Memories
The GSV Occasional Journal: November 2004, Volume 1, Issue 3
T’was A Grand Irish Wake
By Mary McDonnell, CT-112
It was a cold night in Boston
the winter of 1959. My husband
Gerry was in Okinawa on an
unaccompanied tour. He was
refused leave for his grandmother’s death so I filled in the
best I could, helping his mother,
aunt and uncle to greet the long
lines of neighbors and friends.
They were guided to the
house where a large floral
wreath guarded the front door, a
custom in those days to let people know there was a person lying in state inside. In my young
days I remember passing these
wreaths on tip toes holding my
breath lest I make any noise.
This was done out of respect for
the family in mourning.
Grandma made it known that
she wanted to be buried from
her home of sixty (60) plus
years, so a dying custom was
revived.
The home was on the second
and third floors of a duplex
house. One entered the enclosed
first floor porch greeted by two
doors. The door on the right led
upstairs that entered in a long
hall. At the end to the right was
the kitchen and beside it the dining room with opened French
doors that allowed one to enter
the living room. To the left was
a door that led to an unheated
porch enclosing the front of the
house. Straight ahead was another door to the living room
where one could see Grandma
laid out in front of the three bay
windows across from the French
doors.
It was in this setting that
people came to pay their respects for two days and nights.
The women filled the rooms
talking in soft voices of
Grandma’s many good deeds.
The men gathered in the kitchen
with Uncle Eric for a toast or
two to Grandma. All went
smoothly until the second night.
The rooms filled up early
that night. So it was decided that
the porch be opened for the
overflow. Uncle Eric was put in
charge of finding a space heater
to ward off the chill on the
porch. In the meantime my two
brothers and sister-in-law arrived. My oldest brother, Bill
and his wife Rita knelt down in
front of the casket to say a
prayer or two while my brother
Charlie stood behind waiting his
turn. I stood in the doorway
leading to the hall watching my
family.
A loud noise erupted from
behind the casket. To everyone’s
surprise and horror the casket
started to tip forward as
Grandma began to slide out.
Real shock set in as a muffled
voice could be heard yelling
“Get me out of here.” It was
then that everyone went into
action. Bill caught Grandma,
Charlie and Rita caught the casket and held on until relief appeared as the men ran from the
kitchen to put everything right
again. What happened?
What happened was that
Uncle Eric wasn’t too steady
plugging the heater in on the
porch. There was no wall socket
on the porch. He opened the
middle bay window behind the
casket to lean in and find the
outlet. You guessed it. He fell in
the window, hit the casket and
yelled “Get me out of here.”
There was dead silence
while hearts pounded, blood
drained from faces, dark hair
turned gray and gray hair turned
white. It took a few moments to
realize what had happened and
to get back to normal as everyone took a deep breath. Then
Grandma was put back together,
none the worse for wear. Uncle
Eric was rescued from his mission with minor bruises and the
heater began warming up the
porch. I think I saw a smile on
Grandma’s face. She had a great
sense of humor.
Grandma’s wake was the
talk of the neighborhood for
years. I’m sure everyone would
agree with me that Grandma had
a grand Irish wake. She would
have loved it.
Moving Day
By Virginia Scott, CS 426
I was eight years old on
moving day. My father had been
the preacher of a small church in
South Carolina and was being
transferred to another church in
North Carolina. He and mother
moved their family of 10 children into the parsonage adjacent
to the church. That afternoon,
mother sent me across the dirt
road to the country store. She
wanted me to buy a loaf of “day
old” bread for dinner. Daddy
thought “day old” was better
than fresh.
In the store I heard two of
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the towns people talking. One of
them said, “Are you going over
to the new preacher’s house tonight?” The other wanted to
know what was going on. The
first man said, “Us church
members are going over to the
parsonage to surprise the
preacher’s family with a BIG
POUNDING.” Well, I didn’t
wait to buy the bread. I just ran
home as fast as my bare feet
would take me and I cried, “Oh,
Mama, Mama, we gotta get outa
town quick cause a bunch of
people are coming over to beat
us all up!” When I told her about
the pounding she laughed and
explained that when a new
preacher comes to town the
church members surprise him
and his family by each bringing
a pound of something to eat.
We children especially enjoyed THAT pounding!
I Waited 85 Years
Charles English, GT402
A lifetime dream to see my
beloved Red Sox win the World
Series was finally realized after
85 years. I was born north of
Boston in 1919, six months after
the Red Sox last won the World
Series. I readily admit being one
of the fanatic fans who believed
“next year” would be “our
year.” I followed the fortunes of
the team through college, World
War II and I recall particularly
the 1975 series when Cardinals
and Red Sox were finalists. Living in Germany where there was
limited access to Armed Forces
TV, we traveled to Bad Toelz in
southern Bavaria to an Officer’s
club with the one TV set. It was
in a bar so our 17-year-old son
had to sit in the doorway, chil-
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dren under 18 being forbidden
bar access. The Sox lost in a
dramatic finish and our son said,
“After this experience, if the
Sox ever reach the World Series,
I promise to take you wherever
the game is played.”
This year when Boston triumphed over the Yankees in the
play-offs, our son gamely tried
to get tickets for Fenway Park:
$5,360 for a pair on e-Bay. So
we waited for the outcome of
the National League play-offs
between St. Louis and Houston,
and he got two tickets for Game
4-front row, upper deck overlooking third base. A sea of
Cardinal Red and Red Sox shirts
and caps dominated the field:
55,000 exuberant fans - - the
smell of autumn, bratwurst and
more--excellent weather and
even a lunar eclipse, close-ups
of the players, tension building
with every pitch, superb pitching, a shut-out -- all the flavors
of our national pastime. Best of
all --our team finally won the
World Series 4 to 0!
We were impressed by the
warm, even affectionate, reception by Cardinal fans as we
walked 12 blocks to our hotel
and we were constantly barraged
with congratulations and “Safe
trip home,” followed by “Our
turn next year.” A dream of a
lifetime in real time --- an unforgettable father-son bonding.
The Good Old Days
By Larry Nichols, OH-306
First, let me say that I am
among the younger residents of
Greenspring Village. Why, I’ve
even thought of starting a “60’s
Club,”. So what sort of memo-
November 2004
ries of The Good Old Days
could I possibly have?
I grew up in a brick farmhouse that was built in 1855.
The lower floor was built into
the side of a hill. Downstairs
consisted of a walk-in cellar, a
“sitting room,” a dining room,
and a kitchen. The downstairs
entrance to the house was a
wooden shed that contained a
gasoline-engine-powered Maytag washing machine
Stairs off the sitting room
led upstairs where there were
three bedrooms, a room that resembled a walk-in closet where
a porcelain chamber pot was
used, and a parlor. Stairs off
the parlor led up to a two-room
attic.
The house had no electricity,
no running water, no telephone
and no bathroom. The only
source of heat was an oilburning stove in the sitting
room. The upstairs was heated
during the winter by opening the
stairway door to let some of the
heat rise from the sitting room.
For lighting, Mother used a
couple kerosene lamps and one
brightly-burning Alladin’s lamp,
which produced light roughly
equivalent to a 25-watt bulb but
which had a very fragile mantle
that quickly burned out and
crumpled. We always went to
bed early!
A wood-burning cook stove
was in the kitchen. Rather than
using wood, we usually burned
corncobs. Corncobs burn very
hot but they burn quickly and it
was necessary to continually
replenish the supply in the stove
and remove the ashes.
Mother also kept two or
three irons on the stove so she
could iron clothes. She would
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use one of the hot irons a minute
or two and then replace it with
another one hot from the stove.
Ironing was a long, slow process. It was hot work, too, because the stove had to be kept
hot.
She also made cottage
cheese on the stove. She had a
large oblong copper kettle that
she filled with milk and kept on
the back of the stove, where the
temperature was warm but not
hot. After a time the milk would
“clabber.” She would then skim
off the clabber, tie it in a cheese
cloth and hang it on the clothes
line outside to drain off the
whey. Voila! Cottage cheese!
Dad would use the whey in the
kettle to feed the livestock.
We got our water from a
windmill located near the house.
All water was carried into the
house in pails. Bath water was
heated on the cook stove. The
bathtub was a galvanized metal
tub about three feet in diameter
and about two feet deep. You
would put a couple inches of
heated water in the bottom and
carefully sit on the sharp edges
of the tub. Daily baths were unheard of!
We had a privy. It was located a short walk from the
house. Going there in the winter
was a chilling experience. We
used mail order catalog pages
and corn cobs instead of toilet
paper. The pages were slick and
the corn cobs were rough.
Dad had 12 milk cows he
milked by hand. A handoperated cream separator was in
the cellar. He put the cream into
large metal cream cans that he
took to town to sell.
Dad farmed with two large
draft horses, Dick and Nell. I
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used to go with him in the field
when he picked corn. Dick and
Nell pulled the wagon and Dad
would pick the corn by hand and
throw it against the bang board
on the wagon to get the ears into
the wagon. Dick and Nell were
so well trained they would go
ahead only when Dad told them
to do so. Corn was used to feed
the chickens and the livestock
and was shelled in a handoperated corn sheller. You put a
few ears in a hopper and turned
a large wheel. The shelled corn
came out one end and the cobs
came out another end. We did a
lot of corn shelling.
Later Dad bought a used
Farmall F-12 steel-studded-tire
tractor. You started it with a
hand crank and it was very
rough riding, but it was a big
improvement over farming with
horses.
Does all of this sound like
The Good Old Days? The truth
is, I look back on those days
with fondness and happy memories.
Icarus Reborn
By Bob Scott, CS 426
There was a time in my career when I was asked to write
speeches for government officials too busy to write their own.
I enjoyed doing that. They had
the public audiences and I got
the opportunity to inform a
larger group of fellow Americans. The subject matter usually
was related to our historic exploration of the “New Frontier” of
space, this was not a difficult
task because I had become an
enthusiastic “space buff” myself. One of the speeches was
entitled “What Earthly Good Is
Space?” The client was the Di-
November 2004
rector of Flight Safety for
NASA, responsible for keeping
our astronauts safe.
A surprising bi-product of
the space programs has been the
intentional resurrection of celebrities, V.I.P. heroes and heroines
from ancient mythology. If these
great performers had signed
contracts with Hollywood agents
or today’s ‘Trial Lawyers”, they
might be owed trillions in residuals. At least we owe them
our gratitude and a respectful
familiarity with their services
rendered to humanity through
the ages.
Think about it! Today we
spend millions just to use the
name of “Nike.” Before ‘Tennis” became so “cool” we used
that name for a family of missiles... Nike Ajax, Nike Zeus
and Nike Hercules. Hercules
could easily have won a giant
share of Olympic Gold and Zeus
rule the world from the top of
his Greek mountain. Remember
what we owe to Atlas? He carried the world on his broad
shoulders. We could use him
now. Titan and Thor could easily counter cruel terrorists. Noone would want to mess with
those guys. No way! We later
enlisted Atlas and Jupiter,
topped with A-bombs, to cool
the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our
astronauts flew to glory in Mercury and Gemini and many more
in Apollo. Their lives depended
on the faithful, versatile satellite,
Agena.
We’ve recently been brought
back down to earth by the photograph of the highly “sophisticated” solar space probe “Genesis” buried in the desert sand,
three Hollywood helicopter stunt
pilots flying aloft to grab the
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parachute, to ease the re-entry
fall, but the chute failed to open.
The capsule’s name was optimistic but not realistic. The “beginning” didn’t have a happy
ending. A scientist explained the
purpose of the priority project:
“Genesis was instrumented to
collect ‘bits of sun, some solar
wind, to identify the building
material of the solar system,
gathering a billion, billion atoms
to study, within a specimen the
size of a few grains of salt,’ a lot
of material to work with” -- methinks the salt has lost its savor.
In a related news item,
someone had recalled mythology --again. The story of young
Icarus, who no longer enjoyed
living in Crete, so he made a
pair of wings of wax and feathers and flew too near the sun.
The wings melted, Icarus fell to
his death in the sea. Icarus
should have called to Apollo,
who knew all about the sun, they
said. His knowledge and his
wisdom have been credited with
guiding and inspiring the
“Golden Age of Greece” that
was worth it’s salt!
Porch Tales
By Dennis Jones, Manager of
Pastoral Ministries
The front porch on the house
where I grew up was as long as
a football field (or, at least it
seemed that long).
Five crooked concrete steps
led down to the sidewalk. On
one side of the front door was a
large window into the living
room; an identical window on
the other side provided light for
the dining room. A ceiling light
over the front door seldom
worked, probably because it was
filled with dead bugs. A four-
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foot-high railing defined the
outer limits of the porch – a
convenient place to set your
lemonade and cookies, and a
great launching pad when we
tried to jump over the bushes
below.
At one time or another, that
porch was a medieval castle, the
steamship Queen Mary, the final
curve at the Indianapolis 500,
the Rose Bowl, Roy Rogers’
ranch, a South African diamond
mine, and the Library of Congress. We planned a deceased
hamster’s funeral on that porch,
performed successful surgery on
a sparrow’s left leg, and baptized an uncooperative neighborhood kid . . . three times. We
boys slept on that porch during
the hot summer nights; we
stockpiled and later threw
snowballs there in the winter.
We hung a big WELCOME
HOME! banner over it when my
dad returned from Wales in
1955. “Welcome” was misspelled.
People in the neighborhood
knew about our front porch.
Some went out of their way to
see it; others, driving slowly by
the house, wondered what kind
of folks lived there. When he
left for the office in the morning,
my dad always sighed deeply,
knowing that his favorite wicker
chair would be transformed into
a submarine or possibly part of
the Eiffel Tower by the time he
returned that evening. Coming
home was both a surprising and
a terrifying experience for him.
My mom was more understanding of our escapades of
make-believe. When she called
us in for lunch, she always gave
us enough time to re-enter the
atmosphere or sail through the
November 2004
Panama Canal. If you asked my
dad, “Where are the boys?”, he
would reply: “On the porch.”
Ask my mom the same question,
and you would hear: “The last I
saw of them, they were headed
for Denver.”
Imagination was the greatest thing God invented since
sliced bread. All you had to do
from day to day was agree what
the front porch would become;
and, lo and behold, it did! From
chaos God created the things of
this earth; and from the things of
this earth found in a small town
in Ohio, we created chaos. And
it was good!
I shared some of these
“porch tales” with my girls
when they were small, wondering if a deck-and-patio orientation would allow their imaginations to wander around to the
front of the house. My credibility was enhanced a bit by their
awareness that Mister Rogers
often spoke to them on TV as he
sat on the railing of his front
porch. And then, one day, I encountered Sarah and two of her
5-year-old co-conspirators
trudging through the dining
room with a suspicious collection of blankets, assorted hand
tools, adhesive tape, cardboard
boxes, and a tin of Band-Aids.
“What’s going on?” I asked,
fearful that they would actually
tell me.
“We’re going out back,”
Sarah replied, “to build a front
porch.”
Editor: Fran Richardson, MG410
Production: Bill Raymond, WC514
And Larry Nichols, OH306
Staff: Our Readers