Tag Archives: Found items

Breakfast Picnics

Memories, Things

One of the unique things that my family did when I was growing up was to have breakfast picnics at a local forest preserve. We never did this with just the four of us, but as a planned event with extended family or friends. I remember having a breakfast picnic with my Aunt Ginny and Uncle Jack — perhaps that was the last one. I think it was when Jeremy was visiting us one year.

Anyway, we’d load up the car with bacon, eggs, coffee, cast iron pans, an aluminum stovetop percolator, flatware, dishes, tumblers and cups. We’d drive the 10 minutes or so to the forest preserve and unpack it all. Since the breakfast was being cooked over an open flame, the men did all the cooking. The kids ran around and played on nearby swings, the women set the tables.

Dad always made “egg coffee”, claiming the egg helped keep the grounds out of people’s cups. I don’t remember ever tasting it. My Aunt Ginny would not drink it — I don’t exactly blame her.

A quick Google search suggests my dad had a point about the egg keeping the grounds out of people’s cups.

Adding the egg helps clarify the coffee, allowing the grounds to separate from the water easily. The egg white extracts the bitterness from the grounds and enhances the caffeine. The result is a light, clear brew with absolutely no bitterness or acidity and a velvety texture that’s easy to drink.

The Spruce Eats: Traditional Swedish Egg Coffee

I think my dad learned this from his mother who was Danish — so maybe the Danes also made egg coffee.

These occasions were so special — a lot of work, but also a lot of fun and the food tasted better eating at a picnic table outside. (Now that I think about this — lots of people had this experience, but it was usually during a camping trip. My family was not a camping kind of family, so this was special to me.

The impetus for this blog post are the dishes that we ate off. I have them in a box and should get rid of them, but just can’t bring myself to toss them. I won’t eat off the dishes or drink out of the cups or tumblers because they are probably packed with carcinogens. Below are a few plates and drinkware.

I even have the picnic basket that once held these plates and drinkware, but it’s full of other things somewhere in the kneewall.

Found Items: Dark Shadows Memories

Memories, Obsessions, Television, , , ,

A while back I cleared out part of the kneewall and pulled out my suitcase of teenaged memories. It’s mostly packed with Jeremy’s letters, but I found other memories inside. One of which was a stained manilla envelope labeled Dark Shadows’ Memories. Inside the envelope were pages I’d torn out of 16 Magazine and perhaps Tiger Beat too.

Stained manilla envelop labeled Dark Shadows' memories

I am not sure exactly when I first saw Dark Shadows, but I know that I watched it when I was in 6th grade. I think I’d heard about it and remember watching one episode alone in a dark room and was terrified.

It could have been Eugenia Mack who really got me into watching Dark Shadows. I remember running to her house after school so I could watch it. She lived a little closer to school than I did. It began at 3 pm so we always missed a little bit of it. Her parents worked, so no one was there to interfere with us watching a soap opera about vampires, witches and werewolves.

I stopped going to Girl Scouts, and therefore was not allowed to go on a camping trip.

I guess it was my first obsession, and a gateway to many related obsessions. Based on the last photo it looks like I still enjoyed watching it in late 1970. Or at least I still liked David Henesy.

My two favorite characters were Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) and David Collins (played by David Henesy). Barnabas was such an empathetic vampire. You couldn’t help liking him. He was soft-spoken and gentle.

Dark Shadows by Frenchy. Drawings of many of the DS characters including Barnabas in the foreground.
Photos of Barnabas and Quentin with songs from the show.
Photos of Jonathan Frid getting ready for work

As for David Collins — it wasn’t so much his character, but the actor himself. I was madly in love with David Henesy. In fact, I remember that when I was in stressful situations at school I would imagine David was my boyfriend and living in New York. You see, we had a long distance relationship.

I mean, look at that face. I bet you are a little infatuated with him too!

I was so jealous of Doreen.
My brother took this photo of me at my request. See how much I loved David?
I must have cut his face out of the third photo in the first row. Maybe for a locket

I didn’t like all the characters. In fact I thought Quentin stank, at least in 1970. I guess I just didn’t like handsome werewolves.

Quatro Amigas

Things

I remember when I desperately wanted a TV in the bedroom. People on TV shows had them, some people I knew had televisions in their bedrooms, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant with Andrew and on bed rest that we put a TV in the bedroom. It was a tiny TV — maybe 13 inches, maybe a little bigger. It sat on a dresser on the wall opposite the bed. I probably had to squint to see anything — but at least it kept me entertained while incubating the baby to full term.

After that, we didn’t have a TV in the bedroom again for a few more years. I don’t even remember the first one, but it was probably moved to the bedroom after upgrading to a larger set in the family room. Since then we’ve always had one at the end of the bed. In recent years we’ve rarely used the bedroom TV. We always watched TV in the family room and had our phones or tablets for bedtime entertainment. I’ve made noises about getting rid of the bedroom TV, but Dean is not ready. We don’t get cable upstairs anymore — but we do have dongles that bring us whatever we want to watch except broadcast TV on the bedroom TV.

Today as I was tidying my attic study I came across a woven piece of art that our friends Sandy and Arieh gave us once after returning from a visit to Arieh’s home in Santiago, Chile. We kept meaning to hang it up, but never got around to it. We draped it over the back of a futon for a while, but various cat claws pulled out some fibers and thread. I’ve moved this piece of art from one storage area to another for the past decade or two and while I like it, I was tired of moving it.

Back to the TV — having a huge black void staring at you when you fall asleep and wake up can be depressing, especially since we barely use it. As I walked past it carrying the textile art I had an idea. Not an original idea since our friend Tal did this 35 years ago when he first got a Mackintosh computer. He didn’t like the black screen, so covered it with a colorful batik cloth when he was not using it. I hung the textile artwork over the TV — it fit perfectly. There are even little hooks behind the TV on the top to keep it in place.

I keep smiling when I look at the TV now — something I have not done for as long as I can remember. And now I can really see the artwork, it’s really nice!