Dear $$firstname$$,

Greetings from the Editors at Reminisce! Cooler temperatures have more of us heading into the kitchen for from-the-oven entrees that warm the soul and satisfy heartier appetites. This month’s newsletter brings you a bounty of sweets just in time for Halloween and a harvest of fall flavors in a delicious meal for two. You’ll also find some lighter recipes that skimp on calories but not flavor.

In this issue:

• Norwegian Diplomacy
• Voices From the Past
• Monopoly Master
• Getting “Bulled” Over
• Hook, Line and Trouser

Norwegian Diplomacy

The story about Bill Simenson’s car (“Motoring Memories,” June) brought back memories—not of the car, but of Bill and Katy Simonson and a party we planned in October 1962.

Bill and Katy brought a houseguest with them, a Norwegian journalist who was told that he was going to a church social. Imagine his surprise to find himself at a Halloween masquerade party for the Fairfax (Virginia) Unitarian Church.

Later in the evening, the Norwegian journalist was dancing with Nita Fallis, the pretty and vivacious church secretary. He asked Nita if it was, indeed, a church social. When she said it was, he noted that it wasn’t like any church social he’d attended.

Then he asked Nita if she was, indeed, the church secretary. After another affirmative response, he said that she wasn’t like any church secretary he’d ever known. We don’t know exactly how Nita handled this obvious come-on, but she did. She was as smart as she was pretty.

—Bob and Pris Fearn, Raleigh, North Carolina

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Voices From the Past

Although I am a little young, having been born in 1967, to have any firsthand memories like most of those in Reminisce, I was fortunate enough to be very close to my grandmother and her sisters, who were born between 1902 and 1911.

They are all gone now, but I have so many wonderful memories of the stories they told. When I read Reminisce, I feel as though they are talking to me.

—Tammy Bremer, Bound Brook, New Jersey

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Monopoly Master

My memories as a child were stirred by the origin feature (“Fun Facts,” October 2005 EXTRA) and story (in “Toys & Games,” Aug/Sept) about the board game Monopoly.

Charles B. Darrow lived directly across from us on Westview Street in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1933, when he was inventing Monopoly.

Darrow invited a group of neighborhood children, including me, to his home in our Philadelphia suburb of Mt. Airy for a demonstration of the game. I think he wanted to find out if children could understand and enjoy playing the game. I couldn’t figure it out, but the older kids had fun.

After selling the rights to Parker Brothers, Darrow moved away to a large estate with his wife and two children, and we never saw him again. We didn’t mind; we admired him for figuring out a way to beat the Depression.

— Bob Clifton, Wayne, Pennsylvania

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Getting “Bulled” Over

IN THE 1920s, a clothesline was attached to our small “two-holer” by the garden fence, the other end attached to the old “farmer’s line” telephone pole.

One day, I paid a visit to the repository of Ward’s and Sears, Roebuck catalogs and was about to leave when my father turned the cattle out of the barn. In the herd was a large, not overly friendly bull, and we three kids had been warned to stay inside when he was loose.

I watched through a crack by the outhouse door as the animals made a dash for a drink in the creek. Suddenly, I found myself tipping over. I heard Dad calling my name and my mother screaming, “She’s dead, she’s dead!” Looking up from my prone position, I saw Dad peeking at me through a hole and assuring my mother that with all the noise I was making, I was anything but dead.

The bull, in his rush across the yard, had caught his head in the clothesline. The jolt had barely slowed him, but it had tipped the outhouse so that the door became the floor and the two holes the back wall, through which Dad, after some demolition work, finally extricated me.

—Mary Dushek, Glenmont, New York

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Hook, Line and Trouser

WHEN I WAS 10, in 1921, and lived in Brooklyn, New York, I went down to Keyport, New Jersey to stay with my grandparents.

One very dark night, on my way to the outhouse, I cut across the yard and walked into the clothes pole, bringing the clothesline down in front of me. A pair of Grandpa’s long johns came floating by, waving its arms and legs like a ghost.

Now, back in those days, you didn’t go to a hardware store to buy a clothes pole. Grandpa would go out in the woods, cut down a sapling with a fork on top and trim off the branches for a pole.

As I stopped and started to back up, something grabbed the back of my pants. It was one of the little branches that stuck out from the pole, about 2 inches. I was pinned on the pole and couldn’t move forward or back. I started to scream.

Grandpa got the oil lamp off the dining room table, and Grandma came a-running. Now, Grandpa was a gruff old man. If you told him a joke, he would just say “Huh.” But this time, he stood there and laughed so loud, the neighbors came to see what was so funny.

Grandma had to rescue me by taking the pole off the line and letting it drop to the ground. Naturally, I didn’t have to go to the outhouse anymore.

—Harry Hughson, Keyport, New Jersey

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