PARK MEMORIES

Long before there was a fictional Disneyland, before tennis courts invaded green space, before
kids were immersed in electronics, there were public parks scattered around our hometown in Jackson, Mississippi.

 Poindexter Park was located in West Jackson at the edge of downtown. I lived within walking distance of this beautiful play land. As a child my parents brought me out on Saturday mornings to play before the summer heat drove us indoors. Most Sunday evenings we listened to music played by live musicians. Mother took pictures of my playing in the sand box, sitting on the baby swing, leaning against Daddy on a bench. A wide expanse of area, three city blocks wide and two city blocks narrow held swings, see-saws, and sand boxes.  Tall trees provided shade in the humid summer months, hide-aways for lovers, benches for the weary, cross walks for strollers.

 One area of our own grassy knoll sat a brick and stone gazebo called the Band Stand. There during elections stood candidates who'd promote themselves the only way other than through newspaper articles and advertisements. There during spring and summer nights the city band played while families spread picnic supper and kids ran squealing with delight.

For the little ones, the concrete sandboxes filled to the brim with sand got dug and filled in pails, poured over kids' heads, pee'ed in, spilled over into the grass.  All kids knew what having sand in their hair, on their faces, in their clothes felt like. Yet, every visit the allure of the sandbox began again for the return visitor.

 Two sets of six swings each sat at one area near the sidewalk that bordered the park.  Big kids pumped their swings into the air to feel the exhilaration.  There's no feeling like being airborne without a parachute.  Repeatedly,  swings flew higher and higher,  fingers holding tightly to the chains that held the seat in place.  You were lucky if someone --your dad, your mom, your older brother or sister, anyone, would push you into netherland.  No better sensation swelled in your body. No one thought in the 1930s of a man on the moon, but some kids were often heard to say, "Push me to the moon!"

The park was popular with students who attended Enochs Junior High School, a giant of a three-story building guarding one side of the street.  Mornings found kids scribbling their homework at the last minute, gossiping, and eating an ice cream cone for breakfast bought from the popular Seale-Lily store across the street. Afternoons students sat waiting for their buses, or short cut across the park to reach a nearby house or apartment. Six streets were in proximity of the park.
 
I have no reason to be in the vicinity of Poindexter Park anymore.  The city has expanded in other directions. Original families have found other parts of the city to live. The surrounding landscape has changed. No more Seale-Lily, movie theater, or Greco's Spaghetti House.  No sandboxes, no swings carrying shrieks of joy, no music from the gazebo which still stands as a silent reminder of its popularity when I was a kid.
 

MOTHER'S PRECIOUS POSSESSION

Sis and I never knew what Mother kept inside her hope chest.  When she opened it to add  or view its content, we asked no questions. This was her special box.

As Mother grew older and her mind weaker, she opened the chest often. She’d thumb through the contents, then lock the peeling faux-mahogany box with a brass key as old as she. She once told us her mother gave her the chest to collect items for her future marriage.  I imagine she carried it to Greenwood, where she attended business school. On to Jackson to sit in her rented room at the YWCA . In a few months hence she moved the chest to her new apartment when she married our daddy.

By the time she was in her eighties she and her chest had moved into my home.  She struggled to remember from one opening to the next where she had laid the key to the aging lock. Often Mother would wail, ”Help me find the key,” as though it were made of a precious metal. Daddy,  Sis and I pretended we were on a  hunting expedition to humor her. After too many hunts, Daddy removed the lock from the chest, leaving a small round hole large enough to spoil some of her precious belongings.

A short time after her death in 2002, we opened the chest. What seemed, at first invasive, became a tour of our Mother’s youth.  We reveled in the1900s postcards written by her mother, photos of her high school days, tissue-wrapped carnival glass, embroidered dish towels and pillow cases, a baby ring,  her high school boyfriend gazing at us from a filigree frame, a 1920s diary written in pencil.

The real prize  sat hugging the bottom of the chest. A stack of telegrams Daddy, a telegrapher, sent Mother from his first sighting of her  in 1930 on the city streets, to twenty years after their marriage. Despite their age, the messages were legible. The words were humorous and poetic.They revealed to us daughters what a love-struck young man our daddy had been.

MY FIRST WATCH

I was five years old in 1936 when Mother bought me a Mickey Mouse watch.  She was a clerk at Woolworth’s and bought the watch at a discount from its $3.25 marked price. The Ingersoll Company sold these wind-up watches as early as 1933.

On the face of the watch Mickey pointed out the hours and minutes with his  yellow gloved hands as he stood on skinny legs in his oversize red shoes. I felt grown up when I learned to buckle the black band onto my arm.  I knew no one else my age with a watch as fine as this. Like Mother’s watch, Mickey had a real crystal cover protecting him. That crystal was my downfall.

On numerous occasions when we visited my grandparents’ home in South Mississippi, I found an adventure I often repeated. Having no playmate in the large house, I played “pretend” under beds.  I looked for lost treasure, hid from robbers, discovered how to escape from bad men while squiggling on my stomach in the low space. Mickey stayed close and helped me escape from danger.  On one tense exploration I heard a  Crack!  Mick took a bullet. Even with the broken crystal he stayed with me.  I crawled out from the depths of the cave to civilization with bits of glass clinging to my wrist.

In the kitchen Mother and her family talked softly. I walked past those uncles and aunts all the time worrying I’d never see Mick again. Mother  examined the damage and calmly said, “Don’t worry, we can get Mr. Bourgeois to put on a new crystal.” Mick  stayed in the “hospital” for nearly a week. My left arm felt as bare as my dad’s bald head. Mother suggested I tighten the strap, thinking that was my problem. She didn’t know how the crystal broke.

Until I had Mick back with me, my adventures weren’t as interesting. No one could read the map or open locks or use his big eyes to tell me where to go in the darkness.  When Mick returned, I took special care of him. I wiped his face and wound him every night before I went to bed. He slept in his box on the bedside table. I never failed to say “Goodnight, Mickey.” He replied “G’night, Viv.”

Did I learn my lesson after that first break? No. I broke the crystal three times more before Mother caught on to my underworld adventures. She put Mickey away in her secret place. I didn’t see him again until I was six when I was too big to slip under beds.

MISS VELSOR, PEGGY AND ME

Miss Velsor’s Dance Studio sat on the second floor of a commercial building on South Lamar Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Mother and I trudged up the narrow stairway squeezed between a restaurant and a plumbing supply business. While she enrolled me for ballet and tap lessons, I looked around the vast room. A mirror the size of our school auditorium faced the entrance. Bars ran the length of the two walls. A flutter played an imaginary piano inside my stomach. I was about to begin dance lessons in this very room.

Miss Gladys Velsor danced  and floated instead of walking. She twirled and posed to show us how a dancer uses her body. She exuded mystery dressed gypsy style in long, colorful skirts and full-sleeved blouses. When she waved her arms, the sleeves widened like petals of a sunflower. She pinned her dark hair off her face. She smiled, only appearing serious when she wielded her companion, a long pointer, at a leg or foot out of place.  We fifth grade girls listened to her every word.

One afternoon during ballet class she read a letter sent by a Hollywood movie company to dancing teachers everywhere.  A search was on for an experienced dancer at least eighteen years old. “Now, students, this shows you how persistence and hard work may one day give you the chance to enter a contest like this.” I rode the bus home imagining my winning such a prize. Near the end of the year Miss Velsor announced the contest winner as Peggy Middleton of Canada. At that time we had no idea how she would enter our adult lives.

My dream of a dancing career faded as I entered ninth grade. Like girls of the mid 1940s, I wrote fan letters and read magazines like Movie Star and Photoplay. In one issue I found an article on Peggy Middleton who by then had a “Hollywood name.” I copied the movie company’s address and wrote her a fan letter on my best notebook paper.  Within a month she responded with five black and white glossies of her dressed in her costume for her first movie, “Scherherazade.” She was beautiful with curly hair falling to her waist. On one photo she wrote,” To Vivian” and signed her name. That cemented our connection. I was her fan forever.

  Ten years later on the night before my wedding, I pulled out my collection of fan photos and tore them, saying goodbye to my youth, goodbye to Gene, Roy, Sons of the Pioneers, Bing Crosby, and others I’ve forgotten.  I gazed a long time debating whether to keep or destroy those from Peggy. 

One evening in 1965 as my children watched ”The Addams Family,” I interjected during the advertising. I thought it a good time to tell the story of the set of particular fan photos. They gushed, “Oh Mom, how could you?” when I told  them five of the photos I destroyed were from the actress they were watching play the role of the popular Morticia: Yvonne de Carlo.

HEARING IMPAIRMENT

We had the greatest idea. Our imaginations ran wild. We’d have tee shirts, buttons, flags with our logo. Logo. What could we use as an identifying reminder of our idea?

The above ideas began after a birthday dinner in which the family sat in an upscale restaurant (for our area it was “upscale”.). The members turned to me and said, “Did you hear our conversations?” I replied “No, but I got the gist of it.”

Son 2 said he knew then how difficult it was for me to hear (a) between walls (b ) in a crowded place (c) around corners (d) and everywhere in which no one was facing me. So began the process of helping me enjoy family get-togethers in the future with ideas flying left and right.

After figuring out what the logo would be, Son 2 went online, “Just to be sure there’s not one already.” There was - - not just one but variations of the standard logo for impaired hearing. We were disappointed but happy. Disappointed we didn’t think of printing tees, buttons and signs, and whatever forty years ago when my hearing problem was in its infancy; disappointed that we hadn’t learned the symbol wasn’t used more often in public; disappointed that I had lost so much enjoyment in the myriad of table conversations.

We found a company that printed anything you want on tees and buttons. I ordered several buttons with nifty statements. From the logo alone to a few words. Each button makes clear the message I need to convey when the cashier babbles incoherently (I think) “Thatistwentythirtytwo.”  Maybe she’ll read on my lapel “Speak a little louder and more clearly,” instead of apologizing when I ask for a repeat – twice – she’ll understand.

I wear a different one every time I leave the house. You know what? No one sees or comments on the button. I have to announce in a group why I'm wearing it. Do you think voices increase in volume because I'm there? Absolutely not!

When you know of someone with hearing difficulties, touch him/her on the arm and speak while you look directly into the eyes. Then see a smile develop.

ONE VALENTINE'S DAY

Daughter Janie was in the second grade in 1970. With February 14 soon to arrive, I asked if she were going to give valentines to her class. No. Was her answer. I asked again a few days later. No, came the second time. Then the night before at 9 p.m. J said she had to go to the store. Why, I asked?  "To buy some valentines for my class." What made her change her mind? She failed to give me a reason. Just insisted she buy some.

With package in hand she sat in her room and vigorously wrote a few words on the back on each valentine, shoved it into its envelope, wrote a name outside. This she did for 25 students and the teacher.

The family of mom, two sons and J went to the same school. I taught in high school at one end of the building; the kids at the other end in elementary school. At lunch Janie's teacher came up to me and asked: "Did you read your daughter's class valentines?"

"No, she wouldn't let me."

Her teacher revealed each student got this message: "Happy VD Day!"

Smile.
                                   

THE ARGUMENT

“I will not sit on a paint bucket. Period.”

 “It’s only for the summers, Hon,” I argued.

“Don’t care, no paint bucket.” Dick folded his arms, his chin thrust defiantly forward.

We had a newly-built cabin in the lower Catskills with a separate bath house containing an old tub large enough for a midget to sit. Missing was a toilet. We were living off the grid. No electricity, no water source.  After consulting several books on the subject, the paint bucket seemed our only choice -- unless husband Dick forked out big bucks for a compost toilet.

“Listen,” I began, “a paint bucket is the smaller version of a purchased toilet. We prepare it to accept a  layering of stuff inside. Never any odor. Once loaded, we cover it, set it aside to compost, and begin with a new bucket.”

“And what happens when we’re ready to come home and there’re forty buckets composting?

“Well, uh, let’s play it by ear the first year,” I replied weakly.

 Such a simple process to create your own toilet: You take a five-gallon plastic paint bucket and have ready in a small garbage can torn-up newspaper, leaves, sawdust, and food scraps. Begin with the first bucket layered with scraps, alternate waste and scraps until the bucket is full; snap on a lid and place it in the sun outdoors and proceed to use second container.  A bi-weekly walk in the woods to collect moist leaves lying near the ground keeps the scrap bucket ready in an emergency.  At the end of a period of time the covered waste disintegrates into a loam-like substance, clean and ready to nourish plants. Paint buckets cost a couple of dollars at the local hardware store. Who could improve on an instant bathroom?

Dick next complained about a permanent ring indention appearing on our backsides. I suggested, “We can use a toilet seat.”

“Negative,” he quickly countered.  I rolled my eyes. There’d be no friends visiting; we had been told how crazy we were at age 70 to tackle living without amenities. Who would spend the night if we had no television set?

I quickly replied, “Inside the bath house we’ll post a sign with directions ‘How to Use the Toilet.’ To ease the process, a decorative cardboard crown will hang next a sign stating ‘For Guest Use Only’. Directions will suggest the sitter put on the crown and pretend to be King or Queen of his/her throne.  Our friends will ignore the inconvenience and come out smiling.”

“The crown thing is stupid. Management doesn’t approve!” Dick declared

How could I win? I gave up fussing and let Dick have his way. He ordered a medium-sized composting toilet. We installed it into our new bath house by setting up a pipe that reached from toilet to the outside roof. The toilet was so high off the floor we had to put a step stool in front to hike ourselves up onto the seat.

I smiled all summer. His way cost time and energy. He soon discovered the New York summers failed to produce enough heat to compost the material. He spent time every eight days raking out the compost himself and disposing of it. 

                                                      *

Below is an at-the-door glance of bath house interior. Tub in rear, compost toilet on right. We gave up using  toilet and used Wag Bags.