Tag: my family

A Zany (but Harmless) Prank

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

My wife says I should tell you about this, so here goes.

Many years ago, the dentist next door got rid of a whole bunch of plaster dental molds. They were in rather nice cardboard sleeves, each set of choppers labeled as pertaining to a particular patient.

Well, I gave ’em out as Christmas presents to my family.

We were all gathered together at my Grandpa’s house–I don’t know how we all fit in there, every Christmas–and I had one gift-wrapped sleeve of dental molds for each guest. Ours is a small town, so chances were that the molds you received belonged to at least one person you actually knew. My mother, for instance, got a set of Wayne Whatsisname’s dental molds, who used to live around the block from us.

You should’ve seen the look on her face.

Everyone was flabbergasted, no one knew what to say–until my brother started giggling uncontrollably (I forget whose teeth he had), and next thing you know, they were all guffawing. It must have come as a great relief to realize this–er, gift–was just a gag.

Yes, we also gave out real presents. Nobody had to be content with a set of Priscilla So-and-so’s plaster teeth.

Today’s My Wife’s Birthday

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Image result for images of wild birthday cake

My wife, Patty, the partner of my labors, the delight of my eyes, the answer to better prayers than I knew how to pray when I met her 40 years ago, has a birthday today.

Fairly often her birthday falls on Election Day–which this year might be fairly called a stressor, in that we might wind up handing our country over to the tender mercies of a crime family. But it’s still her birthday, and we’re not going to let current events deprive us of the pleasure. Well, we hope not.

Memory Lane: DIY T.V. Repair

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Image result for images of old tv with vacuum tubes

One of the pleasures of my childhood was when the TV set would stop working and my father and my uncle would fix it, right there in our living room. Which meant they had to take it apart first.

I didn’t know this at the time, but my uncle was an inventor with lots of patents to his name. He worked for RCA, on the cutting edge of electronics. As for my father, there was no appliance in his home that he couldn’t take apart and put back together so it worked; and he could explain how everything worked, too. By contrast, I live among all kinds of hi-tech stuff without a clue as to how any of it works. It might as well be magic.

So my father and my uncle would take the TV apart, and its innards–mostly vacuum tubes, which I found endlessly fascinating, and it looked like there were hundreds of them–they would carefully spread out on the floor. Somehow they isolated the tubes that were probably at fault, and took them to the local hardware store to be tested on a tube-tester like the one pictured above. I loved that! It was even cooler than the machine that used to shake cans of paint. My daddy liked to take his kids along wherever he went, and I was always up for a trip to the hardware store.

Having learned which tubes needed to be replaced, they would buy them, come back home, and put the TV back together–and voila! Good as new.

I would give an awful lot to be able to watch them do that again.

A House Full of Family

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Image result for grandma moses big farmhouse

I don’t know about you, but Grandma Moses’ paintings always go straight to my heart. If only I could find my way into one…!

What do you say to a little trip down Memory Lane?

When I was 12 or so, maybe a little younger, my Grammie and her new husband took my brother and me with them on what was meant to be a camping trip. Grammie was a Pennsylvania farm girl, and the campground happened to be very near her home; so it wasn’t only a camping trip, but also a chance for her to visit her brother, cousins, and other family members she hadn’t seen in years.

After heaven knows how many hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we finally arrived. We stopped at the farmhouse first, and there things began to go pear-shaped.

First the car door closed on my finger. Now that’s pain! Then we went on to the campground, set up the tent and the cots, had a bite to eat, and went to bed. It rained heavily that night. That was how we discovered the waterproof tent wasn’t even sort of waterproof.

So instead of camping, we spent the whole week at the house. It was a very big old house that had been added to, now and again: a map would have come in handy.

But it was wonderful! Four generations of the family were living there, with room left over for guests. They had no TV, so after supper each night, everybody who didn’t fall asleep played games. There was always someone to play with.

Uncle Walt taught us to make really good slingshots. Great-Uncle Mac took us fishing. We played with our distant cousins. Then a lot of slingshots got made and we had a rousing good slingshot war in which three generations were represented. *

I wouldn’t have minded staying there all summer, or even longer. But eventually we had to come  back, and none of us ever had occasion to go there again. I doubt I could even find the place, now. It’s just another one of those much-loved places that I might have only dreamed of, for all that remains of it now.

But it was a good dream.

*P.S.–For ammunition we used harmless soft green pine cones–no danger of anyone putting your eye out.

Once Upon a Sunday

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Image result for images of old-fashioned tripod barbecue grill

Sunday afternoon, in the summer: come on back with me for a visit to my family. A visit to old times.

It’s noisy now on Sundays, but it wasn’t then. Sunday school is on vacation. My father sends me to the playground–it’s right next door–to get sand for his grill. No gas: it’s one of those black things on three legs that uses charcoal briquets.

Everybody comes for the cookout in the afternoon. My father’s kid brother, Uncle Ferdie, will play horseshoes with us. Uncle Ferdie is an inventor, with all sorts of patents to his name. Once for Christmas we got a battery-powered tape recorder; but it was mercury batteries that had a tendency to leak. My father didn’t think it was safe, so he turned it over to Uncle Ferdie. He built a little power pack and converted it into a plug-in tape recorder, and it worked better than ever.

Along come the hamburgers, the hot dogs, the lemonade. Beer for the gents. Our step-grandfather, John, an old sailor from Holland, plays his harmonica. My aunts are all there, telling stories of their most recent bit of globe-trotting. At a leisurely pace seldom seen anymore, the day drifts into evening.

Or we might go to Grandpa’s house, just a few blocks away. He doesn’t have a grill, but he has patches of both black and red raspberries, he grows both white and Concord grapes, and he has really comfortable lawn chairs left over from the store he used to have in the 1930s. And a nice big front porch where Grandma has her rocking chair.

All gone, all gone, both the people and the places. Gone from the earth, but not perished: for God will preserve His people; He will preserve every good thing. They live. The Lord hath spoken it.

You’re all invited to come again, anytime you please. Maybe next time we can hike off to Hangman’s Tree and tell some scary stories.

By Request: Andre Rieu, ‘Amazing Grace’

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Wow! Linda, thank you so much for this contribution–Andre Rieu and his orchestra, performing Amazing Grace.

My aunts all loved Andre Rieu, and hearing this brought back wonderful memories of Christmas-time at their house. But even without these memories, the beauty of this hymn moves me to tears.

Tomorrow is Aunt Joan’s birthday, and I should be well enough to go and see her then. I wish I could play this for her.

Some of Aunt Joan’s Life

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of ocean liner postcard, 1958

Since so many of you have been praying for her, and she seems to be out of danger for the time being, I thought it only fitting that I ought to tell you a little more about my Aunt Joan–the last of my family in her generation.

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, when hardly anybody else was doing it–in fact, you could get famous for doing this, if you wanted to–Joan and her sisters, Gertie and Millie, were world travelers. I mean, they went everywhere! And it was always an event when they came back with stories and a slide show. I’ll never forget the tale of how they wound up stranded at the Black Cat Cafe somewhere in Uganda, way back when, examining the varied and exotic wildlife that had taken up residence in their salad.

Joan, Gertie, and Millie got jobs as young women, fresh out of high school, which they kept for their whole working lives. How common is that anymore? They always had ample summer vacation time–especially Joan and Millie, who worked for school districts–in which to stage their travels.

It’s just too bad they didn’t keep journals. It was a very different world, that they traveled, and they knew it better than just about anybody.

Aunt Joan Has Recovered

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Just got a call from the hospital: they are discharging my aunt tonight, sending her back to the nursing home, because she has, for all practical purposes, recovered.

Thank you all for your prayers. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.

‘Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty’

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Linda requested this a couple of days ago, so here it is–Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty.

And now I have to run off to the hospital. Having received no phone calls since yesterday afternoon, I expect to find all’s well, comparatively speaking. Aunt Joan has had incidents like this before; but for those, her long-time caregiver, Patricia, was always on hand to run interference. Patricia’s in Ghana now, visiting her family, and I don’t have her phone number. She loves Joan and would want to be on hand in a crisis, but I don’t have the heart to call her back from Africa.

Please keep your prayers coming, folks.

And don’t forget, from now on we’ll post your prayer requests, too.

Aunt Joan Update

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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I know I should be blogging news and stuff, but I do want to report on this.

I finally heard from the doctor this afternoon; and, against expectation, my aunt seems to be getting better. She’s still breathing on her own, and various medications are kicking in. I plan to visit her tomorrow, now that she won’t have assorted doctors working on her. She hasn’t had to be placed in the Intensive Care Unit, either.

I thank you all for your prayers on her behalf. Please keep ’em coming.