O, Pioneers!

Pack the sofa
And pack the old arm chair
Tell the china
To ask the silverware
To pray we find that
They speak the language thereAnd say good-bye to Carolina......Lyle Lovett, Goodbye to Carolina

We have a new parlor game.  It's completely harmless..doesn't cost a dime...yet keeps us entertained on long car trips or during coffee breaks in the office. At least once a day, and frequently more often, an email appears with listings for a whole bunch of houses near or around the Lake of the Ozarks.  Sometimes the houses are small and old and cheap; sometimes they are upper floor condos with big balconies overlooking the water; and sometimes they are monstrous vacation homes with docks and six bedrooms, decorated in an unmistakably generic yet tacky style that features pelican door knockers and shower curtains with sailboats.  They are all fun, good for daydreaming on wind whipped afternoons when grit irritates your eyes and dust fills your ears.  We are modest folk: not for us the vistas that top seven figures on mountain or beach.  Best to aim low if one is going to aim at all.  And it does no harm to look.

My dad must have subscribed to that notion.  Every once in a while, he'd decide he wanted to move somewhere else, so we'd load into the car and drive to some other suburb and look at apartments or neighborhoods. 

Picking up and moving out never struck me as the least bit odd.  Everybody did it.  Our subdivision had been built on bare dirt and populated mostly by young families just starting out on their own. At the end of every school year, some friends would leave to be replaced by a whole bunch of new kids when September came around.  This was the Sixties, we were the end of the Boomers, cars were cheap, homes were plentiful, and people knew they could do better..somewhere else.  Of course it would be our turn to move...it was only a matter of time.

Eventually, the discussions my parents must have had after our bedtime crystallized into actions. Instead of a summer vacation, we would have a "Moving Adventure"thanks to the U Haul trucks my dad rented.  Laura and I were tasked with devising an efficient plan for loading the big pieces of furniture; we measured and drew and cut out paper representations of the love seat, the hutch, the dressers and trunks.  We bid farewell to the black baby grand that had dominated our living room.  I'm sure there were other items discarded or given away, but for the life of me I can't imagine what they were, only that the truck was packed to the gills and the metal shelving for my dad's radio equipment was tied to the back.

By this time in my life, after several trips west along the paths of the pioneers, I was enthralled with the Oregon Trail and the great American Westward expansion.  In my imagination, our yellow U Haul equated favorably with a prairie schooner and a family on the road to a new life.  If we made it down I-55 and Highway 54 with our teetering truckload of possessions, we'd arrive at our family's Oregon in Calloway county, Missouri.  Other folks might use Mayflower, but we were rugged and self sufficient and moved ourselves.

That was my romantic notion anyway.  After I helped hoss those self same possessions up the steep and narrow stairs, I might not have been so enthusiastic.

 My mother's best friend, whose family had, it goes without saying, also moved before we did...to Beatrice, Nebraska, home of Homestead National Monument, wrote my mom a letter afterwards saying, in no uncertain terms, DON'T MOVE YOURSELVES!  When I read it just last month, I had to laugh, having helped to move everyone in our family multiple times in the last decade and a half.  There was another letter among my folks' things, one from our pastor in Illinois.  He had come by the house to find us up and gone...

I know the process of  packing  up life and leaving was way more complicated for my parents than it was for me as a kid. Like the pioneers, I figured  life would be better somewhere else and I looked forward to a new town and a new school.  Our grandparents lived in Missouri and we loved to visit.  Illinois was where we lived, but not permanent...not home.  Even when our house sold, I never really missed it, not like places I have missed since that time.

Back then, we were all pioneers....


Go west young man while you still can
Before you're old and gray
Go west and make a better life
Than you could if you stayed
Lyle Lovett, Goodbye to Carolina

From Greenberry Road

I see places.  I don’t know whether it is a blessing or not, but I can tell you more about how a place looked than what I did there.  Perhaps that comes from taking lots of photos..perhaps taking pictures is a consequence of the way my brain functions..either way, asking me to remember someone often begins by recalling a place.

Take Greenberry Road.  My mother’s parents lived at the very end of Greenberry Road, just before the bridge over the Moreau where town ended and Route B took you to Wardsville.  The house was faced with sandstone slabs bound with thick bands of mortar protected by asphalt, a style I now know is called “Ozark Giraffe”. When Laura and I were little and the days were hot, we would amuse ourselves by pressing our fingernails into the asphalt while we played on the deep front porch that protected the front door.  My grandparents had a huge porch swing, big enough and wide enough to lay down on.  The  cushions and pillows were covered in striped canvas; to get the whole assemblage moving was more like launching a ship than taking to the air.  Even though Grandma and Grandpa Froerer had one of the first home air conditioners, a real marvel, I still remember summer days reading on that porch swing.  Second choice was the green canvas butterfly chair; the wooden Adirondack took a distant third.

Not only did Grandpa, a WWI veteran, and Grandma, whose mastery of needle and thread ranged from crocheting doilies and tablecloths...really...to my mother’s lovely pink silk wedding dress, have air conditioning in their home, but they also had the first air-conditioned car I’d ever seen...a 1964 Dodge with a push button transmission.  When we visited, Grandpa would eat ‘mush’ every morning for breakfast and a couple of slices of wheat toast.  There was always a jar of Heinz Chow-chow on the table, an unappetizing concoction of mustard and pickle.

Grandma  made my dad the oatmeal cookies with caramel frosting he loved.  My grandma drank Coca Cola, but the rest of us enjoyed Dr. Pepper, unavailable way up north. We ate cake or cookies and pretzel sticks in a booth in the kitchen, which also featured a fold down ironing board, and a flour bin in the lower cabinet.  When Grandma made home-made noodles she rolled them out on a cutting board that pulled out from the cabinet. In the basement was her washing machine, electric, with a wringer attachment.  There was clothesline spread all across the basement for winter and clotheslines in the backyard.

Grandpa had been a civil engineer with the WPA, helping build the road to the top of Scotts Bluff.  Both he and Grandma hailed from Utah where their ancestors had emigrated with the Latter Day Saints and established their farms and families near Logan.  My mom told me they bought the house on Greenberry Road when my grandpa went to work for the Missouri Department of Transportation because it was the only one for sale.  Grandpa read constantly even when cataracts forced him to use a big lighted magnifier.  His vocabulary was not gentle and he had strong opinions. My father always addressed him as Mr. Froerer.  At Grandma and Grandpa’s, we got to watch Hollywood Squares, Password, Ed Sullivan, and Art Linkletter. Grandpa was a night owl..long after our bedtime, he would still be in his chair listening to the Tonight Show.

Grandpa F. was a superb woodworker before his eyes failed him. He built their dining room table and chairs, hutch and corner cabinet.  He made the hard maple desk on which I did all my schoolwork. He designed and created the big toy train, tender car, flatbed, and caboose large enough to haul our dolls and stuffed animals around their house as well as the multi-hued building blocks and wagon his great-grands still use.  His workshop in the basement was engineer neat with cases of cubbies and jars containing tiny incomprehensible parts.

Granny and Grandpa Renken, my dad’s parents, were the mirror image of my Grandma and Grandpa F.  Where Grandma F. was quiet, Granny was a tiny, talkative, vivacious woman who loved music, children, making up and telling stories and all the world outside her door. Family meals were big, plain affairs with lots of canned or frozen produce from Grandpa’s garden.

 She adored my grandfather, a quiet man who worked in his orchard and his garden after he retired from years as a letter carrier.  I can easily picture him in his rocker next to the piano, the lamplight shining over his shoulder as he peered through his bifocals down his long straight Renken nose at a Time magazine.  Granny always had a record playing on the stereo. She wrote poetry and spoke of the mockingbird outside her window as a personal friend.  Granny worked at the Conservation Commission but then, after age 50, took her daughter’s encouragement to heart and began writing.  She published a series of children’s books featuring a big family as well as two hardcover books for young adults.  Even though I wasn’t quite old enough for the young adult books at the time, I was thrilled when I got to read some of her typewritten chapters.  

Granny always had surprises for the kids around, something she continued to do for her great grandchildren...puzzle books or story books gleaned from book fairs, homemade musical instruments for a parade...

Granny and Grandpa lived on Greenberry Road too, a few blocks up the road from the Froerers.  My mom’s younger brother was best friends with my father’s younger brother.  But Granny and Grandpa moved across the river to a small acreage past Holts Summit when we were still young and that’s the place I remember the Christmas and Easter and Fourth of July celebrations.

 The house was brick with aluminum windows and certainly not a bit of insulation between the interior and the great out of doors.  It was without a doubt the hottest and coldest house I’ve ever been in.  Cold was never a problem when all the families were there at Christmas; steam condensed into a river on the windows and even the unheated sun porch where we cousins ate meals was cozy when the stove was on and ten people were doing dishes.  But in the summertime when the house became a brick oven, we were more than happy to escape to the cool basement where Granny set up her ironing board after lunch while she watched her “stories” as she called the soap operas she dutifully followed. (Side note: my dad got hooked on a soap opera or two during the years he repaired televisions...this tiny vice always made me smile.)

All summer Grandpa would work among his trees or wrangle his beastly tiller through the rows of his garden or push mow the vast yard and come in with his face red and his pith helmet and retired mailman shirts black with sweat.  The windows were open all summer and oscillating fans provided relief until the evening cooled down.

Fourth of July and Easter at their farm were the best a kid could hope for. At Eastertime, Granny would boil dozens of eggs for all us cousins to dye.  How come the colors back then seemed so much brighter?  There was nothing fancy about the decorating, no shrink wrap, or glitter or tie dye: just Paz tablets, the smell of vinegar in hot water, and the little white crayon with which to write names or draw crosses.  The “Easter bunny” would hide the eggs throughout their big yard and we would run like crazy to search them out before the dogs found them.

  On the 4th, Grandpa would grill hot dogs and hamburgers, the men would play ball or have a green apple fight, and we’d all play croquet until it got dark enough to shoot more than bottle rockets.  Fireworks were illegal in Illinois, so even sparklers and Roman candles were a thrill.  Some 4ths, the humidity was so high, we couldn’t set anything down or it wouldn’t light.  Most nights, heat lightning would add to the show, flickering silently and futilely on the horizon.

I didn’t grow up with my grandparents just down the road, but the memories are so vivid that it sometimes feels that way.  The four of them were so different in experience and personality, even from my vantage as a child. Grandma Froerer’s Mormon upbringing means there are still papers and stories to read and pass down. Granny wrote of her own childhood experiences and my aunts Liz and Anne bound them for all of us to keep. As I gather up shreds of my memories and attempt to record them, I’m just following a tradition and hoping my grands and greats will treasure them too.

Advice Column

 

“What advice would you give your great grandchildren?”

Dear me. Will answering this question make me a preacher? Or a prognosticator? A sage? A voice crying in the wilderness? Or will it brand me indelibly as a grumpy cross old lady wrapped up in my 'back in the day' cobwebs and shaking my finger at the back of everyone who avoids me as a bore?

Fortunately, my sample size of great grandmas doesn't include any incredible bores. There's hope for me yet.

First thing to remember, great grandchildren-to-be, is how fortunate we will be to get to know each other....how marvelous and amazing it will be for me to have held in my arms, whispered nonsense to, held hands with and tickled toes of not just your mommies or daddies, but your grandmas or grandpas....and now YOU! I didn't know my great grandparents: I couldn't even tell you the names of all of them, though I do have photos of some of them on the walls of my guest room. These great grandparents only figure in a few tales left behind by my Granny, who had the urge to write them down so her grandkids would hear them, and your great grandpa Blake's grandpa who told dozens of stories to his grandsons...then they remembered the funniest ones and told their kids, too.

So...maybe that's my very first bit of advice, even if it's not the most important or most useful: Tell your children stories...even when they don't ask to hear them. Take the pictures, go to the cemeteries, pass on the traditions. Build your family brick by brick and connect your past to your present. You have roots, kids, and they reach deep in the country you have come from, or your folks came from. I learned to love your great grandfather because he told stories of his town, his parents, his farm, his history...funny stories full of character and idiosyncrasy. I learned to know your Great Grandpa's family from afar...before I came to Atchison county to join them and grow roots here myself. You come from a long line of storytellers...

Travel. Travel cheap when you're young and pack sandwiches and cereal and milk and your one hot meal a day is cheap Chinese or cheap Mexican. Stop for historical markers and local museums and national parks and pose one or more family members in every picture. Climb trails and skip stones on lakes and toss pebbles into creeks and pick up rocks as souvenirs.

Then, later, see the great cities, go to the theater, eat good food, stay in a room with a view. Spend whatever is necessary to qualify as a splurge....every once in a while. What was magical to me...your great grandma...may be antiquated to you....but, believe me, high class never goes out of style.

Sigh. All this fun will come at a cost. And that cost, lovely kids, is work. Your grandparents will tell you how very hard they worked in rain forest heat and bone chilling winds building greenhouses and loading trucks...how they awoke and fed their animals in their pajamas and muck boots long before the sun rose. And your parents will tell you they spent summer day after summer day getting up early to fill thousands of pots with mix while their friends were sleeping in until nine.

And I'm here to tell that it's TRUE, all TRUE! Yes, your grandparents worked hard with us building our business and learning the burden of responsibility: for years after the fact, they would awake from dreams in which the steers were out of feed or the well had pumped dry because a hydrant was left on. Your parents are learning all about sweat equity down in that dirt shed; today they're paid only with an afternoon free to swim or read in the cool shade, but before you know it, they will be logging hours on a time card and saving for a college car. Great-grands, whatever your career and your livelihood, you will have learned the dignity of working with your hands, the reward of working side by side with your family, and earned the right to tell those 'way back when' stories to future generations.

Finally, exercise your minds as well as your hearts and hands. Read. Read fantasy and history, mystery and adventure. Escape, enrich, enjoy. Read your Bibles for instruction, for counsel, for comfort, for encouragement. Read the stories you loved to your children....The Poky Little Puppy, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel, Hobo Dog, Winnie the Pooh. They are the common threads of your cultural heritage. My parents left a roomful of books three foot tall by 12 foot long by 6 foot wide, proof of a lifelong curiosity on a variety of subjects. Among these books are my grandfather's engineering text, my grandmother's poetry books, my father's Spanish dictionary and German Bible and my mother's botany book. I doubt that anyone else will ever read these volumes, but I will preserve them in hopes that you and your children will leaf through them, read the frontispieces and the notes in the margin, and comprehend the glorious debt of enrichment you owe your book loving ancestors.

Oh, great-grands...there is so much more! Play music...sing loud in church....plant lots of flowers.....use the right tools.....take lots of pictures.....and come play with your great grandparents often....

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Kodachrome

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day.

..Paul Simon

I guess you could say it's just bred in the bone. The crisp new leather camera bag front and center with the toddler in the fifty plus year old snapshot was omnipresent during my childhood, sometimes in the foreground therefore unintentionally starring in the recorded history of our family. Over time, the shiny saddlebag took on the character and texture of a Pony Express rider's satchel after a couple of trips cross country. The camera bag was a signal that Something was going to be Remembered.

Does anyone outside of professional photography even own a camera bag anymore?

I do. Current incarnation is a compact little LowePro just the right size for a DSLR, battery charger and two lenses. Or...my wallet and two lenses, if, as is my wont, I hang my camera around my neck for easy access.

To be quite honest, if you count the uber-rugged, heavy-duty, closest-thing-to-Kevlar, tips-the-scale-at-twenty-pounds Tenba bag I now carry, I am never without a camera bag. I bought it to replace the super convenient little Swiss Army backpack I treated as combination gear and hand bag. When the zipper broke two years into use, I was crushed and disappointed. Firstly, because I replaced it sight unseen with an overweight over engineered monster that may never wear out...and secondly, because Swiss Army gear should last more than two years even when thrown carelessly on the floorboard every day and stuffed mercilessly into crannies in cars and overhead bins in airplanes. I guess that's why they don't make them anymore. Brass and tanned cowhide like my mother and father's heirloom beats a two way zipper any day. The Tenba will hold not just a camera, but a Kindle and an iPad too. It's more like a steamer trunk than a briefcase.

from the Island of Misfit Toys

At this point in my diatribe, you may be asking, "Your iPhone 6 is always at hand...can be shared instantaneously...edited on the spot....why on earth are you whining about cameras?

It's a sad truth. Consider the contents of one drawer of my cupboard: a whole array of outmoded superseded camera equipment. Heavy metal, not plastic, precisely machined, created to capture a moment unique in time and bring it back to life. Now, as discarded as the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys, blind eyes turned upwards. Generations of German and Japanese engineering gone by the wayside.

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic.. I bought it in high school and carried it right through college and into marriage, recording school trips to New Orleans, a summer spent in Washington DC, our first home in Columbia, a weekend getaway to Kentucky, our first summer on the farm....and ultimately, the first year of Lee's life. The Instamatic shot a cartridge of 24 pictures and used a flash cube for low light shots. The ultimate in point and shoot. It was a big deal to finish a roll of film and take it to the drug store to be sent off for developing in Omaha, and a little bit like Christmas to open the packet of prints when it returned after a couple of days.

These prints look older than I feel! The colors have deteriorated and faded; to an eye accustomed to the wonders of auto focus and HD, most are either under or overexposed and fuzzy. But I try to salvage what I can digitally, preserving a snapshot, so to speak, of when we were very young. I have but a few Polaroids of Blake's folks in their youth, even fewer photographs of our grandparents when compared to the black and white albums and carousels of color slides (Kodachrome or Ektachrome....I don't remember which) of my Zeiss and Canon toting parents.

I had a Fujica SLR for almost twenty years, a birthday present in 1982. It was completely manual...the photographer chose the shutter speed and the aperture based on the ISO of the film loaded. No auto focus and no built in flash. But it did sport a metering system, a big step forward from the hand held light meter my folks used for difficult shots. I always shot 200 film, walking the line between detail, what tech calls pixels, and a lack of sharpness caused by movement. Life was recorded 24 shots at a time, except for vacations, when I would load up on film, buying 8 or 12 rolls at a time, even a couple of rolls of 36, just to be safe. Finding film in some of the places we wound up was not a sure thing and I was paranoid about running out. Even so, the number of pictures I took from 1982 to the first digital camera Blake bought me in 2008 average one album a year, not counting weddings, graduations and the births of grandchildren.

One night the Fujica shutter locked wide open and moved no more, almost as if it sensed the end of the film era. It's last picture was taken through Ben's telescope: the moon.

Don't misunderstand me. To have a camera in my pocket for the sun behind a cloud, dew hanging of a flower, or even a classic car at Casey's adds to the sum of my happiness. Taking four shots at blowing out birthday candles and keeping just one wasn't an option with film. Digital is a license to be silly...not just historic. Pixels encourage creativity...visual jokes, panoramas, way out close ups, in a spontaneous outpouring that amateurs would never have attempted before this freedom of expression was....well, free.

What's to be done with this voluminous recording of minutiae and the mundane? What will our grandchildren do with it all?

In my case, there will be physical books and albums, not just files and .jpgs. I am in the minority; I still print. All these artifacts will wind up, I suppose, where people's great great great aunt's gravy bowls and wedding dresses reside: a local or county museum hard by someone's once treasured tools and someone else's wedding dress, too old to dispose of and too arcane and personal to be historic.

In the meantime, I remember the old ways, paying homage to the blind lenses and camera bodies good for naught but paperweights.

Long live Kodachrome.

 

 

 

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