Month: July 2021

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Jason Turns Forty-Eight

This week is Jason’s 48th birthday. I love remembering the day he was born. He was such a tiny baby, the doctor assumed he was going to be a girl. This was before the days of ultra-sound or amniocentesis. Back in 1973, no one knew what color to paint the nursery or knit the baby blankets until the baby was born. I was happy to have a girl. But when the doctor announced that he was a little boy, I was over the moon. I remember thinking, “another little boy in blue jeans” and laughing out loud at the thought of having two little boys to love.

That was also back in the day when mothers got to stay in the hospital for a long time after the baby was born. Jason and I hung out at St. Joseph’s Hospital for five days before we agreed to go home. In the meantime, Jim took care of Garth and together they painted the nursery blue.

More than anything, Jason has always been outgoing, cheerful, patient and kind. He makes friends quickly and still has many of his friends from high school. He’s a great dad to Devon, Tyler, Connor and Max. And to Kirby, their turtle, and Polaris, their dog.

Jason loves animals. When he was nine years old, he spent the first six weeks of summer vacation trying to grow tadpoles in a jar at home. Unfortunately, they all died (croaked?) before we left for Minnesota to pick up Garth. As soon as we got to my parents’ house, I realized that Jason was still thinking mostly about frogs. Every bait store we went into, he stood longingly over the frogs. When we went to my uncle’s cabin, Jason tried to catch frogs that lived by the dock. One morning I got up and overheard him calling all the pet stores in St. Paul to find out if they had frogs and how much they cost.

In one of those moves that mothers always regret, I agreed we could buy a frog, on the condition that he take good care of it. Jason took excellent care of it. And also of the salamander my cousin’s daughter found for him just before we left for Colorado.. 

We drove back to Denver with the frog and the salamander in an ice cream carton in the back seat. Jason took care of his frog then, and he took care of it later when the salamander ate the frog’s foot off. He called my dad to find out what kind of medicine he should put on the wound. He carefully rubbed an antibiotic on the frog’s front foot twice a day for a week until the infection was gone and the frog could again climb out of his terrarium every time the lid was left slightly ajar.

Next to his family, his friends, and his pets, Jason’s the greatest love is sports. When he was nine, he was addicted to watching All-Star Wrestling and the Roller Derby. He knew the life stories of the Road Warriors, the Fabulous Freebirds and Moon Dog Spot. Each week he could hardly wait to see if Gwen Miller would body-check Georgia Hasse over the railing and then stomp on her with her roller skates.

Jason wrestled in middle school and played baseball from the time he was seven until he was out of  high school. Being the youngest and smallest member of the team, Jason didn’t get to play a lot, but he never lost his enthusiasm for center field.

My most telling story about Jason, however, happened when he was in first grade and learning how rough the real world can he. He came home one night with a story about Dearmon, a boy in his class, who cried every morning. Finally, in exasperation, the teacher called a class meeting. Dearmon sobbed through the meeting and finally blurted out that he had no friends. He never had anyone to sit with at lunch or play with on the playground. Dearmon knew that absolutely no one in school liked him. At that point, Kiki, a most sympathetic and tactful girl, put her arm around Dearmon, looked anxiously around the room, and then told him, with much relief, he could stop crying ~ because Jason liked him.

Happy Birthday, Jason. Thank you for forty-eight wonderful years!

 

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An Olympic Adventure

It all started in late February, 1980. I was working in a four-track, year-round elementary school. One of my favorite families, a single father with three boys, didn’t return to school in January and everyone wondered where the children were. The teachers wanted me, the school social worker, to find out if everything was ok. I called their house. There was no answer. I knocked on their door. It looked as if they still lived there, but no one answered. I asked other students from the neighborhood  if they knew anything. No one seemed to know where they were. I decided not to panic. I wanted to wait and see.

At the end of February, the three boys came back to school with their father. They looked fine.

“Where have you been?” We all wanted to know.

“We were in Lake Placid, New York. We went to the Olympics.” The boys were excited. Their father was proud of what he’d done. The teachers were aghast.

“How could he take them out of school for such a long time? Doesn’t he know how important it is for them to be in school?”

I had a completely different reaction. I went home that night and couldn’t wait to talk to Garth and Jason over dinner. They were eleven and seven years old. 

“Guess what we’re going to do!” I announced. “We’re going to the Olympics.” 

I told them we needed to save our money because the 1984 Olympics would be in Los Angeles and we were going to be there. It was one of the best decisions of my life.

We saved our money. We bought tickets in advance. Jim’s sister, Kathy, and her husband graciously agreed that we could stay with them so we could go to ten days worth of Olympic events. 

In 1984, Garth was fifteen and Jason was almost eleven. We were psyched! I bought a new car, a red 1984 Subaru , to drive from Denver to L.A. and back. I mapped our route and we started out. I’d been having a lot of back pain, but there was no stopping us. Or, so I thought. 

By the time we got to Vail, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to drive all the way to L.A. I turned to Garth, who had recently gotten his learner’s permit, and told him he was going to have to drive. He didn’t hesitate. He climbed into the driver’s seat, with me in the passenger seat, and logged 1000 miles of driving in two days. I still think the best part of the Olympics for Garth was not the events. It was driving all the way California and back.

The 1984 Olympics was pure magic. We went to as many of the events as we could afford, which included watching endless field hockey games because the tickets were $5.00. We skipped the opening and closing ceremonies. Much too expensive! We watch one day of track and field. One day of diving. One day of baseball. We saw the end of the marathon. 

Mostly we soaked up the California sun and the Olympic culture. We ate our lunch in the park outside the Colosseum, surrounded by people from every country in the world. People were exchanging pins and a few were just giving them away. We said “thank you” in English to people who smiled and answered us in their language. Smiles are universal!

I drove while we were in LA, but Garth took the wheel again for the trip back. Jason slept in the back seat. We stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way home and spent our last night in Durango, CO. We talked about all we had seen and done on our two week vacation to California. Before eating our last restaurant meal, we drank a toast:

“To us!! Because we said we were going to go to the Olympics. And we did!”

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How I Learned To Read

I was six years old when I walked into Sister Doyle’s first grade classroom. It was my first year at St. Peter’s School. The school, a big brick building with lots of windows, was on the corner of a busy street, two houses down from where my family lived.

Kindergarten was a long six blocks away. I walked with my best friend, Betty Ann Lennon, holding hands all the way. I was short and extremely shy. Betty Ann was tall and brave. Walking to school made me feel a little braver, too. 

While kindergarten was mostly devoted to listening to the teacher read stories to us, taking a nap, and going outside to play, first grade was serious business.

Sister Doyle had sixty-four students in her classroom, sitting eight students to a table. Sister was small and pretty. She smiled all the time but, to us,  she seemed very old. Looking back, I think she had recently graduated from the Franciscan convent. She had probably just turned twenty-one.

The first day of class, Sister Doyle asked us to stand up by our desk and say our name. “My name is Mary Lynda Jones,” I whispered. 

The boy sitting next to me, jumped up with a swagger and announced, “My name is Dennis, zip up your barn door, Kelly.” The class laughed. Sister Doyle did not. We weren’t in kindergarten any more.

None of us learned to read in kindergarten. Nobody did. None of us learned to read at home. Nobody did. We didn’t have books at home and we didn’t go to a library. We were little kids. We played outside. My Dad read comic books to us, but it never occurred to me that I could learn to read, too, until I got to first grade.

The second day of school, Sister Doyle told us we were going to learn to read. She promised that all sixty-four of us would be reading by the end of the year. I still remember the magic of it.

Every day Sister Doyle read us a story about another letter and the sound it made. It was the Sesame Street approach before Sesame Street. I still remember the letter M. A monkey told us that the letter M said, “Mmmmm. The sound you make when something taste really good. Mmmmm, milk.  Mmmm, macaroni.”

At the end of the story, we sat at our table for thirty minutes with a plain piece of paper in front of us and a big bucket of crayons to share. We practiced drawing the letter M. We drew pictures of all the words we could think of that started with Mmm.

It worked. All sixty-four of us learned to read, except maybe Charles Gott. For months I thought his name was Child of God. Charles often came to school with no lunch. When I told my mother, she started packing an extra sandwich in my lunch bag to give to Charles. Because Charles couldn’t remember all the letters of the alphabet, he got to stay in first grade another year and listen to Sister Doyle’s stories all over again. 

My only other memory of first grade is that when a child broke a rule, Sister Doyle would take her paper punch and punch a hole in the paper he or she was working on. Parents and Sister Evangelista, the Principal, could look at the child’s paper and know they did something bad.

I got in trouble only once the entire time I was in school and it was in Sister Doyle’s class. We were coloring pictures of snow. I was using a crayon to color each dot of snow. Sister Doyle thought she heard someone knock on the door. When she went to answer the door, no one was there. She turned to us and asked who had been knocking on their desk so loud that it sounded like someone knocking on our door. 

Mark Robertson, a boy at my table, raised his hand and said, “Sister, it was Mary Lynda. She’s coloring her snow so loud it sounds like someone is knocking on the door.”

I was mortified. I’m sure I started to cry. Sister Doyle came to me and explained to the class that this time she wouldn’t punch a hole in my paper. Instead, she took out a straight pin, and pricked a tiny hole in the upper corner of my paper. I learned my lesson. 

But most of all, I learned to read.

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Playa Bruja on a Sunday Afternoon

 

Playa Bruja, or Witch Beach, is at the north end of the bus line out of Mazatlán. It takes forty-five minutes to get there from downtown on the bus and it is worth every hair-raising, bumpy minute. Playa Bruja is in the area known as Cerritos, a neighborhood known for drug wars and shoot-outs with the police. I don’t know when those things happen, but it’s certainly not on lazy Sunday afternoons.

Playa Bruja is a Sunday destination for lots of people, but mostly for large Mexican families who go for the great food at Mr. Leones’ restaurant. At least once a month, Neto and I went there to relax, enjoy the food, listen to the music, and watch the surfers. We were never disappointed.

Mr. Leones’ food is excellent Mexican food: Fresh fish, homemade tortillas, burritos and enchiladas, smothered in salsa. Occasionally I would go there with ex-pats from the US, who ordered a hamburger and fries to go with their beer and margaritas. I just rolled my eyes. 

There is always music in the restaurant. Small groups of musicians, or sometimes a single guitar player, go from table to table, taking requests and playing for a couple of dollars per song. I always requested my favorite, Cuando Calienta el Sol, one of the most beautiful songs ever sung in Spanish. It was re-written in English as Love Me With All of Your Heart. Trust me, the melody is the same, but it loses a lot in translation.

At three o’clock, the big band starts playing and that’s when the party gets started. Mexican couples get up and dance. Old men dance with their wives. Children dance with their parents. Young lovers dance with each other. It’s wonderful to watch.

The restaurant overlooks the beach, where surfers perform when the waves are high enough. Neto either brings his board, or borrows one from a friend. After we’ve eaten, he goes to the beach and paddles out to catch the waves. Unlike Olas Altas beach, where Neto first learned to surf, Playa Bruja is a beach for experts. That’s where I first realized how good Neto truly is. The waves are fast and strong “five footers” ~ five feet in the back, (the shoulder) and eight feet tall in front (on the face.) Often the waves are higher.

Neto catches wave after wave. He doesn’t hesitate. Somehow he knows, without turning around, when the perfect wave is behind him. He is on his feet and glides his board from side to side until he reaches the shore. I can tell it is Neto by his style. Younger surfers jerk their boards as they travel back and forth into the waves. Neto’s style is smooth. He is a natural.

Often, as Neto comes out of the water, younger surfers want to shake his hand.  They know that he is one of the surfing pioneers in Mazatlan. He discovered the sport when he was fourteen years old and has surfed all his life. He loves the water. This is where he is meant to be.

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A Minnesota Fourth of July

I checked with my brother to make sure that my memories of the Fourth of July, growing up in Minnesota, were true ~ not some made-up Norman Rockwell picture in my mind. While I had some of the basic facts straight, Bob’s memory for details was razor sharp, as usual.

The Fourth of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town of 2000 people that covered one square mile when I lived there. Early in the morning, while my parents were drinking multiple cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, we kids washed our bikes and decorated them with crepe paper. We wove crepe paper through the spokes and tied streamers onto the handle bars. The boys put playing cards on clothespins and pinned them to their wheels. Riding up and down the block, the noise from the playing cards sounded like motorcycles. Or at least the boys thought they did. We didn’t organize an actual parade. We just rode up and down the street, until our parents were moving and something more exciting happened.

One year there was an actual parade down main street, that included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride on the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick. My brother and other neighborhood boys walked beside the float, along the two-block parade route that stretched from the VFW club to Sandberg’s Mortuary. Bob remembers being exhausted by the time the parade was finished.

The family picnic began at lunch time. Before Highway 36 cut the town in half, the picnic was held in a large, beautiful park next to the railroad tracks. Later, the picnic moved to Silver Lake where, if you went early in the day, you could snag a picnic table. My mother packed a lunch of potato salad, coleslaw, jello, potato chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the parking lot. Our cooler was filled with bottles of soda “pop” for the kids and lots of beer for the adults. 

Sometimes my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and fought over trivial matters. So much for Norman Rockwell. 

VFW members sold raffle tickets as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood in the back of a truck and, in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings.

At 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water Ski Club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest bathing suits, performing all sorts of amazing tricks on water skis. Since we didn’t know anyone with a boat, I never learned to water ski. Given my athletic ability, it’s probably just as well.

As the sun went down, we pulled out a bucket of worms and tried fishing off one of the docks until it was time for fireworks. Huge, loud, booming, once-a-year fireworks! Maybe they pale by comparison to today’s pyrotechnics, but to us they were absolutely magical.

Later, sometime in the 1960s, the Fourth of July picnic became an Ice Cream Social in August. My Dad’s Dixieland band, the Polar Bearcats, played for the crowd from a platform on the side of a truck, as the Ladies Auxiliary sold ice cream cones. By August the lake had turned green from algae and “dog days” had arrived. Gone was the smell of hamburgers on the grill. . Like most things, the Fourth of July would never be as much fun again.