Inklings

Category: memories

  • Memorable Weather

    smores

    Today we kick-off the eighth annual Memorial Day camping weekend with my in-laws. In that time we’ve experienced all kinds of weather which, if you’re tenting, can make all the difference. Most years the nightly lows would hover just above freezing. Other years we’ve nearly been carried away by the rain and high winds. And two years ago we endured the entire weekend sitting in inches of rain without a campfire due to the ridiculous county-wide fire ban. This year, despite the forecast, looks to be warmer and, for the most part, drier than years past. Regardless of what the weather forecast holds, the tradition has built some amazing memories over the years and continues to be one of the highlights of summer.

  • Random Memories

    memory

    I realize I’m putting myself out there as a computer geek with this post, so for those of you not inclined to talk megs and gigs, I apologize. Over the past 20 years I’ve relied on a great many forms of saving digital work. The true 5.25″ ‘floppy’ disk dates back to my junior year in high school and I’m glad to say that’s where it ended. Entrusting anything that flimsy to hold your essential files seemed far too risky. I would equate it to stuffing a vinyl 45 in your backpack with a bunch of heavy text books.

    Things got some better with the 3.5″ floppy diskette. It was no longer floppy and a lot smaller plus a double density disk could hold up to ten times the data. I still have a ten-pack of floppies that I bought in college for one of my classes. They were obsolete before I got a chance to use them all.

    My foray into the world of graphics required a need for more robust storage. One of the earliest forms I recall was something known as the SyQuest disk. You needed a special drive that actually had to ramp up speed before the disk was read. The clear case and size made it seem like an 8-track after dealing with floppy disks for so long. They weren’t reliable and from time to time you lost information.

    The successor to the SyQuest was the Magneto Optical disk. These looked like two floppy diskettes sandwiched on top of each other but again, required special drives. Offering sizes up to 640MB these little wonders were a mainstay for temporary data storage. Not unlike the SyQuest, these too, began to offer spotty performance and after losing some really big jobs we abandoned them all together.

    Iomega offered their own brand of MO disk which was highly successful. So much so, that every computer began offering an internal zip drive as a standard feature. They were certainly more reliable than their predecessors and I found myself having to upgrade to a 750 MB drive to keep up with some of my clients. Unfortunately, the days of zip were numbered as well.

    With CD storage still a standard, the CD-RW became more popular as the drives came down in price. Soon computers offered CD-RW drives as standard features. Once DVDs hit the market, the appeal of CDs wore thin. With 4.7 GB of storage in the same physical size, how could one go wrong. One of my early Macs had a special DVD-RW drive that would burn rewritable DVDs. Though expensive, they were a great way to economize the amount of space needed to store data.

    The USB thumb drives are the latest craze in small, portable rewritable data storage. I remember when a 2 GB USB thumb drive cost $180 (I once had a 2 GB hard drive computer back in ’97 and thought it was HUGE!). Now you can get a 16 GB drive for $45!

    I wonder what the future of data storage will bring. All I know is if it gets any smaller we won’t be able to see it to plug it in!

  • Coaching

    It’s funny how your image of authority figures tends to change as you get older. As a kid in athletics there was sort of a negative stigma attached to the hard-line, uber-competitive coach. You know, the violently gum-chewing, whistle-blowing, arrogant, perpetually angry-because-his-team-didn’t-make-it-to-State-when-he-was-in-high-school-so-you’re-gonna-pay-penance-for-it coach. The guy who ran you ’til you either passed out or died and who would scream rhetorical bits of sarcasm in your face until he was hoarse. So hoarse that he had to use his whistle to bark commands for the remainder of practice (don’t ask how, it’s obviously a gift). He was the ex-jock drill sergeant that felt his sport was more important than life itself – especially yours.

    I’ve volunteered to coach a number of seasons with my sons’ baseball or soccer teams and I can honestly say I am not ‘that guy’. And even if I would happen to slip into that role for even a second it would only be because I want the kids to learn the rules of the game, have fun and win. Is that so wrong?!

  • Clint Eastwood

    This soon-to-be 80 year-old actor/director/producer has had quite the career. Lately he’s had such a string of directorial successes some people probably didn’t know he was ever an actor. I’ll never forget the first Clint Eastwood movie I watched. It was probably one he’d just as soon the world forgot, but in ‘Every Which Way But Loose’ the orangutan-owning, biker-loathing, prize-fighting trucker Philo Beddoe epitomized the Eastwood toughness factor in nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt. All things considered, the gravely-voiced machismo of his character was what typified a lot of his later roles and seeing it almost every other day on HBO made it a cult hit with us boys growing up. It wasn’t exactly the most impressionable program for an eight-year-old to be watching, but let’s be honest, Clint Eastwood could beat the crap out of Sesame Street.

  • Mowing

    The smell of freshly cut grass always takes me back to the summers of my childhood. My younger brother and I shared the responsibility of mowing an elderly widow’s yard every summer, a kind woman who we all had come to know very well. We spent time visiting her and her late husband when we were younger, so it really wasn’t much of a chore but an honorable duty. We called her ‘grandma’, though I think she privately despised it.

    Whenever her grass began looking unkempt we hauled down dad’s old side-bagger Briggs and Stratton and spent what seemed like a whole day mowing. Not only was her lawn expansive, but very intricately landscaped. The backyard was a very quaint and shady respite with lots of shrubbery and herringbones of railroad ties, so maneuvering the old mower became a matter of efficient geometry. I’m pretty sure this is where I developed my mowing technique. I would trace the perimeter of the area of what I was going to mow by ‘cutting in’ and then, very meticulously, I would strive to make the straightest mowing lines possible. Even trees that fell in the path of my ‘lines’ I would carefully swerve around, back up, and continue on my ‘line’ as if the tree were not there.

    After the task was complete, I’d report to the front door, ring the doorbell and await the wrought iron storm door to open. Some days she would invite me in for a short visit, which on hot summer days I appreciated very much because she had a window ac unit to keep it cool. Pay day was either by cash or check – you could expect four crisp Washingtons and a Kennedy half dollar or a beautifully printed check. Having been a perfectionist school teacher, her penmanship was incredible (to this day, my printed signature is inspired by the late Alma Schwartz).

    I realize now probably more than I did then how important it is to respect and care for the elderly. I appreciated the payment for doing the work, but I think she cherished the time to visit with someone who took an interest in what she had to share – and I guess I did too. The saddest part of all those summers, is one day we didn’t do the mowing anymore. I don’t remember why exactly, whether another young neighbor had assumed the duties as we grew older, but the year Grandma Schwartz passed away I felt incredibly sad that I hadn’t visited her for so many years. It’s funny how something like mowing the lawn can teach you so much.

  • Billiards

    I always enjoyed the game of pool. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we never had a table growing up. It was always something we wanted – especially after visiting any friends or cousins who did. It didn’t occur to me until I was much older that there was actually some skill involved in playing the game. Turned out it was actually more than just hitting the cue ball as hard as you could. Suddenly physics, geometry and even ‘English’ had new meaning.

    In college I played nearly every day after classes. For Christmas I got a pool cue. By all standards I was ‘into’ the game. At least I thought I was. I entered an eight-ball tournament in college and soon learned differently. Apparently there were people out there that were more ‘into it’ than I was. In one game I actually beat myself before my opponent had the chance by scratching on the break. Yeah, I was not a pool shark.

  • Swimming Lessons

    I was fortunate that I grew up in a town that made it mandatory for every kid to learn how to swim. Seriously! As eighth graders we were all shipped off to the local indoor pool and evaluated to see where we were on the swimming skills ‘food chain’. I think I landed somewhere between shipwreck and anchor. I wasn’t even an accomplished doggy-paddler based on the fact that I was placed in the beginner’s class. I was a splash above drowning. So, for a whole semester I learned how to swim, dive and even snorkel. By the time I completed my freshmen swim class I was asked to consider the swim team (I had been promoted to driftwood).

    Knowing what I had to go through to learn how to swim, it’s easier to encourage my boys to learn this skill when they are young. While our oldest is a level four, I don’t think our youngest has made it past level two. Neither one of them will drown if they are in the water, but there’s a certain comfort level knowing that your kids are accomplished swimmers. We tend to keep a closer eye on them both when they’re in the pool, but I’m proud to say that my youngest is a much better doggy-paddler than I was at his age.

  • Waterproof

    The spring thaw is underway and things are getting wet. The milder temps have kept the kids busy outside playing in the soggy snow. It’s weird to think that just a few weeks ago you couldn’t get them outside if you paid them. The battle now is trying to keep them supplied with dry caps, gloves and coats. If an overnight stay in front of the heat registers won’t get their saturated stuff dry by morning we’ll throw it all in the clothes dryer. The one item that’s most difficult to keep dry are their shoes and boots.

    There’s nothing worse than soggy, wet socks when you’re outside playing. Especially when you feel them sliding off your feet. The breaking point has to be when your socks reach the balls of your feet – it’s the point of no return. The only way to keep from losing them all together is to surrender by going inside to do what your toes were unable to – pull them back up.

    Mom had an ingenious way of keeping our feet dry when our boots failed to do the job; bread bags. It certainly wasn’t the most dignified solution but it seemed to work. When it was time to change from boots to shoes at school, the only comfort that saved us from embarrassment was the fact that nearly all of our classmates were subjected to the same ‘brilliant’ solution. No sir, there certainly never seemed to be a shortage of bread bags in our home. I wonder if we could get our boys to try it.

  • Playgrounds

    School playgrounds have gone through a bit of an evolution since I was a kid. Padded plastic and rubber have replaced the metal and timber structures that endured the use (and abuse) of hundreds of schoolchildren. It’s a wonder that more of us weren’t permanently maimed by these ‘slaygrounds’ of yesteryear. Next to today’s brightly colored, safety-approved ‘play kingdoms’ the old equipment looks medieval. Don’t be fooled; if there’s one thing our children have proved to us is that no playground is 100% safe. In fact, every playground you visit has at least one guaranteed discovery – the infamous used band-aid.

  • Baking

    Nothing in the glutenous world beats freshly-baked bread. If you’re yearning for that homemade taste, store-bought frozen bread dough will do in a pinch, but I have to say, nothing beats mom’s homemade bread recipe.

    If you’ve never witnessed the making of homemade bread, it’s quite a process. I remember the long hours mom spent mixing all the ingredients in her large black kettle; how she covered it with a flour sack towel (or heating pad) waiting for it to rise; and the violent punching and kneading that was necessary to work it over before forming it into little loaves and buns. All that work she put into it was well worth it and our reward for being ‘helpful’ was a sampling from the first batch.

    Us kids would wait patiently near the oven for the first loaves to come out. As soon as that oven door opened, the intoxicating smells of yeast filled the entire house. After sternly reminding us to stay safely away from the hot pans, she would take a paper towel, swab it with butter and gently rub the golden brown tops of the piping hot bread. Waiting for the bread to cool was the hardest part so we often risked burning our lips to taste what had been teasing our taste buds for so long.

    It’s not often that we get to enjoy mom’s homemade bread but we can usually count on Thanksgiving to get a taste of those incredible buns. They’ve become so popular that she usually doubles her normal batch (half of which always seem to go home with someone very lucky). Maybe, just maybe, we can hope to have homemade buns for Easter this year.