Labor Day

The only thing I remember about Labor Day in Runnemede is that it was the day before school opened.  I loved that day because it meant summer was over and I would be back in school doing reading, writing, and arithmetic, and other subjects.  It seemed to me as a child that summer went on forever (because I liked school).

Now, it seems as if summer began yesterday and the season of summer is over.  Where I now live it ends for children in mid-August.  Our pool closes two weeks after Labor Day, which is nice for the adults in our community -- no children in the pool, not that I mind the kiddos.  I rather like their frolicking, but some of the seasoned citizens that live here do mind them and stay home when there are children splashing and cavorting. 

So, now maybe the fuddy-duddies will come to the pool just for the "fun" of it.

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Red, Yellow, Green, Blue

I was talking to my daughter today and she let me know that there is a contagious disease that is affecting a lot of children in her area of Indiana.  It is foot, mouth, and hand disease.  NOT hoof and mouth disease -- that's in cattle.

Symptoms are fever, ulcers in the mouth, rash on hands and feet.  But it is contagious after symptoms are gone for up to two weeks.  So parents think their child is over the disease and let them go to school or swimming, and bingo, another child gets the disease.  It is contagious!

I remember when I was a child what having a contagious disease meant to the family.  That's why I titled this "Red, Yellow, Green, Blue". 

When one member of a family had a contagious disease -- most of which (diseases) don't exist any more -- the whole family was QUARANTINED.  That meant unless it was an emergency, no one in the house was to associate with anyone outside the house.  The Runnemede health department put a poster on your front door telling the world that your family was infected and they should stay away.  I remember standing on my porch and "playing" with Linda, who was down on the sidewalk.  I think we were playing catch or something -- not catch the disease, catch the ball.

So, if I remember this correctly,  a red sign was measles, a yellow sign was chicken-pox, a blue sign I definitely know was mumps, and a green sign was whooping cough.  I might have the measles and chicken-pox colors mixed up because I was only five when I started the measles quarantine at the Drexler household.  In fact, I also started the chicken-pox quarantine at our house.  My brother, Carl, was only six months old when I got it, and we were worried about him if he got the disease -- which he did -- a mild case.

Mumps -- I didn't get the mumps, but my brothers and sister did.  I had to stay home, and the books I had brought home with me could not be brought back to the school room.  I was in 5th grade at the time.

I guess you're wondering how you got rid of the post on the front door.  Your doctor would call the health department and tell them to take the sign down.  I remember after the mumps we waited for almost a week for them to come.  Meanwhile I was missing school, and not at all happy about that.

So, now they know that shingles comes from the chicken-pox virus, which if you've had chicken-pox you are eligible to get this awful, painful disease, which ruined our first trip out West (see yesterday's BLOG).  My dear husband had a bad case of it and we didn't even know it for almost a week, except that he was hurting so bad.  Since it was so hot, we thought it was a bad case of prickly heat.  I didn't get shingles, but quickly got the shot to help prevent me from getting them.

I hope the shot works.  It has so far.

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Vacation

I think my mom would have loved to travel given the opportunity to do so.  I know when her sister, Anne, went out west, mom anticipated the post cards that seemed to come to the house fairly regularly.  I still have those post cards, tied in a ribbon, just as mom saved them.  And, yes, I've read them.

Well, Alan and I just went out West, again.  The first time we tried a road trip of such a length, Alan got sick and spent a good deal of the time in one hospital or another.  It was the beginning of trips we were to take where he would end up in a hospital or ship's infirmary every single time, until this trip.

Yes, we actually made it around the circle and my dear husband didn't even feel ill.  Me?  We won't go there, but I didn't end up in a hospital.

We tried to keep the drive-time each day at around six hours.  We didn't always accomplish that, but we tried.  Now, drive-time is not time from hotel to hotel.  It's time in the car, driving.  I did all the driving, except for one day.  I decided Alan should try to drive.  There was little traffic on the freeway, and he really wanted to drive.  Alan can't feel anything in the bottoms of his feet so depressing the accelerator and brake are sudden.  Anyway, he took the wheel.  Fifteen minutes later I was back at being the driver.

He ran off the edge of the road -- you know when you're doing that on a freeway because of the rumble strip along the edge.  He ran off the edge of the road 8 times in 15 minutes.  Too many run-offs for me, so I told him to stop the car.  After that he counted how many times I went off to the right or left.  Once in six hours.

We started in Hannibal, Missouri.  Mark Twain's town.  Becky Thatcher's town.  Huckleberry Finn's town.  Tom Sawyer's town.  It is NOT a tourist trip.  In fact nothing is flaunted in Hannibal, MO.  It has a nice main street, little traffic, one or two good restaurants, a couple of candy stores, and typical Midwest homes.  It was enjoyable, but I had my fill after a few hours.

We then drove to Estes Park, Colorado so that Alan could attend his school reunion.  He had a wonderful time getting together with people he hadn't seen in 50 years.  Yes, that's correct.  50 years.
Estes Park is beautiful and the mountains are -- well, they're mountains.  Not like the Smokies.  These are MOUNTAINS.  Until you've seen the Rockies, you can't imagine high mountains.  We stayed at 7,000 feet.  The air was a little thin and walking was a matter of huffing and puffing from one place to the next. 

From Estes Park we went down to Pegosa Springs, Colorado, still in Rocky Mountain country.  Pegosa Springs is a town well visited by the characters of Louis L'Amour's novels and I wanted to go there and on to Mesa Verde, Durango, Dolores, and other towns mentioned in L'Amour's novels.

From Pegosa Springs we went down to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  I liked this place the most.  Mountains?  Yes.  Different coloring though.  And Old Albuquerque was very interesting.  We hired a pedalcar driver and he told us some of the history of Albuquerque.  As he passed the buildings he pointed out which was a brothel, which was a saloon (there was a difference I suppose), which was a school, etc.  There were a lot of brothels and saloons in old Albuquerque, in the days of the cowboys and cattle herds. 

I hope to have pictures to put up on Facebook of the trip, which had nothing to do with Runnemede, but this is my BLOG and I can insert personal items from time to time if I want to.

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I remembered something.

I sometimes think I'm losing my mind, really!

I can't remember things, like where I put my glasses -- oops!  I'm wearing them.  I'm so forgetful that I can't remember to remove them (my glasses) when I go to bed.  I sleep on my back since two surgeries in rapid succession and often fall asleep reading, or listening to the radio.

But...I did remember something today.  Something in the recesses of my mind came to the front and I caught it.

I had a friend -- a playmate -- and her birthday was August 19th, yesterday if you're checking the date on this post.  She was born in August, so she got to go to school before I was permitted to attend.  I had to wait a year.

I know I've related this story before.  After about the third day of her attendance in kindergarten -- we had full-day kindergarten back then -- I decided I was old enough and smart enough to go to school and beside I was lonely.  My playmate was in school and I was on the outside wanting to be in.  I walked right into the school and started to look for my friend.

I was found before she was found and asked to leave the building -- gently, of course.  I said I wanted to go to school and the principal (Mrs. French) told me that I would be in school next year.  I can just see me stamping my foot and telling her, "But I want to go to school now!"

Linda's birthday was August 19th and that reminded me of all the fun times we had a children playing in a play house her dad built, sliding down a sliding board her dad built, learning our stringed instruments together -- piano and viola/violin. 

Linda was always ahead of me in school but we still had Saturdays for several years before we realized that one year DID make a difference and we sort of remained friends until she went to college and I stayed behind to finish high-school.

Happy birthday friend.  You beat me to 70.  You look great and I suppose you don't feel quite 70, while I surpass you finally, because I feel 80.

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What did we do?

What did we do to keep cool before all homes were cooled with central air, or before that window air conditioners? 

What did we do before we could head to the library on the pretense that we were going to read, when in fact we just wanted to keep cool?

What did we do before there were malls in which to roam about, which were air conditioned?

How did we survive the 4/60 air conditioning coolant we had in our autos back then (four windows, 60 mph)?

I'll tell you what we did.

The church where dad was pastor had a basement.  It wasn't air conditioned, but it was much cooler than outdoors or upstairs or in our house, so we did indoor things down there.  DVBS was held in the basement as well, so we didn't swelter in the late June heat.

We sat on the front porch and prayed for a breeze which made us feel cool.

We dipped a wash cloth in cold water and wrapped it around our neck.

We didn't move once we found a "cooler" position in which to sit or sleep.

That's what we did.

 I am so thankful that we have an air conditioned home and an air conditioned automobile.  I am so pleased that I can drive to an air-conditioned restaurant in my air-conditioned car, which sits in my cooler-than-the-driveway garage, and which cools very nicely by the time I am ready to back out of the garage.

I'd be interested to know what you all did to keep cool back in the days before A/C was a common commodity.

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Vacations

It's the middle of the summer and some people have already taken a vacation and others are going to go somewhere in the few weeks left before school starts -- which isn't the end of summer, at least not where we now live.

When I was growing up, one week vacations were a rarity, at least in my neighborhood. 

My family rarely had a vacation.  My father was absent from the pulpit one Sunday a year and that was to speak at a Bible conference in North Jersey.  He left the family at home, and the vacation we had was a week without daddy, and that wasn't a vacation, certainly, for my mother.

During that week, however, we went to the shore with Uncle Joe and Aunt Annie for one day of fun in the sun; or we went to visit Aunt Annie at her house in Springfield, PA for a couple of days.  My sister and I absolutely loved the room in which we were placed.  It had a double bed in it, but it had VENETIAN BLINDS. 

I know lots of you are saying, "So what?"  Well, we had a blast with those blinds (we had shades in our house).  We would raise them and lower them, or change the slant of the blind to allow us to get the most light in the room.  And...

The room had a DORMER.  That was our little playhouse.  We played with our dolls in that part of the room and we didn't really want to go outdoors to play, even though it was pretty warm in that upstairs bedroom.

My mother and brothers had the room across the hall, which was larger, but didn't have the dormer.

One year someone gifted our family (without my father who was at the Bible Conference in northern NJ) to a week at a Bible camp in Maryland -- they sent me to the girls' camp.  I hated it.  I was sure no one liked me because I was there for only a week and the others in my cabin were all there for the whole summer.  I finally had my mom pull me from the camp about the fifth day, when there was only one left.

The two years I was a camp counselor I paid close attention to the girls who might feel left out or who were very homesick and I tried to make them happy.

After I married, because my husband and I had so little money, we spent our vacations at "home" with my mom and dad, taking a day to go to the shore, or taking the train into Philly to visit the sites there.  One year we lost my son.  He was five.  But, he found a policeman, and was reunited with us quickly.

One year we were invited to spend a week with Alan's aunt at Lewes Beach, DE.  That was a great vacation.  Very sandy.  She and I canned green beans and Alan took the children to the beach.  That was okay with me, since I was able to take enought canned goods home to keep us fed for quite a bit

Are you thinking you don't get a vacation?  Take day trips.  They add up, and they are inexpensive.  There are so many free things to do no matter where you live.

This is a picture of the family in 1978, two years after we started traveling from Cincinnati to Runnemede at least one time a year, encountering massive traffic jams on the PA Turnpike (nothing has changed there) and I won't even go to the Schuylkill Expwy traffic, although it wasn't as bad back in the late 70s and early 80s as it is now.

Phil was 9, Cyndi (between Alan and me) was 5, and Becky was 7.  Aren't the kiddies cute?

 

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It's hot

I've been thinking about the heat we are suffering through, and how it was when I was growing up.  You all know, of course, that we had no air conditioning.  My father didn't like it.  He tried it once (after I had married and moved out and got used to having it in my own home) and after only one day he decided it was too cold in his favorite room, and the cool air didn't filtrate into the bedroom, which he only used between midnight and 8:00 a.m.

So, how did we manage back then?  I'm not sure.  I remember a few days of egg frying heat, but it seems to me that we coped by not doing anything but sitting in the shade on the front porch, and waving a fan in front of our faces.

I personally have never liked the heat.  In fact, you could say that I hate the heat.  I love winter.  Cold weather.  Icicles.  Snow.  Tires crunching on a snow-covered street.  Yes, I'm ditzy.  I do like winter.

I also remember many hot days when I was growing up and I would just go into my bedroom, pull down the shades, make the room dark, and take a nap.  In some countries they call it a siesta.  I do know I made sure my summer piano lessons were at 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. because it was a cooler time of the day and I had to walk 8 blocks to get there.  That tip was given to me by my friend Linda, who also took piano lessons from the same teacher.  Yes, I had to get up early on those mornings, but it was worth it.

Our town had no pool.  The Lake was closed a couple of seasons after it opened.  There was a pool in Haddonfield where you could swim all day for 50 cents, but it was a four mile walk (or bike-ride).  I think by the time I discovered the Haddonfield pool, I was too grown up to ride a bicycle.  I guess I believed that only kids rode bikes.

So, the heat we have now is bad.  If I didn't live in an airconditioned home I would, I'm afraid, be certifiably crazy. 

Out here in northern Kentucky, we had over 100-degree temperatures all last week, and the weather folks told us it was going to cool down.  Well, it cooled down to 90-degree temperatures. Tomorrow it supposed to rain and we're only supposed to get up to 88.  Folks, to me, that still too hot. 

The thing that bums me out is that I haven't been able to enjoy my sun room, which isn't air conditioned, since mid-May. 

I have noticed that it's getting darker each day, which means the temperature is lowering earlier each day and it's getting warmer later each day, so there is coolness coming.  Hang tough, you all.  (You all is as southern as I get.)

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