November 1975: Rakes’ progress.

I have previously mentioned the young girls with rakes and faces but no names.

They had names then, of course, and friends and schoolbooks and favorite candy bars and maybe posters on the wall.

But they passed through the history of Hope Street — this history of Hope Street, anyway — without anyone writing their names down. They do not seem to have made it onto my grandpa’s calendar, for instance.

Here at my computer in the autumn of 2016 they are only images on a thumbdrive of my grandpa’s old photos … one-dimensional children in short-sleeved T-shirts in the tall fall grass, doing a neighborly favor.

(Did they shiver and complain about their lot in life? No. Most likely they were quite comfortable.)

I imagine they were my grandparents’ next-door neighbors, possibly even from the light-colored house in the rear of the photo above. (The folks on the other side of my grandparents had a son my dad’s age.)

If I had a 1975 city directory at my fingertips, I could probably find out their names, or their parents’, quickly enough.

I also imagine their house disappeared in the same condominium sweep that tore down my grandparents’. I wonder if they have been back to Hope Street lately, or if there is nothing for them there.

If you’re reading this post, you already know the backstory. My grandfather suffered a heart attack in 1971 that required him to scale back his household activities as much as possible.

The house at 1107 Hope Street had a good-sized back yard and a lot of trees. Raking all those leaves would have been one of those jobs my grandpa looked to outsource, either to professional yardsmiths or neighborhood urchins.

How many years of help did my grandpa get from the girls next door? Maybe not many. The older one, especially, looks to be approaching the age where she can invent plausible other things to do besides squatting in the grass to clean up somebody else’s yard.

Of course I wonder where they are now, and what they are doing. It is that time of year, after all.

Perhaps they have kids who are bracing to spend the coming weekends with rakes in their hands (though some back-of-the-envelope math suggests that the girls in these photos are probably empty-nesters already. Time does fly.)

Perhaps they have grown into the sort of people who refuse to dirty their hands with leaves, and hire yard companies to do the work. “I’ve bagged enough leaves for one lifetime,” they sniff.

Or maybe, in a different lawn with different trees in a different state, they are still at it. Perhaps they even enjoy it. Maybe, for reasons they can’t quite remember, it reminds them of good deeds and hard work well-appreciated.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

August 13, 1975: The big six-five.

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.)

Read Full Post »

December 31, 1975: The end.

Dec. 30, 2017: I believe my grandpa’s calendars have yielded just about all the inspiration they have to offer, and so I am taking another break, perhaps permanent. (I may write about more of his photographs, as I’ve done from time to time. But if I take that up it won’t be for a while.)

While I put my feet up and decide what to do next, I am reposting/sticking the farewell entry I wrote in April 2015, when I first decided to stop writing here. It has not been edited or updated.

Bill Blumenau would have been befuddled by this blog, probably; but he would have appreciated your interest, as his grandson does.

# # # # #

Bill Blumenau and his maniacal-looking grandson. Christmas, circa 1994.

Having come to the end of Bill Blumenau’s story online, it seems like I should mention how it ended in real life.

My grandfather suffered a heart attack — his third — in the early hours of Feb. 26, 2001, and was found dead later that morning in the nursing-home room he shared with my grandma. He was 90.

If memory serves, he also was suffering from prostate cancer, but could not be operated on because of his advanced age and the fragility of his heart. I suppose it is better to die quickly than slowly, though the outcome is the same either way.

My grandpa is buried not in Stamford but in Rochester, N.Y., his last home. I do not remember the last time I visited his grave. I prefer to think of him as he was in life, and I do not think my absence (or anything else on the earthly plane) matters to him at this point.

Having just mentioned all that, I have not spent the past four years bringing my grandfather to life on this blog just to have him die at the end.

Instead, we’ll round out our explorations in a sensible place — at the very last calendar entry available to us, on a day my grandpa probably spent quietly puttering around his house.

Since the calendars we have on hand span the years 1961 to 1975, we’ll be setting the WABAC machine to …

December 31, 1975.

Wednesday, December 31, 1975, is a full working day for President Gerald Ford. The president spends the day talking with such distinguished personages as Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, Alan Greenspan and James Brown.

(No, not the Godfather of Soul; this James E. Brown is an executive at Thiokol Corporation. He gets a seven-minute phone convo with Ford shortly before 11 p.m., while the rest of America is icing down its Champale.)

The year seems to be winding down fairly quietly, without much in the news. As the new year dawns, the Liberty Bell is about to be moved to a new enclosure in time for the bicentennial. The movers say they can do the job without further damaging the symbol of liberty, and they are as good as their word.

Investigators are probing a bomb blast two days earlier that killed 11 people at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, fewer than 40 highway miles from Hope Street. Presumably the investigators are still probing, as the bombing has never been solved.

Guy Lombardo plays one of his last New Year’s Eve specials, joined by guest Aretha Franklin. Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve fights back with Neil Sedaka, KC and the Sunshine Band, Melissa Manchester, Freddy Fender and the Average White Band. And — this being a regular workday for Johnny Carson, just as it is for President Ford — The Tonight Show features Joan Rivers, Orson Bean and Charles Nelson Reilly as guests.

Frances Drake’s syndicated horoscope warns Capricorns against a “tendency toward indiscretion,” cautions Scorpios to “be prepared for all contingencies,” but tells Cancers that travel could lead to “a most unusual and highly stimulating experience.”

According to the morning front pages of December 31, U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger denied a request the day before to delay a multibillion-dollar increase in the nation’s postal rates.

And that — not the airport explosion, or Guy Lombardo, or preparation for all contingencies — is what’s on my grandpa’s last calendar entry of this sequence.

It’s a natural thing for my grandpa to make note of. Postal rate increases are scattered throughout his 15 years of calendars.

At least one of the other postal rate hikes is illustrated with a drawing of a letter with wings. But this one seems hefty enough for my grandpa to skip the whimsy.

I’m sure he counted every cent, and an increase from 10 cents to 13 would have been something he noticed — another sign that the basics of American life just kept getting more and more and more expensive.

Other items of interest at 1107 Hope Street that day:

– My grandfather didn’t have a watercolor painting class. (His teacher, unlike President Ford and Johnny Carson, must have taken the day off.)

– The weather was pretty unmemorable — overcast, nippy and rainy, more Novemberish than wintry.

Despite the rain and the postal rate increase, there were other things on the horizon in December 1975 that would have made my grandfather happy.

He had two healthy grandchildren, and had just found out a third was on the way in the new year. His kids were both within visiting distance, more or less, and visits were not rare.

Apologies for the poor picture quality. This is December 25, 1975, and my Aunt Elaine and her husband Steve are visiting Hope Street.

He’d been retired a few years, and he hadn’t had any more heart attacks, so he was probably pretty well comfortable with his lifestyle at that point. He knew what he could do and what he shouldn’t, and he’d made his peace with it.

(My dad has said many times that my grandpa adapted after his heart attack in ways that many people don’t. He not only made lifestyle changes, but figured out how to relax. The Bill Blumenau of December 1975 was a different man, and in some ways a better one, than he was in January 1961.)

The bicentennial year was coming up, too, and as a patriot, my grandpa would have bought into the idea of celebrating America. I can see him being interested in what was to come.

So, I think my grandfather would have seen out the old year 1975 on a positive note. Life was pretty good on Hope Street. My grandpa had paid his dues in the rat race; now he could sit back and watch the wheels.

And that’s where I think I’ll leave him.

He is sitting on the couch in the front room, a skinny older man in a plaid shirt, reading about Mother Theresa in the latest issue of Time. There are no end-of-year holiday visitors; he is alone in the house with his wife and mother, who are already upstairs, quietly preparing for bed.

The nighttime rain patters gently outside, as it has all day, but he doesn’t pay it much attention. He has nowhere to travel, and his roof will hold.

As page follows page, he starts to think about turning in for the night and saying goodbye to another year. It scarcely seems like another 365 days have passed, but here it is, a new year coming. And if the taxman doesn’t ratchet things up too many more notches, it could be a pretty good one, he thinks.

He yawns, gets up and switches off the light, tossing the magazine onto the coffee table.

As his footsteps disappear up the stairs, the first floor of 1107 Hope Street settles into darkness and silence, with only the eternal streetlights and the occasional tire-slick of a passing car on the wet street to interrupt the stillness of the night.

– April 2011-April 2015

Read Full Post »

February 12, 1975: Giving up.

Several of my co-workers are Catholic; and a few days ago I heard them discussing Lent.

One said she had given up beer for Lent, but would likely switch to vodka. It didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice … though this person has given more time and attention to the church than I ever will, so I am not one to judge.

It seems like most discussions of Lent I hear have a somewhat farcical edge, like the one above. Few of them ever seem to involve real self-denial. Perhaps that has gone by the wayside. (Or perhaps I do not travel in deeply religious circles, which is the most likely answer.)

My grandparents, as previously discussed, were not deeply religious either. However, Lent made its way into their consciousness each February. Or at least it did in a couple Februaries for which I have calendar entries, covering the full 15-year scope of my grandpa’s calendars.

February 12, 1975. Presumably the start of Lent was not contingent on Mertz calling.

February 27 and 28, 1964. “Lenten sign” was presumably one of the pieces of signage my grandpa created for his church.

February 15 (up top of George), 1961.

This raises an interesting question for me: What would my grandparents and great-grandma have given up for Lent?

Their lives were pretty plain-Jane, and not long in indulgences to begin with. Perhaps my grandfather gave up saying “damn,” or eating sauerbraten, or drinking the half-beers he used to split with my great-grandmother.

Or maybe, by my dad’s telling, they gave up nothing at all:

I have no recollection of anyone giving up anything for Lent.  If anyone did, it would have been Grossee, but I don’t remember anything being different at mealtime or any other time during Lent.  No one ever went to any sort of Ash Wednesday service (don’t think Springdale Methodist had one).  

I suppose it’s possible that my grandfather put Lent on his calendar out of some sense of civic obligation. But, I still can’t help but wonder whether he actually did make a commitment to give something up.

If I really had my act together, I’d check his calendars 40 days later and see if he left a record of reveling in anything. I’m pretty sure he didn’t do that, though.

I dunno. I guess I’ll leave the topic there and go indulge in one of the fleshly sins I give in to year-round.

Read Full Post »

June 1975: Village people.

“Senior living.” “Retirement community.”

Some people find those words comforting — an opportunity to shed the hassles of home ownership and live comfortably with others their own age, often in a setting where some of life’s tasks are eased.

Other people find those words terrifying — loss of independence, possibly reduced contact with the outside world, and the sale of a home that’s seen decades of family memories.

(It’s fair to say that some people wrestle with both emotions, too.)

I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that this week’s calendar entry finds my grandparents thinking about which side they fell on.

June 1975. The Mets and Yanks (sharing a stadium) spend the month in third and second place, respectively.

Google says there are a couple of Heritage Villages in the U.S., including one here in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.

Most likely, the one being referred to on my grandparents’ calendar is a retirement community in Southbury, Connecticut. That’s between Danbury and Waterbury, near Woodbury and Middlebury (what is it with all these -burys?), roughly 50 miles from the family home in Stamford.

According to Wiki, Heritage Village in Southbury opened in 1967 and ranks as New England’s largest retirement community, with about 4,000 residents. It’s large enough to be a census-designated place of its own; and as of the 2000 census, the median age there was 75 years.

The question in regard to this week’s entry — written in my grandma’s writing, for what that’s worth — is:

Were my grandparents simply planning to go visit an old friend or acquaintance who had moved to Heritage Village?

Or — with my grandpa in so-so health, recently signed up for Social Security, and my great-grandma edging toward 90 — did they give thought to selling the old house on Hope Street and going the retirement-village route?

My dad believes they were only planning to visit a friend at Heritage Village. He doesn’t recall them bringing up senior communities back then.

For that matter, they didn’t bring it up when they left Stamford for Rochester in the mid-’80s, either. Not until 1998, when my grandfather was 88 years old, did my grandparents sell their home and move into an assisted living facility.

(My great-grandma, who died in 1994, moved separately into a senior care facility for the last few years of her life. It was no longer feasible for my grandparents to take care of her at home.)

To me, the placement of the Heritage Village item on the top of the calendar suggests that it might have been a visit to case the place out. If they had been visiting a friend, they probably would have made a note on the specific date of the visit, rather than up at the top.

On the other hand, maybe they had a standing invitation to go see a friend sometime, and it was written up at the top as a reminder.

Whichever one it was, they apparently didn’t get to it during June 1975, as it was never crossed off. It showed up again at the top of July’s calendar page, and was once again not crossed off.

I don’t know if they ever got there. But I know they never moved there, which is enough to tell me which side of the senior-living divide they were on.

Read Full Post »