The worth of water

Tucked away somewhere in my house is a powder blue t-shirt that was screen-printed in the middlish 1980s with a sketch of the Oxford, Ohio, water tower and the text “ANNUAL WATER EMERGENCY.” The combination of an aging water tower and the arrival of thousands of students to the Miami University campus had precipitated (sorry) a crisis that eventually resulted in timed showers and the distribution of one gallon of water per student for other personal use. (I know that George Z. and Stephanie T. remember this; does Mary W.?) I seem to recall that the Ohio National Guard was called up to organize the water distribution. Time passed, we managed our water use the best we could, and eventually Oxford updated its water processing facilities and — sadly — tore down the uptown water tower that had become a symbol of the town.

In the scrapbook I kept of these years, back when scrapbooks were made from three-ring binders and plastic-covered adhesive cardboard sheets, which is just about as awful an environment as you could possibly think of for photos, ticket stubs, and newspaper clippings, there is a tag from a teabag that reads “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” I preserved it because I made that cup of tea during the Water Emergency we were enduring at the time.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself in a different water emergency at my house. All seemed well on Thursday morning, but when I turned the handle of the kitchen sink faucet that evening there was almost no water pressure. I called the landlord to investigate, and the news wasn’t good — the water pump was failing. I filled some containers with water we could use for personal hygiene until the situation was remedied.

After some work on Friday, I thought that the problem had been solved. After using one stock-pot of water to make penne for dinner, we poured out the rest of the saved water. As it happens, that wasn’t really the best idea.

On Saturday morning I dropped off Youngest at the mall and went to watch Austin Kleba, the son of my high school (and Miami!) classmate Stephanie, skate in the National Speedskating Championships at the Pettit Center in Milwaukee (okay, actually West Allis). He eventually qualified for the World Cup Team for the 500m.

After those heats were done, and while the Zamboni freshened up the ice for the next event, I picked up Youngest and did some more shopping before returning home. There was my landlord in my front yard, sealing a concrete piece that I had never realized was the cap for our well. (I have lived here since 2007? 2008?) It turns out that the pump wasn’t the only problem: the well was running dry. (That explained why the water had slowed to a trickle during my morning shower; unfortunately, that was after I had thoroughly wetted my hair.)

It probably looked a little something like this.

We don’t know who might be able to drill a new well, or when that might happen. This morning I packed up my laundry and went to my friend Carol’s house to wash and dry it. I picked up some jugs of spring water on the way home. I’m not sure how we will do what needs to be done until we have dependable running water again, but we will do our best. We definitely appreciate the things that we took for granted last week.

Last week I did not buy another typewriter, though I did read a few more pages in a maintenance-and-repair manual for Smith-Coronas. You never know when that kind of information will come in handy.

In horticultural news, Princess is now almost two inches tall. I’m so proud!

I also received a Level 1 accordion instruction book in the mail and downloaded an accordion app to my iPad. Look out, world!

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Knitwise, I made progress on all three of my active projects. I have been pushing myself to knit in situations where I would otherwise be sitting and staring at a screen, so a certain amount of forward progress seemed inevitable.

Stripe Scarf is now several stripes long. Interestingly, the black sections take 9 ridges (18 rows) and the grey sections take 10 ridges (20 rows) to complete.

The striped scarf made from the thrift store yarns is longer now, too. I still have the work on the huge aluminum needles, so I get a forearm workout whenever I add a few rows.

Finally, I also worked on the Skinny Shawl made from the purple thrift store yarn. It’s hard to tell how wide it is, so I’ll just keep working on it until it’s done. This light is bad and doesn’t show the true colors of the yarn.

So we knit on….

In the presence of Royalty

The littlest peach tree is quietly growing away, and we have dubbed her “Princess.” She seems to be getting enough water, and every day I make sure to open the curtain and let her get some sunshine (well, as much as there was to have in this rainy week).

Friday

Sunday

I just love the way she’s coming along, particularly with so little assistance from me. I’ll leave her at home sitting in the big window in the library, unless it becomes obvious that she needs to be in the light from the lounge at my workplace.

This week I acquired two more typewriters. One is a Smith-Corona electronic that came with its own table and some supplies: typing paper, sheets of carbon paper, and the backing from a package of the ribbon cartridges that it takes. We plugged it in, and it works just fine. It’s not the same model of electronic typewriter that I had in the mid-80s, but it’s close. I didn’t do a photo shoot (but I could, if anyone wants to see it).

The other typewriter is a Royal HHE manual that was manufactured in late 1952. It’s in pretty good shape except for a missing key, and the ribbon is almost perfect. I’m not sure that the last owners knew that they had to press a special button to open the cover. After I opened the lid and un-jammed the stuck keys, it typed beautifully. I did buy some compressed air this weekend to help me blow out the dust and crud from underneath all the moving parts.

As I putter and play with these new toys, I’m getting story ideas. We’ll see what becomes of it all. Right now it’s hard to keep up with just the books that I’m reading, but the stories I want to tell are insisting more strongly that they be told.

In the meantime, I have a lot to learn about repairing, cleaning, and maintaining these old typewriters. I now have nine unless there are more in the basement.

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Knitwise, I made some progress on Stripe Scarf this week, and I cast on for another scarf project.

The stripes of Stripe Scarf are about 20 rows deep. I’m not counting the rows as I knit — mostly because I’m knitting while doing other things — but it’s not hard to tell when I’m getting close. At that point I fold the work over so the current stripe is directly on top of the last stripe. Then I ask myself, “Do I need to knit 2 more rows or 4 more rows?” The answer should be fairly obvious. As of this evening, the total length of the work is 14 inches.

Un-woven ends are tucked under the work in these photos.

Made you look!

Two weeks ago at my musical night out, I discovered that another attendee and the owner of the bar were both knitters. I resolved to bring a project the next Wednesday — but which one? Stripe Scarf was too dark and fussy to work on in a dim bar, and the skinny purple shawl was really a project to work on as I relaxed in my bedroom.

I put together a project bag of some Lion Brand Homespun that I had recently picked up at a thrift store. There were two partial skeins; I didn’t weigh them (what do you take me for?), but one of them seemed to be about half the size of the other. I decided to make a scarf with shallow stripes: two ridges (four rows) of the main color and one ridge (two rows) of the secondary color. I forgot to check my needle inventory before I headed off to work, so I was stuck with starting the work on a pair of straight aluminum needles in size US15.

These needles may be the reason you can’t take knitting needles on airplanes. On the other hand, nobody messed with me at the bar.

I have no idea what colors are in each skein, so it may be interesting to see what emerges as I knit along.

I’m not worried about the ragged-looking edge. This is [3 dollars’ worth of] acrylic, and it should work itself out when it’s washed and dried. I have the same number of stitches on each row, so it’s probably just a tension issue.

I’ll make some progress on the skinny purple shawl when I can sit in my bedroom chair again; it’s covered in two weeks’ worth of clothes that I haven’t hung up yet. I can only get so much done in a week (or two).

Happy campers

I spent part of this weekend at a retreat, held on the grounds of a rather historic summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. It still gets a lot of use even though it’s not summer now; in fact, two other groups besides our own had events there on Saturday.

Because my upbringing was not Jewish, I imagined that everyone else at the retreat had gone to a camp like this one (or specifically this one) for many of their childhood summers. That was where they learned all the songs and melodies I don’t know, made memories, and deepened their traditions. As it turned out, though, most of the women there had not gone to summer camps in their youth. Maybe just their brothers got to go, in their generation? At any rate, summer camp apparently wasn’t the universal experience that I had imagined it to be.

The setting — by a lake, surrounded by forest — reminded me of the day camps and overnight camps I had attended when I was in Camp Fire Girls, and of the 4-H Camp I had attended after we moved to the country and discovered that Camp Fire Girls didn’t exist out there. My choice was between Girl Scouts and 4-H. It was farewell to Wo-He-Lo and hello to figuring out what the four H’s stood for.

If I remember correctly (and it’s quite possible that I don’t), Camp Otonwe was the day camp for the younger girls and Camp Wyandot was a day camp with one overnight before the last day’s events. Where these camps were in Central Ohio I don’t know; I got on a school bus and went there and came back. My senses of time and distance at that age would not have been reliable. Riding a school bus was exciting enough, since I normally walked to school or rode my bike.

I loved hiking through the woods, looking for birds and animals, and doing all of the crafty things we did. I still have a beaded bracelet for which I did the macrame work, and a candle I dipped at camp. Socially, I hung out with more girls than I usually did — I lived on a block where the school-age kids were almost exclusively boys — and I learned some of the camp songs of the time: “There’s a Hole at the Bottom of the Sea” and “John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt” are the ones I remember.

4-H camp, of course, had both girls and boys, though we were housed in separate cabins at Tar Hollow State Park deep in the Hocking Hills. I knew a few people from my school but not very many. But there was hiking and swimming and canoeing, and there were songs around the campfire at vespers. I spent most of the week hanging out with the camp’s conservationist and his wide array of critters in cages and aquariums.

A few years later I went to a weeklong camp at Miami University. Back then the camp was called the Institute for Tomorrow’s Leaders, and I sure hope that it has a different name now. We campers probably would have called it Geek Camp. We spent the week immersed in science, math, and computers — though we also wrote and performed skits and paired off into couples by the end of the week.

My father used to tell me about a whole summer he spent going from camp to camp. After school let out for the summer there was church camp, then baseball camp, then Boy Scout camp. Before he knew it, it was time for school again.

It’s been eye-opening to talk with some friends about camp experiences, especially when it turns out that I have had more experiences than I’d thought that they’d had! On that horrible sentence I should go to bed. If I find any camp photos this week I’ll add them in to illustrate.

Oh! Peach update: the sprout is still growing!

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Knitwise, I worked on the Stripe Scarf and the soft purple shawl. I’ll take photos of those, too — later.

My life at the mall

I spent part of this weekend at a mall, and it led me to reflect upon the many intersections of my life with various shopping malls. Depending on the generation to which you belong, this may be a trip down memory lane (Gen X) or the most boring and pointless piece you’ve ever read. Also, I have no idea how this will (or will not) resonate with audiences outside of the United States; feel free to leave a comment.

Then

My memories of Westland Mall go back to before the mall was covered with a roof. I remember going shopping there with my mother on a rainy day, and dashing from one doorway to the next to avoid the raindrops. The mall also gave me one of my first pony rides; every so often, during the summer, a contractor would set up outside one of the entrances with a contraption that put the tamest ponies in the world in their traces and let them plod around in a circle for a few minutes. I don’t know exactly when this happened — I think it was after the roof was added — but I was young enough to be absolutely thrilled.

After the roof was added, seasonal events took place in the open areas of the mall. There was a visit with Santa, a visit with the Easter Bunny, and sometimes musical events or magic shows. One particular set-piece was a display of penguins “skating” on simulated ice.

center: clingy Chocolate Lamb.

Going to the mall was a big deal in the early 1980s, especially for kids from out in the country (where I now lived, having moved from Columbus’s West Side [Hilltop] in the summer of 1977). Behind the mall was a strip mall that contained an arcade and a movie theater; it was at that theater that I watched, though slightly underage, the movies Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop, having smuggled in snacks that I had purchased from the Woolworth’s in the mall proper.

My first real job was at JCPenney’s in Westland Mall. I worked in the Mens’ Department in the summer of 1985, where I learned how many pins are in an button-down shirt (all of which you need to remove), my ethics with regard to swapping out change for a buffalo nickel in the till (I refused), and how many people shoplift jeans and try to get a cash return (too many). I returned to JCP in the summer of 1986 to find that I didn’t have a job there because I “hadn’t given them advance notice” that I would be returning. I retaliated by applying for a job at Domino’s on my way home from the mall. After I spent a week answering the phone and cleaning the windows at the pizza place, Penney’s called me with an offer to rehire me in Linens, where I spent the rest of my “career” with JCPenney. Note: minimum wage was $3.70 an hour in 1986.

I never saved a dime from my job at Penney’s because I used all the money, in addition to my employee discount, to shop at special sales where I could purchase clothes that complied with the strict dress code. No patch pockets, no blue jeans…. But one lasting benefit of the job was my first credit card. Penney’s knew I didn’t earn enough to qualify for the card, but since I was an employee they couldn’t turn me down.

Many years later, my beloved took me out to dinner (and drinks) at the Chi-Chi’s at the mall, after his homemade dinner proved too spicy for me to eat.

These days (literally) Westland Mall is being demolished. There’s a Facebook Group that shares still pictures and drone videos of the teardown, and the group also gives those of us who came of age at the mall a place to share our memories.

Now

This weekend I visited a mall in one of Milwaukee’s suburbs. Although JCPenney’s remained as one of the mall’s anchors, Boston Store was empty and the food court was nearly deserted. One of the few food vendors in the court was a place called Arepa’s, where I ordered a vegan arepa and a side of sweet fried plantains (sorry, Starliner Diner). I nibbled on the blazing-hot plantain slices, took the leftovers with me, and didn’t try to dipping sauces until I got home hours later. OMG try the dipping sauces, folks!

Westland Mall’s food options back in the day were an Orange Julius, a place where I could get bagels with cream cheese, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, the super-classy restaurant at Lazarus, a Mark Pi place, the Woolworth’s lunch counter until it was taken out, and a Wendy’s next to the Chi-Chi’s. I never could have conceived of being able to order Venezuelan food in a mall.

One-third to one-half of the spaces in the mall were empty. I sat in the center and worked on a knitting project (cf. below) between a “We Fix” kiosk and a tall video screen that, on a loop, displayed Halloween-oriented recipes and makeup tips. At one point I set down my knitting just so I could finally discover the food item on which “Edible Intestines” was based (cinnamon roll dough).

Eventually one of the “We Fix” owners approached me, complimented my knitting, and offered me his business card. A few minutes later, a young Asian girl worried about the End Times invited me to her open Bible study. People with various disabilities walked laps around the perimeter of the mall’s interior. The mall itself seemed eternal.

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A week after being potted, the peach seedling didn’t show much sign of growth — but it was still alive. I watered it and put it back in the window. The remaining seeds didn’t show any evidence of rooting, and I cracked the lid of the plastic container when I checked on them. Goodbye to the rest of the setup; I’ll take the peach seedling to work for more sun and regular watering if nothing changes in the next week.

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Knitwise, I have been knitting 2-4 rows every day after casting on for a shallow-but-wide shawl from the marled purple skein. It’s soothing. The pattern right now is kf&b, k1, YO, k to end; repeat. I won’t change anything until the last 2 rows, which should be (k1, YO) across, end K1; BO.

I’m on the third stripe of the Stripe Scarf after restarting on smaller needles. I had a GP to watch this weekend, so I was able to make progress building on what I knitted at the mall (cf. above). Winter is far away, but the chilly weather has already arrived. I need to keep up the pace.

Digging deeper

While you were looking the other way roots have been growing, wings have been stretched, and new connections have been made. Don’t worry, though; I wasn’t looking, either.

Let’s begin with the roots and work our way up. Last week I had a rooting peach seed that was almost large enough to plant in a pot. Other tasks and deadlines intervened and I put off the task until, look at the time, here we are on Sunday afternoon and I should take another look at that seed. I was delighted to discover that the tiny roots had grown through the damp paper towel, just as they had on the video I had watched all those weeks ago to learn about this process.

I gently pulled away the paper towel, but not gently enough to keep from breaking off one of the tiny roots. Oops.

The other five seeds still had a bit of slow action going on, so I tucked them back in for another week.

Now it was time to finally get out the pot and the potting soil and plant the seed. After I rewatched the first video in the peach-seed-germinating series, I watched the second video for the first time. In that video, the gardener re-potted his peach sprout in more soil so it would sit higher up in the pot and get more sun. So I put in a lot of potting soil for such a tiny sprout.

We’ll see what progress it can make in that window by this time next week. If it needs more sun I can take it to work and rest the pot on a sunny windowsill.

This week I added another typewriter to my collection, which totals seven unless we find my Smith-Corona electronic typewriter (“K9”) from the mid-80s. I took it to college with me in the fall of 1985, and it saved me (despite some professorial grumbling over the aesthetics) when my manual typewriter broke a spring halfway through a 20-page English paper in the spring of 1986. A few years later I acquired a Macintosh SE and a DeskJet printer, and now I’m not sure what happened to the electronic typewriter.

Editing with K9 in 1987.

Anyway, I found this Smith-Corona Sterling advertised on Facebook Marketplace marked down from $40 to $35. I made arrangements to pick up the typewriter at the seller’s house after work, but when I arrived she wasn’t there and neither was the typewriter. After some hasty communications between me, the seller, and the seller’s husband, she offered to bring it to my house that night and drop the price a bit more. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, but I agreed. When she got there the price became $30 until she pulled the typewriter out of its case and a piece of tape fell off with $25 written on it (the price she’d put on it, and forgotten about, at a rummage sale).

It’s a wonderful little typewriter, especially at that price, and after I fiddled with the ribbon a bit I saw that it types smoothly. Its serial number places the date of manufacture sometime in 1947. Since it’s very clean, it will be a good typewriter to start with as I learn how to do basic typewriter maintenance and repair. I now have three Smith-Coronas, so that will be a good make to focus on for now.

I also joined two sister Facebook groups: one for collectors of antique typewriters and another for maintenance and repair of antique typewriters. This isn’t a change of career, but since many other folks have gone before me to preserve and digitize so many typewriter manuals, I’ll have something I can read and learn from if I get snowed in this winter. (Because, you know, I don’t have enough books.)

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Knitwise, I frogged the striped scarf that was too wide and cast on again with US7 straight needles. After about 4-5 rows it became rather crowded. I was at a craft store this morning to look for a few other items, so I picked up a set of US7 circular needles while I was there and moved the work over to it when knitting the next row.

This looks more reasonable for a “not too narrow” scarf, and I’ll aim for each stripe to be two or three inches deep.

If I finish the scarf too soon (what does that mean?), I can switch to this book’s patterns to use up some of the scrappier parts of my stash.