Nervous as a Cat: 1/13/58

A letter in my sophomore year, describing a "harrowing experience" of a meeting of the Westminster Fellowship council (apparently I was on it) with people from the National Synod about building a new student center. "We don't even bother with an organized budget and they were talking about our raising thousands of dollars. They asked searching questions aout the kind of job we were doing. It was very stimulating to say the least and I never realized how poorly we were doing."

Then some notes on how almost everyone at WF is a Sigmu Nu or pinned to a Sigma Nu. "Very nice for the Sigma Nus but I remember that last year i felt like I was invading an upper class clique." (I went to a retreat at Montreat and got to know everyone and was then feeling more comfortable.)

"I almost didn't go to this meeting, but I'm glad I did, even tho it has made me nervous as a cat." Then the kicker: "I hope in my naivete I didn't say anything tonight which sounded hypocritical or like I was saying what they expected me to say."

Already a rebel.

Four in a Two Door '48 Ford

>I was just thinking I need to tell my grandchildren about our trip out west
>in 1948 in a two door Ford named Daisy. This is Barbara, and comments from

my sister, RosalieAnn, are in Italics

She was Daisy Mae because that was L'il Abner's girl friend's name.
The 1940 black 2 door Ford also had a name, but I can't remember it
now.  We got the new car because we didn't think the old one was up to
the mountains.  To keep it from overheating going up the mountains, we
would release the hood latch and the hood would then be up a bit and
it would squeak in that position.

>I was 8 and in 4th grade, RA was
>10. We camped, and even with no tent we had so much gear that there was a
>tower of stuff in the back seat between my sister and me. Of course we were
>always arguing about who had less room. And we had stuff under our feet.

Mother said she did it that way so that we could not physically reach
each other.

>And no radio or other entertainment. And no air conditioner. Blistering hot
>through farm country.
>
>Even with no AC, there were the triangle shaped side windows that we could
>strategically position to have a breeze, and I think the back seat windows
>could open. When we came to a town, our first stop was the ice factory, to
>replenish our refrigerator and pass around good-sized cubes of ice which we
>placed (again strategically, this time with anatomical strategy) on our
>pulse points. I can still remember how the ice felt on the back of my
>knees, elbows, and on the back of my head.
>
>Though RYF used to decry all the AV available to children today, I reminded
>her that, before interstates, there was always something to look at or
>count. We had endless contests. Red barns. Cows. and of course colors of
>cars. We made up superstitions. See a white horse and you made a fist,
>licked it, kissed it, stamped it, and you would have good luck. All bridges
>required holding your breath (perhaps a holdover from the Billy Goats
>Gruff?) and of course, in the interests of George's swimming prowess, I re
>instituted that with our family.

And maps - how could you forget the maps.  Endless math problems
figuring out how far to the next town.

>
>My sister had the role of story teller. She spun endless yarns. The only
>one I remember was called "Rub Don't Blot," derived from a sign on the
>towel dispenser. I don't remember whether it was paper towels or one of
>those circular linen towels where you pulled to get a clean place for your
>own hands. (BTW when you drive so many miles, how the rest rooms are
>becomes a big part of your life. I am reminded of that when we travel by
>any form of transportation now.)
>
>The story: There were two children named Rub and Blot. One was good (Rub)
>and the other (Blot, of course) was always into mischief. I believe the
>gist of the story was that the mother was always saying "Good, Rub!  Don't
>do that, Blot!" And to be sure her children behaved, she went around
>writing it on walls everywhere, shortened for efficiency, as in "Rub, Don't
>Blot!"

I remember doing that story but didn't remember the story itself.  I
do remember that I would ask you to give me three objects and I would
make a story up about them.   I know I did one about the Magic
Hairbrush.

>
>I don't remember reading a lot of books on this trip. I don't remember
>carrying a lot of books in the car -- we would not have had room. We must
>have had a couple. I do remember begging and pleading and finally being
>said yes to, to buy a couple of comic books. My mother did not approve of
>comic books, but we did have a few, worn thin with rereading. I can
>recreate Archie and Veronica in my mind. Also some Classic comics, like
>Tale of Two Cities, hard to understand.

I don't remember that.  I remember collecting milk bottle tops from
the different dairies and writing letters to Grandmummy about the trip
and naming our sleeping bags.  One was Deerfield and one was Ravena -
named for towns we passed through.

>
>We tented. In rainy weather we slept in the car. Every several days we
>would stay in a motel or, more likely, a tourist home. Motels weren't
>ubiquitous in those days. If in a motel or tourist home, my sister and I
>would sleep in one twin bed and my parents in the other. They did not seem
>to mind the crowding.Hmm.

Mother had made screens for the car windows so if was rainy or
particularly mosquitoy we slept in the car.

I don't remember twin beds in motels - I do remember one place in
Scotland where there were just three single beds and Mother and Daddy
shared.  We went to a motel to get a bath every few days.  And we
stayed in one tourist home in Silver Cliff where we had to go the gas
station to use the bathroom.

>
>If in the car, my father took out the cotter pins so the front seats would
>drop down. Being sure you did not lose the cotter pins was important. I
>don't think we did; maybe we had extras. My place, at age eight, was with
>my feet under the steering wheel and my body angled diagonally to the
>driver's side door. Everybody else fit in somewhere.

That wasn't the way it was.  Daddy being the tallest had his feet
under the steering wheel and his head toward the opposite corner.
Mother was next to him on the passenger side with her head in the back
corner.  I was next to him on the driver's side.  You were in the
corner next to mother on the passenger side.

>
>We always started out at the crack of dawn, or before dawn, to do as many
>miles as possible before the heat. I did not like those breakfasts, sitting
>on the fender, eating sloppy cold cereal out of the box. I was expected to
>be cheerful, but if I managed to be that, it was under duress.
>

I remember Daddy shaving using a mirror hooked to a tree branch.

>Lunches, however, were very satisfactory. We had a standard lunch. Mother
>loved milkshakes. We would find a Walgreens, and she would order thick
>chocolate milkshakes all round, and lecture the waitress on how we wanted

>them *very t*hick. The milkshakes would arrive so thick you couldn't pull

>them through a straw. Delight. They were always accompanied by packages of
>peanut butter crackers. Chocolate milkshakes and peanut butter crackers
>were the unvarying lunch fare, and always in an ice cold drugstore.

I did remember the milkshakes, but not the other things.

>After hitting the ice house again, we would be off for a couple hours of
>driving and then make camp. Remember, we didn't have a tent, but we each
>had a sleeping bag, an industrial strength Army surplus camouflage sleeping
>bag good for 30 degrees below and with a waterproof cover. We spread these
>out on a big canvas tarp, and we had pillows, and we tried to stay cool.
>

In the daytime when it was hot, we would strip down to shorts and a
T-shirt.  But it got cold at night so we would put on jeans and a
sweater and crawl into our bags.  One morning in the Grand Tetons we
woke up next to a snowbank.

We also stayed in a cabin at Yellowstone - they wouldn't let us camp
without a tent there because of the bears.  It was the 4th of July and
they let us have sparklers.

>We camped in farmyards and in parks; there were no real campgrounds then.
>The one place I remember camping was the Badlands of South Dakota. We had
>just been to visit the (what is the four faces on a mountain site?) and the
>badlands was quite deserted. No other people were around. Somebody -- I
>don't remember if it was my sister or my mother -- found a toad hopping
>across her face, screeched, and threw it into the bushes. Major excitement.
>

I don't remember the toad so it must have been mother.  I do remember
some people coming to the overlook above us about dawn and suddenly
seeing our sleeping bags below and hushing their voices.

>We had a small green gasoline stove (coleman), which I think we still had when we

>closed the house. My father was a good cook on that stove. And we had a set
>of nesting pots. I guess we had hamburgers and hot dogs, I don't remember,
>but I do remember his cooking some fish that we caught and famously
>teaching me that the fried fish eye was a delicacy. And of course I still
>like to scandalize diners today by crunching on those eyes. They aren't
>that bad but they do taste better fried.
>
>Mother made a point of taking us to see the capitals and RosalieAnn -- who
>did  way more traveling than our family did -- continued that tradition.
>Whatever there was to see, we stopped to see. And mother was an inveterate
>pointer outer of sights. She truly loved adventuring, and noticing, and
>learning about nature. We marveled at clear blue skies with rainbows, and
>sunrises, and sunsets. Every sunrise and sunset had to be photographed by
>Daddy. Every road side historic sign had to be stopped for and read. Every
>continental divide had to be honored with a photo of our beet planted, one
>on each side. Every mountain was anticipated, as we drew nearer and nearer
>but never seemed to get closer to the foot.
>
>The one fishing trip that I really do remember was with my cousins, Carol
>Lynn and Dorothea, who lived on their father's state game farm in Colorado.

I don't remember this as a fishing trip - just a camping trip.  And I
remember mother wanting to camp down by a stream and Daddy insisting
that we camp up on the bluff.  And in the morning there had been a
cloud burst upstream and the water was up to where we were.

>It was not a planned trip but happened for a sad reason. Shortly after we
>arrived at their farm (he was a game warden, and he took in the injured
>animals and the baby orphans) I met m father's mother (Bertha/Barbara) for
>the first time. Within the next couple of days she died. I'm not sure how
>that sequence worked, I'm not sure we knew she was sick. Anyway I was
>dramatically distraught, sleeping in a bed with my non-crying cousins (who
>actually knew her), Sarah Bernhardt sobbing her heart out. To get us all
>out of the house so preparations could be made, my parents took us and the
>cousins on a fishing trip for a couple of days. I don't think the youngest
>cousin, Beth, went with us. Carol Lynn was a little older than I and
>Dorothea is a little younger.

Beth wasn't toilet trained yet - but I remember Dorothea and Carol
Lynn ALSO crying.  And I remember mother telling me not to bother
Daddy because he would be sad because his mother had died.

>
>We have movies of us on the farm, having similar fun to George's family
>having fun on the Mallarnee farm, getting scolded for jumping on the
>haystacks, feeding baby deer with a bottle, running after the pheasants,
>such delight.

We were scolded for jumping and sliding on the feed bags because that
made the feed all dusty and crumbling.  We went out into the pheasant
pens in the morning to find their eggs which we would have for
breakfast.

>
>Then we turned around and drove home. It took the summer. I think we went
>out by the northern route (the Badlands) and home by the southern route
>(Carlsbad Caverns - we have movies of the bats leaving) and Tennessee (we
>spent some time in Oak Ridge, where I puzzles and puzzled over the comic
>book that was supposed to explain nuclear energy, but I still couldn't
>understand it.).

Was it there that we met Vandevar Bush?

> We were used to long hot hours of waiting for grownups
>from working in the un airconditioned mouse lab (that's another story) and
>waiting for our parents on the surface of the Pennsylvania coal mines
>(that's still another story). Maybe it helped us "build character."

We drove from St. Louis to home all in one day because Daddy had to be
back for something.  So Daddy would drive and I would read the map,
and you and mother would sleep, and then mother would drive and you
would read the map - we went for 24 hours that way.
>
>Often we whiled away the long hot hours by singing, any song that anybody
>could remember, often in animal voices. Using the Old MacDonald pattern, we
>sang each song in animal talk, especially Oh Susannah! and You Are My
>Sunshine. Usually we stopped singing when we got to a town, but we would
>squeal with delight when -- at an intersection -- my father would stun the
>passersby with his Woody Woodpecker laugh. This trip is what I think of
>when I hear those songs, those words, whether in human talk or pig oinks or
>horse neighs or cat meows or...

Great memories!
>

Salt Mines and Bike Tours

This post has moved to a private blog. Contact me if you want to be added to that list.

Such Sweet Sorrow

While going through some archives, I found a spiral notebook with just one page written in the back. I thought it might be useful at this time.

They who go
Fell not the pain of parting; it is
they who stay behind
that suffer.
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By sharing the joy of another, we increase it.
By sharing the woe of another, we diminish it.

The bigger the summer vacation the harder the fall.

Only eyes washed by tears see clearly.

Germany is Wunderbar!

Dear Georgie,

You are wondering what it’s going to be like to live in Germany. Well, you are part German! My family came from there.


My grandmother on my father’s side (your great great grandmother) emigrated from Germany and settled in Colorado. Here is a photo of my father (your great grandfather Frank Figge) visiting his German cousins in 1963. They were so glad to see us! Maybe you’ll get a chance to meet them too!


Granddaddy and I lived in Nurnberg (sometimes spelled Nuremberg) for three years. He was a lieutenant in the field artillery in the neighboring town, Fuerth.



For the first year, our best year, we lived on the second floor of a German house. We had a little bedroom under the eaves, a living/dining room with a sofa bed, a tiny tiny kitchen with a two burner hotplate, and a tiny bathroom – plus a balcony. When Elizabeth was born, we rented an additional bedroom, and Herr Gerner (Mr. Gerner, Herr rhymes with “hair’) raised the roof of the apartment to give us more room.

Our landlords, the Gerner family, lived on the first floor. They had two little girls – Susannah and Gertie. When Elizabeth was born, they gave her a dolly, and we named her Susannah. (It’s not a coincidence that we have another Susannah in the family). The Gerner girls did everything that little girls do – played with dolls, went to school, went to church, got yelled out by their mom, and so on. They helped teach me to speak German.




We called their mother Frau Gerner, meaning Mrs. Gerner. Frau rhymes with “how.” She worked hard to keep the house nice and clean, but their little dog kept messing it up. I can still hear her telling him – Strubili was his name. "Strubili! Bist du ruhig! (Be silent!)"

Herr Gerner had his own business, and he was very handy with tools. “Machen machen, Immer Machen,” he would tease Granddaddy. That means “always be doing something, always be busy.” He liked to work in the garden and fix things around the house. He laughed a lot and was lots of fun. He always urged us to eat, and eat more and faster. At Sunday dinner, the first one finished got to say “Koenig” (pronounced kuh-nig, King). Herr Gerner was always “Koenig.”

We were the only “Amerikanerins” (Americans) on the block, but the neighbors were nice and friendly.

Granddaddy had a big huge American car, a white Chevrolet Impala convertible with red leather seats. The Gerners were very proud to have that car outside their house! However, it wasn’t easy to drive it through the narrow village streets. Once I took Frau Gerner and the girls for a drive in the countryside. At that time I could speak almost no German, though I did know “rechts” (pronounced recks, for “right”) and “links (pronounced like it sounds, for left). She sat in the backseat and leaned over the front seat, pointing and saying “Geradeaus! Geradeaus” (ge-rah-duh-ows). I finally figured out that meant “go straight.”

On Sunday, the Gerners would go "Spazieren gehen" (shpots-eer-en gay-en), which means to take a walk in the countryside or to "go see another space."

Oh what good times we had! I was so sad when it was time to move to the Army base. I didn’t get to see the Gerners very much after that, but I did have some other good German friends. The women were Girl Scout leaders, and their husbands were Boy Scout leaders. Scouts were called “Pfadfinderinnen.”

These women were full of adventure! They had fondue parties – beef fondue and cheese fondue. And Christmas decoration making parties. They were really clever with Christmas decorations made from straw.

Once, for Fasching, our German friends had a Middle East party. (Fasching is Germany’s Mardi Gras. Everybody – adults too – dresses up in costumes, and the parties last for weeks.)

They wanted me to come as a belly dancer. I was much too shy then for that so I wore my blue leotard and put a skirt over it and sort of shimmied around. The party was held in a brand-new house that had just been plastered but not painted. They painted the walls with camels, and pyramids and hung a brazier (a charcoal cooking fire) from the ceiling. It was VERY elaborate! And then everyone had to pretend they were desert travelers and tell a story.

It was a great party but the cleanup was more difficult than predicted!

How did we speak to them? They knew a little English, not much. At first we used “pidgin English,” a few words here, a few words there, a lot of gestures and acting out. It’s amazing what you can convey with your hands. I also went to the language school for soldiers and my friend helped me practice. Granddaddy didn’t get to go to the school, but by listening carefully he was able to understand what people were saying. So many words in German are like English words. Milch is milk. Schwimmen is swim. Tanzen is Dance. Name (“NAH-meh”) is Name. Tochter is daughter. Gut is good.

Speaking of schools, when German children start school in the fall, their mothers give them cornucopias filled with candy! To congratulate them for beginning the new school year! The paper cornucopias are on sale in every stationery store.

Speaking of stores, I loved to shop in Nurnberg. They had such cute things! Clothes and knick knacks decorated with ladybugs, or shamrocks, or chimney sweeps, or little ground hogs. Germany is the land of cute. “Hubsch” is the German word for that or “Nette” or "Susse" (sews). If we gave Gertie a little present she would say “Susse” delightedly. The best shopping of all is at Christmas, when the village square has a special “Christkindl Mart” or Christ Child Mart. There are wonderful things to eat – sausages and gingerbread and roasted nuts – and buy. Germany is a magical place at Christmas.

We have fond memories, but they are from long ago (1962 to 1965). Click here for a modern account of a boy's life in Germany.

Mit viele Umarmungs (with many hugs) und Kusse (kisses)

Ich liebe dich (I love you)

Grossmutti (Grandma)

P.S. Wunderbar means wonderful!

Gluten Free Birthday

George celebrated his birthday yesterday as follows:

attended the Republican breakfast, the Lincoln Club, at the Nassau Club, where he heard the New Jersey governor's CFO speak about the budget

helped me pick up 12,000 feet of 16 millimeter film, my father's home movies, converted into 4 DVDs, with copies for my sister, from Ray Hallows of Film To Tape in Lawrenceville.

lunched with me at Chambers Walk -- hot tuna salad for him, because of his just-discovered gluten allergy

played 9 holes of golf at Princeton Country Club

We had dinner at Eno Terra, our new favorite innovative restaurant. I asked the maitre' d if they had a gluten free dessert that could have a birthday candle and the chef and our waitress Dana concocted the fruit plate above -- apple, pear, pear sorbet, blood orange, berries, and Happy Birthday written in chocolate. Superb!

A good day..

Childhood Tracings

Indelible Tracings, a new book, memorializes the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) team that was killed on a plane over Brussels in 1961, en route to the Worlds in Prague, as recounted in Obit magazine. The plane crashed 50 years ago today (February 17), and a prize winning documentary, The Rise, will be shown in some area theaters tonight only.

It brought back memories of my childhood figure skating days at the Ice Club of Baltimore in Carlin's Ice Rink, where my sister and I trained three times a week to pass USFSA figure and dance tests. The USFSA was so small then that when we passed a test, even ordinary skaters like us, had their names printed (albeit fine print) in the USFSA bulletin. I have three such bulletins sitting in my dining room, marked by by mother ("See p. 36") while I try to decide what to do with them. (Tear out the pages? Scan them? Leave them for my children to toss? Toss them now?)

For the record, page 36 in June 1953 says that age 13 I passed my Bronze dance test, including the Fiesta Tango. I remember the judge's name: Madeline Skirven. It doesn't say who my partner was. Nicky Royal was my favorite partner -- Billy Ridenhour was a little shaky and there was an older gentleman who was so shaky that it was scary to dance with him. (Note to grandchildren: even today I remember these details, and the details of your life will stay with you too!)

In earlier tests (May 1951) I passed the Predance. That one's pretty easy. I can still do the Dutch waltz, even in my dotage, all forward movement.

In May, 1950, I passed the preliminary figure test, representing hours and hours of "patch" skating that I wouldn't trade for the world. In patch skating, every move you make leaves a trace. You know absolutely for sure whether you did it right, and then you try to do it better the next time. I believe it was a huge mistake to take patch skating out of competitions, and as a result, few skaters do it. In my opinion that's like saying ballet dancers don't need to do a barre.

My sister and I started skating when I was three and she was five. My mother made our outfits as shown in the photo. They were reversible -- blue wool on one side, red satin on the reverse. The tights were wool. Our hats, which she made from chenille, had little pads in the back though we did soon learn to fall forward.

There weren't many child skaters then, and we were quite a wow at the club show. We did a "pair" number that consisted of us putting together some basic movements. As I remember, my contribution was a two-footed wibble wobble down the center line.

What did 12 years of skating bring to me, aside from knowing how to lace my grandkids skates?

Family time: The chance to participate in an activity with my ever busy father. My mother figured out that it was a good bonding activity for the four of us, and it gave both of them a rare chance to exercise. They developed friendships at the club and did the Dutch Waltz.

Persistence: The opportunity to work hard and be judged on whether I passed the test.

Exhilaration: The chance to skate free and fast, round and round, on an uncrowded rink. I'm spoiled for public skating forever.

A tolerance of cold temperatures, especially when bolstered by hot chocolate.

It's a puzzle to me why I didn't join Princeton Skating Club when we moved here. It focuses on ice dancing but it was expensive to join, and you couldn't just come and skate. Since then, Iceland has been built, but now I can't find my skates.

One result from the plane crash that wiped out all the skating stars: Money was raised to quickly bring the next generation to competition level, and it helped to fund the training of my all-time favorite, Peggy Fleming. She attributes her meteoric raise, according to the book, partly due to the extra training funds, but also to the vacuum at the top.

Dick Button wasn't on the plane; his picture is on one of the Skating magazine covers and he is, of course, featured in the documentary. Perhaps the names of those who died are in those magazines in small type, along with my name. Those young skaters would have been the right age, in 1961, to be champions.