October • 2009 • NEWSLETTER

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Dear ##firstname[Friend]##,

Our October offerings include an 8-year-old boy trying to live down walking up Main Street as a groom to a neighbor bride in a Halloween parade—managing to keep to the boys’ code, of course. Please enjoy, as well, some wonderful photos from a 1953 Halloween party in a polo ward.

As always, feel free to forward our newsletter on to a friend or family member. If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you’d like a monthly copy of your own, just use this link to sign up yourself. For now, get to reading. You want to have time later in the month for that pumpkin carving

—John Burlingham at Reminisce

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In this issue:

• A Halloween Surprise for All
• The Little Red-Haired Blonde
• Putting On Their Own Paper Chase
• Poem: Little Orphant Annie
• Time Capsule Trivia
• A Thought to Remember

A Halloween Surprise for All

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By Virginia Alles
Middleville, Michigan

In 1953 and ’54, a polio epidemic covered a large portion of our country when I was a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

All polio patients in the area were sent to the hospital’s medical floor and put in isolation. We were working 12-hour shifts every day of the week.

Some patients received Sister Elizabeth Kenny’s treatment of placing warm pieces of wool around their arms, legs, chests and backs and covering each piece with plastic to hold in the heat and relax the muscles.

Other patients were placed in iron lungs and some of these had to have tracheotomies performed. Some of the patients improved and were sent home, some stayed a few months and some stayed for more than a year.

All of the nurses became close to the patients, and we did everything we could to help them and keep them comfortable.

Halloween was coming, and we decided to dress up for the day and surprise the patients with a party. However, when we arrived that morning, the surprise was on us.

The patients had heard about our plans, and when we went into the rooms, all of the patients were in costume—even the patients in the iron lungs.

It was a wonderful party, as you can tell from the pictures (in the photo of four nurses standing, I’m on the right with a pipe in my mouth), and one that the nurses, patients and relatives will always remember.

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The Little Red-Haired Blonde

By Dave Bruyn
St. Augustine, Florida

Charles Schultz illustrated for us that in every Charlie Brown’s life, there is a little red-haired girl.

Mine was blonde with freckles, very Irish and made her debut around 1951, just about the time I entered first grade in Northport, New York. She was smart, pretty, popular and full of adventure. Her name was Janie.

I was particularly impressed with her worldliness, as she had come to Northport in a silver airplane from a distant city called Miami.

In those early years, I had only a smattering of knowledge about the distinction between genders—like the fact that girls had long hair and wore clothes like their mommies did while boys had short hair, wore pants and were rough and tough like their dads.

One thing was certain, despite the denials. Girls were just nice to be around, something that no self-respecting 5-year-old boy would admit to his peer group. The girls seemed to have less of a problem with their feelings, freely reciting singsong poems about “two lovebirds sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” and distributing valentines to every boy in class.

Girls also had some kind of amazing fortune-telling device made from paper and held between their fingers. As they flapped the device open and closed repeatedly, it foretold whom they would marry and how many children they would have.

In 1954, we moved from Waterside Avenue to Bayview Avenue. As luck would have it, we were just two doors down from Janie. In fact, she would keep her beautiful bicycle in our garage. We became childhood friends and part of the Bayview Gang, but the boys’ code says you can’t have a girlfriend when you are 8, so I kept our friendship under wraps.

Along about the fourth grade, she approached me about the prospect of being her groom for the Halloween parade and dance, which I immediately dismissed (although she may remember it differently). How could I suffer this public humility and still face my male friends?

However, I figured out a way to justify it. What if I made a deal to borrow her beautiful bike to visit a friend in exchange for being her groom? I made the counter-offer, and she accepted. I passed the scrutiny of the male social enforcement board by invoking the “obligation” rule.

Mom always made my Halloween costumes, and this time, she outdid herself by crafting a tuxedo with tails and a top hat. The outfit made me nearly as handsome as Janie was beautiful in the wedding gown her mom made for her.

As we marched in the parade, up Main Street to Ocean Avenue School, I could hear adults on the sidewalks exclaiming how cute we were—when I think about it, I guess we probably were.

At the school dance, I realized I had never danced before and had no idea how to do it. (I was not a good planner in those days.) I don’t know if Janie had danced before, but she seemed comfortable with the idea.

I was petrified and could feel my shoes filling with my own perspiration. Janie told me to put my right arm around her waist and my left hand in her right—so far, so good. I just kind of moved around with her and we muddled our way through the Halloween dance.

Janie and I remain friends today and e-mail over the miles, often reminiscing about those early years when we were wide-eyed and had a whole life and a whole world in front of us—there are no friends like old friends.

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Putting On Their Own Paper Chase

By Charlene Wright
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sometimes, as I sit and drink coffee, I think back to a time when my dear friend Beverly was still alive. She was my co-partner in many adventures. Some of the quandaries we got ourselves into!

We were always trying to help each other out with decorating and redecorating our homes. It must have been during the early 1970s when it was her turn to redo the ceiling wallpaper in her kitchen.

As Beverly was the taller of us, she stood on a chair while I climbed up on the table. We noticed several cracks in the ceiling, so we came up with a plan.

When I was living at home and helping my dad wallpaper and fix up, we always used strips of old white cloth to mend cracks. The cloth would lay over the repaired crack and prevent the new paper from splitting.

Aha! we thought. Instead of laying strips over the cracks, we would just paste up an old sheet and hang that over the whole area and cover all the cracks at once!

Can you imagine how heavy a full-size bed sheet is after being soaked with wallpaper paste? We struggled. We’d put up one end in the corner quickly and move to the next corner, patting it into place.

As fast as we moved around, the first corner would fall! After romping from table to chair and corner to corner, we had pasted bed sheet all over ourselves, paste in our hair and our energy used up.

So we got down, cleaned up the mess, made a fresh pot of coffee and sat down to think of our next plan of attack.

I often think of my pal Bev when drinking coffee; her pot was always on. We did finally get that ceiling papered, but on a different day!

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Poem: Little Orphant Annie

Many readers may recall having to recite this James Whitcomb Riley poem in class around this time of year. The folksy, conversational spellings also make it very fun to read in print.

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other children, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers—
An’ when he went to bed at night, away upstairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an’ roundabout:
An’ the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An’ one time a little girl ’ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;
An’ wunst, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks wuz there,
She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist, as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ’fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away—
You better mind yer parunts, an’ yer teachurs fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ’at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ’at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

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Time Capsule Trivia

From the decades spanning the 1920s to the 1960s, try to guess what year these historic events took place. Click the link below for the answer, but no peeking!

1. A manpower shortage causes some companies to “pamper” employees with things like coffee breaks, piped-in music, suggestion boxes and fringe benefits. However, the government institutes a “Pay as You Go” income tax that withholds 20 percent of employee earnings.

2. Duke Ellington and his orchestra appear at Carnegie Hall for the first time.

3. Frank Sinatra is named Downbeat magazine’s male vocalist of the year.

4. Popular movies include The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Phantom of the Opera and I Walked with a Zombie.

5. Top songs include As Time Goes By, I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night and a number of songs from the stage musical Oklahoma!, including People Will Say We’re in Love and Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.

Click here for the answer to Time Capsule Trivia.

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A Thought to Remember

Be careful not to stretch the truth … it may snap back.

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