Category Archives: Friendship

Community, Family, Friendship, Parenthood, Travel

Morningside, Virginia-Highland, and the Fight Against I-485

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During our time in Atlanta, my daughter and I usually spend part of one day browsing the eclectic shops of the Virginia-Highland neighborhood. Developed in the early 1900s as a “streetcar suburb,” with trolley lines to downtown, Virginia-Highland is now one of the city’s most inviting and vibrant sections. It wasn’t always this way.

When we moved to Atlanta in the late-60s, many such in-town neighborhoods were, to varying degrees, down at the heels. We found an affordable house in Morningside, which adjoins Virginia-Highland. Most Morningside homes dated from the 1930s. Small but well-built, many resembled English cottages. It was a neighborhood with great bones, but a bit tired and frayed. It had the look of a place whose heyday had passed. Most of our neighbors were elderly; Mama and Daddy were among the few young kids. Many homes were behind on routine maintenance. As anyone with a renovator’s soul and an affinity for hard work recognizes, this is the time to buy. Things will get better, my parents reasoned, and they would be instrumental in the upswing.

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The original marker denoting the boundary of the Lenox Park section of Morningside.

Virginia-Highland was shabbier at the time than Morningside; it was older and had had more time to slide into dishevelment. Both neighborhoods were haunted, now and then, by the ghost of a rumor that a highway was being considered in the area. My parents, and others new to the area, decided to regard it as neither likely nor imminent. But in the years to follow, the threat became all too vivid.

The temper of the times was changing.  Fear of inner city crime was mounting. The conflicts over school desegregation never turned violent in Atlanta as they did in some cities, but they prompted more homeowners to sell and flee to the suburbs.  Older neighborhoods like ours were increasingly branded by state officials as futureless pockets of urban decay. What Progress required, according to the Georgia Highway Department, was a multi-lane freeway to whisk city workers safely home in the evenings to suburban promised lands. The highway, named I-485, would cut a frighteningly large swath through the hearts of Morningside and Virginia-Highland. The ghost was real, and it meant business.

Almost immediately, the state began a fierce program of land reclamation to prepare for the road. Many elderly owners were frightened into accepting low offers for their properties, which were quickly razed or left to deteriorate, unprotected from nature and vandals. It was heart-renching when the moving vans arrived and the slow exodus of boxed-up belongings began.  It was heartbreaking when the “Condemned” signs were posted.  There were a few brave owners, however, who refused to leave, even under threat of legal action. Some of these determined residents remained in the homes they had built, even as they seemed poised to tumble down around them.

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A Morningside garden angel, in prayer.

I-485 appeared unstoppable once the demolition machines were roaring. It could easily have been declared a lost cause. But a coalition to oppose the road had taken root, and like those who refused to move, this group wasn’t afraid to persevere. Several young Morningside mothers, including Mary Davis and Barbara Ray, who were parents of my friends, played a crucial role in countering the conflict.  Energetic and zealous, they rallied their friends and neighbors. They formed the Morningside-Lenox Park Association specifically to fight the road. They explored various legal angles and kept working even as other groups lost hope. There were several points when it looked as though the fight was unwinnable. But each time they persisted; these women did not give up.  After a while, some of the most pessimistic among us began to glimpse the possibility that together, perhaps, we might triumph. And if we didn’t, it was certainly worth our best effort. As the coalition gained in strength and numbers, the tide gradually began to turn. After several years of closely fought legal battles and imaginative grass-roots efforts, the freeway was stopped.

At first it was hard to believe that we had won. We had lived with the fight, and with uncertainty, for so long, but now it was history. The reality of relief set in. Thanks to five fiercely determined young mothers, our homes and neighborhoods were safe.  Now it was time to start the clean-up. We would be here for a while.

Community, Family, Friendship, Nature

Lilacs, Lyric Hall, and June Bliss

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In the early spring of the first year we spent in our house, I noticed green buds emerging from the gray branches of the tall shrub by the front walk. I had wondered about the identity of this large and leggy plant. When I looked closely, I saw the beginnings of lilac leaves. Our new old house was blessed not only by eminent silver maples, but also by a mature, substantial lilac bush. This realization brought me a jolt of happiness more typically associated with an unexpected gift, such as one that arrives in a pale blue Tiffany box. Lilacs have a special place in my heart. Like the maples, they speak of home and loved ones.

Lilacs grew in great abundance around my grandparents’ house, the locus of my earliest and happiest childhood memories. Lilacs surrounded the area in front of the smokehouse and adjacent to the chicken lot. They created a leafy enchanted shelter, a cozy enclave where I liked to play with my grandmother’s kittens.

Atlanta is generally too hot for lilacs. I missed them, growing up in Georgia. For me, the lilac became a symbol of a time long past, alive only in memory and never to be repeated. I didn’t expect to live among lilacs again.

Then I moved to New Jersey, where lilacs, like peonies, thrive. My walks into Rocky Hill took me past a ramshackle former church in the center of town. Built in 1870 as a Methodist Episcopal church, by the early 20th century the building was known as Lyric Hall and used as a community theatre and concert space. I knew the place as the home of a dear friend with the unlikely, romance-novel-worthy name of June Bliss. For many years, June was the warm and capable administrator at the center of the art history department at Princeton University. To anxious grad students she was a calm and motherly presence.  To professors preoccupied with the esoteric details of research, she was a grounding force.

Lyric Hall became June’s home in the early 1970s. She rented out the old sanctuary as a warehouse and lived in a warren-like apartment that had been added to the back of the building in the 1940s. June’s girlhood home was a magnificent Gothic revival house near Princeton, where her sister continued to reside. It baffled me that after growing up in such an architectural gem, she was content with her quirky, cramped apartment. I always imagined how the church could be renovated into a striking, spacious, light-filled home. June probably could have easily afforded such a project, but she wasn’t interested. She was thoroughly without pretense, and her unusual living quarters suited her just fine. I think she enjoyed the surprise in the eyes of first-time visitors’ to her decidedly eccentric home.

The old church was set on an expansive piece of property that adjoined what had once been the town green. June had a large garden in the side yard, bounded by a towering hedge of lilacs. She was generous with her bounty of vegetables and flowers. She encouraged me to cut as many lilacs as I wished, which I gladly did, usually under the watchful eye of the neighbor’s hulking pot-bellied pig. Every spring, thanks to June, our apartment was filled with bouquets of lilacs, in addition to the peonies I bought down the road. On a return visit after H and I had married and moved south, June dug up forget-me-nots from her garden to send back with us.  I planted them behind our townhouse, where they are probably blooming still.

June was a cheerful person with a lively sense of humor and a keen appreciation for irony. She retained her sunny disposition in the face of the cancer that afflicted her for a number of years before finally claiming her life. I remember very clearly the warm summer day I went to the mailbox and found the kind note from June’s daughter that broke the news of her mother’s death.  D was very young at the time, and we had been playing in the yard together.  Seeing my sudden tears, she dashed over to comfort me.  Our lilac bush serves as a reminder that departed friends, as well as the essence of home and family, remain with us always.

This spring, though, I was dismayed that only one small lilac bloom appeared. For several years now, blossoms have emerged only at the very top-most branches.  June’s vigorous lilac hedge, in contrast, bloomed profusely, from bottom to top, for decades. When I asked if she had a gardener’s secret, she laughed and replied that she simply appreciated the plants and left them alone.  Our lilac evidently needs something more than admiration.  I’ve read that an aggressive pruning can reinvigorate an old lilac plant. We will get the shears out this weekend and go to work.

I recently discovered that upon June’s death, her home was donated to the New Jersey Historic Trust. The Trust sold it, with a preservation easement, to an architectural firm that restored the building to its original appearance and now uses it as their headquarters. The gray asbestos siding was removed, the original white clapboard restored and repainted. The arched windows were elongated to their full height and the sanctuary space’s soaring ceilings were restored. June’s old apartment was replaced with a bright and much larger one.

It’s remarkable to me that even though June didn’t care to restore Lyric Hall for use as her own home, she made it possible that others, later, could enjoy the beauty of the renewed historic building. It gives me hope for the rehabilitation of our tired lilac bush.  Lyric Hall flourishes again, a fitting memorial to its former owner, and I’m convinced our lilacs can, too.

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My grandfather and me, with lilacs behind us.

Family, Friendship, Nature

The Silver Maples Say Welcome Home

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For the past two weeks or so, the seed pods have been falling from the big maple trees in our front yard. As the wind blows, they hit the roof with a sound like a shower of fat raindrops or forcibly hurled pea gravel. The tiny twirling helicopter blades drift slowly to the ground. Our daughter used to love to chase the flying seed pods. They gave my husband and me a welcome break from hands-on parenting. On warm weekend afternoons, we’d sit in cheap aluminum lawn chairs and watch her zigzag happily across the grass. We all still appreciate those spinning seed pods, despite the legion of tough little seedlings that spring up among the flower beds. We certainly love the trees that send them forth.

It was in the late fall, nearly eleven years ago, when we first saw our house. Most homes in our area date from the seventies through the nineties, and it stood out because of its age. Built in 1920, it was originally the center of a two-hundred acre farm. Unlike most northern Virginians, who apparently put a high value on new construction, I actively wanted an old house. I like the idea of a house with a past, with character, with some history behind it. Having watched my grandparents’ lovely old Victorian slip through our fingers, as well as the demolition of my grandmother’s birthplace, a far more historic dwelling, I wanted the chance to be a good steward of someone else’s family home.

I had all but lost hope of finding a livable old house, but suddenly we had stumbled upon one. It was a little shabby, and it had aluminum siding. But it was a genuine old farmhouse, a classic American four-square, with sizable rooms and a sensible floor plan. While it contained some dated 1970s touches, such as expanses of orange shag carpeting, it was solid and didn’t appear to need structural renovation.

And it had those wonderful trees, a semicircle of six huge trees that shaded the front yard. They were silver maples just like those that twisted their knobby roots through the soft grass at my grandparents’ house in Kentucky. Because it was late November, the branches were bare, but the shaggy gray-brown bark was as recognizable as the face of an old friend. This was the house! I was certain of it. The silver maples offered living proof.

Because my husband is a clear-headed man of business and science, he weighed all conditions carefully and made a low-ball offer on the house. I was anxious, nearly certain we wouldn’t get it, already formulating back-up plans.  Maybe that 1980s house (the one annoyingly referred to as an “executive colonial”) wasn’t so bad after all.  Or we could give up the search and spend another year in our rented townhouse.  But our daughter, a new walker, needed more space and a yard in which to roam.  I wanted an old house. I wanted the old house with the old maple trees. The one that just seemed like home.

Luckily, the prevailing local bias against older homes worked to our advantage. We managed to learn that our only serious competition was a developer whose goal was to tear down the house and build a bigger, newer one. Better yet, two. The owner, fortunately for us, much preferred that the house in which she had raised her children continue to be a family home. 

During the following December, matters concerning our purchase took off on a wild roller coaster ride. There were complications with the contract, concerns about the foundation, the floors, the septic system, the furnace, the roof, the crazy property lines, and more. During our Christmas vacation with H’s family in Rochester, he was on the phone constantly with building inspectors and legal experts. But by early January, the house was ours. Our realtor, who had decades of experience, claimed that the closing was the most dizzyingly complex one she had ever witnessed.

That winter, while H worked especially late, I often sat by an upstairs window in a rocking chair, holding our year-old daughter.  As she nursed, or slept, smiled or cried, I looked out through the somewhat uneven glass at the dark blue shadows the big maples cast on the snow-covered ground. It sure was good to be home.  And it still is. 

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Silver maples are fast-growing trees with limited life spans. 
We had to remove this tree’s branches when they became fragile
and hazardous to passing cars, but we left the trunk as a monument.  Our daughter occasionally uses it as a place of solitary refuge.

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On an Easter Sunday in the 1960s, my friend Jeanie and me
beside one of the silver maples in my grandparents’ yard.

Community, Family, Friendship, Parenthood

The Hunger Games: A Movie Event for my Daughter

Just as I was bemoaning my daughter’s dearth of memorable movie experiences, she was invited to a birthday party to see The Hunger Games on its opening night. This is great! I thought. She can learn to love going to the movies, and I am not inconvenienced. My parents must have felt a similar degree of relief when I went to Disney World with our church youth group. My husband and I are in complete agreement that opening-night showings of eagerly anticipated potential blockbusters are firmly in our past. I was excited that D had the chance to participate in a true film event. I also looked forward to a pleasant, quiet spring evening at home. Maybe a couple of drinks on the porch with H.  How nice for everyone.

D, ever the skeptic, has a tendency to cast a cool and wary eye on many, if not all, trends in pop culture. It pleases me immensely that she doesn’t follow, willy-nilly, the noise of the crowd. She was especially suspicious of such tween phenomena as Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, High School Musical and Justin Bieber. I think she imagined a vast adult conspiracy to control the tastes of her peer group, and she resented it.

She was unmoved by the prospect of the Harry Potter saga, even though H’s grandmother gave us all the books in the series (after enjoying them herself). I read most of the first book to D when she was in third grade or so. Toward the end, during Harry’s confrontation with Voldemort, her interest waned. The situation was too tense for pleasurable before-bed reading. She resisted when I suggested afternoon readings, and so the book remained unfinished. We saw the first movie several years after it appeared, at home on DVD. With that, her tepid interest in Harry Potter was quenched.

As for Twilight, it sounded ridiculous, according to D. Having been raised on horror stories, I was curious to see what the fuss was about, so I bought the books. After finding the first one more satisfying than I had expected, D read it and gave it a lukewarm review. She felt no need to continue with the next volumes or to see any of the movies.

My daughter was no more interested in The Hunger Games series for several years. Children fighting to the death? Really? How truly horrible!  I agreed with her. It sounded like something best avoided. But as the hype surrounding the movie gained momentum, and as friends she respected spoke of their enjoyment of the books, she cracked. When a friend lent her the first book, she began reading. She loved it, she was surprised to admit. The opening night birthday party gave her a deadline, and she stayed up late finishing the book.

The family of the birthday girl has continued to eagerly embrace the movie-going tradition. I admire their zest and stamina. They took their girls to all the Harry Potter films, typically on opening weekends, many at midnight showings, frequently in costume. Once at a neighborhood party, the mother told me that she and a friend had attended a weekday 1 AM opening of Sweeney Todd. Despite being exhausted at work the following day, it was worth it, she said, clearly elated. I can only vaguely remember a time when I might have felt that way.

D’s first real movie event was a great success, thanks to the enthusiasm of her friend and her parents. The theatre was among the newest and most comfortable in our area. The screen is quite large by today’s standards, and the seating is stadium style. Even if an incredibly tall person sporting a top hat occupies the seat ahead, it’s still possible to see the action.

Thanks to our twenty-first century technology, I got a play-by-play report of the evening. The texts arrived with regularity:

  • In theatre. It’s sold out!
  • Just saw 3 other friends here!
  • Preview for Dark Shadows!
  • It’s starting!

At this point, there was a break, I’m glad to say, during which she actually directed her attention away from her phone and toward the screen. I can imagine the rows of young teenagers putting their phones to sleep and raising their heads in unison. The final film-related text was this:

  • The movie was awesome!

The Hunger Games ended my daughter’s long stint as a reluctant movie-goer. I doubt it will result in her unconditional acceptance of every teen trend to come. She has, however, already expressed an interest in seeing Titanic 3-D with friends over spring break. I bet she’ll be up for Dark Shadows, although she may no longer want me to tag along. If so, Mama will go with me. That’s the thing about mothers—the good ones never get too grown up to be seen with their children.

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Finally, a young-adult phenomenon that my daughter endorses.

Community, Family, Friendship

Movies with Friends: From Frogs to Rocky Horror to Toco Hill

During my late elementary and middle school years, as now, a movie was a frequent element of the tween and early teen birthday celebration. The unintentionally funny horror film, often on the theme of nature’s revenge, was prevalent in the early 70s and perfect for group viewing. Such classic B movies, silly, clumsily cobbled together, yet still scary, wouldn’t have had the same impact had we been sitting around the TV in the cozy safety of a family room.

 

I think it was for my friend Katie’s birthday that we saw Frogs. It was playing in one of the increasingly faded theatres in Virginia-Highland. The movie poster shows a bloody human arm protruding from the mouth of a frog. Its breathless text reads:

If you are squeamish stay home!!! Cold, green skin against soft, warm flesh!  A croak, a scream. . .FROGS. The day nature strikes back.

The human villain of the story is the haughty patriarch of an old Southern family, eager to celebrate his July 4th birthday at his sprawling mansion nestled uneasily in the oozing spookiness of the swamps. Ray Milland plays Grandpa, as he is called by everyone. Fed up with the overabundance of icky, cold-blooded creatures that call the family property their home, Grandpa hires a man to saturate the surrounding landscape with pesticide. This, of course, does not sit well with the slime brigade, and lots of gruesome death ensues. Despite the movie’s title, frogs do no killing. They merely croak and look vaguely, disinterestedly malevolent. Snakes, lizards, alligators, leeches and spiders are among the many creatures that exact horrifying vengeance on the humans who have the nerve to try to move in on their domain.

Once the critters began to seek retribution, my friends and I huddled two to a seat, for better moral support. Sitting in darkness, surrounded by other shrieking kids our age, the experience was akin to a thrill ride at an amusement park.

We loved this kind of movie, in which most of the human characters are so proud, self-absorbed, or just plain clueless that one tends to root for the animals. The creatures, of course, were there first; it is the people who are interlopers. And like the rat army in the film Willard (for which the young Michael Jackson sang the theme song, Ben), from the year before, the fauna of Frogs were disdained and misunderstood. Their voices needed to be heard. They deserved respect, if not revenge.

Around this same time, we enjoyed another movie with a swampy setting, The Legend of Boggy Creek. It was a docudrama based on sightings of a smelly, hairy Bigfoot-like figure in the remote Arkansas woods. The film attempted a serious tone, which made it all the more laughable to us. Again, we empathized with the creature, whose existential angst was nicely expressed in his unnerving screeches. The rag-tag community of humans that inexplicably made their home in this marshy wilderness did not appreciate the beast’s sporadic appearances and attempts to dine on their pets and livestock. In an attitude common to city kids, we considered ourselves superior to our country counterparts, and the bog-dwelling Arkansawyers on screen were no exception. Yes, we were Southern, but not that Southern. We knew to avoid the double negative, and our accents sounded positively Yankee in comparison. Had anyone reminded me of my rural Kentucky roots, I would have pointed out that my family had the foresight to settle on higher ground.

During our high school years, more and more of Atlanta’s large in-town theatres closed. We continued to flock loyally to those that remained. On weekends we gathered, with crowds of other teenagers, at Garden Hills or The Plaza for midnight showings of Up in Smoke and Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was festive movie-going at its most social, its most raucously, gloriously communal.

The multiplex became more prevalent as the older theatres disappeared. When it was convenient, or for lack of anything better to do, we attended showings in such box-like rooms, the screens hardly larger than some of today’s TVs. A movie like Halloween, which appeared in 1978, was good fun, even at the multiplex. My eagle-eyed boyfriend still managed to note every inadvertent intrusion of the microphone.

My regular movie attendance in Atlanta ended at Toco Hill. Among all the cramped cinema spaces in the city, for years there still survived this 800-seat theatre in a suburban strip mall. Tickets cost just $.99. One needed only to wait a week or two, and nearly every major release came to Toco. Weekend showings filled to capacity, and every age group was well represented. Closed in 2000, the theatre may soon be the site of a bagel company. I hear Atlanta has been an absolute bagel wasteland.

The Plaza, though, now the last of its kind in the city, is still in business. And it still hosts Rocky Horror nights.

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Some of my movie-viewing pals and me,1972.
Apparently, during several years in the 70s, we only
took photos around Christmas time.

Art and Architecture, Community, Family, Friendship, Parenthood, Travel

Back When the Movies were Big, and the Theatre was a Palace: Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox

My trove of movie memories was neatly packed, sealed, and hidden away in my mind, and it took a while to access them. I’ve grown so accustomed to the ease of home viewing, of DVDs, streaming video and Tivo, that I had nearly forgotten the thrill of the old-time movie-going experience.

Having grown up in Atlanta during the 60s and 70s, my most colorful movie memories center on the Fox Theatre, which opened in 1929. Originally intended as the Yaarab Temple Mosque, national Shriners’ headquarters, its flamboyant style is best described as Islamic with touches of Egyptian. When escalating costs jeopardized the project, William Fox stepped in and oversaw the completion of the building as his newest movie palace. The fanciful exterior is a wealth of onion domes, minarets, ornate tile work and arched colonnades.

The movie that stands out most clearly among the many I saw at the Fox was, strangely, a re-release of Disney’s Song of the South, truly a remnant from another world. I was with a group of fifth-grade friends, and it was the first time a parent had dropped us off at the theatre. Maybe the movie was chosen by that parent simply for its “G” rating. Had we been younger, we might have taken some delight in the singing, dancing, southern dialect-spewing animals of the Uncle Remus stories. We were mature enough to be uncomfortable watching wise and contented former slaves extolling the joys of life on the old plantation. (Because it is now generally considered a racially offensive film, it has never been released in its entirety on VHS or DVD.)

The movie wasn’t a good fit for us, but it didn’t matter, because the Fox Theatre was dazzling. Gilded opulence was everywhere, from the box office window, to the concession stand to the luxurious Ladies’ Lounge (no mere utilitarian restrooms for the Fox). The auditorium was vast and atmospheric, with nearly 5,000 seats. It resembled an enchanted courtyard from the Arabian Nights. Before the movie began, we marveled at the gradually darkening and slowly rotating twilight sky above, flickering with crystal stars and the occasional drifting, wispy cloud. Just before show time, the famous pipe organ rose from the orchestra pit. The second-largest theatre organ in the U.S., it filled the great space with the music of an entire orchestra, a variety of brass instruments and sound effects, such as thunder and lightning.

By the mid 70s, as potential movie-goers flocked to the suburbs, the Fox was struggling financially. Down at the heels and seedy, it had become the Blanche DuBois of movie palaces. The City of Atlanta, always quick to move on in the name of progress, proposed demolishing the theatre to make way for Southern Bell’s new headquarters. This plan awakened Atlantans, at long last, to the urgent need for hometown historic preservation. (The city’s once-magnificent Terminal Station, designed in the Spanish Mission style by the architect of the Fox, had been torn down in 1972.)

Perhaps because so many Georgians clung to their own unforgettable memories of the old theatre, the Save-the-Fox campaign gained support quickly. The building was not only saved, but eventually fully restored. It now serves as a popular concert venue, with a film series every summer, complete with organ sing-a-longs. The historic old girl looks better than ever. Blanche has bucked up, gone through rehab, become fit and healthy. An active, happy grandmother, it looks as though she has many good years ahead.

My daughter has never been to the Fox.  My husband hasn’t either, although he and I have eaten dinner across the street at the Georgian Terrace, while crowds flocked to a performance of Celtic Woman. I hope we can catch a summer movie at the Fox this year, so H & D can see that magical, indoor amethyst sky.

Community, Friendship, Holiday

Working the System: Getting the Hang of High School Valentine’s Days

At my high school, the junior class began Valentine carnation sales in early February as a prom fund-raiser. During our freshman year, my two best friends and I didn’t grasp the magnitude of the event. I had had my wisdom teeth removed shortly before February 14 (a procedure that, amazingly, required a two-night hospital stay, the same as for the birth of my daughter), so I was preoccupied. But I clearly remember the day the carnations were distributed during homeroom. I didn’t receive any, and it was not pleasant. It was especially unpleasant to be surrounded by those who were greeted with bouquets scaled more appropriately for Derby-winning horses than for teenage girls. My memory may be somewhat warped here, but its essence is true. Those blessed with flowers carried them around from class to class all day long, so each hour brought with it a new group of lucky carnation-bearing kids.

 

As sophomores we got with the program. The three of us sent flowers to each other, the envelopes signed “from a Secret Admirer.” As an investment, we also bought carnations for several boys in our circle. We chose funny, thoughtful boys who were likely to return the favor next year. When the flowers were delivered, we each received an additional one from a senior boy who had taken a big-brotherly interest in the three of us. Getting three carnations, even if none was from a potential boyfriend, was far preferable to walking around all day with none.

The next year, the boys did their duty, and by that time, we all got a couple of flowers from other friends. We had learned how to work it, and the annual event had become almost enjoyable.

By senior year, the day was a real pleasure. My two old friends and I were closer than ever. We each sent a number of carnations and received quite a few. I had a boyfriend by then, and he came through with candy, as well. How wonderful to receive Valentine candy I could feel good about! My friends and I made GQ-spoof magazines for our favorite boys. We wrote silly captions for clippings snipped from National Lampoon, Seventeen, and a French fan magazine our teacher had suggested we subscribe to. We called it Hunky-Stud Quarterly: The Magazine for Discerning Gentlemen. We found it hilarious. The boys, though pleased, were probably not quite as bowled over by our humor.

It took us four years, but we had mastered the art of the high school Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, we had to start from scratch again the following year, because things were different in college.

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My carnation cards from Valentine’s Day, senior year (of course I saved them).

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A rare edition of Hunky-Stud Quarterly. I have this copy because my high school boyfriend returned everything I had ever given him after we broke up.  He left it all on the front porch in the middle of the night.  Evidently he knew I would appreciate it more than he did.


And he was right.

Community, Family, Friendship, Memorials

Remembering Doug

Two weeks ago today, my friend Doug passed away. Doug had a zest for life that never flagged, despite the direness of the situation. He was a character. He was great company. He will be sorely missed.

Doug was known for his sharp memory, keen sense of humor, and flair for observing the odd detail, qualities that made him a compelling storyteller. He had copious amounts of material to draw on, including high school days in his native Seattle, where one of his classmates was Jimi Hendrix.

Doug had an exceptional ability to talk to anyone about anything. What’s more, he could make the exchange interesting. Early in his career he worked for the CDC in the effort to combat the spread of syphilis. He coached interviewers on effective methods for talking with syphilis patients about those to whom they may have spread the disease. If anyone could make a conversation about VD less uncomfortable, perhaps even verging on enjoyable, it was Doug. Not simply a skilled talker, Doug was a thoughtful listener and an engaging conversationalist. He delighted in the give and take of a spirited conversation. He would have been in his element with Samuel Johnson in the clubs and coffeehouses of eighteenth-century London, or with the circle of the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens.

Doug found his true calling in his career with the Fulton County Public Defender. His outlook made him uniquely suited to the position. He had a profound respect for all people. He empathized especially with underdogs and with those who had been dealt life’s poor hand. Doug took pleasure in getting to know his clients. He could see their admirable qualities despite the shadows of their terrible decisions and ill-advised deeds.

Doug was a dapper dresser with a discerning eye. For years, he and my father made an outing of the annual sale at Muse’s, the old Atlanta menswear store. Doug recognized style wherever it appeared. I remember his remarking on the classic élan of one of his clients who happened to be a transvestite. He was so impressed with her smartly tailored dress and lovely jewelry that, with a thought to his wife’s upcoming birthday, he asked for shopping references.

For the past two decades, Doug had suffered from syringomyelia, a rare degenerative neuromuscular disease. It began with a disturbing loss of balance first noticed during his neighborhood jogs. Over the years, it progressed at varying rates, leading toward a nearly complete loss of physical mobility and bringing with it a host of related issues. As the disease accelerated, Doug never lost his dignity or his ability to laugh. When he could no longer work, his computer and the Internet served as lifelines to keep him mentally active and in touch with his many friends and acquaintances. He continued to be a force in the legal community, appearing remotely on several occasions as a commentator on Court TV.

During our visits to Atlanta, my daughter and I liked to stop in to see Doug on our walks to the park. He and I discussed recent events and swapped memories of former neighbors. Doug was a great resource for entertainment trivia, and he never forgot names. He knew, for example, that Rashida Jones, who had just begun appearing on The Office, was the daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton. Doug and I liked similarly offbeat movies and TV shows. I regret that I never got the chance to ask him if he watched Justified. Its dark, ironic humor would have appealed to him, I think. And in its colorful, flawed characters, he may have seen glimpses of his former clients.

When my daughter was very young, her primary motivation for stopping by Doug’s house (other than to marvel at his futuristic wheelchair) was the chance to see the elusive and fabulously fluffy Elvis the cat. Elvis is shy and typically avoids children. If we stayed long enough, though, he would usually appear from beneath the sofa, or slink in furtively from another room. After staring intently for a while, he sometimes allowed my daughter to pet him. Doug told D it was because she behaved in a calm and grown-up manner that Elvis was willing to trust her. But he didn’t condescend to children, and D came to enjoy talking with him as much as I did. She appreciated his addressing her as a full-fledged person, even when she was a preschooler. Doug asked interesting questions, and he heard her responses. He avoided the painful clichés children must often endure from well-meaning adults.

Doug’s devoted family was his greatest treasure. He never bragged, but he adored sharing amusing anecdotes about his beautiful wife and daughter, his handsome son. He chose Christmas and birthday gifts for his wife with the utmost care. To preserve the surprise, he had her presents sent to my parents’ house, where my mother would wrap them. Sometimes, however, his gifts needed no festive paper. As his illness increasingly confined him, he treated his wife to unusual thrills with an emphasis on motion: a flight in a hot air balloon, a ride in a speeding racecar. Doug was a NASCAR devotee. Anyone who thinks all NASCAR fans are cut from the same cloth never met Doug. His elegant wife is an even less likely fan, but under the influence of his enthusiasm, she became a convert.

After so much of his life spent in hospitals, subjected to a dizzying array of treatments and procedures, Doug took his last breath at home, asleep in his own bed. I like to think that where he is now, the opportunities for fascinating conversation are even more abundant. And he has no need, anymore, for that cool wheelchair.

Community, Friendship

Middle School Memorabilia, Part II

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Near the top of my miscellaneous middle school mementos was a stationery box containing several small notebooks I used as journals. My account of seventh grade begins on a cheap note pad shaped like a tulip and continues on others, equally makeshift. These messy little chronicles carried me back across the years, with jottings concerning such experiences and events as these: 

  • The chaos that accompanied every class change in that immense and heavily populated school. Unaccustomed to negotiating crowds, I was surprised at those who delighted in barreling their way through bullishly. By mid-winter I had come to enjoy the challenge of the crowded halls. It was valuable life training, useful in airports and on the streets of New York City.
  •  Locker drama. Considerable anxiety surrounded the necessity of learning my combination and opening the lock successfully in the midst of class-change turmoil. One day as I was focused on the lock, an unknown boy took hold of my long hair and kept walking. Another time, my locker was broken into and my money, all 45 cents of it, was stolen.
  • The opportunity to make friends from a broader, more diverse pool.  Many pages contained lists of my new friends and the wide spectrum of elementary schools they represented.
  • The obscenity-laced scuffles that broke out every day among a group of boys during art class. Thankfully, my table-mates, all girls, were a peaceful, non-confrontational group. As pandemonium exploded around us, we carried on resolutely with our drawing and painting. We quickly learned that some problems can be avoided by simply pretending they do not exist. The teacher, who could neither ignore the commotion nor deal with it, was often in tears at the end of class.
  • Hobo Day, which we celebrated in mid-November.  This astonishes me.  I do not remember Hobo Day, although I participated.  As a fund-raiser, the PTA sold “hobo permits”  (at 25 cents each), that allowed students to come to school dressed as hobos. Those growing up in the 60s and 70s may remember when Hobo was a popular Halloween costume choice; the term as yet had no ironic or politically incorrect implication.
  • The powerful presence of our assistant principal, Mr. Sharpe, who effectively blocked the gateway to total anarchy. On my mother’s first visit to the school, she walked in as he was breaking up a violent confrontation between two sizable female students. One girl refused absolutely to back down. She continued to struggle ferociously to get at her opponent, requiring the assistant principal, at last, to sit on her. Somehow he managed to do this with dignity and no sense of impropriety. I befriended Mr. Sharpe early in the fall when I discovered $2 in a stairwell corner. My conscience demanded that I take it to Lost & Found, evidently another of his domains (he managed to be everywhere at once). After two weeks, he said, if the money remained unclaimed, it would be mine. Sure enough, the rightful owner never appeared, and I was $2 richer. Mr. Sharpe was my champion ever after.  In the spring, I accidentally threw my retainer away inside my lunch bag. Mr. Sharpe immediately set about searching for it in the cafeteria trash. When that proved unsuccessful, he got in the dumpster to continue the search. He didn’t find it, but by then it mattered far less. His selflessness had transformed bad into good.
  • First crushes. My friends and I created complicated code languages to discuss and pass notes about the boys we liked. Seems like the note writing occupied far more time than actual class work. My friend Katie managed to infuse her notes (which she usually folded into flat paper footballs) with great absurdist humor. To this day, I find them hilarious. We’re still good friends, and she’s still funny. Two or more of us tended to choose the same boy to focus on. Looking back, this first struck me as a silly approach, but I see now that it served its purpose. We weren’t yet actually interested in having a boyfriend. We needed first to prepare ourselves for the idea of a boyfriend. Because we chose boys who were unlikely to fall for any of us, solidarity was maximized and friendship-threatening rivalries avoided.
  • The sea of flamboyantly-hued polyester that engulfed the teachers and staff. Our principal, in tinted aviator glasses, favored earth-toned leisure suits. Mr. Sharpe opted for the more traditionally tailored double knit suit. For some reason, the paunchiest of the coaches gravitated toward brightly patterned, body-hugging synthetic shirts. The sensible and impermeable polyester pants suit prevailed among the female teachers. Patent-leather loafers, in white and rainbow colors, were popular with both men and women. Jeans, always bell-bottoms, were worn by students, but never by adults.

 

  • Bus drama. Our bus number, P-50, is a fixture in my memory. A frequent afternoon announcement was this: All students riding Bus P-50 must report to the cafeteria immediately! P-50 was exceptionally crowded, the aisle filled with standing kids, and notorious for bad behavior. My friends and I weren’t generally involved. We kept to the front of the bus, a zone of relative order. In the back, mayhem ruled. Fighting, yelling, smoking, and profanity-spewing were among the typical pastimes. Various items, including left-over lunch foods and specially prepared “flour bombs” were routinely launched from the windows onto passing cars. On several occasions, our bus driver, unable to enforce discipline or to bear the pain any longer, simply stopped along the route and made us all get out and walk. This usually happened not far from my house, and after the uproar of the ride, the quiet was welcome.

I find it reassuring that my journals confirm the accuracy of many middle school memories. I really do know what it’s like to be thirteen. This should qualify me as a wise and valuable advisor to the young teens of today, right? Even though when I was thirteen, computers were the size of a house, and there was no such thing as the Internet, a cell phone, texting, Facebook or Twitter?  I’m hoping my daughter thinks so.

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Do you have middle school memories that beg to be shared?
Tell me about your odd ones, your funny ones, your unforgettable ones!

Community, Family, Friendship

Middle School Memorabilia, Part I

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The fragility of memory has always bothered me. Even as a child, I hated that many experiences were already lost. During Atlanta’s mild February days, my parents would reminisce about the lovely white winters in Kentucky. Don’t you remember the huge snowman we made when you were three? No, I didn’t remember, and it angered me. Just as it angered me that my Georgia friends and I were so snow-deprived that the slightest dusting of powder, or more typically, ice, sent us outside in deliriously futile attempts at snow-related activities. The sled would get mired in leaves and mud, the smallest snowball was elusive. We would return inside wet, cold and grumpy. I had spent my babyhood in a winter wonderland, without a single memory to show for it. The old photo of me in a snowsuit stirs no wayward recollection. It seemed terribly unfair.

Partly in an effort to make up for the transience of memory, and partly because I have a strong thread of OCD, I save the stuff that declares I was there. My parents’ attic was once filled with boxes of papers attesting to my life’s various stages. There are letters, artwork, class papers, books, school information, playbills, calendars with notes of daily activities, and much more. Although I realize the line is fine, I’m not a hoarder. Not every scrap of my past made the cut; much has been thrown away or recycled over the years (sometimes, I admit, reluctantly). My collections are organized, to a degree.

Now that I live in a house with storage space, on every drive up from Atlanta, my parents bring along one or two of those memory-filled boxes. They are determined, little by little, to win back some space in their home, while mine becomes more cluttered. This Christmas, a battered file box labeled Middle School arrived with them. Its timing was perfect. It offered a window onto my early teen years, when I was my daughter’s age. And it proves that my memory is not altogether unreliable.

My seventh grade year coincided with the desegregation of the Atlanta Public Schools. This was accomplished, I am glad to say, without the riotous tumult that occurred in certain cities (not all of them southern—Boston comes to mind). The perceived threat of greater diversity prompted a few families to flee our in-town neighborhood for distant suburbs. But we would stay the course, as would most of my friends. This was no time to pull up roots so recently planted, roots that were just beginning to flourish. We believed in equal rights for all people, and we were in this together.

We were bused to a newly created middle school adjacent to the Georgia Tech campus. Previously a high school, it was a massive, rambling, red brick structure built in 1922. Impressive, yet down-at-the-heels, it would have made a spectacularly atmospheric haunted house. I can see it as the architectural star of American Horror Story: Schoolhouse.  Even now I have the occasional eerie dream that I’m lost in the shadowy recesses of the sub-basement, or peering out from a broken window in a third-floor classroom. If the details are vague, the spirit of the place remains very much alive in my mind.

The life that teemed within the walls was equally unique. The school brought together a diverse young population. We spanned every spectrum. There were kids from the grand old homes of Ansley Park, from Techwood Homes, the country’s first public housing project, and from every Atlanta neighborhood in between. All of the major ethnic groups were represented, as were many of the more obscure ones. For most of us, it was the first time we were outside our own comfortably familiar environment. For all of us, it was an adventure. A nearly unforgettable one, as my memorabilia box confirms.

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My 7th-grade schedule.