We're Off to See the Wizard

Since beginning our life on the road, we have been to a lot of different cities and states.  It's like being on the Yellow Brick Road.  Each time we leave a place, we feel like we're off to see the Wizard, the Wizard being any company where we can find employment.  Well, we left South Carolina last week and headed to Pascagoula, Mississippi to find the Wizard.  I thought it only fitting to say goodbye to the people and places in and around Greenville and Piedmont, South Carolina who have touch our lives during the five months we lived there.

Goodbye Ivy Acres RV Park. With your park like setting, it felt like we were out in country yet we were never more than 15-20 minutes away from anywhere in Greenville. We enjoyed the curb-side garbage pickup and having our own private mailing address.

Goodbye Missy, the RV park cat. Even though we “adopted” you while we were living here, fed you each day and  gave you shelter (outside) when it was cold or snowy, it breaks our hearts that we could not take you with us when we left. Three cats in an RV is one too many. I will miss our walks to the mailbox and seeing you sitting on the RV steps each morning. You’re a good cat and I hope you find a home someday.

Goodbye Copper River Grill. You were by far our favorite restaurant here. Your house salad is the best salad we ever had…mixed greens with diced black forest ham, cheese, hard boiled eggs, bacon bits, sliced almonds, all topped with the best honey mustard hot bacon dressing you ever tasted and you even included a hot croissant drizzled with honey . . . absolutely to die for.

Goodbye Mr. K’s Used Book Store. I was able to trade my used books in for credit against other used books. I got them for a fraction of the price they were when new. I was a reading machine while I was here! I stocked up before I left and now have about a dozen books to read.

Goodbye Callahan’s Family Restaurant. You serve the best Sunday-after-church fried chicken I have ever eaten! And your hamburgers were good too!

Goodbye Dr. Tucker at Greenville Eyecare Associates. You really blessed my heart with your generosity and compassion (see blog post One Act of Random Kindness).

Goodbye Fluor. Thank you for offering the Pipe Upgrade program for only $6/day. Rick has learned much from Austin the instructor and leaves with confidence in his pipe welding abilities. It’s too bad you took your time getting back to us regarding that job in Juliette, Georgia. You would have liked having Rick as an employee. Your loss.

Goodbye FGS Hardware Store. There is nothing better than a small town hardware store. You get personalized friendly service every time you visit. This is where we got our propane and discovered lye soap. It’s amazing stuff and good for your skin.

Even though it’s tough to say goodbye, I know there is a hello waiting on the other side. A new city is always exciting for us. The chance to explore the area in hopes of finding other great people and places is what life is all about.

The Dawnwood Years, Part 2 (The Stu Mystery)

Here are some more of my ramblings on the notes that were written in my yearbooks and the memories they evoked.

I didn’t really date in 7th grade. Note passing, eating lunch together, walking to classes together, going to someone’s party together, and coming by the house after school or on Saturday’s are what I would call dating in the 7th grade. There were a few notes written in my yearbook that gave me some clues as to who I was “dating” back then. Here’s what Alice Madonna wrote:

God made butter,
God made cheese,
God made Patty,
For Jimmy to squeeze.
Love Alice

My friend Gail Casserly also wrote a note that mentioned Jimmy. The Jimmy they were referring to is Jimmy DeGregorio. I remember he was my boyfriend in 7th grade and into 8th. He is the first boyfriend I remember having. I don’t remember how long we dated or even when or why we broke up.

But Jimmy wasn’t my first crush.

My first crush was Henry McDowell, who was two years older than me and lived next door. He was also my brother Mike’s friend. But Henry never acknowledged this crush. To him I was only Mike’s little sister who always wanted to hang around with them and one time when they let me, I wrecked Henry’s mini bike down at Wood Road Elementary School. It happened at the end of summer just a few days before school started. Going too fast + forgetting how to stop = big crash!! I remember I skinned up both knees pretty badly and was embarrassed by this on my first day of 7th grade. I looked like a little kid with skinned up knees. Ugh!

Sorry, I got sidetracked. Getting back to the notes. There was one note that indicated I had a crush on someone else besides Jimmy. It was written by Stu.

It’s too bad it didn’t last.
Oh well, good luck.
Stu

Stu who? Pantke or Silberman? Or was it another Stu? Anybody remember? The mystery continues.

Moving on to 8th grade, there wasn’t much in the way of “clues” in my yearbook so I don’t have much to tell about that year in my life. There were only 8 kids who signed my yearbook and 7 of them just signed their name. I wonder why? Did I fall in a hole or something? Tommy Accardi wrote a note on the FRONT of my book that got me in trouble with my mom. She didn’t think I should let kids “deface” the cover of my yearbook. I got mad at her for saying that. Maybe that is why I didn’t get many people to sign it. Did Mom confiscate it?

Notes picked back up again in 9th grade with 35 students and 5 teachers signing my yearbook. Stu’s name turned up in 4 of those notes and there was even the most sincere note to me written by mystery Stu himself. I'm embarrassed that I can’t remember. I wonder if Stu even remembers?

The other notes in my yearbook contained some endearing comments about me. Louise Kilcoyne called me her “science buddy,” Rich Portnoy called me his “little friend,” Al Giuffrida thought I was a “gr-8 German student,” James Feigel called me his “partner in the hall,” while others used words like sweet, kind, considerate, nice, thoughtful, loveable, a real doll, and a cute kid to describe me. Was I all that? Hmmm, but it’s nice to know others thought so.

I wish I could remember more of what happened during these impressionable years. When life is happening to you, you take it for granted. You know some of the major events in your life will pop up in your memories later on, that’s a given. It’s the minor or trivial things that don’t hang around in your brain for recall. I’m glad that these notes in my yearbooks were there to coax my brain into giving up these few memories that have been hidden for so long. I wish it had given up more.

I’ll close the Dawnwood years with another 7th grade memory that came to mind as I sat on my bed in my RV looking through my yearbook.

It was 1964. I just got the yearbook. I was sitting on my bed in my room looking through it and picking out all the cute boys in my class. At that age it was all about the boys. Little did I know then that the boy I thought was the cutest would become my husband six years later, Don Neidhart. Was that my destiny? I think so. My wonderful son, Jeffrey, and my beautiful grandchildren, Lexi, Niki and Andy, are proof of that.

To be continued . . .

The Dawnwood Years, Part 1

In the next few blog posts, I’ll be continuing on with my reminiscing about my Junior High and High School experiences that were sparked by me digging out my old school yearbooks.

As I entered 7th grade at Dawnwood Junior High School, I remember being scared and excited at the same time. Afraid I couldn’t get to my classes on time or would get lost in the halls. Excited about all the new people I would meet and experiences I would have. I slowly thumbed through the pages of my yearbook, the 1964 Orbit, trying to relive that time by coaxing buried memories to the surface of my mind.

The great thing about 7th grade yearbooks is they are full of notes and well wishes from your classmates that give you clues to what your life was like back then. Some of them are funny, others simply wishing you the best in the future. Here are a few classics:

Remember Grant;
Remember Lee;
The “hell” with them;
Remember me!
Ted (Blanco)

Ashes to Ashes
Dust to Dust
If it weren’t for boys
You would rust.
Love & Lolly Pops,
Cecelia (Vanisky)

Never kiss by the garden gate.
Love is blind, but the neighbors ain’t.
Love ya, Jack (Reinhard)

There were loads more, equally as corny. Some wrote “good luck in 8th grade,” while others just signed their name. John Brown wrote “Peace & Contemplate.” A 7th grader? This guy was so far ahead of the rest of us. In all there were 40 students and 9 teachers who signed my 7th grade yearbook. I will cherish every one of them.

I must say that traveling down this road has awakened something in me…a desire to reconnect with the person I was back then and a need to reflect on the person I am today. How do the two compare? I would like to think that I am that same person deep down inside, but how can I be? So much has happened in my life these last 45 years that forced me to change.

For one, I am now a child of God…the old me is gone and I was made new. Hallelujah! And life experiences change you: 3 marriages, 2 divorces, children, death, etc. all have a part in shaping who you are and how you look at life. I’d like to think I’ve handled these changes in a positive manner, that I didn’t let them take away from who I am at the core, but instead used each experience to make the person I was back in 1964-69 a better version of the one I am today in 2010. Yes, that’s what I think.

To be continued . . .

If I Could Do It All Over Again

Since being on Facebook, I have been in touch with several old classmates that I hadn’t thought about in 40+ years. There was a 40th reunion of the Class of 1969 this past summer, but I was not able to attend. Neither did I attend my 20th or 30th. There was always something stopping me from going. My loss. It would have been nice to reconnect with people who knew me when.

Yesterday, I took out my Dawnwood Junior High School and Newfield High School yearbooks to jog my memory of those years in my life. So much has happened between 1964 when I entered the 7th grade and 1969 when I graduated high school. Now, my brain is clogged with 45 years of stuff and, try as I might, I can’t shake out many memories from back then. I wish I would have taken the time to write a journal, take some pictures or do something that would have helped me later to recall the fun times, the heartbreaks, the experiences I had back then. Kids today have it much better. With affordable digital cameras, online social networks and blogs they can record their entire life without much effort and recall it down the road to relive again and again. I see my granddaughters doing it.

The one regret I have after looking through all the yearbooks was that I didn’t make the most of my school years. I didn’t really get involved. I didn’t join in enough.

The only group I remember being involved with through all three years of Jr. High was Chorus. I loved to sing. Still do. Also, I saw my picture in the German Club for 9th grade. (Was machst du heute nach der Schule? Translation: What are you doing after school today?) But I don’t remember anything about German Club. What did we do in that club? Anybody?

In my sophomore and junior years I didn’t do or join anything. In my senior year, I joined the Quadrangle staff (probably because I was dating Don Neidhart who was the Sports Editor) as a contributing writer (I wrote a column about what was going on in other schools) and I was involved in the senior production (I wrote the Excederin Headache #69 commercial and co-starred in it with Marc Capobianco).

When the 1969 Medietas came out, I remember feeling sad when I looked up my name and there were only two numbers listed beside it, #95 and #200, the pages on which my picture appears. One was my senior picture and the other the group picture of the Quadrangle staff. Aside from class head shots, there were many other pictures in the yearbook, but I was only in one of them. I remember looking at the senior pictures and seeing all the activities, sports and clubs other seniors were involved in and the number of years they were active and thinking I wish I had done more. But it was too late. You can’t go back and relive your school days again. You only get one shot.  But if I could, I would do it differently.

If I could talk to a bunch of 7th graders today, I would tell them the key to a successful and fulfilling academic experience is to get involved. Join a club, sing in the choir, play sports, get to know as many people as possible, have the best school spirit you can have, attend all the games, plays and events you can get to, and record as much of it as you can in photos and journals. There will come a time, maybe 20 or 30 or 40 years later, when you will be glad you did.


To be continued . . .