Living in the Past

I don't know why my mind has been "harking" back to the past so much these days. Last night my dreams were filled with my grandmother, my mother and my Aunt Florence and Uncle May. No, that's not a misprint, his name was Arnold May Sellers and I believe it was a family name...he was called May. In my dream I could see them all and chatted with them as though I were 8 years old again and in the center of their hearts. By the way, all these beloved people are no longer on this side of the veil.

Like I said, the past has been on my mind quite a bit lately and yesterday while chatting with Lee I asked her if she remembered the Betsy McCall paper dolls. She assured me that she remembered them well, having played with them at her grandmother's house. I remember playing with my Betsy McCall on the floor of our apartment in Washington, DC. I was about 4 at the time, and I know you find it hard to believe that I can remember these things, but I do. I remember my toy ambulance with working lights and sirens from that era, too. But Betsy was special. I had my little scissors (metal not plastic) and waited eagerly for my mother to finish the magazine so that I could acquire my "pasted to hard board" Betsy some lovely new clothes. Now, my mother sewed, she and all her sisters learned to make their own clothes when Home Ec meant just that. Home Economics! Mama sewed beautifully and collected patterns for our clothes from McCall's huge drawers located in the cloth shops she frequented. Betsy's dresses were often found in the deep long drawers located under the cutting tables. So yesterday, Betsy was as real in my mind as she had once been in my hands.

Cooties. Do you remember the game Cooties? Doesn't sound very nice, does it? But it was a game along with so many others...the card games we learned like Old Maid, War and Rook. I loved it when my older sister Holly would come down off her high horse long enough to play a game of Rook with her annoying little sister. It never lasted long, but I felt special while it was going on. We played Monopoly, of course. It was the lucky player who wound up with not only Boardwalk, but Park Place , too. Usually that indicated a winner...but not always! And the year I got my really nice Bingo set with the turning basket and genuine bake lyte bingo numbers...wow! I was forever trying to get a game of Bingo organized!

But Scrabble has forever and always been my favorite game. I introduced it to my boys as soon as they learned to spell. First it was Scrabble Junior, then they became such good spellers that we packed it away for the real deal. While some families get together to play poker, we crowd around a Scrabble board. Now, Arianna is included in this fast paced game of words and meanings. Lee and I play online nearly everyday. It's something I look forward to.



But of all my toys of the past, Betsy McCall stands out in memory and I can't say why. I don't know why. But I found her online last night and she's about to become mine again. Of course, I'll let Arianna play with her. I want her to have such a memory, too.

The Gazebo

I love my yard, or as it was called in England, my garden. We have so much planted, areas laid out with broad swathes of color and texture that I think we can call the whole affair a garden and easily get by with it. I call our place Orchard Cottage, which is what our home in England was named, because of all the fruit trees and bushes that surround us here as it did there. Our place is not large, but cozy and very comfortable for the two of us and room for guests when they arrive. The front porch is large and shaded with hanging pots of broad leaf moss roses (Portulaca) petunias of every hue, mostly double and rose bushes all around. There's a Mandavillia vine curling it's way over the porch rail and a volunteer cantaloupe twining it's way alongside. There are cats sleeping on the porch rail, escaping the heat of the day, their sweet faces turned toward the front door in hopes someone will come out and sit with them. Looking over to the front drive the other day, Mac allowed as how a Gazebo would look fine up there, inviting us within it's cool depths on the way back from the mailbox. I had to laugh, he who is always accusing me of "having visions", was apparently having a few visions of his own. I told him I didn't think I wanted a Gazebo, though the idea was nice. He looked at me for a second, reached out and touched my face and smiled and said "Chesterfield's Gazebo get you spooked?" and suddenly laughed one of those laughs that only a man can manage, head thrown back, bellows of sound erupting like silly thunder. I nodded, oh yes...Chesterfield's Gazebo....

Chesterfield is such an amazing little town, the County Seat, only one street long with shops on either side, a bank at the corner by the Courthouse, the Western Auto Appliance Store directly across from the brick edifice we call the Courthouse...the old Courthouse, which is at the other end of the street actually looks like what it is. It has charm and character and stories to tell...but a couple of decades ago someone got it into their heads that building a new Courthouse and making it look like some large brick box with a flat roof might make Chesterfield seem an up and coming thriving town. So we have this nondescript brick building we call the courthouse, across the street is the Western Auto and next to the Western Auto a small grassy area that held...nothing. So the Town Council agreed to erect a lovely little Gazebo there, a place where perhaps lunches could be taken, or just a place to sit and rest and talk with friends. It was a wonderful concept.

Now, Chesterfield is a small town, as I have said. But we have more than our share of, for lack of a more politically correct word, town drunks. This is no Mayberry where Otis comes in and takes the key off the wall and opens the door, locks himself in and goes off to sleep. While we have our share of those who go peacefully down the hall to the cell block, and even those who had family members drive their beloved drunk family member to the jail and unceremoniously boot them out the door into our loving arms, for the most part our drunks don't want to be locked up. They want to drink. They want to drink in peace and quiet. And one night they stumbled upon this lovely gingerbread construction, sort of an open air drinking spot...and they thought, (I can hear strains of "there's a plaaace for us...right here a place for us...") why how thoughtful. The town has erected us a gathering place. No more will we have to hide out in the back lots looking for concrete block upon which to rest our weary drunken bones. And a trash receptacle...don't know what that's for, bottles and cans belong littered upon the ground to prove that we were here...I was on my way home from work one night and saw my cousin (who was a town cop) sitting in her patrol car, parked where she had a clear view of the Gazebo. I pulled in next to her, my drivers side window next to her drivers side window (when you see cops parked like this along the highway, they're not trying to set the radar to work both ways...it already does that in one car alone...they're chatting...comparing calls, catching up on what's been going on) and asked her what was up. She had her reading glasses on and pushed them up on top of her head and laid the crossword puzzle book down on her lap. "We've been getting complaints that the Gazebo has turned into a gathering spot for every drunk in the county...so far I count four...I looked over at where she indicated and named two "frequent flyers" from my own experience. I asked her what she was going to do. "Just waiting for them to get drunk enough to forget I'm here and start passing that bottle around...and they'll pass it around, believe me. Then that's when I'll go get them and take them off to the jail." We sat and talked for a couple of minutes and then it happened...happy hour in the Gazebo...she picked up her radio and called the jail. She told them she was about to be 10-67 four times and to meet her under the Sally port. This was a scene that was repeated every day. Sometimes several times a day...there were male and female drunks and the worst of them were the females. I'd rather have dealt with a drunk man than a drunk woman any time of the day. I don't remember how long the Gazebo stood on the little corner lot that was intended to be a park of sorts, but it wasn't long. Perhaps two years, maybe three. But the Council in all its wisdom deemed the Gazebo no longer a part of the beautification of Chesterfield, but an eyesore. And so they tore the little Gazebo down...nothing there now but sand and small tufts of Dallas grass. A few rocks to get stuck in the soles of your shoe if you walk that way towards the Western Auto. The drunks are now relegated out of sight mostly to the back lots, going to the red dot store (ABC Store, Liquor Store whatever you call it in your neck of the woods) and scurrying quickly away so that the Cops can't interfere with what they do best. And so as I stand gazing up towards the front drive where Mac was envisioning a Gazebo, I hear the words in my head just as they came in "Field of Dreams"...build it and they will come...". A chill went straight through me. I shook it off and muttered under my breath "oh no, not only no but HELL NO!"