I enjoy looking at the sketches of my grandpa’s life on his old calendar entries, or in his journals, and trying to fill in the gaps around them. How did an event affect him? What did he think about it?
There are a few days that I don’t have to guess about or fill in, though, because he wrote them out in full detail from dawn to dusk. We’re going to stop in on one of them this week.
My grandfather, in his later years, would sit down on his birthday every year — August 13 — and write down everything he’d done that day.
Since he wasn’t in the habit of climbing mountains or going surfing on his birthday, the letters also serve as a pretty good look at what his everyday life was like.
So here we are on Wednesday, August 13, 1975, my grandfather’s 65th birthday.
The Yankees are in third; the Mets are in fourth. Record-setting miler John Walker is on newspaper front pages. Buddy Ebsen is on the cover of TV Guide. The Bee Gees are at Number One. The Grateful Dead are on O’Farrell Street.
President Ford is on vacation in Vail, Colorado, where he starts his day with a swim.
At 1107 Hope Street in Stamford, Connecticut, the day begins with a bland breakfast and proceeds apace.
The blow-by-blow account, with occasional notations:
Arose at 7:30 – temp 70 degrees – Hot day coming up
Breakfast – Maltex and Wheatena mix, toast, Sanka, orange juice
Brought art stuff down from attic into studio
Took stuff from studio to attic
(Perspective from me: Wonder what his art stuff was doing in the attic? The upstairs studio — formerly my Aunt Elaine’s bedroom — served as his art room all the years I knew him. He wasn’t painting the studio: His journal’s year-by-year list of home projects makes no mention of such a project in 1975. Never mind what I said about knowing everything about the day: It’s not even lunchtime and I’ve already encountered a mystery.)
Lunch at 12:00 – Hamburg – potatoe – tomatoe – peanut butter + crackers – cool tea
Listened to news 12:30-1 pm
Rest period
(I find it interesting that he didn’t watch the news; he listened to it on the radio. He might have been tuned in to local legend Don Russell’s program on WSTC, described in an earlier blog post.)
Petro service man arrived 1:20
Cleaned boiler & burner – left 2:50
Took pics of stuffed bird at bird bath.
(The stuffed bird wants some explanation. My dad played organ at the wedding of a fraternity brother around this time and was rewarded with the gift of a stuffed heron, which lived in the front hall of our house for a good decade before it started falling apart. The wedding was in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and the stuffed bird apparently lived at my grandparents’ in Connecticut for a while until my dad could bring it home to western New York.)
And you thought I was making this story up. My family visited Hope Street in the first week of August 1975, and that’s probably when this was taken. (If you’re a long-timer here, you might recognize the car visible out the window.)
Cut some branches from trees.
Thought of mowing grass – Too hot. 88 degrees.
Went for Stamford Advocate – bought LOT. TIC.
(Yeah, forget the apologia for my grandfather that I wrote a couple years ago. Dude loved his lottery tickets. At least he confined himself to one at a time.)
Surveyed building foundation across street.
Supper at 5:15 – Lamb – rice -beans from garden – orange pieces
Cold Sanka – birthday cake with strawberries + ice cream and candle
(I have heard of Sanka but have never had any; my grandpa seems to have enjoyed it almost as much as he enjoyed lottery tickets. Wiki tells me the name Sanka is a conjunction of the French words “sans cafeine,” meaning “without caffeine.” Whaddya know.)
Recd gifts – travel kit, stick deodorant, 2 LOT TICS & tie from Corine
(Yup, more lottery tix. Er, LOTTERY TICS. Shame that, as far as I know, my grandpa never actually won. Also gotta love stick deodorant as a birthday gift: “Here’s hoping you smell better in Year 66!”)
Car repair book & $10 from Ma
Took rubbish & garbage to cellar
Listened to radio news – 6:30
Listened to TV news & weather – 6:45 to 7:30. Showers on way
Evelyn J. called – a pair of Rod’s brown shoes has gone missing
(So, would it be fair to say that Rod’s brown shoes didn’t make it?)
Sat out on porch – cool breeze coming from N.W.
(I love that he knew where the breeze was coming from. Probably the same innate sense that enables people to know one kind of tree from another. I don’t possess that.)
Watched Merv Griffin show – 9 to 10
(Guests included Polly Bergen and Gay Talese.)
Bedtime snack – shredded wheat & puft wheat
To Bed 10:30 – read magazines
(One of them was probably Time, whose August 11 issue bore a cover story called “Lisbon’s Troika: Red Threat in Portugal.” I do not think the risk of Communist takeover of Portugal unduly burdened my grandfather as he lay down to sleep with a bellyful of wheat.
(Good night.)
Love that heron and that you put a napkin on it so it wouldn’t spill the crackers you were feeding it!
I seem quite attentive to my task in that picture.
Soon after your grandfather died I discovered (as I remember it) a notebook/journal of entries done each year on his birthday. I’m surprised to see the photograph of your hand holding a single sheet of paper; maybe 65 deserved its own!
I anxiously dug into the book expecting my father, from beyond the grave, passing me the secret of the universe, or at least the meaning of life, or at least some new wisdom he had learned in the year since the previous entry. Needless to say, I was disappointed by his meticulous mundanity, and quit after a couple entries, never to re-open it.
But it is charming for what it is – and maybe one shouldn’t expect more out of life than Cold Sanka and pufft wheat.
If you have any secrets of the universe feel free to share ’em now.
The letters I saw are indeed stand-alone letters; I have pix of at least 10 of them, all single sheets of paper. Maybe they were collected together in a folder and you took them all out?
When I was a kid, “Sanka” was synonymous with decaf. You ordered either coffee or Sanka. It’s still made, apparently, but I haven’t seen it (or ads for it) in years.
I went searching, hoping against hope that there would be a Sanka website. I was eager to see how this product would be promoted on the ‘Net to 21st-century audiences.
Alas, there is no such site — though I found some Amazon links purporting to sell the stuff.
I remember that heron! In fact, I can honestly say that it is the only particular item of household decor I remember from the house on Timber Brook. I think it freaked my out a bit.
yeah, I don’t remember other houses in Penfield having stuffed avian life on display in the front hall. I suppose it did break up the monotony of Seelerland a little bit.
I’m glad to see that someone was properly indignant about Kraft’s mishandling of the once ubiquitous Sanka brand – http://www.brandlandusa.com/2011/09/26/sanka-coffee-history/. It and Turtle Wax were consolation prize staples on 1970s game shows.
Wouldn’t shock me if my grandpa used Turtle Wax too.
I would suggest that Sanka might be due for a hipster revival, Pabst Blue Ribbon-style … but the snobbery that has come to be attached to coffee would probably prevent that.
If memory serves, Sanka contained not only no caffeine but no coffee derivative whatever, and was essentially a cereal-like product which you drank instead of coffee.
Memory, I regret to say, does not serve: If Wiki is correct, you are thinking of Postum.
Postum was made by Postum Cereal, founded along with Kellogg’s at the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium. Postum Cereal acquired the US rights to Sanka in 1927. E.F. Hutton was company chair when it acquired Clarence Birdseye’s General Foods in 1929 and the company changed its name. His wife and Post heir Marjorie Merriweather Post was the wealthiest woman in the county and the namesake of a concert pavilion in the DC/Baltimore area. Donald Trump purchased her Mar-a-Lago estate.
Thank you; yer right, as always!