Gone for a while

For my sister who will worry when I don't write anything for a few days, this is to let you all know that I'm taking a break to let my mind rejuvinate and hopefully come up with something new to write about.

I will be attending a few grandchidlren Christmas presentations in the next 24 hours and hopefully I'll get some decent pictures. But, I may still not write anything on the BLOGs.

I have just too much to do right now, and BLOGging is going to have to take a back seat to the other things that are pressing.

I'll be back in a few.

ttfn

Snowy Saturday and Army/Navy Game

See? we had snow. I know this picture is dark, but I took it tonight, after the community lights were turned on. Not a very good glimpse of our various displays, I admit, but you can see those splotches in the picture -- that's snow, folks. And, I'm loving it.

Oh, I had to postpone plans to head west to visit my daughter today and spend the night. I'm not one to try to go anywhere if there is even one flake of snow, unless the temperature outside is 40 degrees or more and the flakes melt as soon as they hit the ground. But it's cold outside and so the snow is sticking, and it's suppose to get very cold again tonight, which means whatever is water is on the roads will freeze. So, I opted to stay home and be bored.

The reason for the Army/Navy game mention in the title is because today was the 79th (or something like that) consecutive Army/Navy game. And that, dear folks, relates to my time in Runnemede.

My dad wasn't a football fan, so to speak, but he did enjoy the Army/Navy game. And so, on the Saturday after the Saturday after Thanksgiving, no matter what, we watched the Army/Navy game. Dad always routed for the Navy. I rah/rah/sis-boom-bahed for the Army. And I would watch the whole game.

I think for me, it was more, a girl loving those cadets and midship men, more than really loving the game, although I did enjoy football back in my younger days.

And I recall that as a teenager on that first Saturday in December (usually) we would go into Philadelphia where the Army/Navy game has been played for those many years, and I, teenager that I was, with all those hormones raging, would love to walk the streets of the city and see all those men on leave.

So, while Alan and I were watching the A/N game (sort of, I lost interest pretty early in the game when Navy got a touchdown), I was thinking of those Saturdays when my father and I watched those games together.

ttfn

Home work

Not house work. Home work.

Alan and I were watching the news this morning and the pundits were talking about how much homework children are given these days and that the time they have to spend on that odious task is not allowing them to be children in their "off hours" from school.

Home work for kindergartners is not something I understand or can comprehend. Why would a teacher require that a 5 or 6 years old do homework when they get home. Seems cruel to me. Are teachers afraid that the child will forget what they learned in the 16 hours they are out of their teacher's control? I don't think so. I mean that might be what teachers are afraid of, but I don't think they will "forget" what they learned that day in school. I didn't. My sister didn't. My brothers didn't. Well, maybe they did a little bit.

But my point is, give the kids some credit that they will retain what they have learned that day.

I was a teacher. And I know I've ragged on this before. But when I attended Runnemede Public Schools back in the 40s and 50s, I did NOT have homework. Not once! Never! It wasn't until I got to high school that I even knew what homework was, and then it seemed that each teacher I had was in a competition to see which one could give the most homework. And, if you didn't do your homework, you COULD fail the course. Stupid. The homework was never graded, but if you didn't do it, you got a black mark and were threatened with failure.

And when I was teaching, I always gave enough time in the classroom for a student to get his/her homework completed in class if they worked at it, plus they had the advantage of having me nearby if there was a problem with their homework. I remember doing math homework and not being able to do it because I didn't know how to work the problem, and then turning in an incomplete homework assignment, fearing that I would fair the course because I hadn't been able to work all the problems assigned. I'm feeling the angst I felt then as I write this.

So, I learned to read, write, and cipher without doing homework. There were enough hours in the day for the teachers to get into my brain, and my classmates' brains what we needed to know to go onto the next grade level. And, we had time for recess each day, and time for music, and time for art, although for music and art we weren't sent to another teacher. Art was part of our classroom experience, and music was a combined effort by one of the teachers with whom we combined classes to have a time of singing or play rehearsal.

Alan went to boarding school from the time he was 9 and he said that after 4 p.m. each day there was no more school work. That was the time for sports or reading or just being a kid and doing kid things.

So, I have to ask, when do children today get to do children-type things. If they have two to three hours of homework a night (which is what was reported on the TV, if you can believe that) when do they get to go outside and ride their bike. When do they get time to play a game of Monopoly? When do they get to play with their dolls? I mean if they are in school from 8 to 3:30, and get home at 4:00 p.m. Homework would go until at least 6:00 p.m. at which time it would be dinner time. Then, figuring dinner is over around 7:00 p.m. it's time for baths and then to bed.

I know that my younger grandchildren are in bed by 8:00 p.m. They have to be because they have to be up by 6:30 in order to get on the bus by 7:30 in order to get to school by 8:00.

And so the circle goes. Poor kids!

ttfn

Out back

Not "outback", but out back. In South Jersey, that means outside the back door, or in the back yard. The view from the back windows -- and this will be the last in the windows series -- logically would be entirely different from the front windows. The back windows faced south, and the front windows faced north.

For years I had the attic view for "out back". The window was at the top of the stairs and if I sat on the top step, I could look out the window and see far away -- no trees to obstruct my view. I could see our church, I could even see the church which was across the street from our church. I could see a ways up Johnson Avenue, and I could, of course, see several of the neighbors' homes -- the ones that lived on Clements Bridge Road. And, best of all I could see the rooves of the chicken coops that belonged to our neighbors. And, if the window was open I could hear what was under the rooves of those coops. Sorry, no pictures.

In the winter, because the back windows faced south, when it was a sunny day, it was a warm day. At Christmas time, dad set up a train platform on the porch. The back porch, being on the south side of the house, was lit up and warmed and that was our play room. The back porch was mostly windows.

Now, that view, being almost at ground level (there were six steps up from the outside ground) had an entirely different view than the attic view, but both were from a comfortable, cozy place.

In the summer, there would be a huge fan in the attic window so enjoying the view was not as easy as in the winter. From the porch you could, of course, see the church, and I posted that view in a previous rambling, I could see my favorite climbing tree, the garage, my mom's rose bushes -- of course all these things were visible from the attic window, but looking at the roof of the garage or the top of the tree is entirely different.

It's amazing that looking at the same place, from a different sea level abode, is so different.

How I wish I had some pictures of those views, other than the ones in my mind which is getting fuzzier the older I get.

Attic windows

In the attic where my sister and I were housed (after several years of my father using it for his study), there were two windows, one in the front, and one in the back. You can see the one in the front in the picture of our house. The "front" room was used for storage until I was 16, at which time I nagged and nagged my parents to let me have the room for my bedroom. I told them I would clean it out and since there was furniture in there, I decided I could use that furniture for my own, and not share a bureau and bed with my sister. Not a bad idea, eh?

The front room had no heat in it, so we took off the door that separated that room from the "back" room, where my sister and I had been housed, so the heat would flow into the "front" room (minimally). I think I had an electric heater in there for the really cold days in winter.

So, I had a different view out of the front of the house, than I had from downstairs, either through the door or the front window -- that would be the openings that faced Second Avenue.

From my perch I could see a lot more, and since I was even with the tree branches, I could enjoy the birds more closely than downstairs where I would have to look up to see them. I recall a family of cardinals that "lived" in one of the sycamore trees that was out front. The trees are still there, you can see them in the picture. The cardinal family lived in the tree on the left as you look at the picture.

I loved my roost. And it really was like being in a tree house. The window, although it doesn't look really large was 48x54, so it really was a good sized window, and the dormer in which it was set was like a little sitting room, although I did put my bed under the window in the summer time.

I have always been a furniture mover, and so every time I cleaned my room, I moved the furniture. Now that I can't move myself, my furniture moving days are over, and I think my husband is very thankful for that, because when I was younger, he would leave for work and the furniture would be arranged one way, and he would come home, hoping when he walked in that I hadn't moved the furniture to a place where he would trip over something. I tried to be sensitive to traffic patterns, at least.

So I arranged that little dormer-room as my "office" with the desk in front of the window and the chair set so I could see out the window. Or, as I mentioned, my bed would be placed in front of the window and I, like Beth in Little Women, had a great view of the street, the school, and far up the street, and trees and their inhabitants.

From my lofty position I could see not only Mrs. Mahorter's house, but the Britton's home, and almost up to the Strike's house.

I recall one day Tom Lodge -- our produce huckster -- was parked out front of our home, and I was spying on him. He looked up, and I'm sure he could see me on my side of the window, but maybe he couldn't. After all, when you look in a window in the daytime, you really can't see very far into the house -- not like at night-time when all the lights are lit and you can see whatever the curtains or blinds don't hide.

I wish I had a picture of that view, but I don't. You'll just have to imagine what it was like.

NOTE: The picture of mom and dad sitting is the side window in the living room, which is the first window about which I wrote. The one where they are standing is in front of the porch/front window in the living room.

mtf

Windows -- II

Well, yesterday I mentioned what it was like looking out one of the living room windows. When I counted the windows, I did not count the door windows, and I suppose I should talk about what I could see out the front door window. I also didn't count the two attic windows, but I shall talk about the views I had from those two windows at another time.

The closest thing to the front door was the front porch, then the steps leading down to the sidewalk, the street, and across the street, Downing School. The school I attended for 4 years. I recall waiting by the front door for the children to line up to go into the school, then I would head over to school arriving just in time for school to begin. I really didn't want to play on the playground in the morning before school started, but can't recall whether the reason was I was shy -- yes, believe it or not I am shy -- or whether it was because I didn't want to get dirty before school started.

The piano was just inside the front door -- there was just enough room to open the door without bumping into the piano. As I mentioned the rooms in the small house were, well, small. So, as I sat at the piano, which was a daily occurrence for me as I was religious about practicing right after school, I could see the comings and goings on the street -- of which there were few, children playing on the school ground -- there weren't many of them either -- and the porch, where, if the weather was nice, my brothers and sister would be playing.

In nice weather the door was left open, and the screen door provided the view, rather than the beveled glass door which was shut during cold weather. I seem to recall that the door was open on the first nice day, usually in March, and left open, pretty much the rest of the time, until late October. The only time the inside door was closed was at night, when we were in "lock down" mode.

My dad was a stickler about locked doors. Why, he wouldn't even give me a key when I was in college for fear I'd lose it and someone would find it and figure out where we lived and break in. So, I had to pray that someone was home at any time I was away from the house and coming back to the house. I don't think I had to sit on the front porch very often waiting for someone to come home to unlock the door for me.

Since my mom and dad both played the piano, I think they were determined that each child would learn to play. My dear sister tried, but didn't get very far. My brother, Mark, quickly switched to trumpet, and I don't recall that my brother Carl ever learned any instrument. If he did, it was done after I wasn't home very much any more.

So my view from the piano was such that I could see and hear the street and it's sounds, and the street could hear the sounds emitted from the piano, good and bad. But it was another view from the multitudinous views I had from various parts of that tiny home.

mtf

Window views

I was awake again today at 5:00 a.m. and was thinking about Runnemede and it came to me that every window in the house where we lived had a different view.

I recall watching Little Women (the one where June Allyson plays Jo) and how at the end of Beth's life they moved her to a place where she could look out of the window.

I am going to spend a few days recalling the many views that you could see from the house on Second Avenue -- the house where I grew up.

While the house was really quite small, probably 1800 feet including attic space, it was loaded with windows, and I'm not going to count basement windows, because really the only view from there was up someone's pant leg or the sky. But on the first floor -- not including the back porch which was one massive set of windows now known as a three-season room -- there were 12 rather large windows, each having it's own distinctive view of the neighborhood in which I lived, the view of which changed as the seasons changed and as my direction of looking from them changed.

I recall one Christmas Eve I desperately wanted to see Santa Claus. I was probably 4 or 5. And I changed my position in bed, so that I was sleeping at the foot of the bed and had a clear view of the two windows in the little back bedroom where my sister and I slept with my brother Mark(he was in a crib at the time). Mom and dad weren't too thrilled with me sleeping in that position, but they let me, knowing full well that I would wake up in the morning in bed, in the correct place (because they had moved me during the night) and that while I hoped to see Mr. C, I wouldn't see him, but looking out the windows would make me drowsy and sleepy. They even put the shades all the way up to the top so I would have a full view from those windows. Parents will do anything to get their children to sleep in Christmas eve!

What did I see that night? Nothing but reflections of the bedroom, and stars. Never did see Mr. C or his animals. But when I woke in the morning, I was sure I had heard the bells and the noise of hooves on the snow.

One of my favorite places to get a view from the Runnemede house was the side window in the living room. There was a love seat placed in front of that window, and I would sit for hours looking out that window, watching the traffic (maybe one car an hour would drive by, on a busy day), watching for my friends, looking at the garage next door -- yes, there was a great view of that garage, because it butted up against the church's property. Mom had planted roses and lilies there to try to hide the garage. She also had a forsythia bush that covered a portion of the building.

That particular building was black tar paper on the outside, and roofed with an ugly dark brown roofing single. It was not an attractive building, and as far as I ever knew, it was never used. Mr. Kline, our neighbor on whose property the garage resided, may have used it for storage, but I never saw anyone coming from or going into that garage. I think finally it fell down.

From that seat I could see the sky, the sunset (it faced west), smell the on-coming storms, watch them roll in, and enjoy the magnificence of the lightning and thunder on a summer day. From that seat I could watch the seasons change and with each change the view changed. In the summer the garage was well hidden by mom's bushes. In the winter, all the plants seemed to have died, they had lost their leaves, and so only a few "sticks" hid that garage.

I also liked to sit in that seat and on a cold day blow on the window creating a haze into which I would write words, or draw, and then get in trouble because I messed up my mother's clean window. My task then was to clean the window back to it's original cleanliness and pass mom's inspection. But that didn't stop me from huffing and blowing on the glass again and again and again.

The view at the top of this BLOG is the view from the back porch windows over to the church on a snowy day, many, many years ago. It had to be before the 1970s because the gray siding came off in the 70s and was restored to a white clapboard siding, to make the church look like it did originally.

much mtf