They're sinking the Big U...by Sheila Claydon

 

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An article about the cultural heritage of transatlantic liners has triggered a childhood memory. Exciting though it was at the time, I had long forgotten the day I ate lunch aboard the SS United States until I read about its imminent demise. Known affectionately as the Big U, it was the last word in transatlantic liner design. The biggest and the sleekest, it broke the transatlantic speed record on its maiden voyage from New York to Southampton (UK) in July 1952, a record it still holds to this day.

More than 40,000 people greeted its arrival in Southampton.  It then provided a regular service between New York, Le Havre (France) and Southampton until it was suddenly retired in 1969.  Since then its chequered ownership has included the US Maritime Administration, several individual owners and the Norwegian Cruise Line, all of whom attempted to make the ship profitable, but to no avail. Eventually her interior furnishings were sold and her interiors stripped to the bulkhead. Then, unloved and poorly maintained, she was towed to Philadelphia where she remained for many years while the United States Conservancy unsuccessfully attempted to raise funds to save her from being scrapped. 

Now she is owned by Okaloosa County in Florida and the plan is to sink her this year near Destin, where she will become the world's largest artificial reef. Artificial reefs have been created since Roman times, so this is nothing new even if it seems a sad end for such an elegant and famous liner. I don't know whether the plan is to promote marine life, control erosion, block ship passage or block the use of trawling nets. It might even be to enhance scuba diving and surfing.  Because Destin is a popular tourist destination I would guess it's for the latter. Sinking such a beautiful ship is sad but the good news is that at least the Big U will continue to be useful.

So where do my childhood memories come in? Well I was born and raised in Southampton and can just about remember the excitement of that maiden voyage because, as my grandfather was a merchant seaman for fifty years, ships were very much part of our family history. So I can remember being taken to see it as a tiny girl, not realising then that it was special or that I would be eating aboard it a decade later.

That's where my mother comes in. She was a florist, and in those heady days when a five day voyage from Southampton to New York meant that the ship's public areas had to be decorated with fresh flowers and foliage, and bouquet after bouquet had to be carried aboard and delivered to the cabins of departing passengers, she was very busy. As a young teenager I was sometimes conscripted to help during my school holidays and that is how I ended up eating with the crew on board the SS United States. The meals were large, hot and delicious, and I can see them in my mind's eye to this day.

Those experiences, together with my own journey through life, inform my books Cabin Fever and Bouquet of Thorns.

First of all Cabin Fever. This is the story of a cruise director and the lead dancer of the onboard entertainment troupe as the fictional liner, Oceana, sails from Aukland, New Zealand to Sydney in Australia. I have been on  that cruise but as as a passenger, not a crew member, and it was wonderful, not least because we have friends and family in both countries, all of whom we were able to see at the different stops along the way. The information about the life of the crew is, however, linked to what I learned from my grandfather, and to what I saw on board the SS United States. Times change of course and Oceana is a very different ship from the liners of the nineteen fifties and sixties. These were designed to deliver a fast and efficient intercontinental service in all seasons and all weather whereas the cruise liners of today are more like floating holiday resorts whose job is to convey tourists between ports. They are, however, still things of elegance and efficiency even if they are not looking to break any speed records. 

Bouquet of Thorns, while not set anywhere near the sea or a passenger terminal, contains much of the knowledge I learned about hotel floral displays, weddings, parties, in fact anything that can be enhanced by flowers, including, staying true to my writing genre, romance!

Memories—Tricia McGill

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This is a reboot of a blog post I did years ago, but is probably more relevant today so I thought I would give it another outing.

What is it about getting older? I can remember my first day at school clearly yet can’t recall what I did two days ago unless I look at my diary to check. As we get older, we seem to dwell a lot in the past. I’ve never been one to live with regrets. We can’t do anything to change what has gone before so what’s the point.

My childhood was exceptionally happy, and I always say I am blessed for I have been surrounded by loving people as far back as I can remember. I was the youngest of ten and most of my five brothers and four sisters were adults or coming up to adulthood by the time I reached an age when I took notice of what was going on around me. My sisters taught me the alphabet and how to read well before I attended school. It pains me to hear that many children these days never read a book and in fact are not able to read or spell.

I was one of those children who happened to love school. I had one regret in my first term—we had a class band and all the children (there were probably about 40 five-year-olds in the class) got to play an instrument, but whether by design or something other I always seemed to get stuck with the triangle—and how I longed for just one go on the tambourine. Perhaps that is why to this day I cannot play any instrument.

My two eldest sisters treated me like a doll and as they and our mother were all handy with a needle and sewing machine I was donned regularly in pretty dresses and with a white bow in my hair was taken off to have my photograph taken (which was done in a photo studio in those days).

One of my early books, Remnants of Dreams is based on our mother’s life in that it follows the timeline of her life. She was born in 1895 and married our dad in 1914. Our dad went away to the war and our eldest brother was born not long after. Dad didn’t return until four years later, consequentially it was a while until the next child came along. But then there was mostly a one or just over a year gap in between. These children were reared during the hard times between wars. So therefore, I was the luckiest as by the time I came along things were a lot brighter all round. I grew up on stories of the difficult years told to me by my eldest sister who will soon reach her 100^th birthday. Sadly, she is no longer able to remember the past, but in her day read more books in a week than I ever could.

I get angry with young people who complain if their latest gadget is not performing well or feel hard done by if Mum and Dad won’t buy them just what everyone else at school is getting. We never had a telephone until our eldest brother had one installed. We lived in a six-storey house in North London. Our mother’s sister, her husband and two girls, had two rooms and a kitchen in

the middle, and one brother, his wife, son and daughter lived in the top two rooms with two attic bedrooms. We had the bottom two floors, so, when we received a telephone call (of course we gave out the number to our friends) someone would yell from the top of the house for us and we would then climb five flights of stairs to answer the call in their living room. No one thought this odd in the least, as our lives were so closely entwined. Our very extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins was spread far and wide, yet we kept in constant touch even before the telephone came along. There was such a thing as writing letters and waiting on the postman to call in those days, so we never missed a wedding or celebration.

For all our lack of amenities my childhood was full of happiness. It’s so true that what you never have you never miss. But I believe we were luckier by far. From an early age I was allowed to wander far and wide with my friends. We would be away from home for hours, only coming home when our stomachs told us it was time to eat. We played out all day every day, rain, sunshine or snow. We walked to and from school—a thirty minute walk each way in all weathers. Our world was small.

We had no idea what was going on in other countries or even in other parts of England, and ignorance is bliss. Most of our information and entertainment was gained via the radio, and then there was the cinema. We

never saw television until I was in my teens; and that was also my eldest brothers’. At times there would be about 15 of us crowded around his lounge room to watch this tiny black and white 9-inch screen—wonder of wonders! I remember vividly us all watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth of England in awe on that far
off day in June 1953.

Now here I sit in 2022 at my all-in-one computer that I could not live without, and keep in touch with friends and relatives whose messages jump into my inbox regularly. Each evening I make myself comfortable in front of my flat screen immense TV watching my choice out of a million old and new of my favourite streamed shows, where I simply touch a button on my remote control to change channels of which there are many. I might receive a beep from my mobile phone to alert me to the fact that someone has sent me a text, or a call will come from a friend who lives miles away. Such is life! 

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Short Stories

 

            Have you ever tried to capture a childhood memory -- that illusive remnant of an adventure softened by the shadows of time? As adults, we might wonder if those events really happened, or if they are only figments of our imagination.  We might laugh now at our naiveté, but at the time, those painted carousel horses were very much alive, the pirate ship held tons of gold, and the cowboys always won.                    For me, there was a candy dish; but not your ordinary candy dish of course…

            "Are we there yet?"

The road was bumpy, and Dad swerved to miss a snake slithering across the gravel.  It was hot, but July is always hot in Iowa, and back in 1956, air conditioning wasn't included on the sticker price of our Chevy station wagon.  It didn't bother me, though, because I was seven years old.  I was tough, and not about to let hot weather stop me from enjoying the drive that would take me to my adventure.

            Bugs splattered against the windshield, and a big grasshopper ricocheted off the rear view mirror to land on the back seat.  Dad said to get it out of the car, but one look at those beady eyes convinced me it wouldn't hurt if the grasshopper went with us. 

            Dad was taking me to my Aunt Bea's -- a farm with horses and other animals and homemade cookies and my cousin Craig.  We would take baths in a galvanized tub hardly big enough to sit in; we had to hand-pump water into the kitchen sink.  We played from sun-up until Aunt Bea rang the huge dinner bell, then after meals we played some more.

            At that time, there were no convenience stores on the corners, no public swimming pools and skating rinks or shopping at the mall every afternoon.  There were no computers, video games or cell phones; no colored TV in every room or central air conditioning. 

             Instead, we had acres and acres of green grass and blue sky in which to play; square hay bales to hide behind when playing cowboys; a big house with a huge porch and cookies hot from the oven.  Our imaginations never limited the source of our adventures, and we didn't need a lot of toys to occupy our time.  Unless, of course, you counted the dollar's worth of plastic cowboys we bought at the local Five & Dime. 

            Aunt Bea had a big old farmhouse -- far too large for just the three of them, so the front rooms had been closed off by a set of pocket doors.  White slipcovers blanketed the furniture and the draperies were always closed. Voices echoed eerily off the chill walls and hardwood floors should anyone happen to step into what looked like a mausoleum.    

            It was as though an entirely different family lived there, but they were never home.  Even so, you had to walk past the connecting doors quietly, for it wouldn't be polite to disturb them. 

            "Don't say a word," my cousin would whisper, a finger to his lips.  Of course, I believed him -- he was older than me and he lived there all the time.

            It was more fun living in the back of the house, anyway, because there were two kitchens.  In one, Aunt Bea put up summer vegetables from the garden.  There were big wooden worktables, the pump to get water into the sink, and a big, pot-bellied stove. 

            Aunt Bea made cookies in the other kitchen.  It was by the living room, where Uncle Clair watched black & white TV and an old sidesaddle hung on the wall.  My cousin and I would lie on the hardwood floor and play with little cars that went in a metal garage and rolled down the ramp to the car wash.

            Every day we played cowboys, hiding behind hay bales and shooting at each other with plastic handled pistols.  We'd take turns being the cowboys and bad guys because it was only fun when there was someone to shoot at.  After all, with just two of us, it would be too easy to steal horses from imaginary outlaws.  Even so, it was easy to get bored.  So we would hide out and try to decide what to do next.

            We could go get something to eat or drink.  It was hot and we played hard.  Of course, we couldn't just walk in and ask -- that would have been too simple -- so we decided to sneak in through the front of the house.

            The old weathered boards of the porch creaked beneath our bare feet.  The screen door swayed on rusty hinges and created eerie noises that belonged to the inky night, not to broad daylight.  I giggled and my cousin shushed me -- we couldn't dare be caught.  We silently crept closer to the door, keeping low beneath the windows.  Craig turned the handle -- a soft click and the door squeaked open, inch by noisy inch.  I held my breath, sure that any second we would be discovered.  Craig pushed on the big wooden door -- I grabbed his arm and hung on.  After all, he was bigger than me and much, much braver.

            Shadows loomed gigantic across the wood floors.  Shrouded furniture turned to ghostly shapes before our eyes and towered larger than any monster either of us had ever seen.

            "Let's go," I whimpered, ready to forget the entire escapade.

            "We can't," Craig jerked me to a stop and pointed. 

            There, like a glittering crystal crown, a candy dish perched on top of the dark wood coffee table.  We stood in silent awe as it beckoned us.  Sunshine filtered through a gap in the draperies to form a spotlight, causing the crystal to wink knowingly at us.  Dust motes floated down the sunbeams and danced around the crystal, paying homage.

            We crept on hands and knees now, our eyes wide and our hearts pounding.  Any minute unbidden creatures would jump up and screech at us from behind the white sheets.  Beasts from beneath the couch would snatch our legs and drag us, screaming and fighting, beneath the draped edge, never to be heard from again. 

            Regardless of the danger, we slithered closer, for the candy dish proved a stronger lure than the threat of unseen monsters.

            Even as our grubby hands touched the sparkling cut glass, we cast furtive glances over our shoulders toward the doors that separated this section from the real house.  Craig whispered to be careful, for we not only had to remove the lid without letting it click against the side, but we must put it back so no one would know we had been there. 

            Our adventure became more difficult the minute Craig lifted the lid.  It had a fluted edge, and if the little curves didn't fit together just right, it would fall off to the side and break.  Not to mention making an incredible noise. 

            I could hear Aunt Bea moving around in the kitchen on the other side of the pocket doors.  The dog barked outside, and a horse neighed in the distance.  My heart beat louder than any ordinary noise, and I knew for sure she could hear us.  I held my breath as I reached into the bowl.  My hand closed around the prize -- sweet, hard bits of sugar.  As quietly as we had come, we left, pulling the door softly closed behind us.

            Those few seconds were as long as we could remain quiet.  With whoops of laughter, we jumped off the porch and raced for the hay bales, falling down to the ground only after we were safely out of sight and no one the wiser.  We laughed as we ate the spoils of our adventure, arguing already over who would lead the secret raid tomorrow.

            We never questioned the reason for a candy dish in a room no one ever entered.  After a week of raids on the ghostly haunt, we never once thought it unusual that the candy dish, sitting alone in a room never used, was always full.  After all, it was summer on the farm, and at seven years of age, it's easy to believe in magic.

***

If you like short stories for a change of pace, I invite you to grab a copy of “Before Tomorrow Comes” -- Can five women with tender hearts find the love they deserve before their secrets and pasts are exposed? This, and all my romance novels are available at Books we Love www.bookswelove.net.

Here’s hoping your memories are magic.

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

Greendale, A Fond Memory by Katherine Pym

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~*~*~*~*~

A Young Greendale, City Hall

Nostalgia comes from memories and our minds burgeon with them, overflow onto our current visual space (writers use these for their stories, and anything else that one can find in the larder :D). As we gather new memories, we merge them with the old. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the town where I grew up. It was one of the greenbelt projects FDR initiated during the Depression. We lived in the Greendale community. 

https://livingnewdeal.org/tag/greenbelt-towns/

It put men to work, building a country hamlet with the amenities of a city. The people who lived there had to make a certain income. My dad was short by a few dollars. He had someone vouch for him. 

Greendale Theatre, Only 10¢ for Sat matinee

We had a grocery store, a Five & Dime (run by two harridan spinsters), drug store, theatre, dentist and doctor offices. When mom took me to the doctor for a smallpox vaccination, I didn’t cry, so the doctor inoculated me again. The nurse was a big boned woman who walked all over town, visiting homes and administrating cough syrups. Her hair was stone grey in a thick braid that she wound around her head. Even as a young child, the town’s nurse made an impression on me. 

There was a public school, grades kindergarten to 12, police department, a tavern called the Village Inn, with a bus line into the city, and churches scattered throughout. It was a good place to grow up.

I’d walk outside into the cool breezes and smell fresh grass clippings, raise my head and listen to robin’s song. When the summer nights were gentle, our windows would be open. As dawn lit the bedroom, robins began their day. It was a balm to my ears and I’d sigh. I’d be reminded life was good. My parents protected me and kept me safe. 

New houses, New streets, New everything

I’d explore with my brothers over rutted paths with puddles from last night’s passing shower. If I were a pioneer and thirsty, I could drink from the puddle to survive a long trek across country. Tommy would point and yell, “Let’s explore that field over there. Maybe, there’s hidden treasure.”

We ran up a hill where a big tree had fallen over, branches and bracken tucked about. It made a good fort. My brothers settled in with their boy scout knives and began to form swords, bows and arrows while I pretended to work in the kitchen, the old tree stump being my countertop. 

Later, after we moved from Greendale, new memories joined with the old. 

When I see fluttering wings of butterflies, it reminds me of the bright afternoon when, in a moment of quiet serenity, thousands of monarch butterflies blanketed our backyard, resting before they started again on their migration. I can still feel the hot sun on my shoulders as I stared out the back door. I did not move, afraid I might jar them into flight. 

Greendale today

I went to my son’s room where he had just been put down for a nap but he was asleep. I could not rouse him. When I returned to the back door, the butterflies were gone. 

Nostalgia can give you a nice afternoon, away from the thunder of violence that seems to have pervaded our world these days. It’s like a good book. We can escape into past memories for a while but we don’t want to get lost. When the story in the book says, The End, we close the book. We reenter the world of our lives that can be tumultuous, difficult, and far away from our sweet memories. 

~*~*~*~*~

Many thanks to my memories, & WikiCommons, Public Domain

Another Journey down I-70.

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http://books2read.com/A-Master-Passion

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH

Old Main, built in the 1870's

I don’t do much long distance driving these days, except to western Ohio to visit my 90 year old Aunt J. She was the youngest of the 3 girls born to my grandparents. Paradoxically, she was the one always in ill health. She had trichinosis in her 1930’s childhood and barely survived. She had spinal fusion during the 60’s—not an optimum decade for surgical tinkering with the skeleton. Though she’s weak as a kitten—between busted spine and unused muscles—here she still is in 2018—breathing and talking, as full of opinions and stories as she ever was. A  perfect descripton for her would be Shakespeare’s: “though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Aunt Juliet and me, Summer 1945

ALL my female relatives were spacey in one sense or another, so I come by it naturally, but with my aunt, I am just beginning to note a faint slippage between her past and future selves. Aging is such a bitch, as it takes place on many levels, body and brain. Read a Thurber story, one like “The Night the Ghost Got in” and you’ll have a better understanding of what the women in my family are like. 

I’ve done a lot of traveling on I-70 over the last thirty years, always making the “home place” pilgrimage. My arrival brings mixed messages. Yellow Springs is nothing less than an fable I tell myself. Aged nine, I chronicled the tears when I departed, written in a journal while on my way home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. 

In those days, I was little, cute, and good. The college was prospering; the town was eccentric, but still sleepy.

Camping with my grandparents

Physics—or, a driving story 

A long side by side train of vehicles emerging in a long snake as we go west out of Columbus. Construction, construction, on I-70 and on I-71, as well as I-270, causes a pinch point of driver’s stress.  The semis are rolling; FDX with pups, Crete, Hunt, England, and they are not the only ones, the heavy equipment long bed, except for some big chains, want to run back for the next load at 75, and a whole bunch of what I am told are called by the professionals “Roller Skates” are out there, driving like fools, a few potential dotards beside me. I--like 70% of us, I think I recently read--imagine ourselves to be "above-average"drivers. I know I'm a pretty good one, especially at defensive driving--after all, I learned to drive in Massachusetts...

 Other than the truckers, the rest are “kids” which is now, in my book, anyone under 50. Of course, the real kids, the backwards hat twenty-somethings—both male and female—can be a real problem. A couple of them in a beat up black Japanese something or other—maybe a ten year old Civic—decided that the tiny crack between a semi and the aforesaid heavy equipment long bed would be a good spot to wedge themseleves into . 

Maybe they were playing automobile roulette, or maybe they thought they were still in the video game they’d been playing earlier, the one which automatically resets the players at “start” after you die. I, at 73, have much less faith in this kind of magical thinking, so, instinctively—I was two cars back but traveling the inside lane so I had a sight line—well, I tapped my breaks, just to tune up the guys behind me. People always follow too close. A second later, the following truck hit his. 

I don’t know if the trucker screamed at the dopes who’d just asked him to perform a stock car racing kind of miracle in order to keep them alive—this, while he was just out there at 9:30 a.m. on a Monday, trying to have a decent day in the office. I prayed we all would have a decent day, and cast an eye to the road's shoulder.

 Fortunately, around Columbus is flat as a pancake, even beside the sculpted vandalism of an interstate. Flat, no big trees, no immediate barbed wire—good! To my great relief—and I don’t think I was the only one—though, nothing happened. The truck slowed, the Civic squeezed into the spot, no one touched anyone--and a good thing, too, at 75 mph.  We and the backwards hats were spared one of those hard, mean life-changing lessons about PHYSICS. 

Yellow Springs Bumper Sticker: 1.9 square miles surrounded by Reality.

Mr. Eko

The Sixties landed and never took off from this town (my hometown) in a sometimes less than pleasant way. Some things delight me, the glittery, slight sinister pipe, t-shirt & poster shops, the book store—the fabulous Dark Star--the import and antique/junk/clothing shops, the deli, little restaurants, and Tom’s small, yet incredible grocery store, full of local, organic free-range everything.

It’s the attitude of the visitors, and of many of downtown folks that grates. Some towns have drunks, and YS has always had a few. Over the years, the town also acquired the tattooed/pierced owners of lunging Akitas, the gray-disreputable chronic cafe table hogs, all of them scattering cigarette butts and dog poop indiscriminately.  I mean, you can be tattooed and pierced and have green or orange hair—no problem —just be polite and keep your butts in your pocket if you can't find an ashtray. Smile and say hello! After all, isn’t engagement the whole point of the sidewalk café sitter? And don’t let your Akita or Pitty bite me in the leg –or more to the point—the leg of my aged aunt -- as we pass by.

There’s the 21^st Century too, to contend with. The cell phone users who blindly crowd others off the sidewalk, or insist that everyone needs to listen to their very important conversation, those texting behind the wheel who can barely operate the vehicle because they are busy talking, the jay walking scofflaws--there are a plethora-- who don’t use the many well-marked crosswalks.

The big semis  who are forced to drive through on State Route 68, must really, really hate this once unremarkable small midwest town.  

~~Juliet Waldron

Fly Away Snow Goose, in the Canadian Historical Brides series

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Chocolate and Oranges...by Sheila Claydon

No, I'm not talking about Christmas, although I certainly hope to enjoy my fair share of chocolate plus an orange or two over the festive season. Instead I am following through on  last month's blog A letter to remind us, which is about WW2 and how much we owe to everyone who lived through it.

Thanks to an conversation I had earlier today, I unexpectedly found myself thinking about my very early childhood. I was born in Southampton, England, at the very end of the war. It was, and still is, a very busy Port which, during the 1940s, was a starting point for troop ships, supply convoys and destroyers. Consequently it was regularly bombed throughout the war, and although the devastation of people's ruined lives had been cleared away long before I was old enough to be conscious of it, I can clearly remember the gaps, like missing teeth, in row upon row of houses. I remember, too, the 'wreck', a large grassy field with a huge dip in its centre that my friends and I used to slip and side down, shrieking with laughter and covering ourselves with a reddish dust, never for a moment realising our playground was the result of an exploded bomb, and that there had once been houses on our 'field.'

I didn't know either, that the wood yard opposite my grandmother's house was a yard only because a bomb had flattened all the houses that had once stood there, at the same time it had blown all the windows our of my grandmother's house. I even thought the dark cupboard under her stairs was exciting and liked to crawl inside, never knowing until much later that she and my mother, then a teenager, had spent many terrifying nights sleeping there when all the men of the house were away fighting.

I guess it is understandable that a war torn generation doesn't want to remember the horrors they have been through or talk about them to their children. Instead they need to create new memories and look forward, so my early childhood memories are mostly good ones, and among them are some real treasures. One of the best involves chocolate and oranges...which is where we came in!

Although my maternal grandfather had a terrible war sailing backwards and forwards across the Atlantic in supply convoys until his ship was eventually torpedoed, to me, as a little girl, he was neither a hero nor someone with dreadful memories. Instead he was a smiley, white-haired granddad, who put on a smart uniform every Thursday morning and went to the Port to help organize a ship's turnaround. I loved trying on his peaked cap and looking at his shiny medals, but by far the most important part of the day was when he came home. On Thursdays, instead of using his key he always knocked the door, and it was my job to open it. (I'm sure he must have unlocked it and clicked it open before he knocked because at only three or four years old I was far too small to do it by myself). Then, before he stepped into the house, I had to choose which of his pockets held a surprise. I never got it wrong...a small bar of chocolate, an orange, a banana.  The excitement is with me still and of course I was too young to realise that every pocket was a winner! Nor did I know how lucky I was to have a grandfather whose semi-retired job meant he was able to bring home such treats. I didn't know that chocolate and those oranges had travelled thousands of miles across the sea or that few other children would taste them for several more years.  

There are other memories too. One is of being sent to the shop next door to buy a bag of broken biscuits. This was much better than choosing one particular sort. Instead there was the joy of dipping into the bag and never being sure what would come out. Half a custard cream, a chipped ginger snap, or, if I was lucky, something with chocolate on it. The cakes were delicious too, despite rations being short. My grandmother always cooked from scratch and there was never enough sugar for icing, but even so I've never again tasted a Victoria sponge as good as hers.

I didn't know shelling peas was a chore either, or picking gooseberries, or pulling carrots. I thought they were just things  I did because I loved how my mother cooked them, the same as I thought going to the library every week was because I liked to read, not because there was no spare money to buy books except at Christmas or birthday.

So that's another debt I owe to my parents and grandparents, and I am sure there are many others who feel the same. I was allowed to grow up without any of their memories of those terrible years of war shadowing my childhood. To me, until I was much older, all I learned were the popular songs they had sung and the strange nicknames of the people they had once lived and worked with. And my favorite dress for a very long time was an Royal Airforce blue pinafore embroidered around the bib with bright pink chain stitch. To me it wasn't a remake of my mother's WRAF uniform skirt, it was a lovely dress, a Christmas present lovingly made...cut out by my father and sewn by my mother.

The ice-cream and the bread might have been rubbish in those early years after the war, and for years to come, but I barely noticed because I had the chocolate and the oranges as well as a whole lot of other things besides. So thank you Mum and Dad, and thank you all those other adults who made sure I and my friends had a shadow-free childhood. It's taken me until now to really understand.

Mending Jodie's Heart (pictured above) is the first book of my When Paths Meet trilogy and as well as a romance it is a story of the sacrifice and love that is needed to raise a child. Books 2 and 3 continue this theme although none of the heroines were as lucky as me. You can find them at:

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I  also have a website where I write an occasional blog and I can be found on facebook  and twitter

Song of a Whip-Poor-Will

by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Louis Agassiz Fuertes - Birds of New York 

I’ve never ceased being amazed at how a sound, a smell, or an image can set off a chain of memories. Often these are deep-seated, long forgotten memories tucked away among recollections from earliest childhood. Sure, there are photographs stored in boxes or old slides whose colors have faded that I’ll take out and once in a blue moon to share with family, or scan to preserve for the future. But every so often, something totally unexpected tickles a nerve, stimulating the mind to take a trip back in time.

Take the song of the Eastern whip-poor-will, for example. Too many years had passed since I last heard its distinctive call, making for a completely unexpected moment of nostalgia one late spring evening about a year ago. Well over sixty years, to be precise. 

I was a city kid. We lived in a one bedroom apartment in The Bronx—my mom, dad, two-year-old sister, and I. Some years earlier, my paternal grandfather had bought a property in Plattekill, NY, a picturesque spot in Ulster County on the Hudson River, with acres of land on which stood an old and sizeable stone and clapboard Dutch farmhouse. It was to have been Grandpa Ben’s retirement home, but a massive heart attack felled him at the age of 48, a month after my sister was born. Subsequently, the house, along with its abundance of trees and assorted wildlife reverted to my dad, his sister and my grandmother. I don’t remember much of my life before the summer after I turned three. But that summer was memorable.

As a toddler my world consisted of our small one bedroom apartment on University Avenue, where a grassy esplanade down the center of the street held groups of benches for sitting and shooting the breeze on sunny days in all seasons; a small playground with swings and seesaws, and a movie theater were within walking distance. Family and friends all lived close by. But starting some time after I turned two, we began spending our summers at the house in Plattekill. 

My sister and me (right) in the haystack, circa 1954

Even now I remember how much I loved the place, although I can’t really visualize much of it, and after a futile search for it online, I wonder if it’s still standing. There was a certain smell, of pine and cedar, the coolness in the shadows of wide elms and oaks, from one of which my father hung a tire on a rope from a hefty bough for us—and the many cousins who came from the city in an endless stream—to swing on.  We had a beagle, Taffy Lou, who, it seemed, had a litter of fat, fluffy puppies every summer—brown ones, black ones, spotted ones…. Her beau was a neighbor dog named Fido (no kidding), who came to visit alone or with his owner, a freckle-faced girl named Terry, who was about seven or eight. Down the country road was a dairy farm. I had a particular favorite among the cows; her name was Elsie (or at least that was what I called her).

On warm summer evenings, we’d sit outside in the newly mown grass on folding chairs with striped canvas slings and watch what seemed like hundreds of rabbits hopping along the edge of a copse of tall trees at the edge of the property. We had a small tractor that one of my older boy cousins liked to drive over the acres of tall grass, with me and his younger brother dangling our legs off the back platform. Afterwards, we’d rake up the cuttings and build a gigantic haystack, which provided hours of jumping and burrowing fun. Our next door neighbors behind a palisade fence were a family who owned the Freihoffer Baking Co. They had an apple orchard, and by summer’s end, there were more apples than they could shake a stick at. Around this time, the sweet cinnamon aroma of simmering apple sauce and apple pies in the oven filled the place. 

And, of course, there were whip-poor-wills. Every evening and well into the night, I'd stay awake listening. A kid from The Bronx never heard such a thing.

After my family sold the house following the summer of my fourth year (because we had outgrown the small apartment with the birth of yet another sister), we moved from The Bronx to Long Island. I remember being sad over not having the old house to summer in anymore. Even the thought of having grass and trees (and bugs) year-round was of little consolation. And for the next 12 years, I didn't hear a single whip-poor-will. Not even once. Then, after we moved again when I turned 16, this time to Connecticut, the whip-poor-will and its singular sound had faded from my consciousness.

My dad was glad of the moves. He owned a printing company in The Bronx and during those summers in Plattekill, he’d stay in the city and join us for weekends. I missed him, just as years later I’d wait up for him and worry on especially snowy nights while he made his onerous nightly commute home.

Which brings me back to that elusive bird. Sadly, its numbers are in decline, and as I mentioned, I hadn't heard one in over half a century. So, you could say, I was exuberant on that evening in early June last summer when its unmistakable warble broke the settling silence in the wooded area near my house. It was probably just passing through, for its call was unusually brief, and I haven’t heard it since. But in the moments following, I was transported back to a Friday night long ago, when, unable to stay awake long enough to greet my dad following his weekly commute, I fell asleep. The bird’s song was a sweet reminder of that night and of my dad, all of about 29 at the time, sitting at my bedside, gently waking his sleeping child with the song she had grown to love over a few short, unforgettable summers.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh's Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan's Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy's books are available in a variety of e-book formats and in paperback from Amazon and other online retailers, as well as a bookstore near you.