Category Archives: Memories

Card from Cindy from Montana

Death, Friends, Memories, People, Things, Travel

Thanksgiving weekend, 1990. Dean and I, along with Paul and Kelly, traveled to Long Island, NY to spend Thanksgiving with Kelly’s parents, Bunt and Ann, who were renovating a house there.

Also at the house that weekend were Bern, Kelly’s brother, and his ex-girlfriend, Cindy.

Cindy and I hit it off right away and talked the entire weekend. We had quite a few things in common: birding, Wisconsin (her parents lived in the same small town a family friend was from), reading. Together we decorated a birthday cake for Paul (I think it was for Paul) to resemble a golf course littered with Canada geese and geese poop. It was pretty funny. I thought I’d found my new best friend.

She wrote sent me a Christmas card with her address, I know I wrote back, but the letter was returned to me — not at this address. I could have easily asked Paul and Kelly for her address, but never did, I think, because they teased me a bit about being in love with Cindy.

Summer, 1998. Dean, the kids, and I visited Paul and Kelly in Los Alamos, New Mexico. At dinner one night in Santa Fe they told us that Cindy had died in a tragic accident earlier that year. She and her boyfriend were canoeing and were caught in a sudden snowstorm. He jumped out of the canoe to seek help but she died of hypothermia while she waited. I think he also died.

I’m a little confused by her note though. I don’t remember going rafting with her. So it is possible this Cindy is alive and well and still living in Bozeman, although I have no idea who she is.

Circus World Museum

Memories, Things, Travel, ,

I’ve just come across a souvenir booklet for the Circus World Museum that my parents must have bought for me on our trip there in the summer of 1972. I’m not sure why I felt I needed a booklet about the museum because I don’t remember really liking it much. In fact the only thing I remember about it was a clown talking to my dad out of character. I wrote about it on my Snapshots of my Life blog.

Baraboo is even more memorable to me. It was there I began my dislike for clowns. The museum put on a circus show several times daily and we got in late and didn’t have a seat so we stood by the opening to the tent. The clown act ended and one of the clowns came over, stood by my dad and said, “Hell of a way to make a living”. That in itself is not a reason to dislike clowns, but it ruined the magic for me. Clowns were supposed to be happy or tragic, but not dislike their occupation.

Me 2005

Grandma’s Tablecloth

Memories, Musings, Reading, Things, ,

I’m reading a book, Wish You Well, that takes place in Southwestern Virginia in the early 1940s. In it the great-grandmother of one of the protagonists sews her a “feed sack dress”, a term new to me. Of course I asked Professor Google and was surprised to learn that feed sack companies made feed sack material dual purpose. The first, a container for the feed, the second a dress or apron or other cloth-made item. The material was not just white or off-white with lettering printed on it, but floral, or striped, or otherwise decorated. I remembered a cotton tablecloth my Grandma Patrick had on her kitchen table and wondered if it could have been made out of a feed sack. I was lucky to be given it and used it on my table for a while. I had no idea where it was, but today I serendipitously came across it while going through boxes for a different reason.

The tablecloth has a pattern of different types of flowers on a gray background with a crochet trim. The material is is soft to the touch, but strong. I’m willing to bet it was made from a feed sack, but of course no one is left to confirm my suspicion.

I’ve decided that it should not sit in a plastic bag in the storage area of my attic, but be displayed somewhere in the house. It’s now covering a too-dark bedside table in the purple guest room.