Permanent

I saw a post asking what smell do you miss most. One smell that I recollect vividly was from my wife Cindy Morrison Beck. It was a smell I detested at the time, but it is one that reminds me of her. Cindy had straight, baby-fine hair. It was dark brown, almost black, but in the sunlight it had an auburn glint. One of her desires since childhood was to have curly or wavy hair.

As a child her mom, Retha Johnson Morrison would cut her hair in a short pixie style. It was almost the same style that she wore as an adult, sometimes a bit longer, but she never got rid of her craving for wavy hair. She envied our children when they had the wavy hair that she wanted.

Cindy wanted longer curly hair even as a child. She would save the empty red mesh onion bags and put them on her head to imitate a ponytail. After she shared this secret with me, I would save other mesh bags from oranges and tangerines and give them to her. She was an adult and needed a larger bag. She would laugh and throw them away, but occasionally she would don the bag for a few seconds.

About every other year, her desire to have curls or waves would overwhelm her common sense and she would go to the beauty parlor for a permanent. The harsh hair condiment would make her hair wavy for two days at the most before her baby-fine hair would lose the curl and the straight hair would sag and droop.

The strong chemical smell far outlasted the curl. For two weeks the powerful smell filled our bedroom. I would roll over away from her and at least the aroma wasn’t right under my nose. The smell was so strong, it almost made my eyes water. I had to turn my back to her in bed so I could breathe. It was the only way to avoid the noxious fumes. I won’t say that I hated the smell, but it was very near the bottom of the list of my favorite smells.

As a nurse, I’ve been exposed to odors that would turn most people’s stomachs. I won’t describe them, but suffice it to say in nearly 45 years as a corpsman in the US Navy, 4 years to earn my BSN, and hospital work; I’ve had a wide variety of olfactory assaults.

Now I return to answer to the question, what is the smell I miss, it’s permanent.

Bedtime Buddy

As a very young child, I can remember a stuffed corduroy doll that was 12 or 13 inches tall with stubby outstretched arms with a span of nearly 9 inches. Its chalky-white, hard plastic face smiled with an almost clownish smile. The doll’s chubby cheeks caused its wide open painted eyes to have the least bit of crinkle as if he was about to laugh. His body and cap were shaped in a Harlequin jester manner with green and brown corduroy material on alternating sides. His name was Andy. Could this be the reason I have a penchant for that name and called my son Andrew? Not really. I had no recollection of the name until my memory opened and I sat to write this piece.

Andy was my constant companion and not just my bedtime buddy. I carried him through the house throughout the day. From my continual abuse that a child like me gave a toy, the hard plastic eventually cracked and Andy lost his engaging smile. His distorted countenance didn’t lessen my love for him and he remained my faithful companion.

My mother Sybil Miner Beck decided that if I wouldn’t give Andy up, she would modify him and make him more presentable. With his distorted face cracking ever wider, Andy looked grotesque like the scary clowns of today. You know the ones that lure souls into the sewers. I am not sure what Mom thought, but Andy’s broken plastic face disappeared. She replaced it by creating a soft cloth one. My mom embroidered a new and different face on a piece of white muslin and used it to fill the hole left by the mangled original jester face that she removed.

It was a nice gesture but I can’t seem to remember exactly what the replacement face looked like. I know it had a mouth, a nose, and eyes but the image blurs when I try to recall the new features. It saddens me that I can’t remember them. Out of her love for me my mom took the time to repair my beloved Andy and yet I have no recollection of it.

I suppose there are some who will ask, “Do I still have Andy?” or “What happened to Andy?” I don’t know. I have no have no idea where Andy went. I can only remember that some of the cotton filling eventually poked out through the seams of his overstuffed body. I suppose that I outgrew the need for him. Obviously he was thrown away. Looking back, I can still see him as a sweet memory of childhood and not recall the tattered creature that he became. Perhaps that’s better for me. 

Autumn Buckwheat and Cider

It’s time again for the Autumn Buckwheat and Sausage Festival in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania. This year the date falls on October 14, 15, 15, 2022. The tradition of using buckwheat flour to make pancakes goes back much farther than the beginnings of the Ohiopyle Buckwheat Festival which started in 1947. The festival had very humble roots, starting out as the fund raiser for the Ohiopyle Volunteer Fire Department and by the community wanting to keep alive the history of the area. The Buckwheat Festival still remains the chief fundraiser for the fire department.

The early method to fry sausage and “bake” the buckwheat cakes started out by cooking the food in cast iron frying pans over single burner open gas flames. The spiced and ground pork was hand-shaped by helpers before they made their way into the skillets.

That way of cooking continued at least until 1974 when I started to volunteer there to spend time with my-wife-to-be, Cindy Morrison. For a few years, my job was to wash dishes. That was a major undertaking. It seemed there was always something to wash.

Later I was pressed into service baking the buckwheat cakes. It was a move up in responsibility. This takes sweat and special care. By then, the wide griddles had been introduced. It was a hot job. The temperature of the griddles must be maintained for an even baking of the cakes that limited the air flow to that room. Smoke and heat quickly accumulated and at times it became very uncomfortable.

I was “rescued” by my father-in-law, Elmer “Bud” Morrison to fry the sausage. Soon afterwards, the sausage frying area converted to the wide grill surface. Each grill will hold nearly 3 dozen of the sausage patties. At last count, there were a dozen grills set up to thoroughly cook the pork patties before serving them to the guests. I’ve volunteered for nearly 50 years.

Chris Fennimore and WQED television often come. One year they recorded the Buckwheat Festival for a program on volunteerism. Usually WQED repeats a showing this time of year. Most years he makes the trek from Pittsburgh to visit the festival.

Once cooked, the sausage patties are placed in huge roasters to be transported upstairs to the dining area or to the school building next door to keep the patties hot and ready for those who come to enjoy the autumn leaves, Ohiopyle Falls, and the meal. The only change in the menu was the addition of pancakes for the younger generation. Steaming stacks of buckwheats, pancakes, sausage, freshly fried potatoes, bread and butter pickles, and applesauce are placed on the table “home-style” to assuage the hunger of the diners. 

Riches Come and Riches Go

I’ve been trying to sort through things that have accumulated, old receipts, old checkbooks, odds and ends of information, and the like. I’ve been tossing them into a two chamber egg crate until it was more than overflowing. I thought I might leave a trail and a chore for my kids to follow once I decided to shuffle off this mortal coil, but finally decided to leave them a much cleaner slate to deal with. When I reach the bottom of the storage box, I may have an idea exactly how many years I have been hoarding all of these records. I know the initial reason I’ve stored receipts was for proof of paid bills. I was told it was necessary to keep records for three years, but once the three years were up, I had no desire to root through the pile of accumulated paperwork. The papers will help heat my house this winter.

Among the massive pile of printed material were Christmas, thank you, birthday, and get well cards. I found a few old calendars that I’d saved for a friend who likes to take inspiration from photos to use as she paints. Delving through each layer of paperwork was like opening Pandora’s Box. One thing I found was a note to my wife Cindy from her students telling her to get well. This was before she was hospitalized and died from ovarian cancer, but the poignancy of the recognizable names and sentiments still reopened old wounds.

I started to write this blog about something that I found buried in the remaining stack of papers, but if I only told what that item was, I wouldn’t have been able to write a full blog. So I wanted to share my experience of wading through all of the flotsam that I’d collected over the years. In an envelope I discovered a check that hadn’t been cashed. It was for a sizeable amount, but it was issued January 20, 2022 and not valid after 120 days. I was shocked. I called the company and after I was transferred to several people, I found the reason I’d not cashed it was that the check was from my retirement fund. Because of Federal mandates, I was required to take money from that account. It happened years previously requiring me to pay taxes on the withdrawal. I decided to have the money sent directly to my church telling Uncle Sam to keep his paws off my money. I’d forgotten I donated it. So I wrote void across the check and tossed it into the burn pile. 

 

Homemade Toboggan

            Snowfalls one winter were light and fluffy and not at all conducive to any type of winter sports or play. We couldn’t afford skis. The snow wasn’t wet enough to pack into snowballs, make forts, build snowmen, or tamp down to pack trails for our sled runners. The snow was good only for toboggans that could ride on the top of the snow.

            Les Hall was a neighbor kid. He was older and had access to more tools and supplies than we did. He decided to build a toboggan of his own. It started with a plank that was nearly sixteen inches wide, eight feet long, and an inch and a half thick. That would be the seat and body of the toboggan.

            From another unused board, he shaped four “runners” twenty-four inches long with one end cut into half an arc.  Using several wide chrome strips from junk cars, he shaped them to follow the curve of each runner, attaching them to the curved runners. Two runners were connected by a wooden frame making a pair of runners for the front end and a pair for the back. One set was attached directly to the rear board seat and the other was placed in the front to allow for steering.

            Les drilled a large hole in the front end of the toboggan board, inserting a shaft through the hole in the platform and through the hole in the front runner’s platform. Between the platform and the seat were two large, greased washers that would allow the wheel affixed to the shaft to turn the mobile runners for steering.

            The result was a large, weighty, cumbersome lumbering monster, but it was finished and we were anxious to try it out. It wasn’t beautiful, but would it work? It looked like a creation from the Little Rascals’ comedy clips.

Dragging the behemoth behind us on a rope, we got it to the top of the hill. Les hunched over the wheel, his feet resting on the front runners for extra steering control. The rest of us kids pushed the toboggan and jumped on as it began to move. We made it to the bottom of the hill, but there wasn’t much speed. It was too heavy and the width of the runners wasn’t large to allow it to glide along freely.

            Riding the toboggan was better than doing nothing at all, but it was so heavy that we called it quits after struggling to get the toboggan to the top of the hill several times. We stored it and then we went home. I don’t believe we ever used it again and have no idea what happened to it.