Fellowship of the Writers

Over the past several years I have made the acquaintance of many talented writers and am blessed and thankful for their guidance and friendship. I’ve written for more than 3 decades, but would never have had the courage to share my thoughts with others and I would never have been able to publish even one of my books. The initial chapter and the introduction of the character at the center of my first novella came about with a challenge at a gathering of writers. The challenge was to write a detective story. I had no plans to try the call for the story, but several times as I attempted to sleep, I kept awakening with plot thoughts. By morning I had the basics of the story written and my character of Tommy Two Shoes; a retired homicide detective for the Pittsburgh Police was conceived. Tommy played key roles in my next four books. I chose to have each chapter an actual mystery, solved at the end of each chapter.

I had a falling out with my editor for my first three books when she overrode my choice for the title and placed a gaudy front cover on it, disregarding the mismatched pair of oxfords that was the trademark for Tommy. I have one dear friend who helped me enormously by designing a cover for my fourth book and helping me to self-publish it. She’s also been a godsend designing the covers for and helping to edit the remaining three. There are several mistakes, because she wasn’t the taskmaster that my first editor was, but the books are mine; including each mistake. The plots are great if you overlook some punctuation errors. Lately I’ve been lax in writing any new books. I have several plots swimming in my head, but each involves several simultaneous interweaving plots that I’m having difficulty sorting into a semblance of a complete story. Right now, my time is consumed with canning harvested garden foodstuffs with some friends, spending time writing the newsletter for the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society, and writing my blog that I share every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thinking of memories or new ideas to share is becoming more and more difficult. I started writing a blog every day, but that became burdensome. My first blogs appeared in 2013 and have shared more than 1500 tales. I would like to thank every writer that has guided me along the way and for each person who reads what I write.

 

 

All the World’s a Stage

William Shakespeare said all the world was a stage and the people in it actors, but I think that some people are more like characters. Some of them who arrived at the emergency department were called “frequent flyers.” They were the repeat visitors; some come as drug seekers, some were actually sick, while others wanted to be the center of interest, even for a few hours, then there were those who were just lonely.

We had a married couple who didn’t quite fall into any of these categories, but straddled several. They came close to being frequent flyers. I think they came just because they could come to the hospital and not have to pay for it. We named them Prince Charles and Princess Dianna. Charles and Dianna were their real names.

The closest thing to having a royal escort occurred when Charles came in by ambulance one night accompanied by medical attendants. Charles and Dianna carried the “gold card.”  Pennsylvania public assistance cards were yellow. You’ve heard the commercial, “It’s the gold card, don’t leave home without it” and this couple never did.

Before anybody complains about my comment, I just want to say, there are people who are unable to work due to a disability and SHOULD have assistance. But there are those people who are able bodied and intelligent who should NOT be eligible for those benefits.

I feel that Charles was one of the latter. He was intelligent and if he can have sex, he’s able bodied enough to find a job. At an earlier visit he told me while he was in the triage area, ‘I was teaching the old lady how to play chess tonight before we came in.” He has to have some smarts to play chess, right.

So, let me get back to the story. Charles was brought in by ambulance. As he was moved onto our bed, I noticed that under him was one of the dirtiest, filthiest, and stained sheets that I’ve ever seen or ever hope to see and he was completely naked.  The spots were not the pattern of the sheet. He explained that he and his wife were having sex when his “back went out.”

He was given x-rays, medicated, and discharged. We gave him a pair of pajama bottoms, because he’d arrived “au naturale” and a patient gown to wear home. He was to bring them back, but I doubt that he did. We probably doubled his wardrobe.

He and Dianna had hardly disappeared through the exit door, when she came rushing back into the emergency room, calling, “Where’s my sheet? Where’s my sheet? I need to put it back on the bed when we get home.”

The nurses looked at each other thinking the same thought. “Who would put that filthy thing back onto the bed?” We shrugged, gloved up, and dug through the dirty linen bag to find her sheet. We gave it back inside of a plastic bag.

 

Daydreams

Right now, my time seem to run one day into another. I have been helping friends can the vegetables from their gardens into stewed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and salsa. They want to try their hand at tomato soup today. We’ve also canned and frozen corn. In the days ahead, carrots, beets, and vegetable soup are on the canning menu.

The one thing that causes me pain is the leaning over the kitchen counter top to peel the skins from the blanched tomatoes. Inside I cringe, because I will be in the same position when I help the Ohiopyle Volunteer Fire Department in October. It is their Buckwheat and Sausage Festival. I’ve helped them for nearly fifty years, working my way up from dishwasher to frying sausage. Frying sausage is worse than cutting up the tomatoes. I’m in the leaned-forward position for perhaps an hour, but while frying, it is nearly eight greasy, hest-in-the-face hours of constant motion, flipping the patties.

There are very few days that something hasn’t slipped in to keep me busy. I sometimes dream of a week on the beach; a beach with sand at one end and a rocky stretch at the other. Perhaps it would have a small cottage where I can stroll and search the shoreline for flotsam tossed by the waves. I covet a spot where I can greet the early morning’s rising sun and not be stressed by appointments, the television, or even my cell phone. Somewhere that I can feel the cool morning breeze flavored with salty brine, then warmed as the sun rises and cooks the wet sand and seaweed, but I still have much to do at home. Small repairs, stacking firewood, and canning have laid a claim to my near future time. I’m not sure whether retirement was as pleasant as I thought it would be. My daydreams then was to read some of the books that I’d amassed, take an occasional college course (for fun and not to allow my brain to deteriorate), and to travel when I wanted. I manage to read a book, but my schedule doesn’t allow additional college, and my aging knees don’t permit me to sit in a cramped

Quilting

I don’t think that quilting is the most interesting subject for many readers, but it was an integral part of both my grandmothers lives, Anna Nichols Beck and Rebecca Rugg Miner. My Grandmother Anna’s quilts were utilitarian. Usually the quilt sizes she made were for twin beds and of dark colors of thick warm materials of wool, tweed, and occasionally there were patches of corduroy. She attached the quilt top to a flannel backing with knots of yarn. The finished product was so heavy, I’m not sure that a person would have been able to get out from under a larger than her twin size quilt once a person was covered up with it.

Grandma Becky almost always had a quilt set up on her quilting frame in her television room. When we visited she would often hand us a needle and thread to the stitch straight line patterns she had lightly drawn on the material. She did the fancy scroll and other designs herself. Much of the cotton material was from clothing that had outlived its usefulness. Some pieces were from clothing that no longer fit, were no longer in fashion, or from parts of worn clothing that were still usable. Grandma Becky made squares of many different designs. She would sew the patches into squares on her old Singer treadle sewing machine. Once the quilt top design was complete, she would pin it in layers to the batting and the muslin backing before attaching it to the wooden quilt frame’s rollers. As the quilt was hand-stitched, it would be stretched taut as each unfinished section was revealed. Gram was a busy person, making a quilt as wedding gifts for each of her thirty grandchildren.

My Mother-in-law Retha Johnson Morrison made quilts from double-knit fabric. That nylon material wore like iron. If the backing of flannel wore out, the yarn knots could be snipped and a new backing could be applied. Her first attempts were baby quilts of pastel colors attached to large bath towels by soft yarns. Gradually the quilt sizes increased and her husband Bud built a quilting frame for her. He made it large enough to hold a king sized flannel sheet as backing. I often helped her knot the quilts at the corners where the different fabrics met. Much of the material was from discarded clothing that was no longer wearable or in fashion. Many pieces of cloth had stories attached to them, recalling their past lives.

Last year I had a friend sew three quilt tops that I inherited. They’d never had backing applied; each one hand sewn by my great grandmothers. I passed them on to my children as Christmas gifts.

 

When I Look Back

Looking back over the years, thoughts come rushing back like a river. Sometimes they drift by in a comforting stream, while at other times they swirl by like a flooding river. I do know that the years of my life have rushed by and all that now remain is a small trickle. I think that is why I write down thoughts as they occur. Stupidly as I lived at home, I didn’t listen to the stories my parents, Carl and Sybil Miner Beck would tell me of their lives and the lives of my ancestors and relatives. Like most people, I believed my parents would live forever. Not so, and now I regret that thought. I’ve seen other people’s posts where someone would ask, “If you could tell your younger self anything, what would you tell him?”

I’m not sure that I would tell myself anything. I didn’t listen to others. What makes me think I would listen to an older me? The saying I now believes fits is, “The difference in doing dumb things as a kid and now in that I have to do them more slowly.” I still do dumb things and the ones I can remember of them, I regret. Honestly, can anyone think that telling your youthful self would change anything?

As sometimes happens, my blog wanders off down a rabbit trail and I never get to write about the original thought. I was going to share the most vivid memories of the tenting trip our church group and family made out West about forty years ago, but was sidetracked into this rambling about what might have been. The floodwaters of recollection has again changed the channel of the river and given it a new course and it flows into the ocean of eternity. I guess the major bumps in my life would be waterfalls in the map of my history. Few things can cause a river to flow backwards, even for a few minutes, so life flows on. Grab a paddle and move on. Try to avoid the rapids and toss out a lifeline to those we see struggling. Use the Christ as your anchor and His Word, the Bible as your chart.