Dog Stories I Told at the Café

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

DOG STORIES I TOLD AT THE CAFÉ

While at a local cafe’ my friend and another patron were exchanging dog stories. The following is my contribution to the conversation. The first part of the conversation can be read by clicking on Dog Stories I Heard at the Café

     My friend whom I’ll call Vivian turned to me and said “If you had a pet, you could tell a story too.”

     “I had a Border collie at one time,” I said. “I have stories too.”

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     “We acquired Tagalong when her owners needed a place for her while they took an extended trip to Europe,” I said. “Shortly, we were presented with three puppies. We weren’t certain whether she came to us pregnant, or whether she had had an immediate tryst with one of our neighbor’s dogs.

     One of the pups was gorgeous He was adopted by my mother, who loved him dearly.

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     “For some reason we didn’t know she didn’t like delivery men, especially the UPS drivers. We had to protect them from her.

     “One time I had to stop her from attacking the mother (I’ll call her Amy) of one of my child care home children. On a bitter, cold winter morning three-year-old Christine decided to

Dog Stories I Heard at the Café

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

DOG STORIES I HEARD AT THE CAFÉ

Occasionally I have the opportunity to eat breakfast at a local cafe’. Below is part one of a conversation held there one morning. To read part two click on Dog Stories I Told at the Café

     Border collies are not bred like other dogs—good breeders take into consideration the dog’s temperament and ancestry, according to a woman I’ll call Dot.

     My friend (whom I’ll call Vivian) and I were breakfasting at a local café and talking to a woman at an adjacent table.

     “My border collie (I’ll call him Wicked) was vicious,” said Dot. “I never had a vicious dog before. Even the ghost whisperer I called was appalled.”

     Dot went on to say that Wicked was bred from a nine-year-old, which she never saw when she purchased Wicked from the breeder.

     “They never let us near the mother. We were told she was

Disability Doesn’t Mean Disabled: Two Role Models

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

DISABILITY DOESN’T MEAN DISABLED:

TWO ROLE MODELS

     After becoming legally blind, Janice Greer worked for a time as a typesetter and later sewed costumes for her children’s high school plays, according to her daughter Aimee Coleman and son Thomas Greer. Although both will miss their mother, who died from cancer on April 12, 2011, they will cherish the memories of her being a role model.*

     Reading this Janice Greer’s obituary reminded me of two important people I’ve known on this journey called life.

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     One result of my parent’s divorce was that I was separated from my father’s family. I didn’t meet my paternal aunt, Nyllis Gardner, until I was well into adulthood. When I met her, was wheelchair bound and bedridden, and her hands were grossly distorted from arthritis. Yet she managed to hand stitch Barbie doll clothes for her church bizarre. She also made needlework items on plastic canvas. 

Nyllis Gardner's hand-stitched Barbie Doll clothes

     Watching her work made me realize what a struggle it was for her to create the many

From Chutes and Ladders to Notre Dame University Basilica

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

FROM CHUTES AND LADDERS

TO

NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY BASILICA

     “Will you play a game with me?”

     Hmmm. It was eight in the morning. My four year old grandson was leaving soon for preschool, and my husband Monte and I were leaving Cleveland Heights to head for South Bend, Indiana, a stop enroute to our final destination, Libertyville/Evanston, Illinois.

     We chose to add an extra day to our trip so we could see our son, his wife, and the two grandchildren. Immediately on our arrival I found myself on the losing end of a game of air hockey, being outdone by a six year old. Later I played Candy Land with the four year old, and an electronic golf-like game (on television) with the six year old. I also threatened them that their granddad and I would move all out stuff into their spare bedroom and move into their house—which really only threatened our son. All in all, it was a good evening.

     The four year old wandered into our room after we opened the door the next morning. We had a slight wrestling match before heading downstairs to the kitchen. It wasn’t long before we were spread out on the living room floor, engrossed in a game of Chutes and Ladders.

 

     It was over all too soon, as Monte and I climbed in our car and began our journey and he continued his family routine.

     That’s how our day started. It ended at the opposite end of the spectrum, on the Notre Dame University Campus.

     After a leisurely day of travel, with beautiful weather—sun, blue skies—we arrived at Notre Dame’s Basilica. Monte often

Water’s Dangers Should Be Heeded

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

WATER’S DANGERS SHOULD BE HEEDED

Water’s dangers all-too evident…

     How ironic that the June 2, 2011 newspaper headline states information that I might include in a chapter in my historic romance novel. The warning is made about waterways and water bodies in what was once known as the Ohio country—western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, which includes the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. I had just typed into my third chapter the following:

Monongahela River at the Redstone Creek confluence in Brownsville, PA.

       Floating on a poleboat, even against hundreds of miles of river current, was usually safer, easier and far faster than overland travel. However, it was not necessarily safe. There were dead-heads: fallen trees, tops gone, hung up in the river totally underwater. The end pointing upstream would sometimes be raised by the current, till it would breach the surface and punch a hole in the coming flatboat. In low water there were rocks and even rapids in the river which had to be navigated correctly. And always there were the Indians. The Indian was watching the passing flatboat, they could attack it where it stopped. A captive might be used to lure the boat close for attack and capture.

     I’ll concede that we don’t worry about the dangers of Native American and water travelers in today’s world, but the concerns about

Jane

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

JANE

 This limerick honors my sister Jane, whose birthday is July 19.

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My mother did name me Jane. 

A heart attack to me came. 

I was

Banned: The Mercury Thermometer

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

BANNED: THE MERCURY THERMOMETER

Oct. 7, 1791: We lifted anchor at 6 am and had a contrary wind…At noon the thermometer marked 55 degrees…Oct. 8: We lifted anchor at 6 am with a wind not quite as bad as evening before…at 11:30 and the thermometer is 59 degrees. Stormy weather and wind from the south west…Oct. 9: They lifted anchor at 8 a. m. with the high tide…at 11:30… The thermometer marks 50 degrees; rain wind from the southwest.

Oct 16: The thermometer marks 39 degrees…At 8:00 p. m. returned and went to bed. Good weather the whole day but cold. An hour after a clumsy person touched the thermometer and we all saw it fall and break.

Oct  17: At 3 a.m…We’ve been deprived of the thermometer so we can no longer give you the certain results of the temperature but we continue to make our observations in comparison from the days past. Winds from the NW this morning and the cold ice (a line and a half of ice).  At noon a bad wind, hail and snow. It just passed through. The same temperature about for the rest of the day.

     Madame Rosalie de Leval was a refugee of the French Revolution who had a tentative contract with land speculators Gen. Henry Knox and Col. William Duer to purchase a large tract of land in Downeast Maine—current day Hancock and Washington counties. It was 1791.

     The contract was tentative because Madame wanted to examine the land before she finalized the purchase. The excerpt above is from the journal she kept of her visit to Downeast Maine for this purpose.

     As can be seen, she was meticulous about recording the temperatures during her travels. However, oops, an oaf dropped the thermometer, and she could only estimate the temperature after that incident.

     What happened to the thermometer? Did Madame, the oaf, or someone else pick up the mercury with their bare hands? Was the thermometer and its contents disposed of by being tossed into the water of the Narrows or Frenchman Bay? Was she, or anyone else, aware that to do so was to pollute the waters with mercury?

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     Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer in 1714. French emigrants who purchased the invalid Ohio deeds included craftsmen in thermometer making. In 1792 a visitor to Gallipolis wrote We rode to the French settlement of Gallipolis, situated on the north bank of the Ohio, between three and four miles from the Kanawha… The worker in glass seemed to be a born artist. He made us a thermometer, a barometer…

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     Perhaps you have a mercury thermometer in your medicine cabinet. I know I still do. But by the time Fahrenheit’s thermometer reaches three hundred years of age, it will be extinct. As of  March 1, 2011, retail sales of these thermometers in a wide variety of industries (as well as many other measuring devices, thermostats and switches, using mercury) have been banned or restricted in at least

A Sense of Place

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

A SENSE OF PLACE    

     A sense of place…

     Tim Landy, my friend and leader of the former Foothills Writers Group, was always emphasizing this sense of place, something I could never relate to. I once wrote an article on Tim’s visit to Ireland, where he sought his sense of place beyond the more than rolling hills of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

     As I said, I couldn’t relate to his feelings of sense of place.

     That is, until the first time I set my feet on Lamoine Beach, Maine, at the junction where the       meets Frenchman Bay.

     I’d never even heard of Lamoine Beach before I began doing my genealogy research, during which I learned French immigrant Louis des Isles arrived there, married a local-born English/Irish girl, Mary (Rogers) Googins. The couple birthed eight children, one of which, William, was my ancestor.

      The first time I visited Lamoine Beach was late summer 2003. While there, something magical happened…something I never felt before hit me, if only for a few seconds.

Lamoine Beach, Maine

     I felt an undefineable sense of place. I was where I belonged, where I was connected. It was nothing less than a spiritual experience.

     It came and went so swiftly that, if it hadn’t been so strong, I would have questioned it, or missed it, or attributed it to some strange thing.

     Never again have I experienced this sense of place, although my feet have trod on many of the sites my ancestor’s feet trod.

Aerial view of Lamoine Beach

    What was—is—there about Lamoine Beach that that is the site where I experienced that sense of place Tim kept speaking about? Why there, but not at Wallis Sands Beach or Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, two ocean shore sites that have sentimental meaning to me, places where I spent my childhood summers?

Wallis Sands Beach in Rye, New Hampshire

Why not in Portsmouth, Rhode Island (now Middletown), where my ancestors, the Thomas and Rebecca Cornell family lived? Why not on the Westmoreland County Senior Home property, off Route 119, where my ancestor, Michael Rugh, had an original land grant in the 1770s? Or the Michael Rugh (grandson of the elder Michael Rugh) farm on Route 119 in Blacklick Township in Indiana County, Pennsylvania? Why Lamoine Beach?

Lamoine Beach

     It doesn’t make sense to me, but I am glad the experience happened. I now can relate to Tim’s concept of sense of place with a new perception.

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ADDITIONAL READING:

My Childhood Home: 29 Spring St., Portsmouth, N. H.

Laurel Mountain Borough, Pennsylvania: Quaint

The Park Outside My Front Door

OH, TO CLIMB SCHOODIC MOUNTAIN!

Grandparents, homemade cookies, & licking cream off milkcaps

IN SEARCH OF THE ARABELLA: A Story of Two Boats

RIGHTING A CIVIL WAR WRONG: A Gravestone for a Civil War Veteran

Sky-Patrolling Insectivorous Scary Critters

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

SKY-PATROLLING INSECTIVOROUS SCARY CRITTERS

     They flit at superman speeds throughout my yard and over my head once dusk sets in, forcing me to give up my comfortably cool porch seat to retire indoors. They get into my house, causing an irrational terror that they will land in my hair, bite me, and send me for medical treatment for a series of possible rabies shots.

     Yet I will never advocate eliminating this species except when they enter my personal domain, the interior of my house. Even then, my husband Monte and I make the effort to guide them to the outdoors before executing them.

     It is suggested that they save us big bucks by

Cowabunga! Wowabunga!

CAROLYN’S DAILY POSTS: 2011

COWABUNGA! WOWABUNGA!

     Sometimes a chance piece of information included in a print media article takes you back to the past. This happened while reading an article on Idlewild Amusement Park’s new multi-million dollar wave pool, the single-largest capital improvement project in the amusement park’s history.*

     Idlewild is located in Ligonier Township in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

     The 182 foot-long pool, which delivers seven minutes of waves for every 10 minutes of calm water, is named