Spitball Army

My mother, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, sent me an envelope full of news clippings last week. Among them was The Post and Courier’s weekly trivia quiz. This one was all about The Beatles.

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Transcribing correspondence from the World War II era, starting with that of Beverly Anderson, has been an ongoing, truly enjoyable experience for me, and an educational one. I have always had a fascination with history, particularly cultural history, and find the War era especially rich. “Ancient” American culture is a puzzle: discovering what was once in vogue, what customs we have retained, what practices have fallen by the wayside. I have been particularly surprised with phrases and sayings from this period, some familiar and some that might as well be in a foreign language.

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If my mother had asked us this question as kids, or something similar (like “Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL of South Oceanside children’s future from OUTSIDE of our kitchen?”), we would have just looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head on her shoulders.

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There was a large attic vent perched right up on the crest of the roof. It dated back many decades, perhaps even back to the ’20s or ’30s (the house was built in 1925). There is only one other house with such a vent on its roof on my block. Now it is the sole house with that artifact, as I had the roofing company take it down (it was not functioning).

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It was rooted in the corner of a corner lot, dwarfing the Spanish-style bungalow next to it. Its branches extended high and far out over the street in all directions, safely out of danger from the automobile traffic below, and sheltering the pedestrians and others, like me, on bicycles. I would slow my pedaling to marvel at this tree whenever I rode up the hill to Laurel Road, and would slow my coasting when I returned on the downhill route to Laguna Street. The tree’s age and size seemed to engender respect automatically. I called it “Old Man Tree.”

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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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I hesitated barely a millisecond before touting my yard sale coup after scoring a $3 Polaroid camera some while back. I still consider the camera a bargain, especially since, after finding some fresh film, I discovered that it works almost perfectly.

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While I was growing up, our house was the evening stop on Christmas Eve for relatives and friends, who would congregate in the late afternoon and early evening for a meal centered on the contents of two very large pots on my mother’s stovetop. One contained pinto beans, soaked and seasoned for a couple of days, and piping hot. The other contained her wonderful chili, a crock-pot treatment of which I have perfected over the ensuing decades. The meal also had a few other key ingredients.

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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Over the ensuing twleve months, that post has been seen enough times through Google searches and the like that it is the #9 most-viewed page on this labyrinthine website. And every single person who has seen it has moved on without having that secret yellow cake mix cookie recipe to put to use.

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