Orange - a short mischievous rambling on third grade

No stuff. Just story.
Logan's favorite color for a while was orange.
That reminded me of another little boy who liked orange.
Like everyone else in my first grade class, Peter Hendrickson was issued a box of 8 fat crayons.
He wanted to trade his blue crayon for my orange one.
We didn't trade, but he did manage to negotiate with other kids, and wound up with a majority of his crayons being orange.

Peter was also in my third grade class.  I think I would be embellishing history to claim that he had a favorite orange sweater that year. The sweater I remember could well have been in first grade.

In third grade there was a box in the front of the room where we put book reports. These were not really reports, but rather purple ditto forms that could be completed in five minutes - Title, Author, Main idea.
I don't know if the contest was official, but Peter and I were definitely competing to be the one who had read the most books.  As far as I am concerned, he cheated in a major way by getting chicken pox so that he could stay home and read for days and days.  Ricky McHugh might have been a contender, too, but he only read the skinniest books he could find, so, while annoying, he was hard to take seriously.

Our third grade teacher was Miss Coffin, and I suspect that she was new.  This was long before No Child Left Behind, so there was much more flexibility in the curriculum.
Miss Coffin was taking flying lessons, so her class learned to spell "fuselage" and "aileron" and to label the parts of an airplane on a line drawing.

Also, Miss Coffin mispronounced "mischievous".  She said  mis-CHE-vi-ous.
I have since learned that there has been much discussion of this word, and that she was clearly not the only one who used that pronunciation.  However, I was told at home that this was absolutely not right, and, indeed, on the subject of the extra syllable,  "evidence for the spelling goes back to the 16th century. Our pronunciation files contain modern attestations ranging from dialect speakers to Herbert Hoover. But both the pronunciation and the spelling are still considered nonstandard." (merriam-webster site)

NOTE TO SIBLINGS:  Not nearly as good a tale as "Afaghanstan", I know,but it's all I've got.

We used to sing

Going through a box of musty sheet music, it struck me that we don't sing much any more. 
Many of the pieces have names written on them: Mary Stuck, Mary E Keen, Marjorie Keen, Marjorie Smith, Grace Kwick, Grace K Keen..
Here is just a small part of the contents of that box.
I don't remember anyone actually playing any of these songs on the piano, but I know that both of my parents sang bits of all of them at one time or another - enough that I could probably still sing them.

It isn't that we sang at family picnics and holiday dinners.  It is just that the songs were around, somehow in the collective consciousness.
Maybe this happened because more people were listening to fewer radio stations, so had more songs in common?

I recently mentioned at Karen's house that my friends and I would sing folk songs* at slumber parties, and the response was, "What a weird childhood you had!"    Apparently my children and grandchildren didn't/don't sing on school bus trips, either.  I'm not sure who is weird. 


I'm sure we all sing along with the radio in the car.
Sometimes that tends toward strange, yes.  I make a point of listening for "Maoz Tzur" every Hanukkah, so that I can sing along.   And "Now Is The Month of Maying" reliably shows up on NPR every May 1.  But I also sing along with oldies and the occasional catchy country song, at least when I am alone.

In a slightly different category, maybe, but still in the class of unofficial singing, one of my treasured memories is of the Tower Hill Vocal Ensemble breaking into four-part Christmas carols (and possibly bits of Britten's Ceremony of Carols) while waiting for a table at Howard Johnson's after caroling at unremembered homes.   We were good, so the customers loved it.

Music makes such strong memories.
Tower Hill music might be its own post sometime.


-----------------
* specifically:  Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Lemon Tree.. 
Probably limited to what could be accompanied by two or three chords on our ineptly played guitars.

It's All Yours. 1961. Eighth Grade Operetta

This is the heavily annotated script for our Operetta.  The show was a Really Big Deal for me.
I got to be 'Coordination and Direction', which meant getting out of a lot of classes to go to rehearsals to document blocking decisions, etc.  It also meant staying late at school and going in on Saturdays to work on songs or make stencils and hang out with Mr. B.

It is a subject on which I can bore people to distraction.
At the 25th class reunion, it briefly became a game to try to find something I did not remember about the show. (Not entirely sure it was the 25th.. One of the gatherings at Tepe's that a lot of people attended.)
"What did Dave Conklin do in the Operetta?"
"Dave Conklin was not in our class that year"
"Yes he was! He started in Kindergarten!"
"He was in England for a couple of years.  He was not in the class in 8th grade."

Here is the list of who did what.  Yes, I did re-type it.  The original ditto is really faded.

Obviously, I could go on and on.
I'm proud of knowing the Delaware State Song and being able to add it into the Song of the Underground.  I got to sit with John McDevit in the Gourmet Club scene. I still know all the words to Susie Diver's great song.

I will skip over a rant about the fact that we did not get to have an evening performance (and follow-on party!) because of some scheduling person not paying attention and booking health guru Bonny Pruden to speak at Home and School - or something like that.  We missed out on a party, though.  Not fair.  Wanted that party.

Herewith a bit more of the show.
Feel free to ask me about it.  I'm likely to sing if you do, though.  Be warned.
You can read the whole thing if you want to.  I have scanned all the pages and put them here

Keens sure kept a lot of stuff - 1953 Christmas card

 

I just ran across this card mixed in with completely unrelated papers from 1958.

This is a Christmas Card to me in 1953 from my first grade teacher!

Interesting that it is signed in cursive when we, theoretically, could only read printing.

Her first name was Olive, which I thought was really funny. 

(I did entertain the possibility that the card was from Dorothy Moore, which would have made sense in the 1958 box.  However, this is not Dorothy's writing, and I believe that she would have signed it "Dorothy Moore" and sent it to all three kids, not just me.)

Documentation Mania - 1966 trip

In 1966, the Keens, realizing that there might not be another opportunity for a trip as a family, went to England again.  This time the trip also included Switzerland and France, which we had not visited in 1958.
There is a scrapbook that covers that trip.  Really covers it, but with hardly any commentary or narration. It seems to believe that the stuff tells the story.  Somewhat true.
Of course, there are also lots of pictures - mostly slides - somewhere, too.

I'm just going to put the pages back in the box.  They contain communication with travel agents and Reg Moore about arrangements and some fairly conventional souvenir stuff like programs and postcards.
And more..

Plane tickets over

many Paris Metro tickets

every bit of paper from Hotel InterContinental in Geneva

Movie tickets - American movie with French subtitles

Customs and mailing labels for wool from Scotland

And, perhaps most amazing - 

yes.  ends of film boxes

That's enough.  You get the idea.

If you ever wonder what we had for lunch in Cherbourg the day before we sailed for home you now know where to look.

Hyde Park Hotel, Knightsbridge

The famous Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge.
Today this hotel is the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, a five star establishment.
It was upscale in 1958, too.
My father, Newlin, lived here for the first part of the time he worked on the Hemel Hempsted project 1958-59.
There is a surprising amount of documentation of this time.  Or maybe not so surprising.
At some point, Daddy sent us a brochure with some pictures of the hotel, showing where he ate breakfast...

And here is the breakfast menu.

We also have several weeks worth of itemized bills:

3 pounds for the room, 6 shillings service charge, 9 shillings for breakfast.

By the fall of 1958,  Newlin had moved to a less posh establishment in Kings Langley, close to Hemel Hempsted rather than close to the DuPont office on Jermyn Street in London.

driving parents crazy on car trips

Okay.  Keen car trips.
You can play alphabet.
You can see how many different license plates you can find.
You can play that geography game where you have to name a place that starts with the letter the last name ended with.
You can play Ghost.
OR
You can sing.
You can sing silly songs.
You can sing rounds.

Pretty standard stuff; pretty standard squabbles.

BUT
You can find other things to sing.
I know of someone who said that she and her brother would sing in seconds.  We never did that.
But you can do some mind-bending other things.
Like 
1) Sing a round with everybody singing the same words at the same time while the tune is being sung as a round.  Hard to do.  The more familiar the song, the harder it is.  Difficult for two people to keep going.  Try it with three!

2) Sing the words "George Washington Bridge" to the tune of  the old 'Cranapple Juice Drink' ad, just one syllable after another over and over with no regard for phrasing all the way to the end of the verse.  It actually comes out even. (turns out that the tune is "when you are in love, it's the loveliest time of the year" recorded by Mario Lanza.  Thanks to Newlin for knowing that.)  Not sure why it is more fun to sing the Bridge than the Drink, but it is.
                   *** ----OR ---- ***
This is the one that gets to the listeners the most..
3) Sing a song with the words one syllable off from the tune.  Our specialty was Yankee Doodle.  Just sing 'Yankeekee Doodle" to the first 5 notes and the extra syllable puts you one off for the rest of the song. Takes concentration.  And it doesn't come out even, of course.

Maybe I just had a weird childhood.

There was a Hagstrom trip once in the 80's where we tried to make interesting and long sentences using only 6-letter words.   "Seeing Larry's killer escape, Martha framed George."  "Martha should attend church."  I think this exercise grew out of some Paul project having to do with trying to guess six character passwords.

 

Well Loved Little Rocking Chair

This little upholstered rocker appeared in my life when I was two or three.

I think of it as always being around.
It featured in early Christmas Card pictures.

There was some way we played with it - probably making forts - that involved lying on the floor with the chair upside down over our heads.  I remember this because it was such a shock one day to realize that I was too big to do that anymore.  My shoulders wouldn't fit between the arms.

My kids sat in it, and I am still looking for  more photographic proof of that.I know there are more pictures to find.
Here are Sarah in Grantsburg and Karen in Range.

At some point the chair was reupholstered in blue, and was at the Bon-Keen's.
Amanda and David both sat in it.

Karen and Brian had it for a while for their kids.

 Now it stays at my house.  Waiting for another generation.

What I remember is that it was LOUD

Ran across this program booklet today.
I know that we attended this.  I remember nothing of the displays or demonstrations.
It was a hassle to get there.
It was crowded.
It was the first time I had seen a sign saying "In Case of Fire Dial 999." (not comforting)
It was indoors, so VERY LOUD.
We didn't stay for long.

However, the booklet is full of photographs and short histories, and - especially - advertisements with a military spin.

Piggy Bank

This little guy has been with me since I was in grade school.
He is six inches tall.
I like him because he is just so much cooler than the plain pink four-legged plastic one that preceded him.  Unlike the plastic pig, this one has no plug to take out to empty him.
I remember pictures in books of children taking a hammer to their banks to get to the coins.
Unthinkable in this case.
However, if you are patient, you can stick a table knife into the slot and shake coins around until they line up on the blade and slide out.  Just be sure that you don't fill the pig to capacity, or there will be no space for the knife.
For the record:  He is currently completely empty.

Toll House Cookies and me

 

I can smell chocolate chip cookies just looking at this jar.  It was always visible in the kitchen when we were growing up. I wonder if it was a wedding present to my parents.

Toll House is the only kind of cookie I remember being in it.

This is not a particularly large cookie jar, but then it used to be that a batch of cookies was smaller than we think of today.  A bag of chocolate chips was only 6 ounces.

Cookies - especially chocolate chip ones - seem to be a recurring theme.

I first made cookies by myself when we lived in Ohio in fourth grade.  I particularly remember measuring out six tablespoons of brown sugar.  Since brown sugar holds it shape, I could make it look as if there were half a dozen small brown eggs in the bowl  (hey, I was 9).

The summer after that, back in Delaware, I made a lot of toll house cookies and sold them door to door in the neighborhood.

Fifteen cents for a quarter of a pound.  I think that some relatives must have bought some, too.  There was an option to buy a whole tin full for $3.  I really do not remember what the arrangement was for buying ingredients, but I don't think they just magically appeared.

In any case, at the end of the summer I bought a Brownie flash camera with the proceeds.

And yes, I still have the camera, though I don't know if it still works.  127 film.

I took at least one tin of Toll House cookies to Dr. and Mrs.Webber in the summer after 10th grade, when I audited a pre-calculus class Dr. Webber was teaching at the University of Delaware. It was a course designed to help incoming freshmen, and I aced it with a lot of maternal coaching on the trig parts.  Dr. Webber was just amused to have me in class since he had been Mother's advisor on her Masters Dissertation and thought very highly of her. I'm sure Mother asked him to let me sit in on the course to provide me with something productive to do with my summer.  

There were 18 year old boys in that class, too, but that is another story.

Toll House cookies also were provided to the Tower Hill Summer School faculty lounge in 1963, or whatever year it was that I took a small but arduous course in score reading and conducting from Mr.B.  I was no good at all at transposition, and only adequate at conducting.   The cookies, however, were well received.

At some point - after Deluxe, I think -  I started baking cookies to take to work.
Target(IBM), MSI, and a couple of customer offices all benefited(?) from my signature cookie*, plus experiments with other chip/fruit combinations.

*oatmeal chocolate chip with dried cherries.

If everyone threw a pebble into the Grand Canyon....

But what if everyone took pebbles out of England?

Somewhat amazed to find that these were brought home and kept.  From the writing on the envelopes, it seems clear that this collection is from the 1958 trip.

The majority are most likely from the beach at ?Lyme Regis? Bognor Regis?, site of a day trip with the Moore's. We were much impressed with the fact that this was considered a beach even though there was no sand, just pebbles.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage:  dunno.. from the parking lot? 

North Wales: either from the seaside at Llandudno or from near the tram stop at the top of Great Orm's Head.
(This is a place I would like to go back to and investigate further someday!)

Grade school kids buy presents at Mitchell's

Oh, my.

Somewhat remarkable that these are still in The Stuff. 

However, since Mother kept them, how can I dispose of them?

I don't think they were purchased for major occasions like Christmas or her birthday, but Mother probably got these for Mother's Day or maybe just because one of us really, really wanted to buy something, and these each seemed somehow wonderful at the time.

I mean,  that is truly a remarkable poodle, don't you think?  Clearly a treasure.

And the girl in the green (it used to be green, anyway) dress is a trinket box.  The lower ruffle covers a little dish, and the rest of her is the lid.  Pretty snazzy.

I look at these wonders and think "Mitchell's".

(And if you think, "Mitchell's", you start thinking about yo-yo's, and chewing gum, and candy lipstick, and candy cigarettes, and... never mind.)

Mitchell's Variety Store was in the Fairfax Shopping Center, and in those long ago days we were occasionally allowed to ride our bikes to it.  Traffic was the main thing to be worried about, apparently, and there was only the semi-busy Shipley Road to cross.  The rest of the route was through housing developments.  I think we just had to all three go together, and be home in time for lunch.

I'm sure that the boys were allowed to go without me at some point when I was old enough to be less interested in the trip or busy with other things, but I don't exactly remember that.

One of the stores in the Fairfax center had a soda fountain.  Hoy's 5&10, maybe?  Anyway, I know that we were known to buy root beer floats there at unlikely hours of the morning.

Mitchell's morphed into a train and hobby shop at some point, and is completely gone now.

In the Doghouse

 

Does anybody use that expression any more?

Anyway, this is one of Uncle Ed's projects.  Apparently he thought it would be funny to be able to see at a glance who in the family was "in the doghouse," so he made these for several of  his relatives.
The one for his own family hung in the hall just outside their kitchen for as long as I can remember.
If ours was hung at all, it was someplace inconspicuous.

Ed made a lot of things.  I don't think we should remember him primarily for this one.

EDIT:  This treasure is no longer in The Stuff.  After consultation with brothers, I 'lost' it, so don't go looking for it.

Wilmington Dry Goods, bargains, and street names

Add caption

Before there were chains of discount department stores, there was Wilmington Dry Goods on Market Street in Wilmington from 1924 to 1977.  The Wilmington Dry stores in the suburbs after that just don't count.

This site tells more than you want to know of the history of the enterprise, but skip down to the pictures.  They are great.

http://www.oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/wdg.html
Multiple levels, wooden floors, piles of things on tables.
Going there was always an adventure.

I hardly remember the Market Street entrance.  We always went in from King Street, which meant that if it was a market day, when we were really little, Daddy would buy warm roasted peanuts from a cart there as we left - a little bag for each of us. Surely we were not allowed to eat them until we got home, though. Peanut shells in the car are just unimaginable.

I do remember thinking it was pretty strange that all those farmers' trucks were on KING Street, when MARKET street was right there, one block over.  It was not so much that the trucks were in the wrong place.  It was more that the streets must have had the wrong names.

I was reminded of all of this when I put on this jacket this morning. 

Each of my brothers had one of these coats, bought at Wilmington Dry in the 1960's.  I still use them (coats, not brothers) as 'barn jackets' for outdoor jobs in almost cold weather. The inner lining in the sleeves is shot, but I would say that they seriously turned out to be a real bargain.

Oh how I loved these books!

Childhood of Famous Americans series, bought along with a set of encyclopedia in 1953 or 54.
There were ten about women (blue), and ten about men (red).  They certainly are not heavy on history, but give a reasonable flavor of what it was like to be a child in a particular kind of family in a particular time and place. They are at a pretty elementary reading level.

I know I read Sacajawea, Jane Addams, Martha Washington, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin many times over.

After I finished the first twenty, I went to the library and borrowed as many others as I could find.
Mother would drop me off at the Wilmington library after dance class, and drive around the block once or twice while I went in and snatched up however many I was allowed to take out at a time.
I suspect that I was reading these long after I could have been taking on more challenging books.  However, by third grade or so, I had heard of a lot of people that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Recently, at a 6th grade exhibit where the kids each had to represent someone famous, I was able to impress (or maybe embarrass) a few people by asking the boy who was being Thomas Edison, "Do I need to talk louder? You are hard of hearing, aren't you?"  I knew that from reading his biography in this series over 50 years ago!

These books have not been interesting to either my children or my grandchildren.  I think they have to be encountered at just the right time or they seem kind of silly.

Christmas ephemera

I wish I had the actual pieces for this set, not just the instruction booklet, which is where the picture is from.

This manger scene was assembled at our (Keen's) house for several years in the 1950's in Windsor Hills, and maybe also in Ohio.

I was allowed to set it up a couple of times, which was a big deal.

Each figure had a tab to make it stand up. Small pieces of tape were involved, but carefully, since the whole thing had to be taken apart and be useable the next year.

The figures on the roof were especially challenging, even though their tabs were bigger. Can you see in the picture how the tabs match the backgrounds?

EDIT 6/19/2012
Yes, it was definitely used in Ohio
This picture was taken in 1956

 

Straw hat of great sentimental value - 1954

This hat is from Old MacDonald's Farm – a tourist attraction in upstate New York in the 1950's.

Each of the Keen kids got one when we visited the place on a family vacation.

The important thing about this hat is that it shows up in a famous picture of Neil, who did not enjoy everything about the farm.

This is also the place where my father refused to allow a sign to be wired to our car bumper advertising that we had been there. Bumper stickers were far in the future at that point, but the idea was forming.

Here are a few more pictures from that day.  I have no memory of the obvious fact that cousins Mary Lynne and Glenn were there with us.

Neil didn't get to hold the lamb.