Reminiscences – Page 3 – The Edge of the Wood

How cold was it back in B.C. (Before Cell)

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 3/7/2014)

A friend told me this week it has been so cold where she lives, kids have been complaining their cell phone keypads have been freezing. They have had to wait until second period before the keys have thawed enough they can be used to text the youngster across the aisle to set a lunch meeting in the school cafeteria.

Being without a working cell phone is rough, but I guess it is all relative. I bet my daughter remembers being unable to satisfactorily explain the necessity of tying up the home phone to talk to friends with whom she had just spent the day at school. Even that was B.C. – Before Cell.

Continue reading How cold was it back in B.C. (Before Cell)

But, Baby, it’s cold outside

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 1/10/2014)

The sun is well up as I write this, and still the temperature has climbed only to plus-two degrees Fahrenheit.

You know it’s cold when even in still air you generate enough wind just by walking to frostbite your forehead as the air flows between your wool stocking cap and your sunglasses. New-fallen snow is dry and fluffy, and squeaks beneath your winter boots or snow tires.

Continue reading But, Baby, it’s cold outside

Starlight in celluloid

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 1/3/2014)

The past week I have largely occupied my time dusting off memories. Literally. Like me, even in a box they collect mold and dust. Unlike me, I can use a soft brush to remove the bulk of the blemishes.

Stacked beside my table are a dozen Carousel trays, most of them full or nearly so, each capable of holding 40, 80 or 140 “slides” – color transparencies recording glimpses of my path to here, including images of Hong Kong mixed with frames of Sicily and Italy and Germany and Thailand, the memories stirred like a marbled cake.

Continue reading Starlight in celluloid

Abraham, Martin and John (and Bobby and George).

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 11/22/2013)

Fifty years ago today, Nov. 22, 1963, I was in Chemistry class, a Junior in high school, when we were called to assembly. We filled the bleachers, and our principal told us President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been killed.

That, we eventually would learn, was only the first of a series of assassinations of national figures.

Continue reading Abraham, Martin and John (and Bobby and George).

Remembering 9-11

Doing the job (Published in the Gettysburg Times, 9/13/2013)

I was crossing Baltimore Street on my way into the Adams County Courthouse when my phone buzzed. It was my spouse calling from work. A second plane had crashed into the Twin Towers.

When she called about the first one, I thought some pilot was going to be very glad he’d died for that mistake. But two was not a mistake.

“We’re at war with someone,” I said, then hung up and made my way to the emergency communications center in the courthouse basement, where I remained the rest of the day, watching an endless loop of passenger jets slicing into the two towers in lower Manhattan, and the towers collapsing on themselves, killing, at that time, untold thousands of office workers. Continue reading Remembering 9-11

Remembering songs I didn’t know I knew

Paul McCartney, I can attest, is alive and quite well. At least, he was Friday night at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.

The Resident Nurse is still singing.

She woke me one night to tell me Sir Paul would be appearing in Washington. Should she get tickets? she asked. From somewhere the other side of total awareness, I must have at least not discouraged the idea.

She woke me a short time later. She had tickets and a hotel reservation. That was two weeks before the show. I think she has not yet had a full night sleep, and now the show was two nights ago. Continue reading Remembering songs I didn’t know I knew

Welcome to Emanon

(First printed in the Gettysburg Times, 7/5/2013)

Life was good for many years in Emanon. Herons and osprey hunted the creek, and people generally enjoyed living here. There was a move to pave Main Street, but a rather vocal group claimed it would just allow drivers to go faster. Better to leave the potholes as sort of inverse speed bumps.

Far and wide, word went out that people in the town were friendly, schools were good, and a place to build a home was, relative to many bigger burgs, affordable. Development firms with offices in several states touted the jobs they would create for local workers who would build new homes for new residents, resulting in new revenue in town coffers from the new residents who bought the new homes. All would be beautiful and prosperous in the quiet rural air of Emanon. Continue reading Welcome to Emanon

Oh! to be a robin at the window

(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 5/17/2013)

The backyard this year is full of birds, more species at one time than I remember. They build nests, lay eggs that turn into young birds, and one day the young are gone. I wonder whether the mom and dad birds find themselves stretched between “get out and make a world” and “there’s still so much you need to learn.”

When our son graduated high school in 1991, he was already 18. He left our home for a few weeks, and came back, and stayed long enough for us to have a few skirmishes about whose castle is this, anyway, now the junior male resident was officially an adult.

One afternoon he was preparing to wash clothes, Continue reading Oh! to be a robin at the window

Carly came with the wine

The waitress recommended a wine, then brought the bottle. I’m pretty good at remembering who people are. I’m not worth a flip at remembering names – at least until I’ve sat down and chatted several times with a person, and then written about them.

We had stopped at our favorite winery in North East, Pa, one to be lauded for its Port – a good Port being sometimes difficult to find, in a vineyard or a storm. After chatting a few minutes with the clerk – an Australian lass whose husband had brought her back to Pennsylvania – we headed for a restaurant at which we had dined on our previous trip. Continue reading Carly came with the wine

Buy fresh, buy healthy, buy local

(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 5/17/2013)

I was visiting the other day when someone acknowledged the strawberries tasted good, but suggested washing them with vinegar to ensure that if there was any insecticide on the berries, its “-cide” was rendered harmless.

There was a time when washing one’s food meant using water to remove the garden dirt. Vinegar was for making pickles and sauerkraut. Mom took the four of us kids to the Pick Your Own strawberry fields, where the farmer at the checkout table threatened to charge mom for the berries we kids had eaten while picking. Unfortunately, he had neglected to weigh us when we entered the field. Continue reading Buy fresh, buy healthy, buy local

Now you see it, now it’s gone

Gettysburg Cyclorama partially demolished. (Originally published in Gettysburg Times, March 15, 2013)

Wednesday, as I write these words, the Cyclorama – the circular enclosure that once housed a 359-foot wrap-around panoramic painting of the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg – is nearly demolished. Housed in a circular building, the artwork created by French artist Paul Philippoteaux in the late 1800s, offered viewers a virtual feeling of the famous battle. (Click the pix for larger views before and after.)

The painting, which had lived in the distinctive building since 1962, has been restored and, in 2008, moved to a new home in the new Gettysburg National Military Park visitor center in 2008. Pile of rubble marks the demolished Cyclorama.

Continue reading Now you see it, now it’s gone

Ode to the little house

I was raised an outdoors kind of guy. Even for that? you ask. Yes, even for that. When I was a lad, the running water was a hand pump about 50 yards in one direction from the kitchen door. It ran faster in winter than summer because if you didn’t hustle in winter it was likely to freeze before you got the pail inside.

The “facilities” were about 100 yards in the other direction, and therein lies the tale.

Continue reading on Rock The Capital …