W is for Whoops!

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

Some of the treasures I've been writing about finding at my parents' house are not necessarily from my childhood, but they've been in a closet for a good long time, like the quilt block my mom started and never finished. I think they qualify for this theme, and my blog, my rules, so there you go.

A shoebox has sat on the top shelf of a closet at my parents' house that has not been touched since it was put there over 30 years ago. I know it has been over 30 years, because when I removed the lid, expecting to find an assortment of odds and ends, I instead found my wedding shoes.

I loved my wedding shoes! They went well with the style of my wedding dress, had just enough of a heel to keep me from walking like a duck but not so much as to make me taller than my husband (tall girl problems), and while not exactly comfortable, they weren't murderous to my feet. 

I bought my dress in Nashville, where I lived, but I didn't get the shoes until just a couple of weeks before the wedding, and I bought them with my mom at a bridal store on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. It was the most money I had ever spent on a pair of shoes in my entire life.

Look what was in the shoe box!

Obviously, there hasn't been a big demand for me to wear these shoes, since they are very obviously wedding shoes and I've only worn a wedding gown the one time. The taps on the heels have deteriorated, the bows are wonky because of being in a box for over 30 years, and there is discoloration on them, so letting them go to the landfill wasn't a hard decision to make, but I got a last laugh when I turned them over and saw something I had completely forgotten about:

Oops

It's a good thing that kneeling at the altar wasn't a thing in my wedding, or the entire congregation would have gotten a chuckle out of the writing on the bottoms of my shoes, as well as the price tag that I never took off.* 

Here's a photo from my wedding that shows the toes of the shoes peeping out from under my dress. Our photographer snapped this candid when I was adjusting the falsies that were trying to escape from where I had stuck them in my bra in a futile attempt to fill out the top of the dress, if you know what I mean. And no, it never occurred to me that I could have had the dress altered, since the rest of the dress fit me perfectly. And also no, I did not have nearly enough stuffing in my bra to make a difference, such was the discrepancy between me and the bust size that dress was capable of enveloping.

Only four of us were aware of my wardrobe malfunction; me, my mom, my husband,
and the photographer, who may or may not have been drunk

Side note: I also found my wedding dress (or what I THINK is my wedding dress) in a very large box and buried deep within a closet that always harbored brown recluse spiders and a lot of my junk. I never saw it again after I took it off the day of my wedding. My mom took it to a dry cleaners to be cleaned and "preserved." I'd like to look at it, but it's purportedly sealed in this box and I'm afraid of opening the box and finding out (a) that the fabric will immediately yellow and deteriorate when exposed to the air and/or (b) it's not even my dress in there but some other random person's, and because it was presented to my mom sealed inside the box, she would have had no way to check and see.

*I have always been cavalier about removing price tags, and my mother used to call me Minnie Pearl because of it.

V is for Vampire Blood

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

The source of most of my dolls and toys and novelties growing up was my two great aunts, Edith (or Ecie as she was called) and Daisy. They pretty much raised my mom from the age of 7 when her parents moved from town to the family farm and where my mom would have had to attend a one-room school. Her older brother, my Uncle Bradley, was going to be living with their aunts in town in order to attend high school, and my mom threw such a fit that she was allowed to live there, too. These great aunts were like grandparents to me and my brother, as their brother, my grandfather, died when I was three weeks old, and my grandmother died when I was seven (she is the one I wrote about in R is for Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic). They thoroughly spoiled us and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don't remember the exact details surrounding the purchase of this fun novelty, but I do know that I had to have been the one to pick it out while on an outing with my great aunts, because they might have bought me a doll that they thought I would like when I wasn't with them, but I can assure you they never would have picked up this little gem without me begging for it:

 

I found the tube of Vampire Blood in a sack of odds and ends in my cedar chest. Oddly enough, it was empty, yet there was no sign of it leaking onto anything else in the bag. In its day, it was fairly realistic fake blood in a 4" tube. I can't find a lot of information on the internet about it, but as best I can tell, it was a Halloween novelty that came out in 1971, when I was in 6th grade. I probably saw it at the dime store and wanted it, and since I was spoiled rotten when it came to my great aunts, I got it. The only thing I remember using it for was when my Barbie family had a car accident in their Barbie case turned station wagon, and there were many serious injuries, including a broken leg for Skipper. 

I got a new friend in my life the year before when Abbie moved to our neighborhood and was in my class at school. Her family also attended our church, and we became fast friends. Abbie had a sense of style even as young as 5th grade, and she was the only person I knew who haunted the local Goodwill thrift store while in high school for clothing finds (she was ahead of her time on that one). Abbie's mom was a wonderful seamstress and made a lot of Abbie's clothes, and they were always so cool. 

Abbie and I spent the night at each other's house on many occasions, and Abbie always had fun ideas of things to do. She even taught me a game to play at church! During junior high, we would sit together near the front of the sanctuary and play Rat Fuck. Ever play that? Whoever started the game would very softly whisper "rat fuck." The other person had to say it a little louder, and it would continue until someone (me) chickened out. We usually did it during a hymn. We had matching bracelets that we bought at Bagnell Dam when we went on a youth group retreat in 9th grade. I wore mine for a number of years until it literally broke in half. She was and still is a dear friend.

Back to the vampire blood. Abbie was spending the night at my house one night when we were in 6th grade. My parents had friends over that night as well, and the adults spent the evening playing Bridge at the kitchen table while Abbie and I hung out in my room, and that's when we found the tube of vampire blood in a drawer and an idea was born.

Abbie had a knack for being able to fake cry on command, so I squeezed vampire blood on her wrist and hand, Abbie worked up some tears, and we walked into the kitchen. My mom was standing at the kitchen sink as we came in, Abbie holding her bleeding arm, me hovering nearby, and with a trembling, tearful voice, Abbie said, "Mrs. Vinyard, I cut myself and it really hurts."

My mom turned towards us, took one look at the "blood" pouring out of Abbie's arm, and said, "Oh, Abbie, what am I going to tell your mother?!" The bridge players at the kitchen table jumped up with my mom's words, and I was suppressing laughter. Of course, I ruined the whole thing by not being able to hold back my giggles any longer, and when my mom realized she had been duped, she just said, "Ohhhhh!!!" My mom, thankfully, was always a good sport, and she loved Abbie and her sense of humor (she did not know about Rat Fuck). It became one of her favorite stories to tell over the years. "Oh, that Abbie!" she would say. "She was always a corker!"

She still is.

Me, Dana, and Abbie in Las Vegas in 2010.
Abb - we need an updated photo!

U is for Unrelated, Miscellaneous Finds

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I was quite the little packrat! And as if the collection of items I have shared here so far weren't diverse enough, this post is devoted to some of my more eclectic finds.

First up is my first pair of glasses, which I got while I was in the 7th grade. They are the epitome of 1972 eyeglass fashion, and all my friends with glasses had either this shape or ones with octagonal lenses.

Growing up in Kansas City, we were all about our Hallmark products. Betsy Clark products were a favorite of mine. This is a button, about 3 inches across. I also had a keychain with a Betsy Clark character on it that was a good 4 inches in diameter. All my friends had them, too, with a house key on it that we seldom needed, because our moms were almost always at home.

I took my very first plane ride when I was 13 and I flew from Kansas City to St. Louis. My Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bradley picked me up there, along with my aunt's niece Judy, who flew in from New Jersey. Judy and I spent a week at their home in southern Illinois and had a grand time! This was the tag from my checked suitcase. RIP Ozark Airlines. 

I had my tonsils removed in 1967, right after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. I wrote about it here if you would like to read the story. I have some vivid memories of the hospital experience as a patient and as a child spending the night in a hospital in the inner city when rioting broke out. 

I had completely forgotten about this tiny doll! I don't remember when or where I got her, but someone had crocheted the dress and hat AND teeny, tiny underpants. Quarter for scale. Side note: I was carefully setting up this photo to get as much detail as possible while my cat Nora looked on. The moment I had the doll arranged and lifted up my phone to take the photo, Nora would reach out a paw and swoop the doll towards her. Then I would make a grab for the doll, and she would take the quarter. This went on several times before I was finally quicker than she was.

Crown Center, developed and built by Hallmark near downtown Kansas City, opened in 1973 and included a high rise hotel with upscale restaurants, one of the first food courts in the area, and boutiques and gift shops, as well as office buildings and an outdoor area for festivals in the summer and ice skating in the winter. It was a real treat to get to go there, and a visit on February 15, 1974 garnered me this little prize that I bought at a terrific gift shop called Maudie's. They are sugar cubes, decorated with royal icing flowers. I loved eating sugar cubes when we visited my grandpa's store (don't pretend like YOU never ate sugar cubes if they were available and no grown ups were watching you, and I'd do it again RIGHT NOW if presented with the opportunity), so I HAD to have these! But then, they were so beautiful that I couldn't bring myself to eat them. I kept them in a drawer in my bedside table for years, then they were moved with all my other stuff when my parents moved. I did not eat the 50 year old sugar cubes, only because I figured they'd taste like what I imagine dust mites might taste like, but you have to admit they sure held up!

This is my student ID and activity card from spring semester of my sophomore year in college. If you look really closely, you will see that my tuition for the semester is printed on that activity card. Go ahead and look. I'll wait.... RIGHT?! $180.00, and that was for 12-17 hours. More or less than that was adjusted by the credit hour. Tuition at that same university now is $4,512 a semester based on 14 hours or $279 per credit hour. PER CREDIT HOUR.

And my last entry is something I found in my cedar chest, along with Archie comic books, Tiger Beat magazines, my Missouri notebook from 4th grade, and dozens of scripts from the days in high school theater. It's my Raggedy Ann and Andy paper dolls! These are also the last picture I took tonight in my poorly lit bedroom (poorly lit if you are trying to take photographs, that is; otherwise, it's very pleasant and warm lighting). I took this right after I fought with Nora over the tiny doll and the quarter, and I didn't have any fight left. She won. Notice how she's guarding them with her paw from her brother Finn. If I'd been faster on the draw, you would have gotten an action shot of Nora smacking Finn for getting too close.

Unbelievable that I still have all this!

T is for Time To Bring These Beauties Out Of The Closet....

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I have a friend who has been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since I posted the link for "C is for Communication, 70s Style" on my Facebook page. She made this innocent comment:

I shall call this friend (and former roommate) Regina Flange. This is a photo essay showing what happens when:

a) you are really bad at blackjack

b) you are really bad at drinking games

c) you are really bad at drinking at all

d) the others playing the drinking game are aware of all of the above and cheat while you are in the bathroom with your cards unprotected, causing you to take yet another drink

A word about the room pictured. This was a furnished, two-bedroom apartment that we had recently moved into after moving out of the dorm. It had bright green variegated shag carpet (unfortunately not pictured) that totally clashed with absolutely anything else in the universe looked fab with the plaid tweed sofa in shades of brown. We moved in as the frat boys who lived there previously were moving out (and yes, that means it didn't get cleaned before we moved in), and as the guys were carrying out the last of their stuff, one of them said, "Whoever gets the bedroom on the right, just wanted to let you know the bed squeaks." Then he laughed himself out of the apartment. We did have fun living there (we lasted 6 months before finding better digs). We tried to cook, only setting fire to the kitchen once. We got scared when we had a mouse and had to run to the landlord's apartment to save us from whatever we thought a mouse was going to do to us. We temporarily adopted a stray cat who my parents then adopted and enjoyed for many years. We played lots of gin rummy. One of us spilled red nail polish on the bright green shag carpet, so when we moved, we put a chair over it and never had to pay for the damage. And we had exactly one evening of wild partying (it was soooo not wild).

These were taken B.B. (before blackjack)

D.B. (during blackjack and I was fake drinking)

D.B. real drinking

 

A.B. Guess which one of us lost the drinking game?

Oh, to be 18 again and in your first apartment!

S is for Secrets

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

Have I mentioned before I had a lot of dolls? I had a lot of dolls. 

This is Baby Secret. She has had a wonky left arm since I can remember. Her hair used to be in a ponytail, but I took it down and tried to make her wear it other ways. Note to doll manufacturers: don't make a doll whose hair can only go in ONE style. Baby Secret is mostly bald except for the hair around her hairline and a weird strip around the middle to make the pony tail. That was very disturbing to me then, and it's still disturbing to me now.

This is the back of her head with pony tail
 down and it's just wrong

Baby Secret was released by Mattel in 1965. I probably got mine in 1966. She whispered when you pulled a string AND HER MOUTH MOVED. I never thought of it as creepy, but in retrospect, yeah, I guess it was. Here's the commercial from 1966 to prove it (fun fact: the little girl is none other than Eve Plumb, aka Jan Brady!):

 

I didn't play with Baby Secret like I did with my doll Cindy. She wasn't a baby doll to me but more of a novelty. Most of the time, she was relegated to being a member of my doll classroom, but that's not all she was good for! I liked pulling her string and holding her against someone's face (usually my poor, patient mom's) and squealing with glee as Baby Secret chewed their cheek. I also liked sticking the end of my finger in her mouth after pulling the string and feeling her gumming it. It was also loads of fun to follow our cat around while pulling Baby Secret's string. Cats LOVE that....

Somehow, Baby Secret survived all this, plus a move to a new town while I was in college. She also survived the great basement flood, which got her relocated to my bedroom, and she survived my kids playing with her and is no worse for wear than anything I ever put her through. Sit back and enjoy a few words from her....

Tell me YOUR secrets! I'll never tell....

Fuzzy Thankfuls

 I'm spending the weekend running errands for my dad, trying to catch up on reading A to Z Challenge posts, and watching a documentary series on World War II. It's a full weekend! Now to get my Ten Things of Thankful posted, write tomorrow's A to Z, and keep wading through A to Z and TToT posts - whew!

On Monday, the toddler teachers at our school found an itty bitty kitten hidden under the protective cover on the sandbox. I saw a mama cat in our parking lot earlier when my class took a walk, but she was nowhere to be found. The kitten was brought to me in a shoebox, and I snuggled her into a soft blanket while we waited for animal control to pick her up. She needed some loving care and a foster home, and the humane society was just the place for her to get it. Don't think I wasn't tempted to keep her, but poor Nora wouldn't have been able to take another sibling!

Her little ears are still folded down.

She was hungry and wanted her mama and
was nom nomming the blanket

Shhhh! Baby's sleeping!

So I'm thankful baby was found.

I'm thankful the kindest man came to get her and take her to a safe place.

I'm thankful there are people out there who can foster kittens and not keep them all for themselves.

I'm thankful I know that I am not one of those people who can foster kittens because I WOULD keep them all and then Nora AND my husband would move out.

And I'm thankful for the Book of Secret Rules or the Secret Book of Rules that says if you're killing it with the A to Z Challenge and can't put two thoughts together to make a list of ten things of thankful. then you don't have to!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

R is for Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I was never much for 'rithmetic. As I wrote in M is for McDonalds, I hid my hand and counted on my fingers when I had to add up an order back in the days before computers when we had to use an order pad, a pencil, and a tax chart. I was terrible at memorizing multiplication facts, and when we did the timed tests, like, every single freakin' day of fourth grade, my friend Liz and I would trade papers when we graded them and write in each other's missed answers.  I didn't know how to do long division correctly until I taught fourth grade and had a teacher's manual. I barely passed Algebra I and II in high school, and when no one made me take more math than that, I filled my schedule with English classes and drama classes and lightweight social studies classes such as Psychology and Sociology.

I always loved readin', although I hated when we had to read aloud in class, as I didn't like everyone looking at me. I loved the Ginny and Geneva books and the Cathy books by Catherine Wooley, as well as Jean Little's books. When I was in fourth grade, the librarian introduced me to the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, and I loved them so much, I bought the entire series, book by book. I still have them, and my kids read them and loved them, too. 

And 'ritin'? If I was predestined to be a teacher, then I was also predestined to be a writer, because I reveled in writing papers in my literature classes. I began keeping a journal in 8th grade and wrote in one nearly daily for almost 20 years.

In my cedar chest in my old room, I found this story from one of the English classes I took to avoid math:

"Z was once a piece of zinc, tinky, winky, blinky, tinky, tinkly, minky piece of zinc."

"Read it again!"

Grandma cast her eyes heavenward.

"Just one more time, please? Pretty please, with sugar and cinnamon on top?"

Grandma groaned, "All right, one more time, but that's all for today."

She began reading, with the little girl snuggled against her, "A was once an apple pie, pidy, widy, tidy, pidy, nice insidy, apple pie...."

As the little girl listened to her grandmother's smooth voice reading the alphabet, she thought about her grandma. When she was about three years old, she received a doll, a beautiful, baby doll named Cindy. Dyanne was sure Cindy was a real baby; well, sometimes, anyway. She was so sure, she had her grandma show her how to hold Cindy like mommies hold their babies. Grandma showed her once, but sometimes, Dyanne forgot how, and Grandma would show her again and again.

"H was once a little hen, henny, chenny, tenny, henny, eggsy-any little hen?"

Grandma knew how to do real baby things with Cindy. She taught Dyanne how to wrap a blanket around Cindy and how to burp her. Grandma showed her how to do these once, twice, again and again.

"N was once a little needle, needly, tweedly, threedly, needly, wisky, wheedly, little needle."

Every time Grandma came for a visit, she was confronted with Cindy and The Nonsense Alphabet Book. Every time, again and again. However, when Dyanne was seven years old, her Grandma died of cancer. She didn't understand very much, just that Grandma wouldn't be back to read to her, or show her how to hold Cindy the right way, not ever again. She didn't think about her Grandma a lot until several weeks later. She woke up in the night, crying, and her mother came to comfort her. Although she was seven, she understood the sense of never. It was a deep, dark, unreachable hole, untouchable to all.

"Z was once a piece of zinc, tinky, winky, blinky, tinky, tinkly, minky, piece of zinc."

My mom had kept a mimeographed copy of this little story that I had forgotten all about until now. Note: one thing I left out of the story is my grandma being there when I gave Cindy a haircut. I remember her saying, "Why did you cut off all Cindy's pretty hair?" And why? Because I thought it would grow back, of course!

Not my actual copy; mine looks much worse.

Cindy has been with me always. She has moved to apartments and houses
all over the country, spending her retirement in my little rocking chair. 
She is wearing my baby shoes, but some 30 years ago, I bought her 
a dress to replace the tattered one of mine she used to wear.
Photo cred to my husband, because I was out of town and needed
 a photo, and he nailed the shot in one try, although in all fairness,
Cindy is a pretty compliant model....