I have titled several postings as "Bits and Pieces" or Sleepless Nights". They were created to compile short stories of a paragraph or two, maybe even three or four paragraphs. They quickly filled up forcing me to create more posts for short stories, hope you find them as interesting.
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When Danny was almost two, his little brother Clay was well on his way. We lived in Florida then, it was a magical place that was starting to grow, one of the major theme parks was "Circus World".
I don't remember the details, probably it was just to get Danny out of the house and let Linda rest although my aging memory suggest that Linda may have even been with us that day. At any rate, Danny and I wound up at Circus World. It was fun to see the expressions on his young face as he looked at the clowns, animals and performances that were there. I do remember that one thing we did that put a grin on his face was to ride an elephant.
I'm sure he doesn't remember the day just as I can't remember it in detail but it happened.
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I hadn't been at my first duty station long when I was told to make a pot of coffee, I stated that I didn't drink coffee and was told that was not the issue - go make a pot of coffee. Although I had made coffee for my mother many times I told the petty officer that I didn't know how to make coffee.
The petty officer took me to the coffee urn that made 32 cups and told me to fill it with water and put the grounds in the pan at the top then turn it on, so I did. The first pot came out looking more like tea and very weak so I was told to do it over and this time add more coffee grounds. The second time the coffee came out strong enough that the spoon could stand up in it by itself, the petty officer agreed that I didn't know how to make coffee.
From that point on over the next four years I was never asked to make coffee.
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From the time I was born, until I was thirteen, I spent a lot of time on the farm with my grandparents. Once I started school, I would go to their place until about a week before school started back, looking back those were some of the best days of my life. Being a father to two boys, I can say it was at times a chore to keep young kids preoccupied for a few hours much less an entire day, I doubt keeping me out of trouble was any different but somehow granny and grandpa managed.
For the most part, I followed grandpa everywhere he went, I walked fresh turned dirt behind a plow pulled with mules and sat beside him as he smoked his corncob pipe as he sat in the shade of a tree. Granny, on the other hand, was a different story, she did "woman's work", cooking, cleaning and washing, none of which would hold the interest of a young boy for very long. But on occasion a rainy day would come along and there I was stuck in the house or on the front porch with nothing to do, that's when granny would do he best to keep me busy. Later in the summer was no problem, grandpa would come in with bushel baskets full of beans and peas of all kinds that had to be shelled, snapped and otherwise prepped for canning. Granny and I would sit for hours with a full basket on the floor next to us and a big bowl in our laps, the rain would be pounding on the tin roof so loud we couldn't hear anything, sometimes a little rain would blow in through the window screen and cool us.
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Back in the 50's, air conditioning was coming of age, some of the newer homes had it but it did add to the cost. Most of the older homes did without due to the cost of upgrading and often it was a matter of this was the way people had lived and saw no need to change. My parents didn't have air conditioning until 1964 and it was a window unit in a hole in the wall. The old people improvised as they always had, electric fans of various sizes or small handheld fans. All of the handheld fans seemed to come from either a church or a funeral home, if there was a depiction of Jesus or a cross it most likely came from a church. If there was a name and address of some funeral home followed by some words of sympathy, well that's probably where it came from. Wherever they came from they made their way into homes all around town. My Riggan grandparents had these small handheld fans from grandpa's church and funeral homes in two counties and three cities.
The fans were simple in design, they were somewhat of a square with rounded corners stapled to a large popsicle stick or tongue depressor. It seems that the places that incurred large groups or crowds were churches and funeral homes and neither was airconditioned, they must have bought these fans by the case. Pretty much every home of the time had several fans laying around and on hot days occupants and visitors would be sitting around waving the fan in a manner that cooled the face, the faster you worked the fan the more airflow that was generated. Grandmothers would use them to cool sweaty young children, mothers used them to cool sleeping babies.
This is one of those things kids today would scratch their head in wonder of what it is and then be amazed at why people used them. One of those lost pieces of history.
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