Good News, Bad News

Good News:
The Library book has been found. It was found on a shelf of the library. Their computer was making mistakes and is now in the process of being updated.

Bad News:
The hurricane DEAN is heading toward Texas.

Library

I’m in trouble with the local branch of the Houston library. They say I have a book that’s over due. I know I returned it ahead of the due date and I’ve told them that, but their computer keeps notifying me to return the book. I continue checking books out and each time I return them I hand them to one of the librarians IN PERSON, but they are so busy they don’t remember. I’ve searched the apartment for the missing book, but it’s not here. I asked my son to help me look for it but he couldn’t find it either.

Once last year, I did mislay a book I had purchased at a thrift shop, and spent days searching for it. I was quite embarrassed when my son found it on my bedside table, almost in plain sight. It was lying under a flower catalog. Thinking it was a pile of catalogs, I failed to turn over the top one.

The missing book had been put on reserve for me, and I had waited several months before it was available. After taking it home, it wasn’t interesting enough to keep very long, and I returned it along with other books, none of them over due.

I do not know why I’m so greedy about books. From the time I learned to read and was old enough to go to the library by myself, libraries have been a source of pleasure for me. My sister Adeline and I believed the library was our second home. We spent hours browsing picture and story books. It was easy to stop at the library on the way home from school and we both developed a love of libraries that lasted thru the years. Adeline even became a volunteer to help stack returned books when her children were all grown and away from home. I’ve mentioned in past posts that Adeline and I, either jointly or separately, were in constant debt to the library when we were in the third and fourth grades. By the time we had reached the higher grades we had learned to return books on time, and no longer had to spend our summers finding jobs to pay off the fines built up during the winter months.

Even though I’m diligent about returning library books on time, I once deliberately ignored the due date of a book many years ago. All the used text books for a six weeks college class in Art History had been sold and my budget didn’t allow the purchase of a new text. I telephoned the downtown Los Angeles Public Library and was told they had several copies. I checked one out as quickly as I could, knowing full well I would keep it past due. I had mentally weighed the exorbitant cost of the text against the daily fine and chose the fine. If I remember right, the fine came to a little over $4 and the cost of the book was nearer $30.

My son has been in phone contact with the library from whence the missing book came. There is still hope that it will be found, but it might take as long as 5 weeks to track it thru the library system. If it’s not found, I will probably be asked to buy one to replace it.

Bicycles

The other day on the way home from grocery shopping, we saw a lone bicycle rider pedaling 90 to nothing in the right hand lane of a feeder road. Traffic moves as fast as it does on the freeways and I remarked that apparently Houston didn’t have bike lanes and the guy we just passed would be lucky to get where he wanted to go without getting killed. My son, who was driving, said that Houston does have bike lanes but our errands rarely take us near them.

It has been years since I rode a bike. I enjoyed biking, but I never developed the skill of total control. My first experience was during the summer between third and fourth grade. Several of my siblings and I had gone to the park along the river near the dam to play on the swings and rings. A boy from my class rode up with his new birthday bike to show off. He let a couple of boys ride it to the end of the block and back and I asked if I could have a turn. He asked if I knew how to ride a bike, and I told him, "Of course!" I had never been on a bike but I had confidence that what the boys could do, I could too. I asked him if it would be all right if I rode to my house and came right back. He asked how long it would take and I said a few minutes. He grudgingly gave me permission and I got on the bike. It was a shaky moment but, once I got on the seat and started pedaling, things when as they should. I did have to pedal rather fast to keep my balance but all went well until I got to my house and turned to go back to the park. I made a wide circle but it wasn’t wide enough and the bike ran up on the sidewalk and headlong into a tree. To keep from falling completely over, I had to skip/jump on one leg but the bike scraped my knee and leg as it went side ways. I quickly looked the bike over for damage but it was ok. My leg hurt a lot, but I was determined not to let the boy know I had a fall. When I got back to the park the boy was irate because I had been gone so long but I reminded him that he knew where I lived and he had given me permission and besides, I went there and right back!

During the depression years when we lived on the asparagus farm, the folks bought a bike for the boys to share. Adeline and I, being older than the boys, wanted a bike too, but the folks couldn’t afford it. The boys took to the bike like a duck to water. Jerry, the youngest, was too small to ride, but that didn’t stop him. He developed a style of swinging his body back and forth across the seat, dropping his weight down on the pedal as it reached the high point and shoving the pedal down as hard as he could to bring the pedal up on the other side.

Many years ago when my husband and I lived in the country house outside of Paris, the women in the small village invited me to go biking with them on Saturday mornings to shop in the near by town about 10 or 15 kilometers away. Neither we nor the villagers owned a car. My husband and I walked the three miles to the train station or paid a farmer’s son to take us by horse and wagon. We didn’t have a bicycle either, but the women said they would furnish the bike if I wanted to join them. The bicycle was not like an American bike. It was very high off the ground and I needed help just to get on the seat! There was a basket on the front for carrying groceries but I knew from past experience that if I put in anything weighing more than a feather, I’d probably lose my balance. I was along for the ride more than the groceries. Within a few minutes it was obvious that I was not able to keep up with the others and I began to lag farther and farther behind. One or two of them came back to encourage me to go faster so we could get home before the heat of the day reached a high point. I had never used handle bar brakes and I was warned about not coming to an abrupt halt. At the speeds the women traveled, a sudden halt would have been fatal. I was able to make the trip without mishap, but I refused all ensuing invitations. I think the women only asked out of courtesy and were secretly pleased when I didn’t join them a second time.

The last time I was on a bike was in Palo Alto, back in the 70s when I took my daughter’s bike for a ride. I had a bike/car accident. The fact that the car was a block behind me doesn’t negate the accident. It was a sunny afternoon and I was riding down an empty street near the courthouse. I heard a car and turned to see how close it was and lost my balance. I landed on my keester and got scrapes and bruises and messed up the bike so bad it couldn’t be ridden. Of course the driver of the car never suspected he was the cause of the accident and went in another direction at the intersection. I had to walk the bike home and my aches and pains increased as hobbled home. My son often suggests I get an exercise bike, but at this stage of my life, I know my limitations!

Radio Music

The other day I walked into the kitchen to get something out of the refrigerator and heard Home on the Range being played on PBS radio. It took a moment to believe what I was hearing because it’s not the usual type of music that station plays. My kitchen radio is tuned to PBS radio and plays 24/7. Having been a listener of that station for many years I was a bit astonished. The orchestration was so lovely I paused to listen. I expected the music to end any second but as it continued, I leaned against the counter and lost myself in the arrangement. As it played I wondered what orchestra had recorded it, and hoped it would be identified when the music ended. It was the Boston symphony with Arthur Fiedler conducting.

The song brought back a sweet memory of the ‘music practice’ Esther and I had every day with Mom when she was closer to 100 than 95 years of age. The sessions started one day when I was inspired to create an activity Mom could participate in. I took her by the hand into the kitchen and sat her down at the round maple table in the middle of the room. As she got comfortable, I pretended to be a music teacher. We did some warm up breathing exercises and sang the do re me scales a couple of times, then began singing songs like Old Kentucky Home, Down In the Valley, On Top Of Old Smoky, Amazing Grace and Home On The Range.

Mom had a wonderful time so the next day we repeated the ‘lesson’. Soon we were a trio when Esther came from Baton Rouge for a visit. Between the three of us we remembered more songs and added them to our repertoire. Esther had a wonderful idea of going to the library to get song books to help us with the lyrics. We searched thru music books and made zerox copies of songs we liked, lullabies, hymns, cowboy, patriotic, and pop songs from the 40s and 50s. When Esther went back to Baton Rouge she took the copies with her and made us four duplicate song books.

There was an extra for anyone who might want to chime in. Jerry did join us once when he was visiting from Groesbeck, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover he knew all the words to many of the songs, especially the hymns we sang! Adeline took part in our daily singing sessions when she came for a long visit from California. We coaxed Dad and Charles to join in but they refused. Dad preferred watching ball games on TV and Charles sat outside under the patio umbrella which was between the kitchen door and the wood shop entrance, and talked with Pierce, a neighbor. From time to time, either Charles or Pierce would come thru the kitchen on the way to the refrigerator for another cold beer. They would make disparaging remarks about our singing, but I noticed they stopped talking when we sang certain songs, so we must have at least been carrying a tune!

Esther has an unusually fine voice and enjoys singing and listening to music although her hearing loss is becoming profound. Charles had a wonderful singing voice when he was young. He was often asked to sing solos in school pageants but those days were long gone. When I was in high school I sang alto in the girl’s glee club and even after all these years, I recall the phrase ‘the diadem of beauty reigns’ from the Waltz of the Flowers.

My taste in music is varied. I often stop in the middle of what ever I’m doing if I hear Ode to Joy and hum along with it. Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring using the shaker hymn as the main thread throughout is so distinctive a melody it too is a favorite. I often tune my bedside radio to an FM station that plays oldies like Willie Nelson’s ‘Georgia’, or turn the dial to a good Jazz station. On my computer I often listen to a web station broadcasting only piano music while I’m online. Although I love the 1812 overture, and anyone playing the violin will get my attention, I do not have a good ear for music, but both my daughter and son are blessed with musical talent.