had regressed, and my shorthand skills had disappeared.

I figured I was going to end up stocking socks and underwear at Woolworth’s or assembling widgets in some factory. But that was okay because the scary prospect of having to find work was better than the scary prospect of flunking out of school.

I tried to convince my parents to let me quit, but they were having none of it. Finally, we compromised. They agreed to let me reduce my course load from five to three classes and then do a fifth semester in order to “catch up” and graduate.

I chose to register for three classes that seemed interesting, yet fairly easy. I decided to take a second literature class because I had received a B in the first one. I also registered for an economics class and a sociology class called Marriage and the Family.

By the end of the semester, I had quit going to the economics class unless I felt the need for a nap. I attended the sociology class on a semi-regular basis. I sat in the back of the room and concentrated on doodling and making notes that had nothing to do with the class. I didn’t think I’d need to know much about marriage and the family any time soon. A high school boyfriend had dumped me just before my senior year, and my current on-and-off boyfriend wasn't what one would describe as marriage material.

The literature class was the only class I really liked and went to faithfully. On the last day of finals, I torpedoed my B average in World Literature 102 by arriving five minutes late for the exam.

I should have gone to the teacher and begged for mercy. Instead, I went to Friendly’s restaurant—at 8:10 a.m.—and ordered an ice cream sundae with extra hot fudge sauce and whipped cream. I ended up with indigestion, an F in English literature, and a 1.8 (D-plus) cumulative average.

And that’s how I got kicked out of college for academic reasons.

However, a few years later, I restarted my academic career by taking an evening class at a four year college. After a few semesters of liberal arts classes, I decided I needed to study something that would make me more employable.

I reapplied for admission to BCC. I did really well in my accounting classes and other business classes. With the exception of the French class and a history class called Riot and Revolution, I successfully repeated all the previous classes that had ended in bad grades. I graduated with an Associates Degree in Liberal Studies (aka my Associates Degree in Whatever) in the 1970s.

Many years later, when I was finishing the requirements for my B.A. in English at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, I had a tutee who was on academic probation. She had a 1.8 cumulative average. The same cumulative average that had gotten me dropped from college in the Mid-Jurassic Period allowed her to remain in school in the 1990s. How times had changed.

I Committed a Federal Offense at the Age of Twelve

According to an online article from the MassLive news site, Amtrak has pressed charges against a Massachusetts couple who were “allegedly” caught having sex between several sets of railroad tracks one evening last month. Both members of the amorous duo were charged with trespassing and lewd, wanton, and lascivious behavior.

Well, I guess I could have been charged with one of those offenses when I was twelve. Guess which one?

Too old for dolls, too young for dates, I was bored during summer vacation. There was nothing for tweenagers to do in our small, rural town. I could spend only so much time reading every day. And I wasn’t interested in the insipid soap operas that dominated the afternoon programming on our one and only television channel.

I walked a lot, just to have something to do. Two of my friends lived at the edge of town, which was over a mile away. I sometimes walked to their house. More often, I walked along the railroad tracks that were located in a somewhat isolated area near the river.

Last year, a transit district officer in Vista, California, told me that trespassing on railroad property is a federal offense. Oops. I guess if anything was railroad property then, those tracks were.

I wasn’t the only one committing a federal offense back in the Early Jurassic Period. Fishermen and neighborhood kids trekked the tracks from the first warm day in spring until late autumn. The river, though shallow in most places, was our swimming hole during summer vacation.

Way before I was born, the area where I walked had been dubbed the Jungle. For years I thought that epithet had been inspired by the trees and bushes that bordered one side of the tracks. It wasn’t until I was twenty-something that I learned the Jungle was rumored to have been the site of a hobo camp during the depression.

I can’t recall hearing gossip about any strange goings-on in the Jungle during the depression—or at any other time. As far as I know, no one was ever maimed or murdered in the alleged hobo camp or anywhere else along the tracks. But whenever I reached a certain area in the Jungle, I got a creepy feeling that stopped me from continuing beyond that point.

In 1993, a coworker at SmartMart told me the Jungle was haunted.

 

Fun Times on the Party Line

Thanks to the invention of the cell phone, almost everyone, from young children to senior citizens, now has a private phone line. It wasn’t always like that. Too bad cell phones weren’t around when I was in high school. Cell phones would have made my friends and me very happy and kept people from getting annoyed with us.

Until the early 1960s, we had to share a line with four other telephone customers. One of them was the elementary school; another was a family who lived near the school. I think the third customer might have been an organization that didn’t have anyone working there on a daily basis. I have no idea as to who the fourth party was. Apparently, those people didn’t use the phone much.

When I was a junior in high school, I would come home from school, drag the phone into the hall closet, and call my best friend who went to a different school. Yeah, I confess that sometimes we tied up the line for well over an hour. Or more.

The grandmother of the family living near the school frequently interrupted our conversations, asking us to get off the line because she had to “make an important phone call.” Grandma was polite about it, and so were we. We always hung up so she could use the line.

Her grandson, whom I’ll call “Jack,” was a different story.

One afternoon, Kate and I must have been discussing some really interesting teen gossip. I never heard the click that indicated someone was checking the line. Then again, maybe Jack liked eavesdropping, just in case we mentioned someone he knew.

After putting up with us for what probably seemed like hours to him (but really wasn’t) he broke into our conversation, yelling, “Get off the phone. You two are on the phone twenty-four hours a day. Why don’t you move in with each other?”

I was stunned by his outburst, so I had no words. Kate started arguing with him. I don’t remember what she told him, but I’m sure it was something I wouldn’t repeat here. Anyway, we did get off the phone. And I think I stayed off the party line for a while—maybe even for the rest of the day.

I Would Have Been More Scared Than Bored

A few days ago at the neighborhood café, I heard a woman mention the name of a small town in New Mexico. I so wanted to butt in on the conversation, but I didn’t. Doing that would have been rude, and I was brought up to be nice.

Why, yes, I do have a story to tell about that place.

Way back in the Late Jurassic Period, Ken and I lived on a ranch in Arizona. Ken worked there, but the bookkeeping job I was supposed to get fell through. I could tolerate watching the soaps with the foreman’s wife for only so long. I spent most of my days moping about my present circumstances and wondering if I would ever get off the ranch and back to civilization and a job.

After a few months, Ken became discouraged with the rather chaotic management of the ranch. He thought we probably should move on. I wanted to move to Tucson, but Ken vetoed that idea. He wanted to move to a small town in New Mexico. He told me there were a lot of ranches in that area. He was sure he could get a job at one of them.

I had never heard of that town before, or if I had, I didn’t remember. Most of the small towns we previously traveled through in New Mexico were in shabby shape, with little to offer someone like me who bored easily and thus preferred city life. I thought we would be trading one ho-hum place for another.

I did not want to move to Roswell, New Mexico. And, as it turned out, we didn’t.