Category Archives: Nostalgia

The magic flute

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Last week a thought occurred to me. I should get out my flute. Not only would it be nice to play again after a few years of not playing, it might give me a burst of creativity. I’m always looking for ways to encourage my creative spirit including walks, sketching or reading. However, in my advanced age, I promptly forgot about playing the flute.

Actually after moving, the flute got tucked away along with my music. At our former home, my flute was out on the piano and I’d walk by and stop to play. We donated our piano to our kids’ elementary school before we moved.

I was reading through blogs yesterday when I ran across a mouse playing a flute in a story on Nuggets of Gold called Moonlight Sonata. A note went off in my head. Yes, I want to get my flute out — and music.

I remembered where I squirreled away my music in the guest room dresser. My flute was hidden in my closet. My favorite flute music is falling apart, but still readable. I also found piano music for the Phantom of the Opera and Wizard of Oz. The good thing with the flute is that it’s in the key of C and I can play piano music easily — at least the melodies.

My mom played flute since she was a child and took me to lessons when I was around 10 years old. I played her beautiful silver flute at lessons and practiced with it. She got the flute from her high school flute teacher as a teen. When I was 11 years old, she gave me her flute. Her friends asked why she would give a child such a valuable instrument and she took it back. My parents bought me a flute appropriate to play at school when I joined Band.

When I turned 30, I asked my mom for the flute. She said no even though she hadn’t played it after taking it back from me two decades before. I was planning to make a leap and join our church choir. A friend of mine played flute in choir and suggested I give it a try. I could have played with my old band instrument, but it sounds tinny and is hard to play compared to the rich tone and ease of Mom’s silver flute.

Anyway, that was my excuse — also I was scared. Buying a flute at that time wasn’t even an idea we could consider.

I asked mom at age 40 and again at 50. The answer was always no. Sometime in my early 50s she told me she wanted me to have her flute. On one of my visits, she insisted I take it home on the plane. I held on to it for dear life on the flight back to Palm Springs.

My son and I practiced Christmas Carol duets each year, me on the flute and him on piano. I’d go through phases where I’d practice daily and then stop and start again.

Then the phone calls began. Mom had moved into assisted living. When she was in her 80s she wanted her flute back. I tried to explain that I was enjoying playing and I knew she wouldn’t play her flute or even open its case. She assured me she would and wanted to practice for a concert. Then she’d forget all about it and months later she’d call again about the flute.

I think in the back of my mind, I was hurt when she took the flute away from me as a child. I overheard her telling a friend that I was getting my sticky peanut butter and jelly fingers all over it — which was not true. I also felt that it was wrong to hang onto a possession for thirty or forty years and not let someone enjoy it.

My aunt, her little sister, had a similar story with china inherited from their family. My mom gave it to her little sister (my aunt) before she moved from her home, but once in assisted living kept calling to get her china back. There was obviously no room in the assisted living studio to display the china or store it.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have returned the flute for a few years to appease my mom. I think she was attached to these possessions because they reminded her of her earlier years and she saw them as her identity.

In any case, I have the flute and music out and it brings me joy to play and connects me to Mom in a good way, that I am able to enjoy her beautiful instrument and her musical talent. RIP.

Do you think people hold onto possessions because they see them as part of their identity or youth? If yes, what other things do people hang onto for that reason?

Over my skis

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I woke up yesterday morning dreaming about my skis I bought when I was a freshman in college. They were the pair of skis in the photos above. They were my identity, is what I dreamed. My bright orange Olin Mark IVs.

I bought them in Everett, Wash. near my hometown of Snohomish. I was a student at the University of Washington in Seattle. The sales guy who sold me the skis was cute and he asked me to go skiing with him.

I remember the day so well. It was raining on the mountain and the snow was thick slush and totally unskiable (if that’a word?)

We had lunch in the ski lodge and headed down the mountain in the sales guy’s sports car, a small Fiat, which broke down on the way home. Those were the days before cell phones, but somehow we got back to Everett and my car. Once we got to the sales guy’s apartment, a friend and coworker from the ski shop came over with a case of beer. Apparently it was payment of a bet on if I’d go skiing with him.

I loved skiing. I enjoyed it so much, that I went to Sun Valley with a girlfriend on Spring break to ski. We decided then and there that we’d take off our sophomore year to become ski bums. We got jobs and an apartment lined up on our Sun Valley ski vacation for the next ski season.

My parents weren’t sold on me taking off a year of school. They were sure it would get me off track and they feared I wouldn’t go back to school.

As luck would have it, I didn’t make it to the next ski season because I ran across a street and froze like a deer in the headlights and got hit by a pick up truck. My girlfriend went ahead with the Sun Valley season — and no she didn’t make it back to the UW.

It reminds me of the saying to get out over your skis.

What moment have you had when your plans dramatically changed from what you had planned?

Beware the Ides of March

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Mom and me in the 1990s.
My mom and me in the 1990s.

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. The Ides of March. (Mom died New Year’s Day.) Today I’m going to my brother’s house and we will reminisce and have dinner with family including my mom’s little sister who is 13 years younger than mom.

My mom often told me that she raised her little sister.

My cousin wrote me a loving sympathy letter that included a funny story I had never heard before about Mom, my aunt (my cousin’s mom) and red squares.

My aunt had a friend over and my mom, as the older sister, had them in a competition to earn red cloth squares. I’m not sure what ages they were, but Mom had them busy doing chores. They would earn a red cloth square for finishing their chore first.

I talked to my aunt about it and she said whoever earned the most red squares won the grand prize. She said she wanted the grand prize more than anything!

She won — and the grand prize turned out to be a bigger red cloth square.

Mom was a strong Christian and I have memories of her giving us a Bible verse each morning. She typed hundreds of them on 3 1/2 by 2″ cards.

She was big on chores and that’s one thing I despised the most coming home from school. We’d come home to an empty house, as latch key kids when Mom was earning her degree in Music at the University of Washington. She already had a degree in Home-Ec Education. Mom would leave a legal-sized yellow sheet of college-ruled paper with both sides filled with chores to be done before she got home. She had an ineligible scrawl that was hard to read.

I realize now, she not only wanted dinner cooked, the dishes done, the house vacuumed, the garage swept (you get the idea) — she was keeping my brother and I out of trouble. She was keeping us busy.

Tomorrow we spread her ashes at our riverfront property.

Here’s a photo of her in her teens or early twenties at the river.

What chores did you have growing up? Did you have your children do chores too?

A funny memory

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bobcat
A bobcat in our backyard. I’ve seen this one lately, but haven’t gotten a new photo.

When I was first married and moved to the Palm Springs area, I worked for a Public Relations agency.

We were housed in a small building named for Bob Hope on a hospital campus that has President Eisenhower’s name. A number of rich and famous were associated with the hospital including Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope.

One of the accounts we worked on was the Bob Hope Classic, a golf tournament that raised millions for local charities.

The first year I was working the Classic, I answered the phone and got a request from Rick Dee’s secretary that he’d like to play in the tournament. At the time, Rick Dees was a local Los Angeles DJ. It was before he went national. I had moved from Washington state and never heard of him. I told the woman on the other end of the phone, “No.”

We were well into organizing the tournament and I didn’t think we could allow more players.

Next, I got a call from Rick Dees himself. I told him no. He called back two more times and I hung up on him!

One of my co-workers overheard and asked, “Who were you talking to?”

“Some guy named Rick Dees. He wants to play in the Classic and he called me three times!”

“You hung up on Rick Dees?”

The boss immediately found Rick Dees number and called him back and apologized. Guess what? He was allowed to play in the tournament.

Fast forward six or seven years, and I was at the Classic with my husband, who had our one- year-old son on his shoulders. We walked along the golf course and I spotted Rick Dees.

I walked up to him and said “I’m the woman who hung up on you years ago.”

He laughed and said he remembered. My husband asked for his autograph. Rick Dees was friendly and signed my son’s baseball cap.

What are some of your funny memories during your early working years?

Seriously?

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No, I didn’t watch the Grammy’s. In fact, I didn’t know they were on. I was glancing at news on my laptop yesterday morning and the headline above jumped out at me.

Here’s the song of the year. Warning, it is a tear jerker but a beautiful song.

I’ve been a Bonnie Raitt fan for as long as I can remember! Her first album debuted in 1971. Here’s a LINK to her website with her bio. She’s been inducted into the Hall of Fame and won her 14th Grammy this year.

I wonder if the headline writer who called her an “unknown blues singer” was fired or will be embarrassed for the rest of his or her life?

Here are two songs of hers I like. Yes I owned these albums and played them over and over.

Are you a Bonnie Raitt fan? What are your thoughts about calling her an “unknown blues singer?”

The end of AM radio?

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boy tuning transistor radio
Photo by Victoria Akvarel on Pexels.com

Did you know that EVs interfere with AM Radio waves?

I read yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that Teslas have already gotten rid of AM.

Here’s an excerpt from “Sadness and Static as AM Stations Fade–Space aliens, UFOs, the supernatural—all grist for radio shows” by Peter Funt.

Several European car makers, including Audi, BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Volvo, have stopped putting AM radios in certain models. Trendy EVs and hybrids have electrical systems that interfere with AM audio. But rather than moving a few parts around, or shielding the equipment better, manufacturers are cutting out AM.

American automakers are taking a more cautious approach, but Tesla has already eliminated AM radios, and Ford plans to drop AM from its electric pickup trucks. It’s no small matter, since about 47 million Americans still listen to programming on the AM dial, according to Nielsen data.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sadness-and-static-as-am-stations-fade-electric-car-airwaves-radio-host-ufo-media-auto-drive-soundtrack-11675023531?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

The article also said that those of us who grew up with AM radio view it as the soundtrack of our lives. I grew up on the west coast of Washington State. KJR AM radio was the top 40 station. One of my best friends signed up our high school for a competition where we saved our Wrigley’s gum wrappers and made a chain with them. The school that built the longest chain won a concert downtown Seattle for the band WAR — free for the entire school.

We won. I always wondered if we really won, or if it was my friend dating a DJ at the radio station?

I used to listen to the wacky Art Bell at night when I couldn’t sleep. People would call in with tall tales of UFOs and abductions, mysterious discoveries of crystal skulls and assorted weirdness. I found it entertaining.

I’d also tune into talk and news shows while I drove. It sort of was a soundtrack of my life.

Now with Sirius in the car, we rarely tune in AM. We listen to music of our preferred decades.

Do you think that AM will fade away? What AM stations have you listened to and what was their format?