STILL IN CAMP...

I have a small collection of old catalogs, including several from Sears (late 1800s to 1920s) and one from Charles William Stores, a mail order company in New York; I have, too, a bunch of old magazines and newspapers, and I can find amazing details in all of them.

Last week, after posting the photograph of the Gould kids in their pup tent, I started wondering about tents a century ago...and here’s what I found in those old publications...

In the early 1900s, the choices were more varied than one might think: Miners’ Tents, Hudson Tents, Wedge Tents, Concession, Play and Lawn Tents, all made of “water-resisting duck” cloth, and all supported by an oftentimes bizarre combination of “wood pole, metal frame and line.”

          There were tents in stripes and/or solids; tents with “a handsome scalloped curtain all around at the top of the walls,” tents with the walls themselves “arranged so that each can be rolled up separately, or used as an awning.”

          “Never,” one ad exclaims, “roll or fold tenting while damp or rainy for fear of mold or decay!”

By 1929, the choices in the Sears catalog were nearly out of hand.

“We Offer the Greatest Tent Values in America” screams the banner headline on a two-page spread.

          Honor Bilt Umbrella Tents, in beautiful olive green color, shed water like a duck’s back. 9x11 feet for $39.95.

The Highway King was Forest Green; it had a height of 6’2” at eaves, 8 feet at center pole. It also had a waterproof duck floor sewed into the bottom of the tent. $23.95.

There were ventilated tents, white duck tents, play tents; bug-proof tents equipped with marquisette curtains to keep out mosquitoes; small, medium and large tents with collapsible steel center poles and stakes, awning poles; tents with eight guy ropes and rustproof tent pegs.

 But the best of all were the “Tourists’ Tents,” popular for “week-end trips” in the family automobile. These were 7x9-foot tents with two windows and sewed-in front curtains; additional front awnings could be drawn over the top of the car (see photo) to help support the tent and, one presumes, allow for extra space in the seats of the car. $15.95.

I look at that arrangement and shudder.

All things considered, I think I’d rather stay at a Motel 6, thank you.

TENTING ON THE OLD CAMPGROUND...

Here we are, the Gould kids, in 1948 or 1949.

John and I always called this our “pup” tent – a variation on the term “dog tent,” which was American English for what Brits and Aussies apparently call a “shelter-half.”

I don’t know why it’s called a shelter-half – or a pup tent, for that matter.  I asked my neighbor, who’s nearly 90 years old and was in the military; he said  it has to do with each soldier carrying half the stakes and poles so when they paired up, connected their ponchos and draped them over the center pole, they had a full tent!

He also thinks that “dog” is an old slang term for a soldier...and that maybe it all does make sense when you add it up!

Anyway, I’ve promised him a Milky Way candy bar if he’s right (his favorite), so let me know.

There’s something sweet about this photo...

...not because it’s of me (I’m teeny) and my brother John (slightly less teeny, but still small). I know this was taken at my grandmother’s house in Boston, and I know that the tent was a Very Big Deal when we were little...

...I remember the smell of it, especially when the sun warmed the canvas: a kind of damp, musty smell (which must have put my brother’s asthma into overdrive, but I don’t remember that happening). And I remember lying inside it with my head facing out, smelling grass and dirt; I remember our cocker spaniel, Ferdie, barking at it, convinced it was an intruder of sorts; I remember, too, my father, crawling in with me and spending the night once—my first camp out!

...but I digress.

...the sweetness has to do with a time and place long gone by, an age of wonder and promise and youth, and that lovely border of iris in my grandmother’s back yard; a sudden understanding that I inherited that love of iris from her, and, to this day, have borders and beds of it in my own back yard, sixty-five years later.

FORGIVE ME, COUSIN JESSIE...

I spent a couple of days looking at the Sepia Saturday prompt – the photo of the hurdy-gurdy man and his little monkey – wondering where I’d seen it before.

          I knew I hadn’t, of course.

          But there was something familiar about it, something that just grabbed me by the neck and wouldn’t let go. I thought about it all Thursday and Friday morning while doing errands, doing laundry, cleaning house.

          I kept going back to my computer to look again at the photo. It wasn’t the man in his soft hat and jacket (with lovely hands), and it wasn’t the little girl with her handkerchief balled up in her fist and her arm pulled tight across her chest...

          ...it was the monkey.

         

It was something about the monkey.

And then I remembered.

          I went dashing up the stairs to the second floor closet where the boxes of family photos are stashed, and went to work, and found what I was looking for inside of ten minutes.

This is a photograph of my grandfather’s cousin, Jessie Collins Gould, who was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1885; she’s on the back porch of the family cottage in East Boothbay, sitting in a rocker in her white summer dress – all lace and frill – with a locket around her neck and a white hat perched jauntily on her head.

I’m expecting thunderbolts for saying this, but...

...she looks like the monkey.

THOUGHTS ON TP...

I’m writing a novel, one that takes place in the 19^th century. It’s harder than you might think—not in a general sense, though. After all, people and rivers and oak trees and cows and brick buildings haven’t changed very much.

No, the difficulty is in the detail of everyday life in the mid-1800s.

There are some details that I just never thought about until now—details such as: what did people use for toilet paper?

So I’ve done lots of research on it...

Ancient Romans, who were big on public baths and privies, used a sponge on the end of a stick (now that brings to mind some pretty funny images). It was kept in a trough of salt water that ran in front of rows of privy seats and was used over and over by goodness knows how many people...(and that’s a whole different set of images!).

Richer people used wool (I get a severe rash from wool against my skin; I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if I used it as toilet paper!) and pieces of fabric.

Poorer folks – those who used the great outdoors – used leaves, ferns, clumps of hay or grass. They oftentimes used streams and rivers as direct toilets, sometimes taking off their clothes or simply lifting their skirts, squatting in the rivers, then washing themselves in the river/lake/stream and redressing.

In New England outhouses, our forebears had a bucket or wooden box that hung on the wall that had a collection of rags, corncobs, and loose hay – after wiping, we’d throw whatever we’d used down into the privy hole. Corn cobs were popular; also corn husks, which probably weren’t too awful when recently shucked from the cob, but when they dried out, they must have been dreadful!

In the wintertime, those tough New Englanders used handfuls of snow for cleanliness; the thought of that makes my toes curl.

Later on (or whenever a family ran out of corncobs and hay), pages from catalogs were a popular solution; you could read your Sears catalog while doing your business, then crumple up the page and wipe with it. Somewhere, I read that rich earls and lords in England used pages from real books – none of that low-class catalog paper in those privies!

Some of my cousin’s ancestors were ship captains out of Boothbay Harbor, and they had coils of old halyards and other lines from their schooners. They’d cut the ropes into small pieces and fray the strands, then make a loose ball of threads and use that for wiping, throw it overboard.

But then, in the late 1860s, a trio of innovative brothers named Scott (think of today’s Scott Paper Company) began to manufacture packaged toilet paper—first as individual sheets, then on rolls.

Perforated rolls came along in the 1870s, and by the end of the century, companies such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, Charles Williams Stores and others were all marketing toilet papers in their catalogs:  toilet paper of extra-quality, silk velvet; soft, firm perforated papers with fascinating names – Japps Tissue, Manhattan White Crepe Tissue, White Rose, Snow White Crepe, Nippon Crepe, and Watersmeet Crepe Tissue.

So, the next time you find yourself in the bathroom (john, loo, jake, outhouse, biffy, latrine, W.C., gong, head, privy, necessary or throne room) please give silent thanks to those Scott brothers, the first commercial makers of soothing papers for us all!

LETTER FROM LUTE...

Lucius Wilder Sabin played cornet in a Navy band; he served for years on the Richmond, a wooden steam sloop, flagship of the Asiatic Fleet. Between 1879-1881, the Richmond cruised through the ports of China, Japan and the Philippines, and the men played various concerts throughout the area.

          Lute wrote many letters home to his family in Boston...I’ve transcribed most of them, and am fascinated by his descriptions of Shanghai—his reports of playing in the Public Gardens, at Grand Dinners, at private residences of notables in the city during that time.

          This letter is one of my favorites: a letter Lute wrote to his younger sister, Ethel Sabin, my great-great aunt, who was about five or six years old in 1879...

Shanghai China Nov 9^th 1879

Dear little Sister,

          I promised to write to you again and I will do so now. I was very glad to get your letter sometime ago and I said I would answer it right off but I have waited a long time.

          I went into the old Chinese City the other day and saw some funny things there the little Chinese girls dont wear any dresses they have a little sack and little pants their heads are shaved and all the hair they have got is two little tails over their ears and they look funny enough. I went into the Prison and saw some very bad men with great big chains on them and they were all dirty, and looked very bad. I guess you would not like to see them. I saw some pretty toys & playthings for little boys and girls and when I come home I will bring you some of them...

          ...it is most a year since I enlisted and left Boston. I guess I will be home in about a year and a half more. I want to see you and Mother & Father and Brother and Sister very much and you must write to me & tell me all about them...

          Write Soon to

                   Your Absent Brother

                             Lute

SIGNS, SIGNS...

When I saw the Sepia Saturday prompt, I just grinned—I knew exactly where to go...

...and so this morning, after breakfast and numerous cups of coffee, I hopped into my Yaris and headed north to the town of Windsor, a small town near Maine’s capital city of Augusta. After the rush and roar of Augusta, it’s absolute heaven to roll along the side roads of Windsor, past the fairgrounds and the church, past fields and woodlots.

 Hussey’s General Store in Windsor is, I am sure, a state landmark – a general store that sits at a crossroads in rural Maine. Tourists make the trip here just to photograph this sign.

It’s definitely worth the trip.

The store boasts that it’s got everything (and if it doesn’t have it, you don’t need it), and I believe it...hammers and nails, bread and chips, paint brushes and rollers and dropcloths, brooms and mops and buckets, bottles and boxes of cleaning fluids, oil and gas treatments, wallpaper, rugs, welcome mats, wooden drying racks, dishpans, storage bins, paper plates, knives...

...and, of course, guns and wedding gowns and cold beer.

All you need, indeed!

JAWS....

Greetings and handshakes.

Pipes and politicians...

...and jaws!

          I mean, look at the jaws on that man!

          I’ve been looking at jaws a lot lately, especially after these past few months; it’s incredible how we take our jaws for granted!

         

Last March, after a few weeks of severe pain in my lower right teeth, my dentist took a panoramic x-ray of my face—one that started just below my eyeballs and ended below my chin—and he saw a shadow. It was long, set deep in my mandible; it was below my teeth and partially in my jawbone.

          “What the hell is that?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but I know it shouldn’t be there.”

I had a biopsy: the oral surgeon punched a hole in my jawbone, went in, cleaned out the area as best he could; sent a sample to a laboratory near Boston.

          “I think it’s just an infection,” he said, “but the biopsy will make certain.”

          I relaxed a bit—the surgeon wasn’t too concerned. I started taking an antibiotic, lived through several painful days of stitches in my mouth (and another course of antibiotics when it became infected).

          On the tenth day, my phone rang.

          “It’s not cancer,” he said, “but it’s not good.”

I was diagnosed with an odontogenic tumor—a tumor caused by a rogue toothbud.

The method of treatment?

“Jaw resection,” he said.

People say that life changes in an instant, and I now know exactly what that means; I was terrified.

I wanted a second opinion. I was referred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The oral surgeon there (who looked to be about fourteen years old) sat me in a chair, looked me in the eye and said, “I’m not going to take your jaw; we don’t do that here anymore.”

I burst into tears.

I had surgery in mid-May. They took my lower right teeth, went in through the top of my jaw and inserted an irrigation port that sits on my gumline, then wired it to my other teeth for stability. And my job is to irrigate twice a day...the tumor will shrink and my jaw will begin to replace bone that the tumor has destroyed; in about a year, they’ll go back in, remove the smaller tumor and freeze the lining of the cavity.

And I’ll be done.

Whole.

Amen.