More Than a Sale Day

Monday is Memorial Day.  Its origins seem to be in the ladies of the South following the Civil War when they organized a day to remember those who’d fought for their community.  To help heal the country it was decided that the entire nation would remember those who fought and died for our country regardless of the side they fought for and gradually the tradition of decorating graves came to include all loved ones.  As a matter of fact, it came to be called Decoration Day in many communities including the one in the Missouri Ozarks where my father, Conrad R. Frieze, grew up.  This is a picture of the cemetery where some of my father's ashes are buried with his parents and grandparents.  I intend to have the rest put in Tahoma National Cemetery because there is no one left in Greenfield to even stay with if I want to visit the cemetery that is half way across the country from me.

I believe that those we love can come to us in dreams and are never far from us and I have reason to believe that applies to pets as well.  Yesterday a young friend of mine posted a blog about having had a dream about a beloved dog that passed a year or so ago.  In her dream the dog was everywhere she looked, swishing between her legs, running down the road she walked and only she could see her.  Her dream doesn’t surprise me a bit.

Last summer a most beloved cousin passed away.  On her birthday she came to her best friend in a dream.  Debra, who had been very sick and emaciated at the time of her passing looked well and healthy.  Her friend asked her how she liked heaven and she said, great!  I am so glad that Debra visited her friend and comforted that for sure she is out of pain and finally, finally feels well.

My own beloved grandmother came to me in a dream.  We were in an unfamiliar but homey kitchen.  We sat at the table there and had a lovely conversation.  I was so glad to see her!  Eventually I realized that I had to leave and that she could not.  I woke crying, but grateful that I’d had this encounter with someone so beloved to me.  Recently I discovered that a friend had the same sort of dream, including the kitchen, about her grandmother. I must say that I was glad to find someone else who’d had the same sort of visitation—or did we visit there?  No mind, it comforts me that Grandma is still thinking of me.

Memorial Day weekend is a great time to get together with family and friends, to eat summer food and have a good time, but somehow the true meaning of the day has been lost in vacationing, and Memorial Day sales.  Those in particular really make me mad.  Monday is not just a day off from work.  Take time to remember those who you loved and loved you.  They are not far off.

Growing Up in the Atomic Age

For his Sophomore Exhibition the student I work with picked the topic of how the development of the atomic bomb impacted the world when viewed through the political and psychological social science perspectives. Boy did his choice of topic get me to thinking the last couple of weeks.

Once that jinn was out of the bottle the United States and the world was set on a course that created the Cold War, the Atomic age and is arguably responsible for the rebellion of the Baby Boomers in the 1960s. Talk about psychological perspective!

Because he worked for Boeing on the B-52 flight test program my father was part of the government’s operations Redwing and Hardtack in 1956 and ’58 respectively.  I don’t remember a part of my life when the atomic bomb wasn’t in my consciousness. It loomed like a dark cloud over my childhood.  It is not that my father wanted to frighten me, but as a veteran of WWII and Pearl Harbor, he considered the threat of a nuclear attack to be a very real possibility and wanted my mother and me to be as safe as possible.  He considered Boeing to make Seattle a prime target and while he did not build a bomb shelter in our backyard (he didn’t think them worth the money), he did come up with a plan.

My father felt that if we were lucky we’d have 30 minutes warning of a nuclear missile headed our way.  He hoped that would be enough time for my mother to get me far enough away from Seattle to not be involved in the initial destruction.  If the air raid siren (which was tested weekly) behind my elementary school sounded I was to go to the back edge of the school property and meet my mother there.  We were to drive to my grandparents’ beach house on the south Washington coast where he believed the prevailing off shore winds would blow the radiation inland¸ away from the coast. Initially we were a one car family with my father riding in a ride pool.  I don’t know what was supposed to happen if the attack occurred on his day to drive.

Around the time my father returned from his first tour on Operation Redwing one of the television networks produced a program that he thought was important for my mother, her sister and brother-in-law to watch, but which my cousins and I were not to see.  We were visiting my aunt and uncle at the time.  I guess I developed my nose for news at an early age because despite my cousin’s protestations (she was a very good child who always minded), I crept to the bedroom door and peeked into the living room where I could see the television.  I sat on the floor in stunned horror as I saw a program about the death and destruction promised by a nuclear attack.  I never told my parents what I’d seen.

Not long after that a new high school was being built in Bellevue where we lived.  My mother drove me by it, cheerfully saying, “That’s where you’ll go to high school.”  I didn’t say anything.  I knew she wasn’t kidding anyone.  I wasn’t going to live to go to high school.  None of us were going to live long enough for me to go to high school.  Imagine my surprise when not only did I go to high school, but realized that I was going to graduate and had better figure out what I was going to do.

The development of the atomic bomb, the Cold War and the arms race, a world that our parents, the Greatest Generation, had not been raised in, but had created, contributed materially in the rise of the Peace Movement and the rebellion of the 1960s.  I grew up envying my parents childhoods.  Sure they had to deal with the depression, but they didn’t have to worry about becoming so much radioactive ash at a moment’s notice.  This gap in understanding made it difficult if not impossible for that generation to understand the Boomers.  My mother regularly asks the universe how she could have raised such a radical liberal.  Maybe I’ll show her this.

"I Go to the Sea to Breathe"

My “reasonable assurance” arrived in my work mailbox this week.  That means that I can be “reasonably assured” of a job in the fall.  Actually, I’ve worked for the district for long enough that they’d have to RIF a whole bunch of people to get to me.  The notice along with the oral boards and the secretary printing diplomas are signs that the end is near and I can’t wait.

Our 131 year old house by the sea is waiting for us to make more than a visit of a few days.  There is always plenty to do there, but it different “stuff” than what goes on here and our activities are set to the background music of the Pacific Ocean and the bustle of the Ilwaco docks where we can shop the Saturday Market or buy fresh fish at Jessie’s cannery.

Hopefully I’ll get in some writing this summer, exploring possible homes for my father’s autobiography, and get in some reading as well.  Not only do I have a stack of books beside my bed in Gig Harbor, but our gypsy bedroom is full of “my one true weakness.” 

Ocean air truly is beneficial.  Whenever we have guests they become relaxed and sleepy and have to adjust to both the sweet salt air and beach time. You’d better not be in a rush to get things done at the beach because you will be fighting the universe.  Things don’t move quickly there.  Better to sit on our porch and watch the world go buy.

Hey, Mr. Postman

I seem to be writing in circles, coming back again and again to both post offices and letters.  The recent news that the Postal Service is going to cut back hours and rural post offices rather than closing them is welcome news indeed for anyone familiar with the life of a village.  Heavens, they may cut service to all of the post offices before all is said and done.  We’ve come to rely on technology rather than the handwritten word.

Recently the importance of writing and receiving letters was brought home when I had the privilege of attending a reading at the historic Espy house, now the home of Sydney and Nyel Stevens.  Sydney is a writer and a descendent of the Espy family which helped found the village of Oysterville, Washington on the Long Beach Peninsula.  Among her writing credits is a wonderful book titled Dear Medora and which I’ve blogged about before.  Dear Medora is a collection of letters written back and forth between Sydney’s grandmother and Aunt Medora.  The collection, along with some wonderful pictures, is a glimpse into Oysterville’s past that might have been lost were it not for the Espy family’s predilection for keeping correspondence. Sydney read from Dear Medora, published in 2007, on Sunday evening, but that was just the warm up.  She also read from her biographical manuscript on her uncle, writer Willard Espy.  Again she has drawn on family pictures and letters.  The sneak peek she gave is has me praying that the manuscript will find a publisher because I want to read the rest of the story.

Sydney’s readings also made me ruminate on my own boxes and boxes of letters.  I come from a long line of packrats and consider myself in recovery, but Sydney has given me license to hang onto my letters.  I have letters that were written to my grandfather by a girl he didn’t marry. I have letters written to me by my father when he was on Eniwetok helping test the atomic bomb and later from his travels around the world for Boeing.  I have letters from my grandmother who was the lynch pin of our family until her death.  She was the source of news of aunts, uncles and cousins.  While our family is not as prominent as the Espys, I’d like to think that if not my children, my grandchildren will be grateful for my accumulating ways.

Which brings us back to the Postal Department’s budget woes.  The reason the Postal Service is in trouble is that we don’t write letters any more.  Email and texting are easy and sometimes faster than trying to call someone.  Remember when you waited until evening before having the operator place that long distance call so you’d get the cheaper rate?  Now my daughter-in-law is able to talk to her mother in Brazil every day.  So why write letters?

I think that future generations are going to lose out on a lot of information about our lives unless they are able to hack into our email accounts when we are gone.  I’m not sure that has the cache of finding a ribbon tied bundle of letters that have been handled by a forbearer. Maybe my great-grandchildren won’t have any letters written by their parents or grandparents, but my grandchildren will.  I will keep doing my part for history by saving my letters.  Besides, I think them much more a treasure than my husband’s 7,000 LPs.

Razor Sharp Clam Memories

My job was to stomp the beach

When I was growing up my grandparents had a beach house in Seaview, Washington on the Long Beach Peninsula.  That was where I learned to eat razor clams.  I can’t remember a time before razor clams were an important part of my life.  Fried or in fritters, they were a special part of going to The Cow Palace as my grandmother named their house. Clamming was an important enough activity with our family that my father painted razor clams on the front window shutters.  They are still there fifty-five years later.

My father was an excellent clam digger.  I loved it when I knew that we were going to go clam digging because it meant that most probably he’d wake me in the middle of the night to go along.  Back in those days we called my grandfather’s collection of clam shovels clam guns.  That was before the advent of the cylinder shaped clam guns that eventually came to be made of PVC pipe.  Daddy loaded the shovels, buckets, and kerosene lanterns into the trunk of our old Ford and off we’d go. 

Sometimes we drove out the Seaview approach onto the beach and headed north in search of good beds.  Sometimes he thought that Oysterville had the better beds and we’d work our ways south on the beach.

My job was to stomp the beach for the little telltale clam holes and to rinse the clams and count them when we thought we had a limit.  Limits were much higher in those days, I think around 30 and licenses were not required.  There didn’t seem to be red tide, at least not that I ever remember hearing about and no one ever got sick on the clams we dug.

When we got back my mother would stand at the old farm house sink and clean the clams.  It was back breaking work.  In the ‘60s Daddy heard that if you dunked the clams into boiling water for just a second or two and then plunged them into cold water the shells would come way from the clams with little to no loss of flesh.  He built a wire basket for this operation and it worked well.

Sometimes my mother fried the clams.  Other times she got out Grandma’s meat grinder and ground the clams for fritters.  When her arm got tired I’d stand and turn the crank.  I loved the fritters, but I’m not as big a fan of dough as I once was and don’t think I’d like them that way as well as I do fried.

My father liked to tell the story of the time he and his best friend Smitty went out clam digging.  It was dark and the clams were plentiful.  They’d lost count, but figured it was dark, that they had their limits and were heading back to the car when a voice came out of the darkness, “How’s the clamming this morning, fellas?”  A Fish and Wildlife man turned on his flashlight and had them dump out their clams to be counted.  To their utter amazement they had exactly the right amount for two limits and thus were spared any fines.

When I brought my children back from California we moved onto the Long Beach Peninsula.  My friend Christopher offered to take the older boys clam digging and since he’d grown up on the beach—literally—I thought there was no one better to teach them.  The first clam season after we moved there we piled into my old Buick station wagon and the boys got their first taste of clam digging.  Unfortunately, the mist rolled in and we got soaked, but the boys proved to be good diggers.  “Thanks for the experience, Mom,” Josh told me a little sarcastically as we slogged back to the car.

Now my friend Christopher has been many things in his life, but he is as flawless clam fryer as he is a clam digger, so while the children shed wet coats and shoes to dry in front of his wood stove we cleaned the clams and Christopher cooked them.  Hmm, hmm, hmm.  Well, the boys didn’t think so.  For the duration of our life on the Peninsula they would dig for me, but not consume which actually worked out pretty well as far as I was concerned.

Nowadays you need a license to dig and it’s only good for those days you pay for, not for an entire season. Dave and I haven’t been clamming in a few years and clamming is open this weekend.  Unfortunately we won’t be on the beach, but I can smell the clams frying in butter and wish all the diggers good luck. I know for a fact that Christopher digs whenever he wants a clam and I don’t think he’s ever been caught or gotten sick.  Considering that he gave his youth and sanity in Vietnam I hope he keeps right on digging.

Shopping in then and now

I can do it in my jammies

When I was a child shopping for more than groceries was an event, as dissimilar to the purchase I just made for my niece’s shower as can be imagined.  The event was not my favorite activity. Ours was a one car family for a very long time so riding the bus was involved and once we had moved from Seattle across Lake Washington to Bellevue it meant riding the bus to Seattle.  In those early days in Bellevue there were few shops beyond the five-and-ten variety and one didn’t wear jeans or even slacks.  My mother put on hose, high heels, a dress and a hat and dressed me similarly.  Off to downtown Seattle we went.

Shopping with my mother wasn’t all bad and was how I learned to love chicken salad.  Sometimes we ate lunch at the Woolworths counter (where I also learned to love chocolate malts), but on special occasions we ate in the tea room at Frederick & Nelson and have chicken salad sandwiches.  Tea rooms still make me feel special and I still judge the stuff by Frederick's standard.  It bored me senseless when Mother headed to the fabric department.  First there was the thumbing through books of patterns to find something that she wanted to sew for herself or for me and then wandering through the maze of fabric bolts to choose fabric.  One time when I was about three or four and had been particularly bored, but not whinny, Mother let me pick a stuffed animal from a table piled high with them.  I chose a sleeping lamb—which I immediately named Sleepy—that had a music box that played Rock-a-Bye-Baby.  I still have that lamb although the music box is long gone.

Later Frederick & Nelson built a store at Bel Square and eventually my mother would take our “second car” there in a “house dress.”  Shopping had become easier!  There is a lot about the ‘50s and ‘60s that I miss, but having to drive six or eight miles, park in a parking lot that had to be paid for, in order to shop is not one of them.  I still like to shop with a friend when I’m not on a mission for something in particular, but I love shopping on the Internet.  As a working woman and mother with laundry, cooking and cleaning to do besides my job it is grand to be able to get on the Internet, look for just what I want, and make my purchase and having it sent to exactly where it needs to go.  Not only do I not need hose and high heels, I can do it in my jammies if I like.

Picking Up the Pieces

Hosford is as a soothing balm to a bad burn

The seniors are a-tweeter because their caps and gowns for graduation have arrived at school. I suppose the company has so many schools to get the graduation regalia to that they must start early and hence senioritis. In addition the leadership class has painted the rock out in front of the school to say “GHHS loves Mr. Hosford!” I believe everyone does.

Grant Hosford jumped into the position of principal at Gig Harbor High School quite suddenly when our principal first took a leave of absence and then was put on administrative leave do to some personal problems that became public. I do not tell tales-out-of-school as it was covered on the Seattle television stations and extensively covered by the Tacoma News Tribune. Suffice it to say that it was a trying few days as we soldiered on, wondering what the heck was happening, but the soldiering was made ever so much easier when the school district called Hosford out of retirement to captain our ship of education to the shores of Summer.

Hosford is as a soothing balm to a bad burn. His good humor, keen interest in everyone, and positive attitude has created a feeling of optimism and stability. “Can we keep him?” asked the student I work with, as a small boy would ask to keep a puppy, not a teenage boy talking about a principal. I replied that I very much doubted it and that Mr. Hosford’s good humor could well be the result of knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an on-coming train. The office staff says otherwise. They believe that Grant Hosford is naturally energetic and good humored. Now if we could just find so amiable and involved a candidate to have permanently, although the district has not determined whether or not our erstwhile principal will return.