CONVERSATIONS

 CONVERSATIONS:

I had a nice chat with family members over the holidays.  I called Richard a few days ago at Davita.  We rebuilt most stories and then some. 

He and Cathy have been on a few quad adventures above Riggins.  They watched a herd of elk through a surveyors tran both he and Cathy saw Dad at their kitchen table a few weeks after Mom died.  He was holding a cup of coffee with a Berglund grin on his face. They have also seen some of their older dogs that are visiting them.  

When I talked with Aunt Wanda she said that when Grandpa Berglund died, Paul was driving along some where and saw him walking along the road.  She also smells Pauls after shave. Awwww. 

I told him that Mom told me a dream she had about a year before she died.  She dreamed that her parents  came to her apartment and told her to pack they were leaving. When she woke she found that her suitcase was packed.  

Richard told me a dream where he was walking along a sandy beach on a Caribbean island while drinking a Corona. Guess what he found in the pantry the next day/ A Corona? No, footprints in the kitty litter.  

I told him the story from the retired Navy Seal.  He helped the Coast Guard with a sunken submarine with drugs.  I asked him to tell me something I would never guess.  So, he reported to San Die;go for submarine school.  He walked around to get oriented.  At the corner of one of the building was a very tall, very old palm tree.  It was planted in 1915 by Teddy Roosevelt during his second term as President.  

Richard replied, I got one for you.  A general was reporting to command a new Naval Base.  He inspected the troops and noticed that two seamen were guarding a bench.  He asked what they were doing.  Standing Guard.  Why. We do not know, General.  He was curious and started asking previous base commanders what they knew about the bench.  No one knew.  He finally contacted the fifth commander and when told the story, exclaimed.  "Isn't that paint dry yet?"  We talked about tatoos.  I told him about the nice tech who got a gorgeous red and blue octopus on her back and left arm.  She showed it to Scott a temp and he said he had a rooster on the back of his calf with a noose around it's neck.  Um, why? That is so he can ask, "Would you like to see my cock that hangs below my knees?"  I have since learned that Richard has one as well as Rocky.  Definitely a guy thing.  Yesterday the same young lady said that there was a new gentleman patient.  They talked about tatoos and agreed that some men got tatoos on the tool. Ouch.  She said she had seen one where the guy had racing stripes.  The man replied that if he got a tatoo of a One hundred dollar bill he could ask, "Would you like to blow a hundred?"  Again a guy thing.  I suppose women could do the same, Tatoo of an arrow above pubes that says "Insert Tab A into Slot B".  Erk.

 FAMILY HISTORY:

I asked Aunt Wanda why Uncle Al left. She said Charlie was dying of lung cancer this was mid fifties. Al came and painted the house. He wanted to bury him St.Cloud MN because there were five plots there. Nellie said no and asked him to leave. Pretty sure the exchange was less than amicable. Al stopped to talk with Paul and Wanda. They did not hear a thing until they got a telegram from St.Cloud VA.  Al was admitted. They drove to see him , visited and got things arranged. There was a brother, Ellis Berglund. HD was in his twenties, HD wad in the Army, on a ship. He got the Spanish Influenza and died, not married. U clearly Al was in the Coast Guard. He was married five times, one wife worked in the PO in San Francjsco. Al spoke Swedish, English and Spanish.

I asked about Aunt Dorothy who was Nellie's sister.

YOUR MAMAS KITCHEN

YOUR MAMAS KITCHEN: I watched CBS Morning the other day. A lady was explaining that she had not written a cook book, The title was a question she commonly asks when she is interviewing them. What did you mama's kitchen look like. Well then. My mother's kitchen was perfunctory, sturdy and well stocked. She cooked on electric. We have some favorite recipes and some childhood abuse foods. We did not appreciate fried calf brains nor liver and onions. I have since enjoyed fresh venison liver fried quickly in bacon. Yum, pass the onions. My Grandmother Berglunds kitchen was usually filled with chaos. She used a pressure cooker for most meat, usually pork roast which Mom thought was greasy. I thought it was tasty. Nellie bustled about the kitchen eating off peoples plates while clacking her loose dentures. She only canned raspberries and she was diabetic. I remember seeing the vials of insulin when I was a kid. Grandma Horn's kitchen was geared for farm life and hard work. The stove was electric. Beneath the sink were large half round containers that held 100 pound of sugar and flour. I was small enough that I could crawl inside the cupboards and hide. Grandma made fabulous pies, my favorite was pumpkin. Her spending money consisted of eggs and butter. Ollie would bring a five gallon bucket of milk. Grandma would skim off the cream until the milk was blue. The eggs and butter went to Albertson' in town. Her favorite fryng pan was electric. She used the cast iron skillet to make popcorn. She had a Paul Revere sauce pan used for Hawaiian Penuche. My mother in laws kitchen was built on a scale to fit her, she was nearly six foot tall. The stove was one of those wonderful fifties white enamal things with a warming oven for plates and two ovens. The counters were done in tile and when she washed dishes she let them drip off befoe wiping them down, saved on water, no harm was done. Lot of venison steak cooked on that stove. Grandma LaVann's kitchen was a wonderful farm house in the woods design. Her son Phil purchased Philco fridge and stove right after WWII. The table had tin barrels that contained 100 lbs of sugar and flour. Her first husband was a baker in the Navy during the Spanish American war. The table was his design. The rolling pin was rather dainty dowel. I loved that thing. The cupboards held gun in one section, rifles. The largest gun was an over and under combination shotgun, rifle, Would love to know how much that thing is worth. The dining room was built in cupboards to hold Franciscan ware, I believe it was Apple Blossom pattern. Lovely. Lots of venison cooked on that stove as well.

BARROW BREW

When I lived in Barrow, It was damp most of the time and once for eighteen months is was dry. Ikept statistics and was cited as a source in a paper submitted by one of the doctors. Also dental was located in the sambe building as the hospital. The dentist and her husband lived in the same building where I lived. When alcohol is a precious commodity in your community, things can quickly become illegal and scarce. The dental service received a lot of supplies at the hospital in very large boxes. No idea of the contents. I saw the dentist once to have a tooth pulled. Since then all of my wisdom teeth floated forward very nicely. When alcohol is scarce people will turn people in if they do not sell some to them. That is probably what happened to the dentist. Authorities went to the house they renting away from their appartment. Aparently they found 99 carboys of beer on the walls, etc. The couple disappeared from Barrow, she went to dental central. I do not believe the illegal activities received any punishment. Also during the time that Barrow was dry, hoarding happened. Folks who had liquor did not share, not even with family. Currently the town is damp and people who purchase liquor must sequetor it with the mayow who is in charge of a holding warehouse. Then after four days the buyer can claim their goods. Kind of like a waiting period. Mah.... when I lived in Dillingham, you could have a drink with hour dinner. The hospital allso a sleep it off room to keep people from drunk and freezing to death.

30th

We ate at Kozy Kitchen to celebrate 30 years since we first met. Husband must find jade rose for actual 30th. I was reminded of an auction to which I went with Mom and Dad. It was held in Caldwell at a house in town. There was a very large hunk of jade it may have weghed 500 pounds. The cosr of one ouncd of uneorked jade is $3000. That siunds pretty high. So three thousand dollars times eight thousand ounces is 24 million dollars. Do wish I owned that much jade and I also wonder what happened to that rock?

HOME EC

HOME EC: I attended Parkview Junior Highschool from fifth through eighth grade. In order to graduate eighth grade one had to know the eight parts of speech; um,,noun, verb, adverb, pronoun, preposition, quark, matter, antimatter. No? Sixth grade was Mrs. Smith. She had an old phonograph from 1880's and she had an old Vaudeville bit about two Swedes talking to each other on the phone. They could not understand each other. I remember one comment, “Not the devil, the wind, the wind, what goes shwoosh!” There was also a song about Barney Google with the goo goo googly eyes. His name was Barney Oldfield one of the first to race Ford racecars. Dad knew the song and would sing Barney Google. In the seventh grade, I took Home Economics. The only thing we ever cooked was milk toast, which is disgusting, only a toothless invalid would find any value in such a treat. What a waste, we would havse been baking cookies or something delicious. The whole class was L shaped; the sewing machines on one side and ovens on the other. We had two projects for sewing. The first was hemming a tea towel. We were shown how to pull a thread and make a clear path for tearing or cutting. My fabric was so rotton that is tore crooked, but I adjusted. The final project was to sew a simple dress. I had blue fabric. I don't remember but Mom probably washed it and had me help stretch it into shape. Then I cut out the fabric and put it together. The plann was to have a fashion show at the end of the year. I took it home. Mom looked it over and promptly tore it apart and sewed more neatly than I had. I do not remember if I ever wore it again. More than likely, I did. That building was torn down in the eighties and replaced with a nice post office. I have a brick somewhere saved from the demolition. Fourth grade was at Wardwell School. The third floor was condemned. Lunch room was in the basement. The building was purchased by the Catholic Church. Parking was saved for the church. A bank and the city Library were built on the rest of the lot. I always wanted to slide down one of the fire slides but no such luck.

RIGGINS

RIGGINS, IDAHO Salmon river, the River of No Return. When I was a sophomore, Dad worked in Riggins, Lots of weekend commuting. He decided fairly early that we should all move to Riggins. So they parked the trailer in a pasture of the Horn family. We stayed in a nice cabin near a good sized creek. There was no TV reception or radio. We played in the creek, there were apparently otters but I never saw them. We were sent to Bible school, a bus picked us up and were home by early afternoon. One of the teachers thought I was the mother of the girls. I didn't know whether to be insulted or laugh. There was the obligatory pasting of macaroni on paper for The the girls. I do not remember much else. Dad decided that me, Richard and Phillip would be enrolled in school. I was delighted to find there was aan art class. The classes were each two hours long and rotated through the week so that the afternoon was free for assemblies or sports. I saw a beautiful young man who smiled at me and my heart was instantly lost. I actually felt a pang of some sort. His girl was blond and they were the power couple. Art class was fabulous. I used oil paints and I loved the smell of both oil pain as well as turpentine. I do not remember painting anything worthwhile. One project was plaster of paris. I used a half gall milk carton for the mold and carved a native face looking upward. The art teacher was impressed and displayed it in a case. My friend lived in Lucille which is just over the time line where it was Pacific time not Mountain. So folks were used to adjusting the drive here and there. One time we rode horses and it was so much fun, even took off our shirts, the things to see us were birds. Dad picked me up for lunch one time. We met one of his supervisors and a flunky named Herb. I had a burger. Did had something other than the special. The big boss ordered heart and so did Herb the flunky. I loved that experience so much. We all learned to play a card game called Nertz. It is a kind of reverse solitaire. The goal was to put all the cards into the discard pile and yell Nertz. It went very quickly.

ENOUGH ROOM

ENOUGH ROOM: This all started with husband commenting that he wished the house was twice as big so he could save more cardboard boxes. (Heaven forefend!) I am reminded of my first roommate, Sue. We rented a three bedroom, two bath house in Novato for about one hundred dollars a month. Remember this was the mid sixties. We both made about 35 dollars per week take home. We were both slobs, I was only a slob in the kitchen, I kept everything picked up and clean. Sue lived in a separate large bedroom with ensuite in the back. I went in there once and she had all of her clothes in piles all over the floor. They were clean, simply not hung up or folded and put away. We then moved into one bed apartments in the same complex. Rent was about 65 dollars per month. One time when Sue's gentleman friend came over, she hid her dirty dishes in the cupboards rather than wash them. When she married, I visite their one bedroom apartment in Napa. She had stuff strewn all over. I started picking up and storing etc. When her husband came home, he asked what happened. I shrugged said, Hurriance Susie I was invited to their home when they moved. Nice large two story home in Napa. Dinner was very nice. I started to help after and was going to stack the plates. Sue said, don't stack them, I don't wash the bottoms. I guess she really needed enough room for the meticulous housekeeper to kick into gear.

MOVIE TAGLINES

Time for Movie taglines: I will list some movies and you must guess them. AS you wish Leave the gun, take the cannoli My greates fear was the thought of a bullet right between my eyes. Christopher Columbus What happened to your hair? Snakes! Why is it always snakes? Play the song, Sam. I have a bad feeling about this. It's over, go home! We're gonnna need a bigger boat. I will never be hungry again. Houston, we have a problem. Come to the coast, we'll have a blast. Kevin! Yo, Adrian. Here's Johnny! Who you gonna call? You are trying to seduce me. Do you feel lucky punk? It's a trick question. You talkin to me? I'm walkin here! ​If he is crazy, what does that make you? Get away from her, Bitch! Answers: Princess Bride Godfather Patton Little Women Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark Casablanca Star Wars Ferris Beuller's Day Off The Fly Jaws Gone With The Wind Working Girl Home Alone Rocky Ghost Busters Mrs. Robinson Dirty Harry My Cousin Vinny Midnight Cowboy Taxi Driver One Flew Over the cuckoo's nest Alien