Memories at 75

Yes, this spring the clock ticked around to where I had to admit time was coming, and had to face facts. Tackle what was to be done with the accumulation of memory keepers. All the boxes, diaries, journals, small totes, filing cabinets, odd “oh yeah” spots of letters, business cards, articles, obituaries, pictures, etc., etc. of not only my 75 years, but my mother and dad’s collections as well.

The trip, I’m finding, is not going to be easy. Certainly no trip of a few weeks. No longer to be passed off lightly as in “Oh, I’ll just set that pile aside,” or perhaps I can do that one later. This is later.

In those odd moments, especially in the evening, when there’s an hour or two before the lids are too heavy, I am finding a great deal of pleasure reading down “the lane.”

I’ve had a terrific life. Been one of the luckiest people I know. Had parents who gave me plenty of freedom growing up. Spent incredible evening hours with next door neighbors Wendell, the famous bird carver, and wife Addie Gilley in their basement where Wendell carved. He, and my mother as well, gave me the inspiration for art and creativity with my hands. The time with dad, a great storyteller in his own right, making his medical rounds and the time we spent fishing and hunting could never be replaced. There were the many students and teachers I met in the several schools attended down the tortuous path to a semblance of a college “degree.” Then from school(s) through Army service, stationing in southern Germany for two years, later teaching school (now there’s one to ponder), renting boats, then building boats for 35 years and the hundreds of associations with customers, suppliers and others at boat shows, it’s been amazing. And here I am, now taking the trip again and I must say, “I’m thoroughly enjoying it.”

As I have undoubtedly written somewhere in scribblings, Mother and I were two of the many thousands alone during the “Big War,” and I know there’ll be a box of letters from Dad when I tackle the 3-drawer filing cabinet of theirs. The first one to surface was a small plastic tote of my letters home from service time. No real particular order, must have scooped them up when we cleaned their house after Dad had passed and Mother had gone to the nursing home. I can just picture her, dementia had set in, reading not only mine but the hundreds she’d never parted with. Here in this tote were brief letters, written in those few quiet moments from basic training, Army Security Agency radio operators school in Lowell, Mass., then from Germany and a tour of duty. I sometimes have to do the literal “pinch myself” to believe I actually wrote that often.

Early 1960’s double ski lift.

Along with the inherited “got to save everything,” I also instigated or kept diaries of special places: the earliest being a “warm bed” ski apartment (two rooms) in a guesthouse in Kitzbuhel, Austria where several of us shared in the monthly rent of $25. Rooms were aptly dubbed “the Womb” as we were “taken into care” by our “womb mother,” “Frau” Tiralla, also mother of some 6 children of her own, whom we plied with PX goodies. We also did turkey dinners, which they’d never experienced, on our Thanksgiving and Christmas days.Turkeys not being a barnyard fowl raised in Europe at that time. Along the way we’d meet various skiers or fellow Americans doing the travel scene who needed a bed. Never really knew who’d be there on any given night, but it was a blast.

Later, when first wife Heidi and I had come back to the states, worked a year, done the college time and were in a safe enough position to afford a ski cabin in Greenville, skiing Squaw Mountain. Owner of this particular one bedroom (two double bunk beds) cabin in Scott Circle was asking the enormous sum of $11,000. So we gave him $9,000 down, balance within the year, and he let me keep the deer rack hanging in the “living room.” Thus was another opportunity for a diary of children Ingrid and Derek growing up on skiis, and again the terrific friends we met there....readers remembering those days will surely recall the honorific “Mayor of Squaw Mountain,” Otis Bacon, and the gallons of hot chocolate dispersed on those sub-zero, wind at 45 knots, January and February days. Skier had only to repeat “Friendly Squaw Mountain” to receive this cup of hands and belly warmer.

Later, as my parents, both golfers, found our cabin on Long Pond here on the “Million Dollar Island” more of a chore to keep up, we purchased it from them. Two days ago I happened to find a picture of dad in 1948, standing on this front porch wearing a double-breasted suitcoat with a wide grin on his face. Took Byron “Byd” Robinson less than 2 months to build the main camp. From notes Dad had written in that particular journal, “Jim Ketchum from Somesville, with a helper, started the fireplace around a ventilator on a Monday morning and by 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, the day after, we built a fire in the new fireplace.” Today would take weeks just to get a permit.

Fun thing is, at age 75, enjoying the hell out of putting words on paper, I’ve got all these boxes of pictures, and memories to sort through that there’s this niggle surfacing for a book(s). I’m just not sure if I’ll live long enough to wade through the memories, the friends, the journals, and the letters to produce anything coherent. I loved it all.

• R E C I P E •

(for a bit of time with the grand-kids on a Saturday afternoon)

ORANGE SQUARES

½ c butter
1 c sifted all-purpose flour
1 T grated orange rind
1 T sugar
2 eggs
2 T flour
½ t baking powder
1 ½ c brown sugar
¼ t salt
½ c ground coconut

Blend together first four ingredients until crumbly. Press into a 9-inch cake pan and bake 10 minutes at 350 deg. Set aside. Break eggs and blend in dry ingredients. Stir in coconut and pour over baked layer. Bake 25 to 30 minutes at 350 deg. Let cool well, cut into squares and enjoy.