Monthly Archives: April 2019

Sweet Tooth

I didn’t get it from any stranger.  My mother has the same addiction. She joneses for Peppermint Paddies. It started innocently enough. At first, I would nosh on a bag of shredded coconut or a miniature box of raisins on our front steps. You know, the ones I’m talking about, the one with the dark-haired little girl with the bonnet on her head. It wasn’t long before that didn’t do the trick for me. I needed more, better, sweeter.

Finally, the day arrived when my mother decided I was old enough to learn how to cross the street. “Susie, take my hand and watch what I do, and cross the street with me. Don’t let go of my hand.

After we practiced this a few times, she felt I was ready to take my maiden flight alone. “Remember what I said: look both ways, look right, then left, then right again. Then cross the street when you are sure there isn’t any traffic coming in either direction.”

“Ok Mom, I know how to do it, you don’t have to watch me anymore,” I assured her.

Finally, I was free to roam not just my side of the street but everywhere in town. Maple Shade was mine for the taking. My first destination was Shucks. I heard all about it from my older sisters, Eileen, and Betty who worked there on their school lunch breaks.

When all the other students from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Elementary School would go home for lunch, they would head around the corner to work for an hour at Shucks. They made milkshakes, malted milk, and hoagies.

In exchange, they would get a free lunch, anything they chose to eat. They were always talking about it, saying how all the cool kids in town went there after school, eat French fries, and dance to the 45’s on the Jukebox.

Well, I had a nickel that was just burning a hole in my pocket. No sooner had my mother watched me cross the street than I was off and running. I took a shortcut through Mrs. McFarland’s yard. She was out in her yard, as usual, weeding her garden.

“Hello, Susie, how are you doing today? Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. McFarland, I’m just going around the corner.”

Mrs. McFarland is a nice lady. And sometimes my friend Joan and I sit on her garden swing and play dolls. She would bring out her doll from when she was a little girl to show us. It looked really, really old. It had a face made from china and had real hair.

Other times, she would take me for a walk on her garden path and tell me the names of all her flowers, explaining the special care each flower needed. Her favorite was her tulips, which she explained had come from some far-away place called Holland. She told me how she had to dig them up each summer and replant them the next year. “Bye. Mrs. McFarland, I’ll see you later.” And I was off and running again.

As I rounded the corner to Main Street, I saw my friend Joanie’s father driving down the street and waved at him. He pulled over to the curb and rolled down the window. “Hello, Susie, what are you up to? Does your mother know that you crossed the street?”

“Yes, you know I’m not a little kid anymore!”

“Alright, be careful when you’re crossing on the way back.” I was almost home free. I came up to the door, as two teenagers walked out, I ran in. They laughed and said, “Look out where you’re going kid!”

Candy from the 1950s &n60’s

There it was. I couldn’t believe it, the holy grail of candy counters. I stood before it, transfixed by the amazing assortment of candy. There were red-hot dollars, dots, ribbon candy, licorice, red and black gumdrops, wax lips, and every kind of chocolate candy imaginable. I stood there, with my mouth watering, almost immobilized by the decision that lay ahead of me. A lady came up to the counter,” Hi dear, what can I do for you?”

I said,” Well, I have a nickel, and I want to buy some candy.”

“You do, well you just take your time and decide which ones you want. It’s penny candy, so you can get five pieces of candy for a nickel.”

“I want a licorice whip and a red-hot dollar, bubble gum, dots, and oh yeah, I want wax lips.” She took a small paper bag and put my booty in one at a time.

“Here you go, sweetie. Now, don’t eat it all at once.” And she handed it over to me.

“Thanks,” I said as I was walking towards the door. Two girls walked in, but I was too busy looking in the bag to notice that it was my friends Helen and Teresa from school.

“Hi,” they both said at once to me. I mumbled hello and took off for my house. I couldn’t wait to get my first taste.

After that first bag, I couldn’t stop thinking about getting more, but the problem was I didn’t have any money. Then, I came up with the idea of collecting the coins from the church floor that people dropped during Mass on Sunday.

And so that’s what I do. Every Sunday afternoon after church, I walk up and down between the pews collecting money. I’ve become a regular customer at Shucks’. I wish I could tell you that I feel guilty, but I can’t. Life has never been sweeter!

For Whom The Bell Tolls

I’m in a deep Temazepam-induced sleep. I have been experiencing a bout of insomnia for the past several months. I hear a relentless ringing in the distance. The sound becomes part of my dream.

In my dream, I’m forced to return to work at Dr. Wozniak’s office, answering phone calls. I worked there while I was in high school and until I was twenty-one. For some unknown reason, forty years later, I’m still dreaming about working there. I have had countless jobs since that first job, but the dream continues.

Finally, I emerge from the foggy depths of my dreamland and realize that the ringing is coming from my phone, not from deep within my subconscious. I stagger somewhat haphazardly over to the phone. I trip over my slippers and stub my toe.

“Hello, hello, do you know what time it is? Who is this? What do you want?”

“You don’t know me, but I know you. I know where you live. I know that you drive an old white Subaru Wagon. I know you drove through the light at the intersection at William Dalton Boulevard last Tuesday, the fifteenth of October. I saw what you had in the back of your wagon. Unless you meet with me and give me $10,000 dollars, I’m going to tell the police all about it. I have pictures of your car and your tags.”

“What in the world are you talking about? You must be some nut. Do not call me again. I’ll call the police and tell them that you’re trying to extort money from me.” I hang up the phone and bang it in the cradle about ten times for good measure.

I stumble back to bed, managing to stub my big toe once again. I curse up a storm. SOB I moan, as I rub my poor beleaguered toe. I throw myself back into bed and pull the covers over my head. I tightly close my eyes and try to will myself back to sleep. Nothing. Sleep does not visit me. I’m reluctant to take another sleeping pill.

I‘ll be a mess tomorrow if I do. I have a busy day tomorrow, including an appointment with the accountant, which I have been dreading. I know that when he goes over my accounts, I’m going to owe a pretty chunk of change to Old Uncle Sam’s coffers.

The phone conversation keeps running through my mind as if it is on a memory loop. I’m the first person to acknowledge that I have obsessive-compulsive thoughts. Thoughts I have difficulty controlling.

What in the world was this guy talking about? What does he think he saw in my car? He had described my car, but I’m sure plenty of old Subaru Wagons are still on the roads. I try to recall the fifteenth of October. I just can’t. I‘ll have to check my calendar tomorrow. I would do it right now if my brain weren’t in a complete fog. I flip on the lamp and write a note on the pad. I keep it there to record my random thoughts and insights in the wee hours. Unfortunately, my handwriting, under the best circumstances, looks like a chicken scratch.

After tossing and turning for three hours. I admit to myself I won’t go back to sleep this night. I dangle my legs over the side of the bed and push my feet into my bedraggled slippers. They are on the wrong feet. I leave them that way.

I make my way downstairs, almost tripping over my cat, Hilda.  Sometimes, I think she might have a homicidal side to her personality. She has repeatedly caused or nearly caused me to fall down the steps.

I turn on the lights as I pass through the living room, the dining room, and finally into my office. I sit down at my desk, turn on my computer, and look at my calendar. On the fifteenth of October, I taught a class on haircutting at the main J.C. Penny’s hair salon. Huh? What in the world does he think he saw? What did I have in the back of the car?”

I think about it for about two minutes. It comes to me. I had the mannequin heads piled up in my back seat. My students had practiced a haircut and blowout on them. I took them home in my car so I could return them to the main office the next day. I sit there for a moment and start laughing out loud. What did this guy think I was some kind of serial killer? Did he think that I kept heads as souvenirs?

The phone rings again. It is now almost four o’clock in the morning.

“Hello.”

“Alright, lady, now you have had time to consider the situation you are in. When do I get my money? If you don’t give it to me tomorrow, I will start adding interest to it.”

“Well, buddy, I’ll tell you where you can go. I didn’t do anything wrong. So, feel free to report it to the police along with the pictures. Then you can go straight to hell.”

I slam down the phone. I start laughing again, a real belly laugh. I get up, turn out the lights, walk back up to my bedroom, and fall asleep. I haven’t had any trouble sleeping since then. I sleep like a newborn baby. No more Temazepam for me.

What If?

What if?

For anyone who is reading this, you’re so welcome. Today I’ll be writing about creativity. For me it is the driving force in my life. And it always has been as far back as I can remember. I was a shy child, quiet and introspective. But I had a vivid and active imagination.

I have a fraternal twin, she was outgoing. Most people would question why are these two so different? They are the same ages, exposed to the same environment and family. Both spent twelve years incarcerated in the Catholic School. We had to wear uniforms including the same shoes. All methods to make students conform, act the same, lose all personality and originality. Methods to control children’s behaviors.

From the outside it looked like I was conforming, fitting, but I wasn’t. My imagination knew no bounds. I made up stories and tell them to anyone who will listen. I would draw pictures of animals and insects, and flowers who could talk. I was a daydreamer. I made things out of odds and ends that I found in my house and out in the yard. I would run in the house and say, “Mom, Dad look what I made.”

The question I asked myself as a child was “What if…” What if the sky wasn’t blue and white? What if I could fly like a bird? What if I could talk to animals and we could understand what they were saying and thinking?

But the real question is why aren’t all people more creative? Why isn’t creativity supported? Why is creativity inhibited in children? People who think outside the box are the people that become scientist, engineers, artist, writers, innovators, musicians, poets.

By putting two dissimilar things together, two unrelated things you can come up with new ideas, new inventions. Think about it. Think about how different your life would be if you let your imagination go and not stifle it. Open yourself up to a new way of thinking and being in the world. What if birds decided to float down to the earth instead of flying,

UMBRELLA BIRDS by Susan A. Culver

 

Good morning Write On followers, thanks so much to those who read my new blog story, MILLIES’S BENCH. If  you haven’t read it yet, please do. And if you missed any of my past stories. I would love if you read some of those. Please leave a comment and share on Social Media. Thanks so much, Susan.

Anyone who knows me even for a short time realizes that I’m an animal lover through and through. I have never met any kind of animal that I didn’t come to love with all my heart. From lizards, I had one whose name was Lenard, after Lenard Skynard. Oh, don’t let me get started with cats, a life time love affair. I have two at present. Sloopy a Scottish Fold, and Eve, a tuxedo cat. Sloopy just celebrated his 25th birthday, And Eve is nineteen.

I thought today I might share some pictures of the over thirty birds I take care of as a volunteer at ANIMAL EDVENTURE in Coats, NC. It is an animal sanctuary. If you live in the area you are more than welcome to come visit the more than 200 animals that live there.   The beautiful Cockatoo below is Montana. It took almost a year for Montana to “like” me. But, now we are friends. This beautiful parrot is Bodie, he is a Macaw. He lives with another parrot  called Moses. They have a love, hate relationship.

Over time, I would love to share more of my animal friends at ANIMAL EDVENTURE. This includes on of my best buddies Monroe a Brown Lemur,  and Leona another Lemur who is blind. A real sweetheart.

 

 

 

 

 

Millie’s Bench

 

Millie anxiously pushes her cart toward the park. The gates will be opening in a few minutes. She’s always afraid that someone will claim her bench before she gets there.  No one ever has. She’s been coming to Fairmount Park for many years. She thinks of it as her home.

Well, if the truth be told, she doesn’t have a home anymore. She has been homeless since she lost her mother, her job, and her childhood home. She did live in her car for over a year until it stopped working. Millie parked it on the street, and after a month, it was towed away. It’s hard to believe, but that was over thirty years ago.

But Millie survives. It’s difficult not to sleep in the same place for more than a couple of days. She knows her way around the city. She knows every nook and cranny. She knows where it’s safe and where the police will leave you alone as long as you don’t cause any trouble, as long as you don’t act too crazy or smell too bad.

It’s impossible to stay clean when you live on the street. Few places have open bathrooms during the day. She would go in when it wasn’t too busy. And clean her face and all the places people can see and some of the ones they can’t. But would start smelling after a while.

Several times a year, she would go to one of the shelters for a couple of days just so she could take a shower, wash her hair and sleep in a clean bed. The shelters aren’t safe. People will steal the fillings out of your teeth if you aren’t careful. You can’t trust anyone, especially the ones who act like they’re your friends.

She tries not to call attention to herself in any way. She tries her best to be invisible. Millie gets a small check from the government. It’s delivered to a postal box. There’s a guy she knows who will cash the checks for a small fee. She’s cautious with her money and never wastes anything.

She knows where to get free food when she runs out of food stamps. Sometimes it’s a soup kitchen. Millie knows when the restaurants put leftovers in the dumpsters. It’s a crime how much food is wasted.

She keeps all her worldly belongings in her cart. She never goes anywhere without it. She brings the memories of her past with her wherever she goes. In that cart are the remnants of the life and person she used to be before she became invisible.

Oh, the gates are opening. Millie nods her head at the guard and heads toward her bench. Good, no one is there. Millie spends her day here, from first thing in the morning until they lock the gates at night.

This is her life now. She imagines nothing, nothing beyond sitting on this bench every day for the rest of her life. One day someone will find her still body. But Millie’s soul will have finally soared away, or perhaps just slipped away into oblivion. Who knows, Millie doesn’t.

She moves her cart next to the bench and looks at her belongings, and sighs. But then she sits down, takes a deep breath, and looks all around. She feels blessed, that’s right blessed, lucky to spend all her waking hours here in this beautiful and serene place.

Spring is her favorite time in the park, breathing in the fragrance of the flowering trees, the Lilac bushes. The perfume wafts through the air, surrounding her, lifting her spirit with it.

She watches young mothers with their babies and the toddlers running around the fountain. She watches the children grow up and become adults bringing their babies to the park. It’s in this way she still feels connected to the life that goes on around her. Although she doesn’t participate in the pageantry of life, she observes it and remembers it.

She feels as if she plays the most essential part of all. She is the witness to everything beautiful and everything that isn’t. She’s a historian that stands outside and looks in on everything that goes on and makes a note of it.

Where would the world be without the keepers of the history of the world? Why it would be forgotten, unnoticed. It gives her life meaning and purpose, and value. Yes, she is invisible to those around her, but she is essential, just as the air is invisible, but nothing would survive without it.

The Stoop

“Jilly go outside and play. Stop moping around the house.”

Jilly flops down on the top step of the porch and looks up and down the street. There isn’t anyone in sight.

The boarded windows of the house across the street are tagged with graffiti. Broken bottles, beer cans, and trash are strewn across the overgrown, dead lawn in the front yard. The steps are covered with yellowed newspapers in various stages of decay. Unopened mail tumbles out of the rusty mailbox. The sad truth is it isn’t the only house on the block that looks abandoned. This neighborhood is the poster child for urban blight.

Jilly isn’t shocked or disturbed by the condition of the neighborhood. She has grown up in similar neighborhoods, some worse than this one. This is her third foster placement in the last year. She had to be moved here because her last foster mother overdosed and was taken away in an ambulance.

Victorian home

Sadly, this isn’t the first experience that Jilly had with junky foster parents. It was just the latest edition to a long line of looser adults that promised redemption but delivered empty promises.

Jilly’s glad that she had finished the second grade before being moved to this new place. Unfortunately, now she doesn’t know any of the kids in this neighborhood because she didn’t attend school here. It was a Catch-22 situation.

Something is tickling her foot. She looks down to discover a black ant marching across her feet and into a crack between the bricks on the steps. The ant is soon followed by several more of his six-legged comrades.

She watches the ants as they hurry along the step and over to a discarded crust of bread. Each one of the ants picks up an immense portion of the crust and carries it just as quickly back to the crack in the step and down into their tunnel.

Jilly is so entranced by the activity of ants she doesn’t notice a cat that struts on the sidewalk in front of the house and down the street. Until he lets out a loud yowl as he passes the rusted gate.

She looks up and sees him. He’s staring right at her as he yowls again. It almost seems as if he’s calling out to her. She reluctantly leaves the ants to go and meet the cat.

She wrenches open the rusty gate and steps onto the sidewalk. Jilly leans down and scratches his head. She notices that the cat has scars and is missing patches of fur from his face and all the way down to his long-broken tail.

“Hi, kitty, what’s your name? My name is Jilly. I just moved here yesterday. Where do you live?”

The cat swishes his tail back and forth and continues his walk down the street. He looks back at Jilly one last time as he moves forward. Jilly calls out, “wait, wait for me.”

The cat walks past two houses and then stops in front of a big old house that has a wide wrap-around porch in front. It’s the only house on the block that looks as if someone cares about it.

The grass is cut and there isn’t any trash in the yard. There are flowers growing all along the white picket fence that surrounds the front yard. There’s an arbor that’s covered in climbing red roses. It smells like heaven.

Jilly is startled when the cat meows again loudly. A very old woman comes to the door. She’s wearing a long-flowered dress and has white hair pulled tightly back in a bun.

“Good morning Frank. I’ll be right out. Sorry I overslept this morning.”

Jilly looks around the yard she can’t believe how beautiful it is. How different from all the other houses and yards on the street. She looks over at the cat and he’s rolling on the grass. Then he starts grooming himself. He licks his paws and then washes his face and whiskers.

Jilly laughs at him. “So, your name is Frank.” Jilly walks over to Frank. And he allows her to stroke his head and scratch behind his ears.

The old woman makes her way carefully down the porch steps holding onto the railing with one hand with a dish in the other. “Well, who might you be? I see you’ve made friends with Frank. He’s a wonderful friend to have. He and I have known each other for many years.”

“Hi, my name is Jilly. I just moved into the house down the street. The one on the corner with the old fence around it.”

“Did you, and how do you like living there?”

“Like living there? Well, I don’t know. I just moved here a couple of days ago. I guess it’s all right. I have my own bed this time. And Mrs. P that’s the foster mom hasn’t yelled at me or hit me so far. And she cooks things besides macaroni and cheese out of the box. So that’s better than the last place I lived in. And I don’t think she’s a doper. So that’s good too I guess.”

“Oh, I see, well it’s nice to meet you, Jilly. And how did you meet my friend Frank here?”

“Well I was just sitting on the step watching the ants and he came walking by. He called out to me to follow him. And here I am.”

“Well Jilly, I’m so happy Frank brought you over for a visit. I’m very pleased to meet you. My name is Mrs. McFarland. Would you like to come to sit up on the porch and have some lemonade and cookies? I just made them and was about to have my afternoon snack?”

“Cookies, yes I would love some.”

“Well, Jilly has a seat. Let me give Frank his lunch and then I’ll go get our snack. You can sit right there at the rattan table and chairs. I’ll be right back.”

Jilly watches as Mrs. McFarland puts Frank’s dish on the sidewalk and whispers something in his ear. Then she stands upright and walks back to the steps and into the house. As she opens the screen door she looks over at Jilly and gives her a warm smile. “I’ll be right back Jilly.”

Jilly watches the door afraid that Mrs. McFarland won’t come back out again but then she hears her say, “Jilly dear could you open the door for me?”

Jilly jumps up so quickly she almost topples the rattan chair. She pulls open the screen door and holds it back. She peeks into the house and sees a beautiful old piano and overstuffed chairs and a red velvet couch. There’s a wonderful glass lamp next to it that has pansies painted on the lampshade. Jilly has never seen such a place in her life.

“Well, here we go Jilly. Have a seat, I hope you like these cookies. They’re chocolate chip with coconut.  And here my dear is the fresh lemonade, enjoy.”

Jilly looks down at the cookies and the frosted lemonade glass. She feels like she’s died and gone to heaven. She doesn’t ever remember having homemade cookies before. She takes one bite. It’s so delicious she can’t help but eat the whole cookie.

“Jilly dear, slow down. We have all the time in the world. Why don’t you tell me about yourself? I would love to know all about you.”

“You would?” Jilly can hardly believe her ears. No one has ever asked her anything about herself or listened when she tried to tell them anything. As Jilly starts telling Mrs. McFarland about the second grade Frank comes up on the porch and lies down next to Jilly’s feet.

Jilly leans down and pats his head as if she has been doing it all her life. She can hear Frank purring softly. She looks over at Mrs. McFarland and she has a sweet smile on her face. Jilly is finally here, she has found her home.

“Oh, these cookies are the best I’ve ever had. Can I have more lemonade?”

“Of course, you can.” Mrs. McFarland sits back in her chair and says softly,” continue on with what you were saying, Jilly.”