Most likely you followed the link from my first page of Random Thoughts stories. Here are some more, and I hope these are just as amusing and thought provoking. And, as always, your comments are appreciated.
This day is Bastille Day in France, but here in Prescott, it's the 100th anniversary of the big fire. While not as famous as the Chicago Fire, it was pretty big news here in Prescott. Much of downtown was burned down, due to a fire that started at a local bottling works. As is typical in an Arizona summer, there was little water to fight the fire which spread rapidly through the downtown area. The only buildings that remain were brick ones. The shops on Whiskey Row all had flyers on the windows reminding us of the tragedy of that night, as did the newspaper. Over one million dollars in damage was done, which was a lot of money back then. For more information about the fire, please check out this url.
http://www.prescottinfo.com/PRESCOTT%201900%20Fire.html
For the last few days, I've been immersed in Prescott's history, specifically the Monday Club's history. On August 19th, it will be the 105th anniversary of the founding of the club. We are the oldest women's club in the state. So we were in existence during the fire. I read that we had already started a public library, and that all our books were burned in the fire. Even then, the women were practical as well as progressive, and they had insured the books for $1800.00, enough to start a new library. They petitioned the Carnegie Foundation and built a brand new, brick library on the corner of Gurley Street and Marina. It still stands there, but is now an office building.
I've long belonged to various women's groups in the different cities I've lived in, and it's always amazed me the things we mere women have accomplished. Here in Prescott it is no different. Looking through decades of scrapbooks and newspaper clippings have proved that. The Monday Club has cleaned up slums, worked for many changes at the public schools, helped on planning museums, hospitals and other civic improvements.
I loved the pictures of the women in the old days. With their hats and hairdos and dress, I'm sure they were the epitome of fashion, but they certainly look stuffy today. And each was known as Mrs. Someone, as if they had no first name or identity of their own. It wasn't until the 90's that the women pictured in the paper were identified as "Mary Smith", not Mrs. John Smith.
The Monday Club was originally called the Prescott Women's Club, but somewhere along the way, they changed their name. And why? Because they met on Monday, which was laundry day and they all had help to do their chores so their time was freed up for other activities. Most club women in the past were married to prominent men in the community. Now, with women working, a lot of women's organizations are having trouble finding new members. The Monday Club is no different, but we are determined to keep growing and making a difference.
Going through all the scrapbooks was time consuming, but a lot of fun and educational. I had help from three other women, all more familiar with the Club than I am. As past secretary, I held the same position as Pauline O'Neill, the wife of Bucky O'Neill who was a World War 1 hero. My scribbled minutes will be stored in the same place as hers. Of course, she probably took careful and neat notes, not being able to go home after a meeting and type them up on a typewriter, much less on a computer. And now as president, I follow in the shadow of many community leaders, most of who are long dead. It is time for me to make history in the Monday Club and in the community, so that in another 105 years, women can look back on what we accomplished. I never thought I'd be a part of history, but it seems I now am.
©17 July, 2000Used to be when I was a little girl, I would ask to go to bed before my bedtime. This is one of those stories that my mom used to tell me over and over again, but that I have no idea if it's true or not. Like my father ate a whole slice of rye bread in one bite or that I tried to grow a Hershey's kisses tree. It's possible all these things happened, and does it really matter? I never succeeded in growing that tree.
Used to be that within ten minutes of my head hitting the pillow, I was asleep. As a girl growing up, as a boy crazy teenager, as a hippie college girl, sleep was easy for me to attain. As a newlywed, my ex used to come to bed with me, but eventually that stopped. As a young mother of one, then two and finally three children, it would be all I could do to stay awake an hour past the kids and spend that time with my ex. He's a night owl and I'm a morning person. I'd go up to our bed, turn on the 10 PM news and be out like a light.
Used to be I'd struggle to stay awake till my kids got home from where they were going. But as soon as I knew they were home safely, I'd be asleep. Or if they stayed in, I would fall asleep before they would. They would reverse roles and sometimes tell me bedtime stories. Tuck me in like I do when I'm there or they are here. They, like their father, are night owls. I'm up by 7 am usually, and they could sleep till noon if I would let them.
That was how it used to be. Like just about everything, it's changed. Part is being alone, hearing all the noises, real and imagined. Even though for most of my marriage, I went to bed before my ex, I knew he was there. Part is menopause and all its joys and changes on a woman's system. I can lie in bed and toss and turn for a good hour or more, no matter how tired I was while I was walking across my house to the bedroom. Lately, I've taken to getting into bed earlier, reading and watching TV, to see if that would make a difference.
I need my eight hours of sleep to function as a semi-normal human being. Doesn't matter to anyone what time I wake up, so now it's not any earlier than 8 AM. Sometimes I get up and within an hour, I'm back in bed. Yes, I know I'm clinically depressed and this is a symptom of the disease. So here I sit, it's 11:44 PM. I went to bed at 10:20, but finally decided to get up for a bit. My relaxation techniques didn't work because sometimes my brain refuses to stop. I'll go back to bed in a bit, and this time I'll stay there till I eventually fall asleep. Not a full nights sleep with no interruptions. There is at least one nightly visit to the bathroom required. When I get up, I'll reread this, edit it and then send it in to Nosh. Would like to see what my midnight ramblings are by the light of day. Sweet dreams.
©17 August, 2000Why I am writing another piece about my sleeping habits is something I'm not certain of, except that we do spend one third of our lives doing this activity. Last night again, I couldn't fall asleep, and got up and listen to MP3s and played Hearts till I was, or so I thought, extremely exhausted. I got into my bed, emphasis on the "my", and tossed and turned for a good half hour. Maybe having the TV in there is a mistake, but for years I fell asleep with the TV on, so that my ex would have some light source when he would join me in our bed..
I remember the first man I spent the night with, after he took my virginity, in college. I don't recall which was more exciting. Finally not being a virgin at the age of 20 in the Age or Aquarius or curling up next to a warm body all night. John (his real name but not last name Smith) and I lived together several months, before he dumped me for my best friend and I ended up with his. He and Lynne (of my betrayal story a few months back) lasted for maybe a month, but Fred and I lasted for twenty five years. Sharing a bed with someone is the thing I miss most about being alone.
Growing up, I had my own room and bed in our house. It was a twin and it seemed just fine for a little kid. When we moved to California in 1963, my mother rented a two bedroom apartment. In theory, we shared a room, my mom and I, but since my father had died some six years earlier, it had become her custom to sleep on the couch, so she continued to do that and I had the room pretty much to myself. She'd bought someone's old white french décor bedroom set, consisting of two twin beds, a night stand and a big nine drawer dresser. Having two beds in my room was great, because I used to have girlfriends sleep over all the time. When she moved from a two bedroom into a one bedroom, after both my brother and I left home, she still had that bedroom set. I would sleep there on weekend visits from college.
In college, I slept on a regular bed and being that I had no trouble sleeping back then, I didn't think about who else had slept or done whatever then. Though, you still technically had to sign a man in before you were allowed to bring him up to your room in 1970. I didn't mind sleeping in the same room with my roommates, although neither of them lasted too long with me, and I ended up with my own room. My third year at Berkeley, my best friend from high school and I shared an apartment. Within a month, we hated each other and I'd moved my bed out of the bedroom and into the living room. It was on that bed that I first slept with John. By the end of the fall quarter, Ellen and I had sublet the apartment, with me moving to Brook Street to be with John and her going I honestly don't remember. Thirty years later, we are still close friends.
When Fred and I first started living together at Brook Street, he had a waterbed. It was the simple kind, with it on the floor and a wooden frame keeping the bed's shape. We moved a lot the first few years, two apartments in Oakland, then up to Chico, down to Stockton, Atascadero, and I'm leaving out a few even shorter term places. He got to be quite an expert at emptying out a waterbed. It was the apartment on Shafter Street in Oakland where, he was draining the bed from our third floor room and we heard someone yelling his name. The hose was, as the song goes, blowing in the wind, right into one of our neighbors windows. Over the years with all the moves, we had to buy new waterbed mattresses, and even a raised frame for it. When we bought our first house, we finally bought a fancy headboard and footboard for our waterbed.
For twenty five years, I shared a bed with him, along with everything else in a marriage. When I moved out, I rented an apartment that the landlady was willing to sell the bed left there to me. It was a double and I'd been used to a queen, but it was also a regular mattress. As long as everything else was changing in my life, why not my bed? Moving here, to my house, I bought a new bed. A regular bed with ornate ironwork attached to wood posts. I picked it and the mattress out by myself. Queen sized and I now also get to pick sheets I like, not worrying what anyone else will say about how feminine they are. Because, except for my children, no one else has shared my bed with me, nor does it look like there will be anyone in the future. When I lie in my bed, I dream of someone to share it, as well as my life, but in the mornings, when I wake up, it's still just me. Maybe my dreams will be answered one day.
©18 August, 2000The A and E (Arts and Entertainment) cable network has a show where it lists the top ten in various categories. I was flipping through the dial this afternoon, having decided that no matter how much I like Antonya Nelson's writing, I was not going to read her latest book, Living to Tell, at that moment. I stopped for a few minutes on MSNBC to watch about capital punishment and the pros and cons of different methods of killing. Hanging is supposed to be the fastest, and the gas chamber the slowest and most inhumane. I kept going down the dial, because did any of the people who are on death row think about how humanely they were slaughtering their victims. I think not.
So I ended up on A and E. They are supposedly more high brow than most cable networks, and they recently started this Top Ten show. I saw one about the top ten jobs, places to take romantic vacations, and I saw the last fifteen minutes of this show. It was the top ten cities in the United States where you can "get it all". By that, they meant quality of life, affordable housing, little crime and a picturesque location.
I came in when they were on number 3, which is Austin, Texas. I watched, because when I was trying to decide where to move to, that was one of the places I considered. I liked the fact it's a college town, but I just couldn't picture myself as a Texan. No offense intended, but I'm a Yankee, and while I lived for six years in Memphis and almost a year in Raleigh, Texas just seemed too different. I've never been to Austin, so I don't know if I would have liked it. It looked pretty from what they showed on the television.
Number 2 was Chapel Hill, which is about 20 miles from Raleigh. It too, was very pretty and is also a college town. I never really explored Chapel Hill when I was in North Carolina, though I did spend some time in Durham. Both of those places really didn't have anything I was terribly interested in, though I probably should have gone to Chapel Hill once. I tried to convince my daughter to go look at the school, but by then I was planning my move to Arizona.
I forget all the towns that were ten through 4 and in what order they were ranked. One was Portland, Maine where I lived for a year and I loved it there, except for the weather. One was Madison, Wisconsin, which is supposed to be a wonderful little town, but when my kids were little, we ended up spending a day there while my ex had business. We were on the way back from Chicago, and it was raining and we were bored and I don't have a very good impression of Madison. The others were Eugene, Oregon, Charlottesville, Virginia and the rest I just can't recall. I want to say one was in Colorado and the other Tennessee, but I wasn't paying that close of attention.
The number one town where you can get it all is Burlington, Vermont. Yet another college town and home of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. It too was pretty, on Lake Champlain, and surrounded by the Green and Adirondack Mountains. It's closer to Montreal than it was to Boston and the announcers claimed the average house is under $130,000, and that it's a great senior place. I'm not a senior yet, but it's getting closer. Then they showed the snow. Lots of snow. Forget it, I've had enough of the white stuff to last me forever.
Personally, I was relieved to see Prescott omitted from the list. I think it was because the cost of living here is high and it's not really a good place to raise a family. The average age of the population here has got to be pretty high, as we're mostly a retirement town. But mostly I was glad we weren't on the list because in the year plus I've been here, the growth is just appalling. Traffic, while nowhere near Phoenix or any other major city, has become a trial at certain times of the day. We're getting a mall and some major restaurant chains are building here. Some things I welcome, but most I don't. I know growth is good, but it seems like no one is thinking ahead, planning for the future. I still love it here and am glad I'm here. I guess I want everyone else to go elsewhere.
©20 August, 2000I woke up this morning to the smell of bread baking and it brought back memories. How many memories are associated with food. I wish I could say I had a bread machine, and it was coming from my kitchen. Instead, there is a bakery a block or so away, and that is what I was smelling. It made me think of how so many foods bring back memories. I used to bake my own bread when I was first married, when I had nothing but time that I had to fill. There is little that compares to the smell of fresh baked bread, or how delicious it tastes while still warm.
Whenever I have a cup of hot tea, with sugar instead of a sugar substitute, and milk, it always reminds me of my grandma. She would fix it for me when I was not feeling well. It was mostly milk and sugar, but it was warm and made me feel better. That's why I indulge myself when I feel sick. It's like my grandma was still here, taking care of me. My Grandma Anna was a perfect grandmother, and I loved her more than anyone else when I was growing up. After my father died, my mother's parents came to live with us, and help her take care of my me and my brother. My grandmother basically ran our house, because my brother was in the hospital more than he was home, and someone had to be there with me. And my mother was never the June Cleaver type.
She also taught me how to bake and make my favorite comfort meal, macaroni and cheese. Not the kind that comes from a box. But made from scratch. I made it at least once a month for my family, and it was never the same twice. I don't use a recipe, because my grandmother didn't either. Sometimes the cheese sauce is a little thicker from too much flour, sometimes more cheesy. Our secret is using only American cheese, which gives it a milder taste. You bake the dish and wait till the top macaronis get good and crusty. And pick them off one at a time.
I remember watching my grandmother bake all sorts of goodies, but I mostly remember her teaching me how to make cookies. My favorite were cookie press cookies, and before I left Chicago, she gave me my own. I still have it, plus two other ones. When I bake spritz cookies, I always use butter. I have taught Evelyn and Lowell to bake, and much to my surprise, when I went to Minneapolis, there was a plate of spritz cookies waiting for me. When I left, Evelyn told me there were still some left, and did I want them. Of course I did, but I didn't take them. I left them for her. And Lowell has quite a love for baking and creating. Though he cheats and uses mixes, he can produce a cake as good as anyone else.
Waffles are another food that bring back strong memories. My other grandmother was the waffle maker. She had a secret ingredient, which was adding chocolate chips. For 15 years, every Sunday I fixed from scratch waffles for my family. Most of the time with chocolate chips, but not always. Sometimes I added nuts or bacon pieces. But always waffles. Until one day, I said enough. Waffles became more of a treat because they weren't regualar fare. Plus I found a great recipe for yeast waffles, so that became a special breakfast.
Pomegranates make me think of my mother. She would buy two or three of them, and eat them. I like them okay, but it's too much effort to eat. Those tiny little kernels of fruit hidden under layers of skins, and all you got was one drop of juice. But when I see them in the stores, I think of my mother. The only food I can relate to my father is rye bread. This isn't an actual memory of mine, just one that has been handed down since his death. My father stuck a whole piece of rye bread in his mouth once. It's sad that I have no real memories of him myself, only what other people older than me have told me.
Grilled cheese sandwiches are another comfort food that bring back strong memories. I had a grilled cheese sandwich every day except Wednesday for lunch for 5 years, when I was in elementary school. My mother would start making it at noon and by the time I got home the bread was nicely crisped and the cheese was soft and gooey. I had to have this with chocolate milk made with Bosco, and Jay's potato chips. And the sandwich was always cut into quarters, diagonally. I would watch Lunchtime Little Theater with Bozo and eat my sandwich in the most bizarre way. I still eat one like this at home. All I'll say is I take off the crusts, and eat them first, then pick off the bread. I guess my children are more like me than I want to believe, because they all do the same thing. It's not a pretty sight.
There are other foods that I associate with people or places. Tommy's, a burger joint in Los Angeles, always makes me think of my old boyfriend from high school. He took me there the first time, and I fell in love with the greasy burgers topped with chili that always made a big mess. The first time I ever had apple pie was when I was in college, and for one of my foods classes, we had to make 5 different apple pies. And taste them. So I did, and I fell in love with them. Blueberry pie makes me think of my one grandfather, who used to take me to a restaurant on Cottage Grove Avenue for pie on occasion. It's still one of my favorite things. I have a secret ingredient in my French Silk pie. I used to bring it to church suppers, and would give out the recipe to anyone who asked for it, leaving out my secret ingredient. It was ironic how a few months later, one of the women I gave the recipe to, claimed it was her original recipe. Well, Becky, I doubt you will ever figure out why your pie never tasted like mine. But go ahead and take the credit for it, if it means that much to you.
I remember my Grandma Anna telling me she no longer liked ice cream, which used to be one of her favorite foods. It made me sad, because I knew how much she enjoyed it. And I remember thinking, how I wouldn't want to live if I didn't like ice cream anymore. So far I still love it, even though there are many foods I don't care for anymore. Like potato chips. I don't think I've had one in years. Maybe because none taste like how I think I remember Jay's tasting like. Now that I'm grown, I have different likes and dislikes in food, but certain foods will always bring back memories, and I hope I will make new memories with food in the years to come.
©Maine, 1998Well, it's just about over. And not a minute too soon. While it wasn't as bad as 1996, it wasn't one of my favorite years either. It was a year of change. I know, change is good, if you don't change, you'll stagnate. I don't handle change well, but when I look back on the last twelve months, I guess I did okay.
The biggest change has to be leaving Minnesota. It wasn't easy. It took two tries until I did it. I left once, to move to Nashua, NH, and attend school to become a paralegal. Being there a week, having no luck in finding a place to live and doubting my interest in paralegal, I panicked and drove back to Minnesota. But I did accomplish one thing back there. I found out that my marriage was truly and finally over. He didn't love me, and it was time to accept it. I headed back east and ended up here in Portland, Maine. I almost left here twice, too. Once, when I was having a hard time finding an apartment, and once, when I had my apartment, but thought I couldn't face being alone.
I have been living on my own for 4 months. I have managed to make a life here. Sort of. I have some routines, know a few people. I made my table and computer desk. I have a doctor here now. I got my car licensed and registered on my own. I dealt with the car accident on my own. I have managed to keep myself clean and fed. The hardest thing is getting used to being alone in the bed, but even that has gotten easier.
There are no children here making demands on me. No organizations I belong to that are requiring anything of me. I haven't been successful in finding a job. My time is my own, and I have spent a lot of time thinking. Most of the time, the outlook doesn't look very bright. It seems like for every step I go forward, I take two backwards. I have decided Maine is not the right place for me, and am now making plans for moving south. I am tired of snow and cold. And since it's my decision, I can do what I want.
I've made some new friends this year. My friends are still the most important people in my life. They make me keep going when I want to quit. They encourage me. Yell at me when that's necessary, too. I started writing this year. It seemed easier to write what I was thinking than saying it. I am a coward. I would rather take the easy way out anytime. I have never felt comfortable saying what I really feel, except now. Written, not oral.
I started fly fishing last year. I never expected to like it, but I fell in love with it. At the time, I was able to find the peace and serenity I needed in my life. It's too cold to fish now, but as soon as I am able, I plan to go back out to a stream. Life seems to make sense there. A lot more than it does anywhere else. Another reason to move someplace warmer. Longer fishing season. I hope to start tying my own flies in '98.
I am glad 1997 is over. It's kind of like a physical barrier that I am climbing over. I now know I am capable of taking care of myself. Living on my own. Making my own decisions and choices and taking the responsibility for their consequences. I am a stronger person now, than I was at the beginning of the year. I plan to build on this new found inner person and continue growing in as many ways as possible. I have the ability to do this, which is something I didn't realize at the beginning of the year. I wonder how I will have changed in the next 365 days. It will fly by, and before I know it, those days too will have passed. And I plan on making each day one I learn something. One I face my fears. One I deal with the changes I am facing. Basically, one day that is worth living.
© 31 December, 1997In the good old days, people used to gather on porches. Or stoops. And we lived in neighborhoods where we actually knew all our neighbors. That's how it was at the house I grew up in. We had a porch big enough for two chairs, and at night, during the summer, the adults would sit outside and the kids would play. Many of the kids on my block would all gather and play, the girls hopscotch or jump rope and the boys a kind of baseball. We'd catch fireflies, wait for the Good Humor man and then be called in around the same time for bed. I wonder if there are still neighborhoods like that now.
Was life really simpler in the 50's when I was growing up? Or did it seem so because I was the child, I didn't have the worries. In the pictures of my growing up years, many of them are taken on the porch. There's one with my neighbor Tina in diapers. Some with my brother and I and our cousins. Us with various neighborhood kids. Some of them with just the two of us, dressed up on our way to somewhere. Kids used to just hang around and be kids. There were no organized sports that I recall, no filling kids afternoons with supervised activities to keep them occupied and out of trouble. Moms stayed home just like the TV shows shown in black and white on Tvland.
We had a great porch on the first house we ever owned, in South Minneapolis. It went across the entire front of the house and had screens to keep the mosquitoes out. The house was built in 1904 and still had most of it's original character. We put up a porch swing and I would sit there with Evelyn, and later with Greg as Evelyn played off to the side. The only other house we owned that had a porch was the one my ex lives in now. I know that was the deciding factor on why we bought the house, that screened porch. It was perfect for sitting in from about May through September. By October it was too cold, and the winter in Minnesota was out of the question. Now it's half filled with boxes of my things that are waiting to be shipped to me here.
My house has a screened in porch, called the Arizona room. It's one of my favorite places to sit and read and watch the clouds. I open all the windows and let the breeze cool me. When we get storms, I stand there and watch the lightning strikes. It faces south, over the Bradshaw mountains and the Prescott National Forest, but I can see to the east quite a ways too. There was a table with bench seats that we wrote into the contract when I bought the house, and I often eat my meals out there too. My cat loves it out there, because she thinks she's outside, but she isn't. The one bad thing is it isn't conducive to being neighborly. I don't really have a porch off the front that I could sit on, but neither do my neighbors.
I think the best thing about sitting on the porch is that, as a child, you think you are watching the whole world go by in front of you. And you are, because your neighborhood is your world. As you grow older, your world expands, but a porch still can be a good place to watch the world go by. Yet you feel safe and protected from the world and can relive your childhood memories. Now if only Arizona had fireflies.
©19 August, 2000I graduated from California State University, Chico in December of 1975. I received a Bachelor's of Science in Home Economics, with a concentration in Food and Nutrition. I graduated to please my mother, who had wanted to go to college but never did. By the time I had graduated, I had gotten what I wanted from my higher education, the MRS. Degree. As well as getting my mother off my back. I did make a brief stab a year ago at furthering my education at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. I think as far as formal education goes, I'm done.
Growing up, all I heard was, go to college, you will go to college. I was smart enough, but not one of those really brainy types. I enjoyed high school, but it was the late 60's, and towards the end, I was going against the establishment. I had been active in all sorts of activities, but there is nothing under my name in my senior yearbook. I took the PSAT and SAT and based on my score on the SAT and my grade point average, I qualified for the University of California system. I only applied to UCLA, because at the time, there was no money to send me away, and if for some reason I didn't get accepted there, the deadline for applying to CSU Northridge was after the acceptance date.
However, it had been my dream to go back east for college. I had a teacher for summer school English, and he told us stories about his teaching at Bennington College, in Vermont. I'd never been back east except for one time when I was five, and we went to New York City to visit relatives. The east sounded more sophisticated than laid back California. I sent away for dozens of college catalogs and applications, but I knew it was not possible for me to fulfill that dream. My grades weren't good enough to qualify me for any scholarship, and my mom didn't have the money to send me away.
My daughter is living my dream for me. She's a junior at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She spent her first two years at U of Minnesota at Duluth, but decided she needed more of a challenge. Because of what was going on in our family's life at the time, Evelyn didn't do a very good job of applying to schools in her senior year. Duluth was a good place for her to be those first two years. When she decided to go elsewhere for her last two years, she applied to two schools she hadn't applied to her first go round, Smith and Bryn Mawr, outside of Philadelphia. She was accepted to both, only Smith let her know first and Bryn Mawr didn't tell her till much after the deadline for accepting Smith.
Since she wasn't coming to visit me for her spring break, I went out to see her. We spent a bit of time arguing about the dates, but eventually we agreed on a time and I flew back out east. I landed very late at night in Hartford, and we drove the 40 minutes up to Northampton talking about what we'd do for the week. At last, I was getting my chance to be a college student back east.
I had seen Smith five years earlier, when we went on our college tour, visiting some fifteen colleges in a two weeks. But I didn't remember the campus at all. All I remembered was the tour guide saying each house (dorm) had a piano in it. Evelyn lived in a turn of the century four story building; not quite a house, but definitely not a dorm. It had lots of woodwork and leaded glass, and her room used to be one of the parlors. One thing that hadn't changed was dorm furnishings. Her bed was hard and the furniture was tacky. I bet she was more comfortable than I was, and she slept on the floor on a foam mattress. There was no housemother living there, to make sure no boys went up to your room like when I was at Cal. But otherwise, it wasn't much different than what I remembered of dorm life.
Girls came and went all the time, and being that Evelyn's room was on the first floor, I watched much of the activity. I liked most of Evelyn's friends. And they were very tolerant of my hanging around. She got along great with her roommate, despite the differences in their backgrounds and interests. Something I never did. I didn't like a single roommate I had. Her room was across from the television room, and down the hall from that was the activity room. They had a kitchen in her house, but they ate their meals at a dorm across the street. Most of the girls I met were much more serious than I had been at that age. Of course, if you're paying some $30,000 to attend a college like Smith, you had better be serious about your studies. Although, I suppose most of them were on some sort of financial aid. I was, and when I started at UCLA and Cal, tuition was a mere $100.00 a quarter. At UCLA, I lived at home and commuted, which was no fun at all. But my mom and I figured out a way to pay for the dorm at Cal, and that was how college life should be.
I went to one class with Evelyn. This was a large lecture class by Smith's standards. The room held maybe one hundred people. At UCLA and Cal, a large lecture class held some one thousand students. The professor wasn't much different that those I'd had. He'd taught his subject too many times and was fairly disinterested in the subject. The only thing that changed from year to year, was he spent some time on current events. I suppose they have a few famous or well known professors on their staff. I took a class at Cal from both M. Scott Momaday and Harry Edwards. I never saw them up close, as I tended to sit near the back of the auditorium. You can't compare Smith to Cal. They're just too different, in too many ways.
I was in college in the 70's. I missed most of the activity at Cal, but not all of it. There were still a lot of protesting going on, against the war in Vietnam, against the Regents of the University. Speakers on the steps of Sproul Hall were a daily occurrence. My spring quarter there, all classes were graded pass/ not pass, because half the time you couldn't get across the campus because of tear gas. I learned the ins and outs of rioting from Leigh Steinberg, who is now a famous sports attorney, and the movie Jerry McGuire is based on his career. At Smith, there were signs pasted all over, to protest the verdict in the Diallo case. An unarmed black man shot some 41 times by white police officers in New York. Except for the posters and I suppose a group that actually did protest, there wasn't any trouble or problems from it. No blue meanies with riot gear waiting to beat up students.
Northampton is a nice small town, as were Berkeley and Chico. Almost every day, we would walk into town, and look in the stores, and the people. I'll never forget this very good looking young man, who was wearing a skirt of aluminum foil over his jeans. Berkeley had its fair share of weirdos, and still did the last time I was there, only a few years ago. Chico was just a nice quiet town. All the towns though, were pretty much there to support the students needs. Lots of restaurants, record stores, clothing stores and bookstores. At Cal, I used to go to Kip's all the time, but Evelyn and her friends didn't really have one favorite hang out. She liked one particular place because she thought one of the guys working there was cute. Personally, he didn't do a thing for me.
We tried different places when we couldn't take the dorm food. Maybe I'm more easily satisfied then I used to be, but I didn't think the food was that bad for the most part. I decided after a few days to try to make a waffle at each meal, and take it back to the room and hang it on the wall, but they stopped putting the batter out. According to Evelyn, the waffles were horrid. There was nothing that compared in grossness as the veal birds they served us one time at Cal, and guess what? They didn't fly. I know, I took one to my 7th floor room and threw it out the window. It sat on the roof of the cafeteria for several months. For all I know, it's still there. The biggest difference was they offered a vegan selection. Needless to say, I didn't try any of those.
These girls are trying to find their own places in the world, as the kids I went to college with did, too. While the guys had long hair and girls wore overalls, and everyone wore beads, these girls had strange colored hair and piercings in various places you could see, and who knows what where we couldn't see. I can just imagine how the alumnae from Smith would look at these girls, who were following in their footsteps. I could picture Smith in the 40's, 30's and even earlier decades. Gloves and hats and twin set sweaters. Privileged white girls, going to college until they caught a husband. I don't know when scholarships became part of college life, but I doubt it was back then. But now, there are girls of every color and social standing. There are in fact girls who look more like boys than boys do, being that Smith and Northampton are known for tolerating the gay life style.
While Smith was not a school I'd even heard of when I was applying to college, I tried to imagine myself going there when I was 18. And somehow, I couldn't. When we were looking at colleges several years earlier, we drove through the Bennington campus. It was ugly. Nothing like Smith or Wellesley, with their stately brick building covered in ivy, looking exactly what a private school back east should look like to a person from a different part of the country or the world. What I saw were modern stark buildings. Would I have fit in there? I doubt that too. What kind of person would I be now, had I gone back east? I never would have met my future former spouse, wouldn't have my children. I don't wish to go back to school, to relive my life over again. I certainly am thankful, however, that my daughter got to what I had wanted so badly back when I was a teenager. She's better suited to that life than I was, and she will also take advantage of the classes and opportunities offered her. I am so proud of her and so grateful she allowed me to live my dream for ten days.
©19 March, 2000There are more stories I have written to read. Please remember these are my original stories and thoughts, and to copy or otherwise use them without my permission is a copyright violation. I would love to hear your random thoughts on any of these stories.