Vintage – Valerie's Voice

Strength in Numbers

Three of us were walking along the road at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, looking for the azalea gardens. It was farther than we thought, and it was getting warm and humid, and we were getting tired so we turned around. Just then, a big, vintage, white convertible, with its top down, slowly drove by. As we commented to each other about the car, the older gentleman behind the wheel stopped and asked us if we wanted a ride.

Hmmm… there are three of us older women…it has been a long time since any guys have asked us to go for a ride anywhere. HA! We all looked at each other, silently accessing the situation, and all thinking there is strength in numbers. This seemed pretty innocent and sounded like a lot of fun – so we jumped in!!!

My moment behind the wheel! Photo by ba.

He took us directly to the main building where we were headed anyways. He stopped the car and we got out and asked if we could take pictures. He said sure. It was a 1964 Cadilac Eldorado convertible, in mint condition. He bought it last fall from a guy who had stored it in an outbuilding. He fixed the four flat tires, but that was about all that was wrong with it, he said.

We thanked him for the ride, and then we laughed all the way to the cafeteria.

A parting shot…one more stunning iris. Photo by ba.

An Unexpected Gift

I was the benefactor of an unexpected gift recently. I can’t remember the last time I received an unanticipated gift. A gift, intended only for me…for no reason…no special occasion. A friend just thought of me when she saw the gift, bought it and wrapped in up in a “brown paper package tied up with string”.

A beautiful surprise: a brown paper package tied up with string…

Wonder, why, love…were the thoughts and questions I asked myself as I read the sticker on the paper with the string forming a frame around the words, “Thanks for being you.” I was deeply touched.

I carefully untied the string and removed the brown paper. It was a small, vintage book titled, One year of haiku. What a thoughtful gift. I like books, especially old ones. I write haikus, and like to read haikus written by others. The gift inspires me…not only to write haikus, but to pay it forward.

Thank you, friend.

And so, I wrote a haiku:

Given from the heart
Unexpected gift tag read
Thanks for being you.

My Bassinet

I was surprised by tears the other night, when I sold our vintage baby bassinet.

The bassinet was handed down to me from my mother, and I only assume, she and my dad bought it, or were gifted with it, when I (or my brother) was born.

I’m not even sure why I became a little emotional when I put it on the front porch, because we used it more as a decoration these last three decades than for our newborns to sleep in. At one time someone suggested I put a fern in it and let the fronds drape over the sides. That sounds pretty, but I didn’t do that. Mostly I filled it with all our stuffed animals.

There is an endearing story about the stuffed animals in the bassinet. We had a sweet kitty cat named Caramel Corn (that was her coloring). She was a cat that liked people, and the indoors. When we moved to our house in Northfield, she oriented herself to her new digs. One day, shortly after we moved in, I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere and she was not to be found. I thought, although it was highly unusual, maybe she snuck outside. So I waited, and hoped she’d find her way home.

A few hours later I went upstairs and out the corner of my eye I saw some movement towards the bassinet. I went over to check it out and to my surprise, there was Caramel Corn snuggled with all the stuffed animals in the bassinet! She looked so cozy. I was relieved she was safe and in the house.

The new buyer wanted the bassinet for that very night, but she couldn’t come at a time when we were home, so she asked if I would leave it on the porch for her to pick up. I placed the bassinet on the front porch (without the stuffed animals) and decided to trust her to leave the money under the mat (she did).

As I set the bassinet on the porch I thought of my own babies, and then about the baby that was to sleep in it that night. I figured, even if I didn’t get paid, it was a good feeling knowing a baby was going to be sleeping in the bassinet once again.

A Treasure Chest

Every few years we open up our cedar chest. It holds many treasures.

We use the beautiful cedar chest my father gave to my mother (when they got married in 1947) as a TV stand. The price tag is still inside…$54.95. Also, inside is a moth insurance policy!

The cedar chest works well as a TV stand, but with the TV on top it is not conducive to getting inside. We need to move the TV and other paraphernalia in order to open it up.

A look inside the cedar chest. It still smells good.

The last time we looked inside was in 2016 and I blogged about it then. Recently we opened up this treasure chest and here a some of the treasures:

This is a baby quilt made for me by my aunts and cousins, when I was pregnant for the first time. it is precious and I put it back into the cedar chest.

This is my Brownie uniform. I gave it to a thrift store.

This is my candy striper uniform, complete with a cap! I was a candy striper at the University of MN hospital. I gave it to a thrift shop.

This baptism gown was used by me and my brother. My mother and her sister’s was also in the cedar chest but in very bad condition. I had to throw it away. I’ll keep this gown until the next time.

This “shawl” my mother knitted. It does have arms and an angora collar. I liked it. I saved it for the grandchildren to play dress-up.

These bags I made for my boys, and then stenciled them. They used them to carry their “stuff” around.

A pillow cover I made from a Norwegian stitchery kit. I sent it on to the thrift store.

This is one of my favorite dresses I sewed in high school. I put it back in the cedar chest.

This is another dress I sewed after high school. It was hard to get the whole dress in the picture. I kept the dress.

There were other items not pictured…an old Christmas stocking, a purse, some glass cat figurines I remember buying as a souvenir on one of my family road trips. It was fun going through these treasures that took me down memory lane.

I do have a story about an afghan I pulled from the cedar chest that I will share soon.

God Remembers Me

The room where we met was the kitchen…wallpaper – circa 1970.

We sat at the vintage kitchen table in the new addition of the old farmhouse. There was plenty of light; one large picture window facing south, that overlooked the driveway and the cornfield. Out the other window, facing west, you could see the barn and other farm buildings. There were always a lot of cats hanging around outside the back door by their food dishes, and birds at a birdfeeder right outside the front window. There was life.

The farmer and his wife, really a city girl converted to a farmer’s wife, were in their late 80’s when we first met. We attended the same church but we didn’t know each other until we began our coffee visits. We started to meet regularly.

The coffee cups were cracked and mismatched but we didn’t care. The coffee itself was very strong but ready upon our arrival to their place. We always provided sweet treats, which they liked. After awhile I started to set the table when we arrived, and served the coffee, since it was getting harder for them to get in and out of chairs. We settled into a comfortable routine.

It all began when I heard he wanted a regular visitor for his wife. He had been living with cancer for over 30 years. Mayo considered him a miracle. He was starting to have other health issues; she was in the beginning stages of memory loss.

So I called to ask her out for coffee. In our initial conversation she asked, “Just me and you?” I laughed and said, “Well, I think my husband would enjoy visiting with you and your husband, how does that sound?” “OK.” And so our visits with the four of us began.

They were engaging folks…they had a lot of interesting stories to tell and yet they were always curious about our lives too. We met for a couple of years on a regular basis. We enjoyed each other immensely. For my husband and I, it was nice to have elders in our life once again since all our parents had passed away.

As time went by they slowed down more and more until he died at age 90 leaving behind his wife of 69 years! They had four children. Their son was their neighbor, living conveniently on the next farm over. The other three daughters lived in the cities but were able to come down often to visit and care for their mother. She was loved.

I continued to go and have coffee visits with her after her husband died until Covid-19 reared its ugly head. She moved into her son’s home and we were all in lockdown.

After March 2020 I tried calling her but I usually had to leave messages on her answering machine…she picked up once or twice and the conversation was just a few minutes long…”how are you? fine”…and I know she understood the pandemic situation. Then that stopped. She didn’t pick up any more. I would send her notes telling her I was thinking of her so she would know I hadn’t forgotten her.

I had her son’s phone number. Six months went by and one day I called and left a message with him. His sister, one of the daughters, called me back. She said their mom was doing ok, had more bad days than good. Thankfully she did know all her children and grandchildren but unfortunately, according to her daughter, she no longer remembered who I was.

And that changed everything. I confirmed to her daughter that I would no longer call or send notes. It felt like a rejection. In my head I know it’s not but in my heart I was very sad.

It was hard to think that my special friend no longer remembers our conversations about her 35 dresses in her closet when she was a child, and about the Young-Quinlan Store in downtown Minneapolis. We shared memories of both growing up in the city of Minneapolis, and then she moving to the farm and I moving to a small town near her farm and our paths crossing at church. She doesn’t remember showing me the photo of her dearly beloved grandfather E-V-E-R-Y-T-I-M-E we were together…”He was born in 1856 and died in 1955, just think of all the changes he saw in his lifetime” she always said. She no longer remembers our chats about her beautiful dishes…and our mutual fondness of dishes and her showing me all her dishes.

But I remember…I remember hearing the stories of this city girl who grew up to be a strong woman…she liked to drive fast cars and she was one of the first women to work at the air traffic control center in Farmington for 27 years. She was also a farmer’s wife, fixing tractors and driving tractors and helping on the farm. Oh what a life she led…

She knitted beautiful sweaters. She learned to knit in elementary school – quilt squares for soldiers in WWII – and she never stopped knitting. She had four children who “she never had to worry about.” I was privileged to get to know her story a little bit…and I grew to love and care for this woman very much, never realizing the sadness it would cause when she didn’t remember me any more.

I cherish the memories. I smile a little when I remember our good times together, then I cry a little when I remember she doesn’t remember them, or me, anymore.
I have more empathy for those sons and daughters whose mothers do not remember them.

But thank God – He remembers me, and He will never forget me.

Trolls

Trolls made a comeback
The vintage trolls went away
but returned transformed.

Before we left on our road trip to Colorado I was going through a closet and found a bag of old trolls. They were the ones from the 1960’s that I used to play with when I was a little girl. I decided I would bring them to Colorado to see if my grandchildren would be interested in playing with them… Zoey was.

The vintage trolls were a big hit. Inside the bag were three “regular-sized” troll dolls, approximately 3” tall with wild hair (well, one troll had thinning hair!), two baby troll dolls, and a lot of trolls-size clothes.

Troll with thinning hair, and a baby troll doll.

I sat down with Zoey to look through the clothes and surprised myself with all the clothes I had made for my trolls, mostly from felt material. I do remember my neighborhood friend, Diane, and I playing with our troll dolls for hours on end when we were growing up, but I did not remember making all the clothes until I saw them again.

Some of the clothes I made for my trolls in the 60’s.

Most of the clothes were cuts in the felt fabric but there were also a couple of outfits that I had stitched together and/or trimmed with sequins and such.

It was very fun for me to look at these pieces of clothing I made for my trolls. I remember the fun we had dressing them up and then changing their outfits. I left my trolls behind in Colorado knowing Zoey was enjoying the trolls too…dressing them up and then changing the outfits.

I know trolls have made a comeback and look a bit different these days. I wonder what The Troll movie is about? I may watch it now that I’ve been reintroduced to my trolls. According to Wikipedia, “The dolls were first created in 1959 and became one of the United States’ biggest toy fads in the early 1960s.”

Ninety and Beyond

We went to visit a special friend of the family…she is like a dear aunt…and she celebrated her 99^thbirthday on December 26^th. We went to offer her congratulations and wish her many happy birthday blessings for the year ahead.

Florence (99) and me. I purposely wore the Norwegian sweater that Florence and my aunt brought back for me from their 1984 trip to Norway.

Florence has a caretaker that comes to help her in the mornings but otherwise she lives on her own in a beautiful house she and my aunt (best friends for 70 years) bought together in 1968. I’ve written about their house before…it’s like stepping back in time…the house has the original gold, wool carpet…gold, heavy draperies…most of the olive green appliances(!)… and a worn linoleum floor in the kitchen. They bought the house by assuming the mortgage…it was only 2 years old when they moved in fifty years ago.

Florence talks about her various jobs she had, with wages that ranged from 33 cents an hour to her favorite job as a bookkeeper for 20 years, starting at $1.00 an hour. We wanted to ask her how she could survive financially after all these years and no pension but we didn’t. We just listened to her wonderful stories. We always enjoy our visits with her, and we always wonder how much longer she will be with us. She told us that her grandmother lived to be over 100 years old. We hope Florence will too.

Another family member in his 90’s is my Uncle Bob. Last month, during the Christmas season we spent time with my uncle, my dad’s brother. He is 92 years old and in good health and is still driving. We also enjoy visiting with him. I asked him his favorite Christmas memory and he told us this story:

As a child his parents (my grandparents) had very little money, and no money for Christmas presents. One Christmas, Bob’s brothers, Herb (my father) and Earl, who were several years older than Bob, found a beat-up old tricycle in the trash with a missing wheel. They repaired the trike, painted it and gave it to Bob. It was a very special gift – one that Bob has always remembered.

I love hearing stories of my father since he died so young (age 55 in 1974).

I relish and appreciate visiting with these two special people, Florence and Uncle Bob. Along with Bob’s wife, Auntie Joyce, they are the only people in the world who have known me all my life – since I was born. That is significant.