The Postcard

I don't even remember what it was that I was looking for, but a few weeks ago I found myself opening the drawers of the secretary in my living room searching for something.  What I discovered was my mom's scrapbook on Kennedy's assassination, a postcard, and old friends.

The secretary had been at my parents' house since my grandmother died in 1981.  They had left some of my grandma's things in the drawers and then had added their own items...yearbooks, a Rand McNally map book, and a scrapbook my mom had made on the assassination of President Kennedy.  My mom was crazy about JFK, and when he was killed, she must have been devastated because she cut out and pasted everything printed in the newspaper about his death.  I had looked at it a couple of times when I was a kid, but it was A LOT of news and not many pictures, and I was quickly bored.

When my dad died, I inherited the secretary and the items in it.  It didn't seem right to remove them after 30 and 60 years in one place, and so everything was where it had been left when I opened the drawers a few weeks ago looking for whatever it was I needed at the time.

I saw the scrapbook again and, curious to see it as an adult, I took it out. It's a handsome, leather bound scrapbook.  John Kennedy is poised regally on the front, framed in gold leaf, the Stars and Stripes behind him. I opened the cover.  The first things in it are entire sections of the paper from November 22, 1964, the year anniversary of Kennedy's death.  There is (was) a postcard of the grave site and three photographs of it wrapped in a work order (more on that later), and a copy of a comparison between Kennedy and Lincoln and the weird coincidences of their presidencies and assassinations.  Lots of tidbits and clippings of the anniversary inside the cover, as if, like we all do, Mom meant to add them later and just never did.

I turned the page and found the articles on the visit to Dallas from Nov. 22, 1963.  Glowing reports of how Jackie has captured the heart of Texas and how the president is courting supporters.  Pictures of the Kennedys and the Connallys together...The photo on the next page takes up the entire space.  It's the one of the Secret Service agent climbing over the back of the convertible.  The headline on the facing page reads, 

"President Shot To Death By Sniper; Johnson Receives Bipartisan Pledge; Red Sympathizer Charged As Killer."

And then page after page of clippings and articles from the next several days of shock and mourning.  

I read some of them, much of what I had already read in one way or another over the years, and decided to have a look at the postcard.  It said, "Dear Son..." and went on to talk about a trip to D.C. and the visit to Arlington and where the writer was staying.  It closed with, "Love, Mother and Dad."  The recipient was a man named Gnadinger who lived in the 40218 zip code.  The date was 1964.  Curious.  I had no idea how my mom got her hands on this, but I knew a Gnadinger from St. X, so I called her to ask if they might be related.

Turned out that the recipient had the same name as her husband's cousin, and his dad was still alive, so she promised to check into it.

Well, a few days later, I got an email, that the card WAS from her husband's Uncle Norb to his son when Norb and his wife were on vacation to Washington D.C.!  What a coincidence!  Kyle and Norb's great-nephew are in the same grade at St. X and are both in the play.  Small world!  I was glad to get that settled, but it didn't explain how my mom got the postcard.  They didn't live near each other.  They didn't go to the same church.  They didn't work at the same place.  HOW in the world did my mom get a postcard from the great-uncle of a boy Kyle knows from school just shy of 50 years since the postcard was written? 

This was a mystery, and I had to solve it.  I asked my aunts if they knew any Gnadingers or had any idea how Mom would have gotten the postcard.  No and none were the answers.  I sent an email back to my friend giving her detailed information on my mom and where she worked in 1964 and her maiden name...anything to make the connection.  I figured the postcard probably came from the recipient to Mom when he or his wife realized how much Mom loved Kennedy, but we just couldn't figure it out.  I went ahead and mailed the postcard onto my friend for her to give to her husband's uncle.  It belonged to them more than me, and I thought it might jog some memories.

Finally, I asked my friend where Norb worked.  She said Tube Turns.  My grandma worked there during WW2, but that was 20 years PRIOR to this postcard.  Then I thought I remembered that one of my mom's brothers also worked there.  I called my aunt back, and sure enough, my Uncle Jim worked at Tube Turns for many years.  He was a machinist.

I called Uncle Jim.

"Uncle Jim," I said, "did you know anybody at Tube Turns named Norb Gnadinger?"  

"Yeah I sure did," he replied.  "He was a good friend!  We used to bowl together..."

And so it went.

Uncle Jim reminisced about Norb for several minutes, and I told him the story of the postcard.  Thing was, Uncle Jim really didn't remember anything about the postcard.  I emailed my friend again.  "Ask Uncle Norb if he remembers giving the postcard to Jim Portman."

I got an email back yesterday from my friend.  This was Norb's reply:

"When Helen and I returned home from Washington, D.C., the JFK grave-site postcard was still safe in the house. Jim Portman and I were very close friends for many years. We did bowl on Tube Turns teams together. He and I shared quite similar averages around 160 – 170 and we enjoyed bowling together. If I’m not mistaken, Jim had his schooling at St Patrick’s on 18th Street (?) (Sharron's input: It was actually St. George). Jim’s main job at Tube Turns was the equivalent Machinist trade in the Laboratory Destruct Stress-Testing Dept. This means that as a machinist, he would make a test sample of aluminum or steel on a Lathe and then this sample was pulled apart on the testing machine and the resistance result numbers, if they were satisfactory to our customers, would accompany the materials as we forged various items for our customers. Of course, we also filed this information in our archives. (sorry I’m so wordy)

Every time I would leave my office to check out something in the mfg. shop, I usually visited with Jim and his co-workers. I know that I talked to him about our visit to the JFK grave-site because that was still of interest to everyone. Jim seemed interested in some way about the photo on the postcard and I offered to give it to him. I thought at the time that he just wanted the card to get an idea of what the Presidents grave-site looked like – as I described it to him – and also told him all about Arlington Cemetery and the ceremony carried out at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (at that time). I don’t believe that we discussed this item again."

Uncle Jim then came home and gave the postcard to my mom, who put it into her scrapbook.  It was just a nice gesture at the time, but I'm sure she was thrilled.  Something fairly insignificant to him, but here we were, 50 years later, reconnecting dots and remembering old friends!

I called Uncle Jim to share the email, and Uncle Jim said again what a really nice guy Norb was.  He said, "He was a real leader!  Any time there was an event, Norb was the emcee."  He organized monthly breakfasts of the men once they retired and was just an all-around "great man.  Please tell him I said hello!"

Tonight, while writing this, I got the scrapbook out again and looked through it.  This time I paid more attention to the photographs I had always assumed my mom took when she finally made it to Arlington a few years later.  I would still think that she was the photographer save for one small detail.  They were wrapped in a piece of paper I had never looked at closely before.  At the top, it says, "Tube Turns  A Division of Chemetron Corporation." It's a copy of a work order from 1961 that was pulled out of a ledger and folded around three photographs of President Kennedy's grave.

I'll bet dollars to donuts, they were taken by Norb.

Life has come full-circle.  How very, very cool.

To Renew or not to Renew...That Is the Question

When my kids were little, they sold magazines for school.  It was a huge fundraiser, and if a family sold 25 magazines, the kids got lunch and limo ride to Gattiland.  My dad was always good for 2 or 3 magazines, so the kids hit him up every year, and every year, he ordered, without fail, Time and Reader's Digest.  Sometimes he'd get Sports Illustrated or Newsweek, but the other two were a given.

Now on the order form, there was always the option of one year for one price or two years for a cheaper price, and it took me awhile to realize that my dad had been ordering 2 years' worth of subscriptions for several years in a row.  The good people at the magazine companies just added those orders onto the existing account, creating a several years of pre-purchased issues.

When Dad died, I had the magazines forwarded to my house since they were already paid for.  Time ran out a few months  later, but Reader's Digest kept coming month after month, like a little present in my mailbox from Dad.  About a year after his death, I wondered how long the issues would continue.  I grew to look forward to seeing his name on the cover, like a little tiny part of him was still alive to someone.

So yesterday, when the March issue arrived with the notice

it took my breath a little.  Only two issues left?  Ouch.  I have grown to enjoy Reader's Digest.  The stories are interesting, the jokes are funny, and I pride myself on getting at least 13/15 on Word Power each month.  But more than enjoying the magazine, I loved that it was still coming from Dad, nearly 2 years after he died.  Now, it too, would be ending.  I felt like crying.

So I am faced with the dilemma:  To renew or not to renew?  If I renew, I will still enjoy the magazine each month, but it won't be the same.  It won't be from Dad, and that is where the ultimate pleasure lied.  If I renew, the magazine will be mine and not Dad's, but it will still be kind of a gift from him because he introduced it to me and got me reading it every month.  If I renew, I think I will leave his name on the subscription.  I'll know the truth, but Reader's Digest won't, and at least in somebody's mind, he's still here, chuckling at "Life in These United States," and that's something anyway.

The One That Started It All

The first Christmas we were home after Kirk got out of the army, we spent much of the time with Mom and Dad.  We had lived with them for about 9 months, and after our house was move-in-able in late November, we moved out of my parents' place and into ours, but we still spent a lot of time with them.  Their house was so much nicer and warmer and cleaner and warmer and finished.  Did I mention it was warmer?

Among Mom's Christmas decorations, Kyle fell in love with a wooden nutcracker.  It was a fairly traditional one, wearing a blue coat and hat with red knee breaches and white socks and black shoes.  The hair and beard were white, and Kyle loved to move the handle on the back up and down and watch the mouth move.  He made a game of putting a finger in the mouth and closing it, and he would laugh like crazy when Mom or Dad or I would put our finger in and then yell, "Ouch!" when he pulled the handle to close the mouth.

Mom used to let him carry the nutcracker around with him in his chubby little hands.  He loved to feel the hair and pretty soon, the beard started to come unglued.  The edge of the hat began to chip when Kyle would reach for the nutcracker, and it would fall onto the table or get dropped on the floor.  I suggested to Mom that Kyle was going to ruin it and that maybe she should put it up if she wanted to keep it nice.  She poopoo'ed me and told me not to worry about it, because if Kyle liked the nutcracker so much, he could have it.

Sure enough, the beard came off and the hair got messed up and the whole rim of the hat was chipped and worn.  But that nutcracker started a tradition that has lasted now 15 years and has landed us a veritable army of nutcrackers that come out every year.

Throughout Kyle's life, I have given him a new nutcracker every Christmas and tried to pick one that related to something he was interested in at the time.  There is an Uncle Sam from his patriotic period.  A cowboy and a Civil War soldier.  The year we saw "Pirates of the Caribbean," I found a pirate, complete with dreadlocks and parrot.  When Kyle was interested in sword-fighting, I found a knight with a shield and a resplendent robe.  When he learned to play the guitar, I found a rockstar with a mullet and sunglasses.  There is a gladiator and a football player and a nutcracker on skis and a New Zealand All-Blacks rugby player.  Last year, I got a real nutcracker from Fussen in Germany after we toured Neuschwanstein.  He's holding a beer stein from the Haufbrauhaus and a big pretzel.  This year, I have a nutcracker that looks like a medieval hunter with a bow and arrow to commemorate Kyle's role in "Robin Hood."  You can learn a lot about my son by looking at the nutcrackers he's collected over the years.  It's a fun trip down memory lane every time we put them out.

I'm already thinking about next year's addition.  Will it be a U of L Cardinal nutcracker or a NKU Norseman or a Hilltopper?  Who knows?  But whatever it is, it will take its place on the table with all of the rest, surrounding The One That Started It All, who stands proudly in the center with its missing beard and chipped hat, as if to say, "Look at me!  I was here first!"

What now?

My sisters and I buried our mom in 2005 after watching her waste away from cancer. She was 65. Our dad developed Multiple System Atrophy, a form of Parkinsonism, and was diagnosed the next year. We spent the past five years watching him slowly lose his jovial personality, his laugh, the sparkle in his eyes. As his world grew smaller and smaller, our responsibilities grew larger and larger. We counted out medication for him to take each day, drove him to doctors' appointments, brought him dinner, helped him with his laundry, paid his bills. When it got too much for us to do and take care of our own children, we persuaded him to move from our family home where he had lived for 42 years and move to a house down the street from me. He left his church, his volunteer work, his penuchle club. We watched as he forgot the words for things and called the "exit" at the grocery the "going out place" and the deli the "cheese place." He struggled to express himself until he just got frustrated and sat in a chair and didn't speak.

The hardest thing for me to do was to take away his keys when the doctor told him he couldn't drive anymore. This was a man who had worked for Chevrolet Motor Division for 30 years. He drove for a living. He drove us to Florida, to Michigan, to Cape Cod, without cruise control, without a relief driver on our vacations every year. He drove us to ball games and the skating rink and drove me to Texas when I moved away. I had to take away his keys like he was a reckless 16 year old who had gotten one too many speeding tickets. He was angry, but more than that, he was hurt. He didn't speak to me for 3 weeks. He didn't tell me he loved me or ask me how my day was or tell me he understood why I felt I had to strip him of his last bit of independence.

When I left for vacation, my thoughts were, "What if something happens to me or Dad while I am gone, and we've left with him not speaking." I went down and tried to make amends. I don't think he forgave me, but he did tell me he loved me, so that was something.

While I was away, Dad ended up in the hospital. From there, he went to rehab and then to a nursing home for more rehab. My sisters and I did his soiled laundry and washed feces off his shoes when he couldn't make it to the bathroom and brought him deodorant and Wint-O-Green Lifesavers and got him coffee from the nurses' station and watched as the man who was our dad, our hero, the man who loved us best in the world, struggled to get up out of his chair and walk with a walker without losing his balance. We wanted to help, to lead, to share our strength, but he would push us away as if to say, "I've lost everything else, at least let me walk by myself."

Dad died in July. He had written a Living Will along with a DNR. When the time came for us to decide in the emergency room if we wanted to override Dad's wishes (you do have that option, you know), we had to decide together to honor Dad and let him go in peace. We told the doctors that we wanted him comfortable but not kept alive by extraordinary measures. We gave him medication to ease any anxiety. We gave him oxygen so he wouldn't feel like he was drowning. We made him comfortable and waited.

Dad lingered for five days, and even when we knew, we KNEW, that this was the end, we kept holding on to every breath, every rise of his chest, every twitch of a leg, because as long as he was breathing, he was ALIVE, and we weren't alone.

These last six months have been a blur, a whirl of going through, passing out, moving on. We've sold his house and distributed his possessions. We've cashed in insurance policies and closed bank accounts and had his headstone etched with the date of his death. The only thing left to do is pay last year's taxes and close the estate and then all traces of Dad alive will be gone. It is a lonely feeling, and nobody tells you how much this sucks.

In my mind, I am still a teenager, way too young to be parentless, and I am so very sad.

To Be Continued

So I'm leaving Locust Grove last night after a Costumed Interpreter meeting.  We have been going through huge changes in the CI program, and it has been very painful.  For awhile, I didn't know if I even wanted to be an interpreter anymore, but since I have so much time and money invested in this, and because I love history and Locust Grove so much, I decided to give the new program a year and see how it went.

At times I've had to choke back tears, and many times I was unsuccessful.  At times, I've choked on my words, and other times, they have spewed out like so much bitter bile.  I have not liked the changes.  I have not agreed with many of them.  I have resented the people brought in as "experts" to tell us what we needed to do to improve our program and our characterizations of the people we portray.  I felt insulted and diminished.  I have had deep seated feelings of betrayal and, I admit, jealousy, and it has been hard for me to be nice.

But I have continued on, hoping it would get better, because I love Locust Grove.

So anyway, last night as I'm leaving, I'm walking out with Emily behind some of the younger people now in charge when I had an epiphany.  It was seriously in a split second that I came to the realization that will take me a minute to articulate, but bear with me while I try and explain it.

What I realized was this:

For a thing, anything, to continue, it has to be passed on.  The people in charge have to nurture younger people in loving and caring for this thing.  The people in charge have to make the thing worth investing resources in.  The people in charge have to let the younger people have some kind of ownership in the thing or else there will be nobody to pick up the mantle when the people in charge can no longer be in charge.

So for the younger people to be interested in the thing and want to continue investing their own resources in this thing, they have to want to be there.  They have to see value in this thing.  They have to have some kind of ownership in this and they have to envision themselves in its future.  For that to happen, the people in charge have to yield some of their ownership of the thing, to give up some of their control, and when they do, the new owners of this thing might see it in a different light with new possibilities.  The younger people may want to try something different or stop doing something the same way it has been done for years.  They might want to tweak something a little or completely overhaul it.  Just because their vision is different from the vision of the older people, doesn't mean that it's wrong; it just means it's different.

But what it does mean is that there is a vision of the future, and this thing is in that vision, which means it will continue.

So, do I like the changes at Locust Grove?  Not particularly.  Do I think that the implementations of the new changes were handled poorly?  Oh, my yes.  Very, very poorly.  But with some perspective and last night's epiphany, I see that the changes are good in a way because they are creating ownership and investment in Locust Grove by its next generation of caretakers.  And that can only mean one thing...Locust Grove is "to be continued."

The Green Beans on My Shelf

I just put 24 jars of canned fresh green beans on my shelf today.  I love seeing all of the jars lined up with their various sizes and colors.  It's quite a mosaic, edible art, if you will.

My mom put up green beans every year.  I only got to can my own beans with her once before she died, but I remember helping her for years before that.  I hated it.

Dad always grew beans in his garden, and whenever she'd have enough to fill the canner, she'd put them up.  Sometimes, though, Dad would bring home a bushel from one of the Chevy dealers in the country or he'd go to Huber's and pick them, then we'd spend a sticky evening on the patio snapping green beans and swatting flies and mosquitos until the whole box was ready for the canner.  Once I remember Granny helping us, and that night was actually pretty cool.  The three generations sitting around, talking and snapping beans.  Still, I never really liked it, so I'm not sure why I CHOOSE to do it now, but I do.

Whenever I put the weight on the vent pipe of the pressure cooker, and it starts rocking with the steam, I have flashbacks of being in Mom's orange and yellow kitchen, jars everywhere, beans soaking in the sink, a pan of hot lids on the stove.  Mom was militant when she canned, as I wrote about in my post "Snapping Beans."  I was canning by myself for the first time this year, and while I wasn't too militant, I did make sure the kids stayed out of the kitchen as much as possible and away from the stove at all costs.  They hated the SSSS SSSS SSSS SSSS sound of the canner as much as I did when I was there age.

I wonder if any of them will ever put up food.  If they do, I hope I am here to help teach them and revel in their wonder at what they have painted.

July 19, 2011

There are days in your life when everything changes.  Pivotal days when something happens, and you are never, ever the same...the day you meet your future spouse or the day you learn you are pregnant or the day you find out someone you love has cancer.  Sometimes these changes come easy and are welcome and, looking back, make you smile to think how different your life is now.

Sometimes they come at you like a brick through your window and land in your lap, bringing shattered glass and splinters, and no matter how much time has passed, you still have the scars and the sliver of wood under your skin that just won't go away.

Today is that day for me.

Today is a day that is seared in my brain like a hot brand on leather.  I can't tell you anything about earlier in the day, but I remember vividly pulling in the driveway about 6 p.m. and seeing Kirk talking to neighbors, inviting them in to continue the conversation, and then answering the phone a few minutes later.  It was Mr. Kresse from St. X.  Kyle was on a mission trip to Appalachia, and the first thought that came to mind was that he had broken something and I was going to have to go get him.  Would that it had been that simple.

I remember Mr. Kresse's voice on the other end, measured, quiet, saying, "There has been an accident at Glenmary.  All of the boys from St. X are okay, but one of the students from another school has drowned..."

I remember the waves of relief that washed over me in that split second...first, that Kyle was okay, and second that all of the St. X boys were okay.  Then I felt the anguish of the parents who were getting the phone call that it was THEIR child who had died.  I remember thinking, "How would you make that phone call?"

Mr. Kresse said that some of the St. X boys had witnessed the drowning, but he didn't know who, and I prayed, prayed, that Kyle had not been there, even though I somehow knew it in my heart that Kyle had seen it.

The boys were coming home tonight, he said, and we were to meet them about 11 at the school.  A sick sense of dread washed over me. My ears began to ring; my skin to crawl.  My heart began beating in my throat.  I was singularly focused on fixing it so that Kyle had not seen anything.  I started praying, "Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there.  Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there.  Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there..."  And because we had 4 hours or more until they arrived, I went back, explained the situation, and finished the conversation with the neighbors, screaming silently, "Would you please go the hell home???"

About 10, Kyle called from the road.  "Hi Mom," he said.

I cried silently with relief, "Hi Buddy.  How ya doing?"

"Umm, yeah, okay," he replied.

"Were you there?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "I was there."

"I am so sorry, Kyle.  I have been praying you weren't.  Are you okay?"

"Not really," he answered.  "I can't really talk now.  I'm in a car with the other guys.  I'll tell you when I get home. Okay?"

"Sure. No problem.  I'll see you in a bit," I said, and when I hung up the phone, I just sobbed.

I drove to St. X early in case they arrived before 11.  It was pouring down rain.  Lightning.  Thunder.  Wind.  Awful, awful storm that mirrored my anxiety.  I waited in the parking lot, praying, praying, praying, watching for them to arrive.  I drove from one side of the school to the other not sure which lot they would go to.  I ran into Mr. Kresse who said they were actually going to meet over at the Speedway across the street for the shelter from the rain, so I drove over there and waited.  I saw other anxious parents waiting in their cars, and we gave each other wan smiles as if to say, "Thank God it wasn't us."

The boys pulled in about midnight, delayed by the rain and the wind.  They were all exhausted and hyped at the same time.  I hugged Kyle, but not too much, and we loaded his things into the van and headed for home.  He didn't talk much.  He only wanted to tell the story once, so we waited until we were in the family room with Kirk, and then he broke down and sobbed, telling us the story through his tears.  Details would continue to come out over the course of the next year, but we heard enough to know that this day would have a profound effect on us.  And it was then that Finoy Lukose entered our lives and changed us forever.