BICYCLES...

For me, getting my first bicycle was my ticket to freedom!

          We lived in Portland then, and my best friend lived down the street; I actually learned to ride on her bike, then got one of my own for my birthday; we rode all over the West End together.

If my eighth birthday had been in 1902, I probably would have received a Sears “Josephine” bicycle (the boys’ model was called “Napolean”). It had wheels made of “the very finest swaged piano wire spokes,” high-quality hubs, bearings, an adjustable handle bar (with “internal expander,” whatever that was); it had a drop curved frame with dress and chain guards – can you imagine catching your 1902 long skirt in that chain mechanism? Also had handsome front and rear crown forks, double tube pneumatic tires; it weighed 28 pounds and came with a ten days’ trial period.

 In 1916, the Charles William Stores in New York (another mail order house) carried the “Overland Special” for only $23.95. It was available in three sizes (20, 22 or 24 inches), had rubber extension grips for the handle bars, a “saddle that is different,” and was “smashing all records for tremendous popularity.” Front sprocket had 26 teeth, rear had 8 or 9. Came in two colors: London smoke or battleship gray with a red head and red hairline striping. Also had mud guards – a great improvement over the earlier models.

But if I’d turned eight in 1930, it would have been a Elgin Streamline bicycle – all models were named for birds – suggesting freedom, flight. Boys could have a Cardinal or a Blue Bird for $32.25; less expensive models were the Red-bird or the Oriole. Women and girls were limited to one model (why am I not surprised?) called the Swallow.

The boys had options of headlamp, horn, luggage carrier and bike stand; they also had a choice of either a red or blue bike.

Girls were limited to blue (see my comment above), but they got to have a “laced skirt guard,” which seems to me a rather dubious plus.

I guess I was lucky: I turned eight in 1954, and by then, girls were allowed to wear pants for outdoor recreation – I never had to worry about catching my skirt/dress in the chain.

I probably would have done it on purpose.

WINTER DRAYS...

The squirrels were, quite simply, frantic before our first snow; lots of last-minute gathering, storing and burying of nuts all over my back lawn.

Now, after our first snows have come and gone and we’ve got bare ground again, they’re working from caches in hollows of trees along the property line that separates my land from my neighbor’s. They’re also digging out individually buried nuts that they’ve tucked a mere half-inch below the ground in my yard. I know they sniff them out all winter long—they can even find them beneath a foot or more of snow, either by smell or by some miraculous internal mapping system!

And now that the leaves are down and the maples and oaks along my street are stark, I can see the drays hanging in the branches—there’s lots of squirrel real estate in my neighborhood this year.

Built of twigs, leaves, grass and even dried flower stalks, these winter drays, wedged in the crotches of uppermost branches of the trees, are as much as thirty feet above ground. They look like messy humps of brown, dead leaves (nothing fancy here) but they’re wonderfully engineered: twigs and branches woven together, lined with leaves and grass and even pine needles for warmth and comfort. The entrance is on the underside (to keep out the rain and snow) facing away from the prevailing winter winds.

 Inside, there’s room for one or two North American grays. They prefer to live alone, but during our cold winters, they sometimes double up for warmth. There’s also a mating season in late January/early February, so having larger quarters might be an enticement—goodness knows a larger house would certainly impress me!

We have a healthy community of grays here in my neighborhood. Lots of us have birdfeeders, and some of us have come to the realization that we feed more squirrels than birds—squirrels are little thieves, indeed, and professional acrobats when it comes to figuring out how to get into our feeders. I’ve seen them leap, twist, dive out of trees onto feeders, watched them hang upside down from wires and perches, even leap from roofs and fences!

And when the supply of seed runs low, they’ll let you know—they’ll even sit on the back porch and screech at you to fill your feeders, those sassy little beggars!

And we do.

After all, we wouldn’t want the neighborhood to go to seed.

TO MUMMY & DEDDY...

I wasn’t very old, six or seven, maybe—but I have a distinct memory of sitting at my desk at the McClellan School in Portland, Maine in the early 1950s, a jar of glue (remember the glue jars with the little applicator brushes stuck to the inside of the lid?) and that white, gloppy paste we all used to eat whenever the teacher wasn’t looking.

And I remember the aptly named Mrs. Little, my teacher; she was a teeny woman, but when she told you to do something, you did it—she had the power of God within that little body.

And I remember struggling with the red and green lettering: “Merry” in red, “Christmas” in green (although I blew that one, clearly); and then...

...the highlight: my name—not my nickname, but my real, formal, given first name—in alternating red and green!

Now, the best part of this Christmas card is the fact that my mother saved it...buried it in the bottom of her jewelry box for me to find sixty years later.

My best wishes to all of you,

Deborah

THREE SETS OF STAIRS...

It’s amazing what a Sepia Saturday prompt can reveal!

          I spent some time rummaging today, thinking that I might be able to find a photo of members of my family on stairs; imagine my surprise when I found these three shots (I actually found more, but these three were the best).

The first is of the Gould children of Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts. It’s a shot taken at the summer house in East Boothbay, Maine in 1900: Margaret and Howard are the youngest ones on the bottom step; the others (left to right) are Richard, Prescott, Allen and Gardner (my grandfather, who’s about 15 in this shot), the oldest. I’m not sure why Margaret is covering her ears; I just love their shiny shoes—Margaret’s with button laces. The boys all have short pants with stockings bagging at the knees, except for my grandfather, who’s old enough to be in long pants.

And then I found one of my father (Gardner, Jr.) sitting between his mother and his sister Shirley – again at the summer house in East Boothbay in, say, 1938-39; my father’s in baggy pants and loafers (such a fashionable look back then); his sister equally fashionable in tailored pants – just like Katherine Hepburn!

To finish the triptych, my brother, me and my mother on the back steps of my parents’ first house in Needham, Massachusetts; this is in 1950 or so. John’s all decked out in his cowboy shirt (with slide tie) and gloves; I’m in my bathrobe, recovering from the mumps!

          And that black-and-white cocker spaniel is Ferdinand, the wonderful dog who loved Oreos (see my post of November 23).

So here we are: three generations of Goulds, the oldest born more than one hundred years ago (1886); the youngest in 1946 and still going strong in 2014 (me).

Just think of all the stairs we’ve climbed!

(To see what other Sepians have found, visit www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com)

THANKFUL...

We got hammered, as we say, on Thanksgiving Eve; heavy, wet snow and high winds, which resulted in downed tree limbs and electrical outages.

          I pinned a blanket over the door to my living room and spent the long evening in the kitchen/dining room, keeping the temperature in there at 65 degrees (thanks to my little gas fireplace), playing solitaire by kerosene lamp. I slept in my cold guest room underneath my best down comforter, and was toasty all night.

On Thanksgiving morning, I awoke to wonderland – this is the view from my back porch!

          Still no electricity, but my morning paper had been delivered (these are some of the people who deserve standing ovations). I boiled water on the stove and managed a cup of coffee, then sat at the table in brilliant sunshine under a strong blue sky. Read the paper.

There was an editorial about Maine’s antiquated “blue laws” (old laws prohibiting business on national holidays, originally established in an effort to enforce the sabbath); the writer was defending Maine’s tradition of upholding those laws—preventing that horrible “Black Friday” shopping frenzy that overcomes most of the United States.

          But in that editorial, the writer called Thanksgiving our “best holiday, in part because people can celebrate it anyway (sic) they like.”*

I lowered the paper to the table, sipped coffee, thought about it.

In this country, people can celebrate every holiday any way they like—they can even chose not to celebrate holidays at all—and that’s an option for which I am truly thankful.

*Editorial. “Black Friday can wait! Thanksgiving is worth it.” Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine) 27 November 2014. Print.

KIDS & DOGS...

There’s something about kids and dogs, I think, that appeals to photographers; something that speaks of the sweetness of childhood, of unconditional love.

Here we are, my brother and I, with our first family dog. I don’t remember the photographer, but the backdrop suggests it was a formal affair, probably in Boston someplace in the late 1940s.

His name was Ferdinand, and he belonged to my mother; he was a college graduation gift from her parents in 1941.

He was named for a bull in a storybook my mother had loved—a bull who wasn’t very “bullish,” which is to say that he spent his afternoons lying down in Farmer Brown’s field sniffing the wildflowers.

My father, who was a lifelong dog lover, told us that the only reason he married our mother was to get her dog—an excellent reason to marry, he said.

          We believed him.

When I was about five years old, we moved from Boston to Portland, Maine.

Ferdinand came with us, of course, and settled in the neighborhood. We lived near a private school playground, and Ferd spent recess there every day, playing with the children: dodgeball, catch, tag; he was such a part of the community that the kids would knock on our back door to ask if he could come outside!

Summers he spent with us at our grandparents’ summer home, near a lake at the foot of Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire, swimming, chasing squirrels and chipmunks, sleeping in our beds.

He loved car rides, walks, and Oreos.

When it came time for him to take his Last Ride, my father, teary-eyed, lured him out of the house with Oreos, one after the other, talked him down the walkway to the Ford; he lifted him into the front passenger seat, got behind the wheel and drove Ferdie away...

...it was a long, long time before we ate Oreos in my house again!

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

When I saw the Sepia Saturday prompt photo of several portly gentlemen filling their plates in a buffet line (all smiling over a buffet table groaning with delicious offerings) dressed in suit jackets, neckties and, of course, nametags, I was reminded of a wedding reception I attended years and years ago.

It was one of those perfect summer days here in Maine: warm, blue skies, sunshine, slight breeze. The gathering was beneath a striped marquee pitched in a field overlooking a quiet cove; people strolled down to the reception from the road by way of a mown pathway through thousands of blooming wildflowers; everybody was in linen and silk, dribbed and drabbed in gold and silver and pearls.

It was, indeed, a high affair!

It was one of those “blended family” things—everybody’s parents seemed to have been married more than once, so there were ex-wives and partners, divorcees and stepfathers, half-siblings and step-siblings, an occasional stray cousin a few times removed; there were also about two hundred friends.

          It was a huge wedding reception!

We all wore name tags, which was bad enough, in my opinion (whatever happened to simply introducing yourself to people you don’t know?), but compounding the issue was the fact that everybody’s name tag carried an explanation that clarified one’s relationship to either the bride or the groom:

          Bride’s brother

          Groom’s first cousin

          Groom’s college roommate

       

 You get the idea.

Everybody spent the afternoon navigating a drink and a small plateful of tastefully served hors d’oeuvres, staring at each other’s chests and mentally leaping through branches of various family trees...and the winner was:

Hello!

My Name Is

Mary

Bride’s mother’s third husband’s second child