1971: Mary Tyler Moore & Minneapolis

By Corinne H. Smith

1971:  I turned fourteen years old.  I was in ninth grade at Hempfield High School.  Daddy was 42, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom worked as a nurse at a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my fourteenth birthday was “Theme From Shaft” by Isaac Hayes.  Mom snapped this photograph.  It must have been taken on New Year's Eve, and Daddy must have been on his way to performing somewhere.  We obviously still had our tree up and most of our opened presents beneath it.  Once again, we missed taking the photo on the exact day of my November birthday.

     My mother was an extrovert:  a boisterous and often opinionated person who freely spoke her mind.  She had recently returned to the nursing profession and was working at a local clinic for women.  She may have been a registered Republican, but she was a moderate conservative.  She was in favor of most women’s rights, including the availability of birth control pills and legalized abortion.  I’m not sure what path her life would have taken if she hadn’t had a husband and a daughter to attend to.  We were hardly high-maintenance housemates, but still.  My mother lived within some self-imposed and cultural limitations.

     For inspirational role models of younger and more independent women, I had to turn to the ones I saw on TV.  When I was turning fourteen, That Girl was just ending its five-year run.  Marlo Thomas’s character, Ann Marie, was somewhat interesting to watch because she was making every attempt to succeed on her own as an actress in New York City.  I never wanted to live there, or to live in any big city -- or to become an actress -- but I certainly could identify with the way she still called her father “Daddy.”  And his name was the same as my father’s was, too. (Although technically, the writers spelled his name as “Lou,” and my father’s given name is “Lewis.”)

     But Ann Marie seemed to get only so far in her escapades.  Then she’d have to confront her father, who usually complied with a gruff version of “tough love” before the practice even had a name.   And then he’d soften.  Or worse:  Ann would go whining to her boyfriend, Donald Hollinger.  “Oh, Donald!” she’d exclaim with a pout, at least once during an episode.  Why couldn’t she solve her problems on her own?  Whenever I see these shows repeated now, I think less of her than I used to.  Really, Ann.  Grow up.  Trust your gut.  Rely on your own instincts.  You shouldn’t have to be rescued by these guys.

     By the time of my fourteenth birthday, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been on for more than a year.  It was set in Minneapolis.  Since many of our favorite TV shows were based in New York, Minneapolis by comparison seemed … exotic.  They got snow there, lots of snow, and large annual snowfall was something I always longed for.  And Mary Richards was certainly a far more independent woman than Ann Marie was.  I immediately liked her.  I admired her.  When I grew up, I wanted to be pretty much like Mary.  Land a decent job in a nice place that gets snow.  Pal around with great people at work.  Have a quirky friend living upstairs in an attic apartment.  Maybe go out on occasional dates.  Maybe not.  And it wouldn’t matter, anyway.  I would be able to take care of myself just fine.  I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to hang a big letter “C” my living room wall, though.  But I put Minneapolis on my shortlist of cool places where I would consider living, along with Buffalo, New York.  Because of snow, of course.

     At fourteen, I was only a month older than Lisa Gerritsen, who played Bess Lindstrom on the show.  What a lucky kid she was!  She was able to hang out with Mary and Rhoda on a regular basis.  She just had to put up with Phyllis’s nonsense as a progressive mother.

     I loved The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was sorry to see it end, even with its classic finale when everyone in the newsroom got fired except for Ted Baxter.  I am sure that the show’s portrayal of a successful independent woman had an influence on me and what I expected of women’s roles in society.  Back then I wouldn’t have considered it a landmark series in the history of television, but I’m glad that people see it this way now. 

     I recently read Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s terrific book, Mary and Rhoda and Lou and Ted: And all theBrilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic.  It’s a behind-the-scenes look and analysis of the show.  You learn a lot about the writers – especially the female writers – and the intricacies of launching a sitcom and keeping it going.  You even find out how they filmed the orange-tiger shelter kitty (“Mimsie”) to portray the meowing MTM logo at the end of the credits.  A fun read.

     I finally got a chance to visit Minneapolis for myself in December 1996, when I drove seven hours north from my apartment in northern Illinois to see John Denver’s Christmas concert at the Orpheum Theatre.  (This was the last time I saw John in person.  It’s a story for another time.)

     I was busy walking from my downtown hotel to a restaurant and then to the theater, when it dawned on me:  I’d forgotten to wear a hat!  How could I walk into the middle of a Minneapolis street and toss a hat into the air when I didn’t even have one to throw?  Mary Richard’s hat toss was the iconic symbol of the independent woman.  Like her theme song said:  by smiling and twirling around and flinging that hat in the air, she showed that she was gonna make it after all.  And here I was, sans hat!  How could I have failed this crucial test? 

     I passed another one, though.  I was already armed with directions on how to find the house that Mary and Rhoda were supposed to live in.  That weekend I drove past the house twice and stopped to take photos of it.  Back then in 1996, it was painted dark brown.  That’s why I drove past it twice.  Other than the distinctive attic window, the house didn’t really look quite right.  I wasn’t sure it was the same building.  In the opening credits of the 1970s show, the exterior was bright white.  (Just like the snow that appeared in some of the shots.)  Here’s my really grainy photo from that day.  It’s a photo of an inkjet printout.  I couldn’t find the original.  I usually have this paper tucked inside a customized snow globe that sits on my bedside table.  That’s real snow in the picture, too.

A really grainy photo of the Mary Richards house in Minneapolis, on a day in December 1996.

      As I prepared this piece, I looked online for better images of the house.  Surprise:  it’s for sale!  The property at 2104 Kenwood Parkway was listed with a local realty office in June 2012, and as of this writing (September 2013), it still hasn’t sold.  Its current price is $2.645 million.  The price tag is not due to its TV connection, but because of its size (7 bedrooms) and the excellent neighborhood it sits in.  It’s not far to walk from there to Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake, just like Mary did in the opening credits of the show.  Click here to see the Realtor’slisting, which includes lots of interior and exterior photos.  The house is now beige and looks much more inviting.  And yes, if I had a few more dollars in my pocket, I’d be tempted to finally take the plunge and adopt this trendy Minneapolis address.  I’d have to find a quirky chick from New York to rent the upstairs apartment.

     Naturally, I had no clue that Minneapolis would come back into my life in a different way.  I’ve since visited the city a number of times during my research following Henry David Thoreau’s 1861 trip from Massachusetts to Minnesota.  I’ve spoken on the topic in the city and its suburbs a few times.  And even though a statue of Mary tossing her hat was installed on a downtown Minneapolis street in 2002, I still haven’t had a chance to fling my own hat in the air at that spot.  I almost always wear a hat these days, however.  Next visit, for sure. 

1970: Collecting Rocks vs. Singing in Chorus

By Corinne H. Smith

1970:  I turned thirteen years old.  I was in eighth grade at Centerville Junior High School, where Mr. Simpson was my homeroom teacher.  Daddy was 41, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was beginning to work as a nurse for a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my thirteenth birthday was “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family.  Mom snapped this photograph. (Obviously we were a little late with the November birthday photo this year.  You can see the edge of our Christmas tree on the right-hand side.)

     When we were in junior high school, our class schedules included a club meeting period on Wednesdays at the end of the day.  Ninth period.  Picking a club was a way to avoid a 44-minute sentence of sitting in homeroom for a study hall instead.  As a result, most students were in clubs.

     Our options were printed in our trusty student handbooks.  Here’s the list.

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, pp. 25-26

     I chose to join Rock and Mineral Club.  I’d been picking up pebbles and rocks for years, especially while I was riding my bicycle around our neighborhood.  Daddy encouraged me, since he was a scientist and liked rocks, too.  Pieces of common ordinary white quartz were my favorites.  Where we lived, it was easy to find.  So was limestone.  So I littered our basement with favorite chunks of quartz and limestone.  Half of the gravel in our alleyway probably ended up in our house.

     I thought that it could be fun to talk about rocks with other people.  I found it amazing that enough students were interested in rocks that an entire junior high club was dedicated to the subject.  Basically, the meetings were just okay.  I always sat in the background with another girl – I can’t remember who she was -- while some of the guys – yes, the membership was almost entirely male – chattered with our advisor Mr. Eckert about breaking into local abandoned quarries and finding trilobites, little bits of fossils.  And geodes!  Where in the world did they find crystal-filled geodes around here?  Why didn’t these goodies land in my bicycle path?  Still, it was an interesting experience.  It was certainly better than sitting in homeroom, doing homework at the end of the school day.

     But deciding in favor of rocks had a consequence that involved music.  I played flute and piccolo in the junior high school band.  Our band rehearsals were worked into our schedules.  I believe that the regular girls’ and boys’ choruses met at the same time, and that you couldn’t be in both band and chorus in junior high.  But I'm pretty sure that at least one choral group met during the Wednesday club period.  If you wanted to sing in this group, you couldn’t be in a club at the same time.  By saying Yes to rocks, I was saying No to chorus.

     This probably doesn’t sound like a big deal.  But our school district had a terrific reputation when it came to music.  One of the jewels in its crown was the high school’s spring musical, put on by the Hempfield Singers, the esteemed chorus for 11th and 12th graders.  If you were in this group, you’d at least be in the chorus for the musical.  You’d be on stage.  You would also get to perform at school concerts and for private singing appearances around the area.  You would wear a choral robe of the school colors.  You would have prestige.

     And if this was your goal, then you and your parents would already be planning ahead when you were in junior high.  So on the page following the list of clubs, the school authorities conveniently outlined a process for reaching it.

  

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, p. 27

     The choral track was clear.  Start singing in junior high and audition for the Intermediate Singers (for 9th and 10th graders) at the end of 8th grade.  Or join one of the lesser choruses in 9th grade, and audition for Intermediate Singers at the end of the year.  Then you would be in line to seamlessly advance to Hempfield Singers in 11th grade.

     Armed with this information, I reassured my parents – probably primarily my mother, who would have been concerned, expectant, and insistent – that I had a way of reaching Hempfield Singers in 11th grade even though I chose to meet with Rock and Mineral Club in junior high.

    And that’s what I did.  I sang alto with the Singing Ladies in 9th grade.  At the end of the year, I auditioned for Intermediate Singers.  One of our try-out songs was “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.  Having perfect pitch gave me an advantage during the audition … but that’s a story for another day.  I succeeded.  I made it.  I was in Intermediate Singers in 10th grade, and in Hempfield Singers for 11th and 12th.  I was in the chorus (and also on the scenery painting committee) for Annie Get Your Gun and Half a Sixpence.  I got to wear the red robe, much to my mother’s delight.

     I can sing if I have to, though it’s been more than 20 years since I sang in any sort of organized group.  But I still collect rocks, just about anywhere I go.  I have jars of them.  Many jars of them.  Quartz is still my favorite.  I’ve even found a few fossils along the way.  No geodes, though.  And I still believe I made the right decision in junior high:  Rocks over Chorus.  It was once a nonconformist’s route to the stage.  Now picking up rocks is one of my favorite things to do, while traveling around the countryside.  I'm sure I'll do it for the rest of my life.

a small portion of my rock collection

Blog EXTRA: Perfect Pitch

By Corinne H. Smith

     When I was growing up, our house was always filled with music.  Daddy’s specialties were (and still are) the flute and the piccolo, with the occasional saxophone and rare clarinet thrown into the medley.  He has played with local community bands, big bands, musical pit orchestras, and small combos nearly non-stop since he found his first piccolo under the Christmas tree at the age of nine.  One of his main teachers and influences was Berthold “Bert” Wavrek, a piccolo player with the Allentown Band, and a man who had performed and toured with John Philip Sousa.  Daddy still plays in church every Sunday and has done so since about the mid-1990s.

     Mom sang alto in the church choir and also played the piano.  She had a trick that she unveiled whenever she and my father entertained friends.  She turned the piano bench so that it was perpendicular to the instrument.  Then she lay down on it, with her face nearly underneath the keyboard.  She put her hands on the ivories – upside down, backward, and over her head -- and played a bouncy version of “Somebody Else is Taking my Place.”  I wish we had been able to film her in action.

     I began taking piano lessons when I was in kindergarten.  Mrs. Hiestand in Salunga was my piano teacher.  So it was from her that I first learned scales, key signatures, and how to read music.  Once I hit fourth grade, I took flute and piccolo lessons from my father instead, so that I could be in the band.  I still played the piano afterwards, but just for personal enjoyment.  A lot of this came later than the story I’m about to tell.

Me and Daddy: An early duet, before I even started taking piano lessons

     One day my mother sat at the piano in our dining room, practicing for the voice lessons that she was taking.  She played a note on the piano and then sang “mah-may-mee-mo-moo” on it.  Over and over, on various notes, moving up and down the scale. 

     I couldn’t understand why this exercise was so important.  I was busy in my toy corner at the opposite side of the room, playing with Barbie and Midge and Ken in their dream house.  I was quiet and could certainly hear what my mother was doing.  She ended by focusing on one particular note, singing “mah-may-mee-mo-moo,” again and again and again.

     When Mom finally paused, I said to her, “That’s a whole lot of Gs you’re singing.”  I made it as a casual remark.  I certainly didn’t think anything of it.  I was more focused on rearranging Barbie’s cardboard furniture to accommodate Skipper and Scooter.

     Mom stopped short.  “How did you know I was singing a G?” she asked.

     I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I can just tell.”

     She didn’t believe me at first.  She began to hit other notes at random, testing me.  I recognized each pitch and told her what each one was.  By this time I had been taking piano lessons for a while.  I knew what the notes sounded like.  I played them whenever I practiced.  I didn’t see what the big deal was.  Couldn’t everybody do this?

     Here began a new parlor game, added to the repertoire of Mom’s party trick with the upside-down piano playing.  Strike a note and ask Corinne which one it is.  To their credit, my parents didn’t do this very often.  The uniqueness didn’t wear too thin.  After all, having perfect pitch isn’t exactly a marketable skill.  It doesn’t make me a flawless musician.  It merely means that I can identify the notes just by hearing them.

     It’s been rare when I’ve admitted having this ability, even to friends.  However, I do remember the issue arising in one session of Mr. Nolt’s seventh-grade music class at Centerville Junior High School.  We must have been studying Mozart, who famously had both perfect pitch and a photographic memory.  Mr. Nolt must have asked if anyone in the class had perfect pitch.  Unbelievably, I felt the need to raise my hand.

     “You have perfect pitch?” he asked.

     “Yes,” I said, nodding.

     “I do, too!” shouted the boy sitting right in front of me, thrusting his arm into the air.  Let’s say that his first name started with S.  S had been in some of my classes at Farmdale Elementary School.  We were not friends; we were more like wary adversaries.  I could not believe that S was claiming to have perfect pitch.  I was sure he didn’t.  Evidently Mr. Nolt doubted it, too.

     “OK.  What’s this note?” he asked.  Without looking, he dropped his hand to the piano keyboard, and his finger landed on the two tones that most people use to start the ditty called “Chopsticks.”

     “That’s not a note!” quipped S.

     “Yes it is,” I said.  “It’s F and G together.”

     The bell rang, and we filed out of the classroom.  As I stepped into the hallway, Mr. Nolt called out, “Don’t touch her, she’s Mozart!”  That was pretty cool of him to say, that day.  It made me feel good.  Naturally, in the end, it didn’t really mean anything.

     We wondered how I’d gotten perfect pitch.  Was it inherited?  Daddy said that he had relative pitch, and that he could get close to identifying tones, especially when hearing flute music.  For decades now, he’s been prodding me, showing me notices advertising the “Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study” at the University of California at San Francisco.  Researchers want to pinpoint the exact gene that is associated with this ability.  They want to collect as many DNA samples as they can so that comparisons can be made.  No thanks.  I refuse to donate mine to the cause.  They’ll have to compile their statistics without me.

     I never read anything about perfect pitch until I picked up the book Musicophilia:  Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks.  It’s a terrific read.  Dr. Sacks devotes a whole chapter to perfect pitch, seemingly because it’s one of several music-related anomalies that he’s dealt with as a neurologist.  Hmm.  Yes, it was an invaluable talent that gave me an advantage in music theory class in high school.  And it sure helps whenever I sit down to figure out how to play popular songs on the piano just by listening to recordings of them.

     I’m still thinking that it may be even more fun to learn how to play a honky-tonk tune upside down and backward, while lying on a piano bench. 

Blog EXTRA: Straw Paper Caterpillars

By Corinne H. Smith


     When I was a child, my mother showed me how to make straw paper caterpillars.  The first part of this exciting discovery was that it happened during our inaugural visit to a department store lunch counter together.  The second was the fun in learning how the item was crafted and put into action.

     I believe this event first took place at a lunch counter at one of the department stores in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s.  At the time, the three local stores were Watt & Shand, Hager, and Garvin’s.  In my memory, the unveiling took place at Garvin’s.  I’m not sure that the other two had lunch counters.

     Anyway, once she showed me the trick, we did it again any time we went out to lunch or dinner, either with just the two of us or in the company of my father.  Without fanfare, one or both of us would manipulate and activate our straw papers.  Sometimes we had a contest to see whose paper caterpillar moved best.  I haven’t met many people who have heard of or seen this phenomenon.  So even though it’s a simple feat, I offer illustrated instructions here.  I apologize for the brightness of the camera flash on the straw paper.  But you should get the idea.

1. Order a drink that the wait staff will deliver with a paper-encased straw.  Or, get your own at your favorite fast food outlet.

2. Tear open the straw paper at just one end.  Do not remove it from the straw yet.

3. Grasp the straw in your dominant hand and hold it vertically against the table top.

4. Tap the straw on the table.  Keep your hand on the paper covering, and lightly push the paper down the length of the straw, toward the table, with each tap.

5. With any success, you’ll end up with the paper looking very much like a tiny accordion.  Or a caterpillar, if you will.

6. Now, here’s the fun part.  “Do you want to see the caterpillar crawl?” my mother asked.  Naturally I did.  So she took her straw and placed it into the drink – just far enough to allow about an eighth of an inch of beverage into it.  She put her finger over the open end of the straw to keep the liquid inside.  Then she held the straw over the caterpillar and eased her finger up.  The beverage dampened the paper and caused it to expand, looking as though it was indeed a crawling caterpillar.

7. Helpful hint #1:  Straw papers aren’t made as loose as they used to be.  Creating a caterpillar may be impossible with some of them.  They’ll tear before you have a finished product.  If you meet with disaster at first, keep looking for an eatery with more suitable straw papers.

8. Helpful hint #2:  Don’t lift too much beverage into your straw; otherwise, you’ll end up with a soggy mess in the middle of the table.  And when you let it drip over the paper, aim first for the tightest folds of the caterpillar.  Go for the drama.  Don’t be afraid to put more liquid on the other folded portions.  The caterpillar will then move in various directions.

Good luck!  Have fun!

1969: The Kansas City Chiefs

By Corinne H. Smith

1969:  I turned twelve years old.  I was in seventh grade (section 7FL) at Centerville Junior High School, where Mr. Bailey was my homeroom teacher.  Daddy was 40, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was beginning to work as a nurse for a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  (Did you notice the change in scenery?  We moved to a brand-new house a few miles from our first one.)  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my twelfth birthday was “Wedding Bell Blues” by The Fifth Dimension.  Mom snapped this photograph.

     My father taught me about music.  My mother taught me about football.

     Mom was the youngest of four, and she had two older brothers.  Maybe that’s why she knew about sports, specifically about baseball and football.  She grew up within walking distance of the Allentown High School stadium, so she probably went to games there when she was a teenager.  She definitely used to go to the college football games both when she was a student and then when she began working as registered nurse at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  She once even witnessed Penn daring to tie Notre Dame, much to the chagrin of her Irish-supporting date that day.  (The 1952 home opener, 7-7)  He was so upset that he had to throw up.  She was overjoyed, and spent the rest of her days madly cheering on every one of Notre Dame’s opponents.

     Daddy played in the marching bands at Emmaus High School and at Lehigh University, so he spent eight years in a row on football fields.  I followed in his footsteps and did the same at Hempfield High School and Clarion State College.  Daddy had seen enough football in person, and he understood the game.  He just preferred participating in or watching the halftime shows.

     So it was Mom who explained the rules of the game to me, as we sat down to watch football on TV each weekend in the Fall.  College ball on Saturdays, the pros on Sundays.  Four downs, the line of scrimmage, the difference between offsides and illegal procedure.  When to go for it and when to kick.  The beauty of the downfield spiral.

     Based on mere geography alone, we should have rooted either for the Philadelphia Eagles or for the Baltimore Colts.  Mom had been a Phillies baseball fan when she was young, but for some reason her loyalties to the City of Brotherly Love never extended to the Eagles.  And the Colts?  Well sure, Johnny Unitas was a talented player.  But how could we ever cheer for a Southern team?  We were firmly entrenched Northerners.  A full 30 miles of buffer-zone landscape lay between us and that crucial Mason-Dixon line.  Was that all?  It sure seemed like a lot more.

     By the late 1960s, the two of us were scrambling for a good pro team to root for.  The NFL and AFL were still separate entities.  We gravitated toward the AFL teams, which then consisted of the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Houston Oilers, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, and the San Diego Chargers.  Mom thought that Joe Namath was too much of a showboater, even though he was a native Pennsylvanian and therefore otherwise could have won our favor.  But after eliminating the Jets, we still weren’t sure who “our” team could be.

     Then during one broadcast in 1967 or 1968, Kansas City quarterback Len Dawson was lined up at center and shouting the count.  He turned toward us:  well really, to the line-of-scrimmage camera.  “Wow, look at those beautiful blue eyes!” Mom said.  And that was that.  We started watching the Chiefs.  OK, so I’ll admit that at first, we were attracted to Len Dawson’s eyes.  But we liked his leadership style, and the way he lined up his teammates in two rows instead of in a huddle.  And the Chiefs had a number of other great players then, too:  Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, Otis Taylor, Curley Culp, kicker Jan Stenerud, and a rookie running back named Ed Podolak.  I loved it when Otis Taylor leapt up to catch one of Len’s passes.  And what wasn’t to like about Hank Stram, the quintessential pro coach?  Coincidentally, we made this choice in time to follow them all of the way to the Super Bowl during the 1969 season.  What a great ride!

 

My honorary contract with the Kansas City Chiefs, for the 1972 season

     In 1972, I spent a few dollars to become an “official” Kansas City Chiefs fan.  I got an honorary contract (“signed” by Lamar Hunt himself), a felt wall pennant and a few other gim-gaws that I may still have in a box in the basement.  I taped a Len Dawson poster to the back of my bedroom door.  We watched and cheered for the Chiefs whenever they were on TV.  In high school, I checked out a football manual from our school library.  It had a photo of Hank Stram on the cover, and he may even have written part of the book.  Yes, I was quite proud that the Chiefs were my team.  It was even more fun that they weren’t local, and that not many people around us shared in our support.

     Of course, loving the Chiefs meant that we had to hate the Oakland Raiders, their natural rivals.  These guys turned out to be easy to hate.  That’s why I was watching the Raiders-Steelers game on TV on December 23, 1972, and why I was hoping the Steelers would win.  My mother and I were at a friend’s house; and as the clock wound down on the game, we got ready to leave.  It was all too obvious that the Steelers weren’t going to be able to prevail against The Enemy.  Mom was already out in the kitchen, goading me to get a move on.  “Wait a minute,” I said, as I watched the TV screen for what was sure to be the last play of the game.  That’s when it happened.  Franco Harris made a shoe-string catch – The Immaculate Reception – and ran for the touchdown.  I screamed and drove everyone back into the living room to watch the replay.  Steelers 13, Raiders 7.  Take that, John Madden.

     When I went off to college in western Pennsylvania in the Fall of 1975, it was in the middle of the Steel Curtain run of the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Everyone on campus was wearing Black and Gold.  This wasn’t a bad bus to jump onto.  I still liked the Chiefs, but I didn’t get to see their games very often on local TV.  I turned into a Steelers fan.  I also grew to have a soft spot in my heart for the Buffalo Bills too, especially once Jim Kelly started playing for them.  Gosh, if he’d only gone to the college closest to his home, we would have walked on the same sidewalks of the same campus and would have been able to share that same football field…

     When I lived in northern Illinois from 1995-2003, I had difficulties sustaining my AFC allegiances.  The Bears-Packers tension of the region gave preference to NFC games on TV.  I kind of liked both teams.  (But you can’t say that in public out there.  Or anywhere, really.)  I eventually became more of a fan of the game in general instead of donning specific colors, one way or another.  I will admit that I bought and wore a foam Cheesehead to a pro game, however.

     I have attended five pro games.  Bills-Oilers at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, 1997.  Packers-Lions at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, 2001.  (Both were my birthday presents to myself.)  I’ve been to three or four games at Orchard Park, N.Y.:  Bills vs Colts, Bills vs Patriots, Bills vs Steelers, and perhaps one other.  I’d have to check my ticket stubs.  Yes, I have had lake-effect flakes fly off of Lake Erie and into my face, and I have sat in snow to watch the Buffalo Bills play ball.  Life is good.

     I have made four visits to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.  One was just to see the place and to take the tour in 1994.  The other three were to watch my favorite players get inducted into the Hall:  Lynn Swann and Marv Levy (2001); John Stallworth and Jim Kelly (2002); Rod Woodson and Bruce Smith (2009).  At one of those ceremonies, I saw Len Dawson from a distance and waved to him.  He must not have seen me.  I guess I blended in with the rest of the crowd.  He’ll never know what he started.

     I gave up watching college football long before the BCS system was created.  But I still have to watch the pros on Sundays in season.  I still cheer for the Bills and the Steelers, and still root consistently against the Raiders, the Cowboys, the Eagles, the Dolphins, and the Browns (in both their current permutation and their previous one, now known as the Ravens).  I believe the cities of Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Seattle, and Charlotte (i.e. “Carolina”) host merely untested expansion teams that don’t really account for much in the grand scheme of the game.

     When I moved to Massachusetts in 2003, I additionally became a New England Patriots fan.  Again, this was not a bad bus to jump onto.  I mean, really.  Tom Brady?  Mom never got to see him play, but she sure would have fallen hard for him.

     As we were saying our goodbyes for the last time, a former boyfriend once quipped:  “At least I know where you’ll be every Sunday, every Fall.”  Yup.  Sitting on the living room couch, watching the big boys pass the pigskin and run for touchdowns.  I would have been insulted by his remark, if I hadn’t known in my heart that it was all too true.

1968: Pixanne

By Corinne H. Smith

1968:  I turned eleven years old.  I was in Mrs. Young's sixth grade class at Farmdale Elementary School.  Daddy was 39, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my eleventh birthday was “Hey Jude” by The Beatles.  Mom snapped this photograph.

   I was not a Mickey Mouse Club or a Romper Room kid.  Captain Kangaroo was the nationally syndicated children’s show that I preferred to watch on TV.  I liked the Captain, of course, and I was also partial to Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit, Dancing Bear, and the adventures of Tom Terrific (with his mighty dog Manfred).  I still remember some of the picture books that the Captain read to us.  “Caps for Sale” by Esphyr Slobodkina and the classic folk tale “Stone Soup” especially come to mind.

   Since we lived in the lee of Philadelphia, as it were, and could pick up Philly stations with our rooftop antenna, we had some other semi-local options to choose from.  I really liked Cartoon Corners with Gene London.  But my ultimate favorite show for kids was Pixanne. 

    Pixanne was a female Peter Pan pixie character who was portrayed by singer-educator Jane Norman.  Pixanne lived in a magic forest, and she told stories and sang songs.  She could fly, too.  Oggie the owl and Fliffy the butterfly were among her friends.  She walked around and watered big colorful flowers that grew at the forest’s edge.  She played a magic rock that was really an organ called a celeste, which created ethereal sounds.  Her nemesis was Windy Witch (who Jane Norman also played).  Pixanne ran on WCAU from 1960-1969, and then went into national syndication for the next seven years.  You can see a video clip of the show here.

   

   I was fascinated.  I longed to live in such a place.  Our suburban yard had some interesting sections to it: with a garden, lots of different bushes and trees, and a great sugar maple for climbing.  None of the plants or animals sang back to me.  And anyway, we sat smack dab in the middle of Lancaster County farmland.  A sizable stand of woods was difficult to find.  The only chance I had to walk into one was whenever I went camping with my Girl Scout troop.  Those opportunities were great but were short lived.

   At the end of the show, Pixanne sang this song:

          I’ll see you in the forest

          And I’ll meet you in the forest

          Come to the forest with me

          Where things are always happening

          There’s plenty of things to see

          So don’t go far away

          Come back, come back every day

          Back into the forest with me

Yes, Pixanne, that’s where I knew I wanted to be.

     On a spring day in 1974, Pixanne came up in conversation during a behind-the-wheel driver’s ed session.  Fellow classmate Tom Markow was driving the car, and Mr. Nuhrenberg was guiding him in the passenger seat.  I think they were arguing.  They were always arguing.  That left me and Jeff Gunzenhauser in the back seat.  Jeff was our class president and would later work for many years as a doctor in the U.S. Army.  But back then, he was someone else to talk to whenever Markow drove.  And it turned out that Jeff had been a Pixanne fan as well.  We reminisced and quietly sang “I’ll see you in the forest” while we rode around the farmland of our school district.

     A few years later, at an event at Dutch Wonderland (our local amusement park), I had a chance to meet and chat with Pixanne, Jane Norman.  I thanked her for what she gave me as a kid.  She autographed the back of a photo card for me.  I asked for a second one for Jeff.  (I was prudent:  I decided to mail it to his house instead of his room at West Point.)  He was polite and gallant enough to write me a thank-you note in return.

     Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my past and the influences that led me to make specific choices in life.  And it may sound silly to some, but I can see that it isn’t too far a stretch from “I’ll see you in the forest” to “I went to the woods to live deliberately.”  Had watching Pixanne set me up for loving nature and the forest, and for being receptive to the words of Henry David Thoreau a few years later?  I think it’s possible.  Henry had grown up in an agricultural community, too.

     During my high school and college years, when Pixanne no longer ran in our market, I morbidly tuned in on occasion to WMAR from Baltimore and watched Professor Kool and his Fun School.  It was a nutty show, and except for its use of Herb Alpert tunes, it was a waste of time to watch.  No one could ever beat Pixanne and her magic forest, in my heart.

1967: The Fifth-Grade Spelling Words

By Corinne H. Smith

1967:  I turned ten years old.  I was in Miss Enders' fifth grade class at Farmdale Elementary School.  Daddy was 38, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my tenth birthday was “To Sir With Love” by Lulu.  Mom snapped this photograph.  No, I wasn’t wearing pantyhose yet.  Mom was growing impatient to take the picture and was yelling for me to hurry, so I slipped my shoes on quickly and ran downstairs to stand in position.  I may even be poised on tiptoes here.  You know that raw feeling you get when your bare feet touch the clammy insides of shoes meant only for socks?  Slick and sticky.  Yuck.

     Each week, Miss Enders gave us a list of spelling words.  I don’t remember how many there were.  10?  15?  20?  Our assignment was to write out each word (in our best cursive handwriting, of course), to copy a definition from the dictionary, and to use the word in a sentence.  This was a simple and universal assignment, back then.

     When you’re the only child in the household, it’s difficult to hide.  I was working on my spelling words early in the school year when one of my parents stopped by the kitchen table to see what I was doing.  (In my opinion, the inquisitor was more likely to have been my logic-oriented father.)  I explained what had to be done.  My parent thought that writing random sentences was silly and almost a waste of time.  He/she suggested that I write a story instead and incorporate all of the words within it.  This would make more sense, as it would end up as a final, cohesive and worthwhile product.  And it should certainly meet Miss Enders’ requirements, since the words would indeed be used in sentences.  It’s just that each one would be connected to all of the others.  A story would be far more interesting for my teacher to read, too.  After all, she would have to grade 28 of these homework papers each week.

     So that’s what I did.  I first looked up the words and found their meanings.  Next, I stared at them for a while and considered the possible plot that could develop from them.  Then I started writing.  I set my weekly series in a neighborhood of mice.  Why mice?  I probably wouldn’t have been able to explain it at the time.  But the choice could have something to do with the fact that our cat Tigie was an adept and ardent mouser.  Since I often had to clean up the remains after his kills, I must have subconsciously wondered what kinds of lives these tiny innocents had had.  (You can read more about Tigie in a previous post, “1960: Brother-Cat Tigie.”)  My stories came complete with at least four recurring characters -- two boy-mice and two girl-mice -- that had first names.  I don’t remember their names or any of the other details.  The stories themselves have unfortunately been lost to time.  (Miss Enders would later tell my mother that she wished she had kept them.)

     It was fun to make something out of nothing, especially with words.  I’d gotten my first taste of this glee the previous year, in fourth grade.  That’s when we learned about the poetry form of haiku.  We were all asked to write an original three-line poem with the 5-7-5 syllable pattern.  Then we had to draw a picture that went with it.  Our artwork was thumb-tacked up in the hallway outside of our classroom in time for Parents Night.  Mine was of a wheat field lying between two green trees; a gray spot with a tail sat at the right-hand edge.  Across the lower portion of the page, I had printed my haiku:

          A golden meadow

          Can hold secrets to explore.

          Maybe a small mouse.

     What can I say?  I was fascinated with those little guys at the time.  And I was reading books like E.B. White’s Stuart Little and Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle, too.  I knew that mice had other lives that could be written about.  And I wanted to be one of the people writing about them.

     I don’t remember Miss Enders talking to me about my spelling word stories.  But I do recall being taken out of class and given a series of intelligence tests.  I assume now that the school authorities were determining whether or not I would make the cut for enrollment in the district’s “Creativity Classes.”  Every so often, a handful of top fifth and sixth graders would get on a school bus and go somewhere else for the day.  No one ever spoke about where they went and what they did.  They must have been the kinds of kids who would later be labeled as “gifted.”  I guess I showed some promise along these lines, what with my story-telling prowess.  But I turned out to be relatively normal instead.  No Creativity Classes for me.  I was just an only child with a thriving, very vivid imagination.

     More than 40 years later, I was sitting around a table with other members of our local writing group, Women of Words.  We were looking through dictionaries for interesting words that began with the letter D.  We found five doozies:  dryasdust, dingus, dotard, dystopia, and dolichocephalic.  (If you don’t know that last one, check it out for yourself here.)  Then we gave ourselves the assignment of writing something with those five words in it.  We shared our pieces aloud at the following month’s meeting.  I came up with a fictional short story called “Fortunato.”  You can read it by clicking here.  This one’s not about mice.

I still use my favorite dictionary, which I got as a high school graduation present.

     I still think it’s an amusing assignment:  to take a few random words and to craft a new story around them.  Isn’t there a saying about the dictionary having all of the other books in it?  It’s true.