Two of my memories of Nevaida Harper

Nevaida Harper passed away this week. There is a memorial service for her today at the Bow Valley Chapel at 2:30 pm.  She was a member of our ward and a long time resident of Alberta.

I have two enduring memories of Nevaida.

The first once occurred when she had remarried. Blaine and Nevaida lived just one avenue over from us.

On Sunday, I usually asked someone from the ward over for Sunday dinner. That is just what my parents had done. It was as much a part of the Sunday ritual as going to Sunday School was. I didn’t know you could have Sunday any other way.

So I asked that newly married mature couple to come over to our house, thinking they might like a break from the quiet of just being together. I had eight children all starving after church and a noise level that they might have remembered from their first marriages, but a noise level that had gone from their lives for a while.

Usually I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the menu was, but that Sunday I must have made fresh buns for when the meal was over, I tried to press Nevaida into taking some home.

“Oh, no I couldn’t.”

“Please take them. There are lots and I make bread about three times a week. My children won’t miss them.”

“Oh no, this is so much work, I couldn’t take one.”

“I think you might enjoy them later in the week, please do. And I have plenty as you can see.”

Back and forth we went.

Then Nevaida melted from her position. She said, “Yes, we would love them. Just love them. Whatever you wrap up we will enjoy through the week. I know how much work this is. Thank you.” 

She was eloquent with her thanks.

Why this memory is so vivid to me was Nevaida’s acknowledgement of other women’s work, the total breadth of it. And her not wanting to seem to take advantage of it.

My second enduring memory takes a little longer to tell.

 I have a university background in music, but in those days, I didn’t have much time to pursue that passion. I was, however, the Primary chorister, and Nevaida was in the Primary presidency. She and I must have had a similar music ethic – ie, never miss a moment to make music. So when the children would start filing in from their classes, I would begin singing, teaching a new song until all the classes had finally congregated. Then I would begin singing time (proper) and teach another song. The expectation from the Stake was that the Primary would learn one new song a month. My expectation for the Bow Valley Ward was that they would learn 8 new songs a month and get some practise singing the old ones.

Nevaida didn’t ever say anything. She just watched. I hadn’t really thought about the disconnect until now. She, with the musical degrees, should have been the one singing with the children and I could have been the one making the announcements.

However, there we were. Nevaida just watching and me wanting to make singing the best time kids had at church. I pulled all of the tricks out of my musical knapsack and laid them there for the children to enjoy.

I was relentless.

Then one day Primary was over. I was exhausted from the split shift – first 20 minutes with the younger children and then 20 minutes with the older ones, coaxing those into singing who didn’t want to sing, trying to help those who needed to move find all the movement they needed in music. Sometimes with a pianist who couldn’t keep up with the music. Going off to the nursery to sing with those children in between the two other shifts. The list of what might go wrong could go on forever.

Nevaida came to me at this day I am remembering and said, “Arta, I wish I could bring my music students over to watch how you do this.”

Being the Primary chorister is a pretty low profile job in the church.

But I knew that I got to touch the life of every child in the ward for 20 minutes each week, though I haven’t ever heard anyone say, “Gee, there is a job I would like.”

Still, it was so respectful for Nevaida to say that to me.

I think more people might like the job of being Primary chorister if there were more people like Nevaida giving praise that nourishes the soul.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #13 Public Transportation

PhotoCredit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_municipal_railway
This 1947 photo shows a soon to be retired streetcar 
passing a new electric trolley bus, the kind of vehicle 
that would replace it.

Public transportation played a big part, always in the background of my growing up – it was the way to the movies on Saturday, the way to piano lessons on Wednesdays evenings, the way to and from Crescent Heights High School, the way to shopping at the downtown Bay and Woolworths, the way for me to go to Bowness Park, the way to the home of my friend, Else, who lived in Montgomery.

I am pretty sure that I was taking the bus alone by the time I was 7 years old.

In fact it was not a bus.

I was on trolley cars that rode on rails and the ticket was 5 cent.

Even today when I need to go someplace, I am never out of sorts if I have to take public transportation. I welcome the ride along streets I might never travel, otherwise.

I am reminded of another lost bus ticket and public transportation.

I had taken my library books back to the Central Library down near 4th Street and 10th Avenue SW. I had my return bus ticket tucked into the pages of one of the books I returned. I forgot to take the ticket out when I put it through the book return.

I didn’t exactly know the way home, if I were to walk from there back up to Hounsfield Heights. But I did figure out that I could follow the trolley lines of the bus I should have taken. When I came to an intersection where the trolley lines split and buses went one way or maybe another, that is when I stopped at a bus stop and waited for my bus to come. When it did, I watched which way it turned and then I continued walking home always following the trolley lines until I got to the 10th Street Bridge and then I knew my way home from there.

I am curious about that child when I look back on her. I know I was afraid to ask the librarian to get that ticket out of the book for me. I could never have endured the shame of telling her I had left that ticket in a book. A little bit of fear in me about being bawled out, and also, I was not sure she could get that book out of the book drop. I envisioned it as a secure mailbox into which only someone very important could go.

And why didn’t I call my mother? Well, there were times when my dad was out of town and she didn’t have a car, so I can see why I might not have called her. At any rate, I figured out how to get home, and I doubt that I told anyone of my lost bus ticket adventure when I got there.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #12 The Free-Range Chicken

I signed up for tennis lessons through the Calgary Herald.

I can remember seeing that they were sponsoring free lessons at the court that belonged to the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Association.

I was a big newspaper reader from when I was very young.  I started at the Comics section of the paper and then worked my way back through until I came to the front page.  I still do that.

I can’t remember much about the lessons, only that they were free, that they were on consecutive Saturday mornings, and I had to bring their own racquet.

To practise the skills they were teaching, I asked my dad if I could come on his 6 am trips to that same tennis court with Lorne Reed.

The gate was locked, but open wide enough that a person could squeeze through to the court.

Doral agreed to take me.

When I got there, I just practised batting the ball against the practise board outside the courts while the two of them played tennis. At one point Doral came over to me and asked where I had been learning to play tennis. I told him I had been taking lessons through the Calgary Herald. He just nodded. Then he stayed beside me for a while and gave me a few tips and then went back to his game with Lorne Reed. I continued to hit balls against the practise board. I wonder why this memory is so vivid for me. My guess is that now I see I was out looking around the world, doing all kind of things my parents had no idea about. Yes. They let me grow up as a free-range chicken. Not a lot of supervision.

Only slightly relevant, here is a tennis joke from Doral. Quit reading if you don’t like bad jokes. To understand the scoring, if you were to score every point on your opponent you would call out Love, fifteen, 30, 45, game. That is just the way the points are scored. So then Doral would ask new tennis players, “Why do they call it Love?” Then the answer is “because love doesn’t mean a thing”. I know, bad joke. But it just comes to mind when I think about Doral and about playing tennis.

Arta

Eight Memories for Eighty Years: #11 Melted Cheese and Gallons of Ice-Cream

Melted cheese and ice cream have nothing in common, except that they are important parts of childhood memories about what I thought good food was.

As to the cheese, Doral would buy a whole round of cheese in Glenwood.

I can remember the cheese cloth casing and the rind of the cheese and having one huge pie slice cut out of that round before our very eyes.

More importantly I can remember Doral slicing the cheese and then putting it in the cast iron frying pan to melt.

When the cheese was warm and its oil would glisten on top, he would take big spoonfuls and put them on a slice of bread or even better, toast for us.

Oh, that was heavenly.

As for the ice cream, Doral would go down to the main office of the dairy and he would buy 2 ½ gallons of ice-cream.

Further, he would get the 100 package of ice cream cones. He would buy Tiger-Tiger around Halloween.

Chocolate,
or double chocolate, or Dutch chocolate, or chocolate swirl,
or chocolate sauce on chocolate ice cream.
For me there an never be enough chocolate ice cream.

When he bought Maple Walnut my mother was so happy – her favourite kind of ice cream though it was down pretty low on the rating of good flavours by the kids.

I think Doral like Cherry; the younger people in the family picked those cherries out, much to his dismay.  The best part!

Neapolitan was the favourite for the kids since there was a chance in that bucket to get one of the three flavours that a person liked.

When there are a lot of people, there are a lot of differences about what the best flavour is.

 We ate ice cream in cereal bowls and even today that doesn’t seem strange to any of us.

In my childhood, I could walk downstairs and get an ice cream cone anytime I wanted to have one.  I don't think this is a phantom memory.  It really happened.

Sometimes I would find a large spoon or the ice cream scoop right in the ice-cream, left by somebody before me who didn’t want to walk back upstairs with it.

A big yes to a childhood with melted cheese, and ice-cream as staple food items.

Ice Cream, Games, Cheese, Lego

Alice figuring out hr next Azul move

I haven’t seen Miranda’s kids for what seems like a long time.

Tonight they came over after school, maybe for an ice cream bar but when that treat was over they were ready to play games.

Since I just purchased the Chinese Checkers board last month, I want to play that game – use it enough times that the price on it will come down to $1 per use.

That is my goal. Michael likes to win – so between us there is a chance for reaching two goals, simultaneously.

Betty just likes to play any game. She has no idea if she is winning or losing and in fact she doesn’t care. Some of the jumps she makes are spectacular ones that have nothing to do with the rules.

Alice had to wait until we were finished so that we could start the second game: Azul.

We had closed that game down yesterday after just opening it up, so we were anxious to take it away from there.

The bonus about this game is that the counting of points is done at the end with one grand flourish, and by the time we get there, Betty, again, doesn’t care about the points and since they are hard to calculate, by the time we find a pen and paper, the girls want to start the game again – no desire, it seems to have a winner proclaimed.

Castello Tickler

Michael voiced what all of them were interested in: a second snack.

I brought out the speciality cheese in the fridge, having nothing else to offer.

I don’t really like cheese myself. But when it is on sale at Costco, I can’t stand to miss the really good price. This makes my fridge always full of cheese.

I had no idea that they would eat the Castello Tickler: Extra Mature Cheddar Cheese from the United Kingdom.

But they all agreed – it tasted better than the Swiss cheese which they declared “sort of tasteless”.

I wouldn’t think people under eight years old would have a taste for the sharp cheese.

Betty loves the new pink caboodle,
now a repository for extra Lego pieces

I have three pastel glasses – probably in a different world they would be called shoot glasses.

I just call them small glasses.

They love to pour on ounce of Mango juice into the glasses, drink it, then pour again, drink it. I am always expecting a big spill. One doesn’t seem to happen.

When Mary was here, she had resorted the Lego and put it in individual buckets with their names on it.

They were so mad that everything had been resorted until they found out Mary had done it and then Betty went into long sentences about how wonderful the new packaging is and how she just loves the new pink tote the Lego is in.

 It is hard for a grandmother to win when the aunts are so spectacular.

Arta

A Slip, then a Fall

Kelvin was coming home with his groceries this week. The handibus driver carried them to the back door for him. But along the way, Kelvin slipped and did a face plant right on a raised brick on the path. When the two of them could see that the bleeding from his forehead was not going to stop, the handibus driver called an ambulance, so off to the Foothills Kelvin went to get some stitches right up by his hairline – the cut is in the shape of a scimitar.

Mary says this picture makes her sicker
than looking at Kelvin's actual wound.

One never knows what to do next in a situation like this.

Richard felt it was his duty to go over and spread salt on the path so that there wouldn’t be a second slip.

Also he took out his camera and took a picture of the spot where the face plant happened.

Only in our family would this seem like an important shot.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #10 The Prairies

I have a memory of time and place where I am young and on the prairies. I can smell the dust as I kick the dry earth, then crushing the sage with my heels, my feet also dodging gopher holes. We lived on the cusp of where the prairies meet the foothills really. Small rolling hills, the grass yellow and dry in the summer, the sound of Richardson ground squirrel, that sound being the cue to find their heads as they popped up out of holes in the prairie. The boys would spend time laying down strings and then trying to lasso the head of the gopher when it would pop out of the hold.

We had to walking to school over a foot path through the grasses from 16 A street to 13th Street. Oh, there was one paved sidewalk and then an alley, but mostly we were walking on the prairie. Only 5 blocks now that I count them, but over hill and down into the dale through which a healthy rivulet ran during the spring run off. The water would be mid-calf on our rubber boots one day and then next day, enough water that when I got to school my boots were filled with water and the hem of my dress soaked. The principal installed a bridge of wooden slats over which we could walk. Still, some liked to take their chances, to see how close to the top of the boots they could come , so not everyone from the west side of the school got to their classroom dry. Long brown stockings made of ribbed cotton were hung to dry on the heat of the school radiators. When the bell ran, we put those socks on, only to get them wet on the way home.

I loved going to school in the spring when the hills were dotted with crocuses. I used to take my mother’s canning jars full of water and then pour it on those plants hoping to extend their life into the summer.

No matter how many jars of water I brought I couldn’t keep that flowering cycle going.

I would leave my glass mason jar there on the prairie, thinking I would take it home in the evening, but my mind wasn’t on doing that on the way home.

I have no idea how many canning jars my mother lost that way.

I remember her telling me to stop doing that, but having the crocuses flower seemed to be a higher priority than obeying my mother.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #9 a pair of white figure skates

... I spent a lot of time keeping my skates
looking unscuffed with liquid white polish.
And it is hard to explain the joy of skating
on them after they had been newly sharpened ...

I loved my white figure skates.

I don’t remember when I got my first pair, but thereafter I got a new pair every Christmas.

That was a given. I was growing taller.

My feet were growing longer.

Skating was as a big part of my winter evenings.

The Hounsfield Heights Association built a small hut and kept a skating ring flooded and cleared and well lit.

There was a spotlight so that we could practise in the dark.

As well there was a pot-bellied stove in which I could build a fire, so that I could come inside, warm myselfs up and then be off to the rink when my toes got warm again. Wood was always stacked in the corner. I wonder now who was flooding the ring and bring the wood in.

The Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Association which was down on 5th Avenue had a bigger rink, larger facilities in which to keep warm, even a canteen, and the association offered skating lessons where I could learned to turn figure eights and practised making a swan, though for me it was often a swan dive. At first the trick was learning to skate backwards. And then to put one leg over the leg as I went backwards and in a circle, always keeping a look-out as to what was behind me. If I think about it I can still smell that cut of fresh ice made with a sudden stop and that breeze on my face when I would try to skate my fastest from one end of the rink to another.

My childhood dream then, was to skate in the Ice Capades, which our family got to attend every year. A little person can’t dream much higher than that.

Arta

The Gape in Alice’s Mouth

Alice has her tooth in an envelope for safe keeping by her father.
There is also a note: this is my terde tooth.
 Im gona losse anater tooth.

I did a double take when I saw Alice smile on Saturday.


I knew her tooth was gone, but it seems so different when she flashes that wonderful smile and there is a black spot where that tooth used to be.


I couldn’t concentrate on Chinese Checkers when she would flash that new smile at me.


She came over today with her siblings, each to eat a Haagen Dazs bar and maybe play a few games.

.... Alice's first top tooth to come out ...

I just want to get really close to see the new look.


The Haagen Dazs bars are not that easy to eat.


I noticed that the chocolate breaks off in big hunks when I was eating one a couple of days ago.


So I watched the kids and the same thing happened to them.


One bite and suddenly there is a large flat piece of chocolate, too big to get into ones mouth, and a surprise, since ideally that chocolate would come off with small bites of ice cream.

The chocolate is gone.
Now for eating the ice-cream!

So what gets left, when the chocolate has either fallen to the napkin, or fallen to the floor, or eaten with two fingers as though it were a fine slice of chocolate … what gets left is delicious ice cream on a stick.


But the coating has to be eaten first, since it is not going to stay on the bar.


Betty and Michael must be used to different smile from Alice already for Michael kept his eyes on a cartoon book while he was eating.


Betty busied herself playing with the finger puppets I had found and put out with the Easter decorations.


I have to be careful that I don’t buy more decorations.

Life at its best: Michael with a comic book and an ice cream bar.

I have so many out in the garage – ones that Mary refused to bring in for me. When she was in Calgary helping me she said, "Arta, it is 3 months to Easter. Someone will get them out for you later, but decorating 3 months in advance is just a couple of months too soon.We are going to do other work around here."

 So she held me off on all but one box of decorations which she brought in somewhat against her best judgement.

I do love to put out all of those wax candled Easter eggs, the ceramic salt and pepper bunnies, the wooden tree-hanging rabbits in a canoe, the casserole dish that looks like a hen sitting on a nest.


I love all of the Easter decorations.

Arta

The Brooks Family Comes to Dinner

LtoR: Alice, Leo and Xavier

Saturday, Mary and Leo brought their family up to see matinee for Dear Evan Hansen and then they came over for supper.


Richard put some of his garlic deer sausages in the slow cooker and Mary brought buns and chips.



That made the meal pretty easy for me. I didn’t have to do anything.

... this part of the table is mine alone ...

Naomi brought her friend, Riley, along as well, so there were 13 of us, including Kelve whom they picked up on their way back from the Jubilee Auditorium.


We couldn’t decide if it would be better to meet at Richard ‘s and Miranda’s house or at mine.


They have more space.


I have more dishes.

Mary delivering food to the table.
Food?  That would be chips.

I love having everyone crowd around the table and the island.


I like the multiple conversations that go on, that buzz that is more than white noise, and more than the number of conversations that anyone can keep track of.


I did hear a small silence when Michael announced that he had just found out that his Grandmother gets up in the middle of the night and eats ice-cream and that is why there isn’t always the same amount of ice-cream in my freezer as when they left it there the night before.

LtoR: Kelvin, Riley, Naomi

I was stunned that he has been keeping track of the level in all of the 2 litre tubs I have in the freezer.


After the silence, Leo said, “So that is where Mary gets it from.”

Rhiannon teaching  Betty and Michael
to use their stemware  with an evil
finger pointing off to the side.

Arta

A line about Dear Evan Hansen

Photo: Marcia Bates

Yes, there we were, waiting for the show to begin.

Wyona had one ticket extra for Dear Evan Hansen.

I was happy to join all of the Bates.

They were there in full force. Marcia had come with her family, but when sitting them down in seats, she said that she was sitting by Art—kind of making it a date, though I don’t know who takes three kids along on a date. I guess they do.

I got to sit by Gabe. I looked through the programme notes and came to the list of songs that would be sung in each act.

I asked him if he could name any of the songs that we would be hearing. “One, maybe two,” he said. I said, “Go for it, and I will check the programme here and see if you get any right.”

He started to name the songs and he could give me the titles of all but two of them, and then on reflection, he even got the two he had missed. He did ask me if a Reprise counts. I told him anything counts. He scored a 10 out of 10 with me. I bow to Gabe. He came to the show far better prepared than I to hear it. If a person can name the songs, they can probably do most of the lyrics, but I didn’t ask him that.

The crowd was a young one – not many people with white hair there. Tim and Lurene was sitting just one balcony below us, and with Greg and Wyona there – that was pretty well all the Bates’ there to watch a popular musical.

If you don’t know the show, Dear Evan Hansen, it features a book by Tony Award winner Steven Levenson, a score by Grammy, Tony and Academy Award winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman), and direction by four-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif (Rent, Next to Normal).

Lots of powerful theatre people came together for this show and it played to a packed house the night we were there.

Arta

More on the Double Feature (the fun of Knives Out)

Arta and Wyona getting seated for
Dear Evan Hansen

not a double feature, but two acts
which sort of counts as something double 

I learned to love double features back in the 1940’s and 50’s when just about every movie house had a double feature.

That is how we saw movies. There would be the feature and then a B movie that accompanied it.

As well, it didn’t seem to matter what time the show started for me.

I just walked in, and then did the full cycle until the movie came back to where I had walked in.

When Wyona said we would be doing a double feature last Thursday, I wondered how that was going to go.

She said it just doesn’t make sense to drive over to the theatre twice, so she bought tickets for Knives Out and for Cyrano de Bergerac and we were going to see them both.

I asked her why she choose Knives Out. “Lots of famous people in the show, well known actors,” she said.

I did look up the plot and a few reviews.

I didn’t get the spoilers, and I had read a review in the far distant past on Knives Out – probably when it first came out. A mystery. I never choose to go see who-dun-its.
which

I would probably choose anything else.

Wyona believes in the full theatre experience: popcorn, drinks, snacks and settling in to using more than one seat if the theatre is not crowded, as ours wasn’t. Our coats on one seat, our bags sitting on another. There couldn’t have been 20 people in the whole room. That probably would translate into15 seats each at the very least, so it wasn’t like we were taking someone else’s spot.

I thought we might not be able to make it through both shows without one or the other of us napping. That just didn’t happen. Snacks. Drinks. Popcorn. Lots of room and two movies back to back. How can retirement be better than this. As well, Tonia joined us for Cyrano. What was fun in that second show, an added benefit was to hear her giggling, sometimes even guffawing. I wonder why hearing a companion thoroughly enjoying the show enhances the whole experience for me. Yes. I like to go alone to movies. But having her there was delicious. A good time was had by the three of us.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #8 Recess - the Joy of the School Day

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_
Alberta_Institute_of_Technology,_or_SAIT.jpg

Our family went to school at the University Demonstration School, which was part of the Normal school where my mother had gone to learn to teach school and so had hundreds of students since her time.

Teachers would practise their lessons on us which worked well for them if our regular teachers would stay in the classroom.

We had name tags that we put on our desks to help the students ask us questions.

When our teachers were out of the room, we would switch name cards in the matter of sly seconds: me with Glenys Parry and Glenys with me. And then I would forget who I had switched with that day since a switch with any of our friends would be entertaining for all of the others. Glenys. Glenys? Glenys! Oh yah. That is me, today.

Recess was just as important as school to me: dodgeball, softball, broom ball, skipping-ropes, and picking-up-jacks. One day my friends and I stayed after school to build a snowman. The snow must have been perfect. The snowman got taller and taller. I saw the teacher come to the window a number of times and then leave. Finally she came outside with her coat on and told us all that we had to go home. That was a sad moment – having to leave the playground for home. In retrospect, I can’t remember my mother ever being worried about where we were or asking why we had come home so late. Or if she did ask a question, there seemed to be no shame attached to our arrival time nor did there seem to be any worry on her part.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #7 Miss Avis and Grade I

This is Lorna Hughes, my best friend in grade school.
No two girls played paper dolls more than we.

It was from her mother I learned to make hollyhock dolls.

I also tried my first cigarettes at her house.
I got in a lot of trouble for that.

Miss Avis taught me to read.

She had a large pink pig on a piece of oversized cardboard and the visual sat on an easel.

Each day she put a different vowel on the pig as its tail.

I didn’t think those vowels looked much like pigs’ tails but I did catch onto the concept of vowels.

One day in Grade I Miss Avis tricked me.

On the worksheet I had to do the following: draw a blue boat, draw a black cat, draw a yellow sun. Then one of the questions was draw an orange.

I was stumped at the last direction.

I didn’t know what colour I should use on that fruit and I didn’t dare ask her, so I sat for a long time until I figured it out.

I will never forget how hard that question was.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #6 Torn Autumn Leaves

... about 1947 ...

When the Vancouver home was sold, the piano in that house was moved back to our new Calgary home.

My first piano lessons on it were given by Mrs. Ione Wood. I took the bus to her home and back.

One day when I was going home, I discovered I had lost my second bus ticket.

She lived in the North East and I had no idea how to walk home from there.

I went through my options. I may have been embarrassed about losing the ticket. For sure, I didn’t even think to go back to Mrs. Wood’s house and have her call my mother to come and get me.  Not did I have the courage to ask her to  lend me money for a ticket.

After thinking of no other option, I found a brown leaf on the ground, ripped it up to the size of a bus ticket, and when the bus came, I put it into the fare box. That was my first attempt at deception.

The bus driver didn’t call me on it.

I used to look Mrs. Wood’s her hands on the keyboard. Her nails were painted red, something my father never approved of in our house.   I sort of liked the idea, but knew I couldn't pull that off at home.  Mrs. Wood seemed very old. The skin on her hands was translucent and blue veins pulsed above the skin, a mass of interconnected lines running from her wrists to her knuckles. I remember hoping that I would never get so old that my hands would look like that.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #5 The Move to Vancouver

When I was 5 and our house at 1235 16 St Street was still under construction, my father sent us to live with his parents in Vancouver. We lived at 2850 Gilpen Road, a place that had a small copse of trees to one side of it, and there must have been a place for a cow, for my grandfather went out to milk one at night.

I spent many sleepless nights there. My brother, Earl, had thrown a stone through a neighbour’s window back in Calgary, a neighbour of my Grandmother Scoville. I knew he was in big trouble. My bedroom in this Vancouver house faced a lake and on the other side of the lake was the penitentiary. 

Many nights I stayed awake , seeing the lights of the prison and worrying that someone would soon be coming to get Earl.

In my baby book is a ticket to a Vancouver Ward Building Fund Part.

People were trying to earn funds for a new building.

The party was to be held at the Pillings.

The ticket promises a Garden Party from 4 – 6 pm, supper from 6 pm – 7 pm and dancing from 7 to ?.

As well there is a promise of the game of The $64,000 Question, Crystal Gazing, a Fish Pond, Palm Reading, a Prize Waltz and Bingo. I suppose some would argue that we can still get those things at church. The ticket for the party was $1. That would be $13.50 in today’s funds.

I am sure the Palm Reading would have been worth the price of the ticket alone.

Arta

A big nose, a big hat, a big fight -- Cyrano

James McAvoy in rehearsals for Cyrano.
Photograph: Marc Brenner

Tonia met Wyona and me at the theatre tonight so that we could see the NT Live production of Cyrano de Bergerac from the Savoy.

Before the show started, the usher announced that it had been taped earlier in the day, and that there had been some glitches, so he hoped we would stay and watch the show, and if we did, we would still get a free pass so that we could come back and watch it again without the glitches at the Encore.

Those were good instructions, or maybe just a great warning, so that I wasn’t overwhelmed with disappointment, thinking the show was stopping at those moments when the screen pixelated and then came back for us.

Rebecca is the one who gave me the head’s up that an amazing production was coming. I have been home for about two hours now, and I find myself still taking deep breaths and then letting the air out slowly since I found the show overwhelming.

I guess I will talk about the little things before I try to get at what it was in the performance that made it such an amazing show. So directly to Rebecca, whom I think must have gone:

1. How did you like the shoes on Roxane. Wyona thought those must have been $300 runners. I told her that I thought they had special lifts to make the heroine (or was she the hero) of the show just tall enough so that we wouldn’t notice a height difference between her and those to whom she spoke.

2. How did you like her costuming – those rolled up overalls, the white stitching on them, the softness of the blouse with its tie collar. Wyona thought there were shoulder pads involved. I didn’t see that.

3. What a fabulous diversity in the actors: tall, short, large, small, one wearing a scarf that reminded me of Palestine, the black shirt that seemed to become a friar’s frock, the use of the microphone, even turning it into a skipping rope, the use of the stage, and how did they turn it into a battle field, a classroom, a private room for an early morning breakfast, a place to write letters. I think the only real scenery was the Gothic lettering – I can’t remember, did it say something like “words are everything”. I don’t think I got that right, but I am close.

4. James McAvoy. Enough said.

5. And how did you like the rewriting of the old script. Now that was a modern adaptation of old words. I only wish they could have changed the ending of the show. Why do we have to be faithful to the old ending? Except, it wasn’t that faithful, was it? Roxane asks the right questions.

6. The faces of the theatre patrons were shown at half-time. Wasn’t there anyone over 50 in the house? I know the actors said that there was one row of students, but they all looked like students to me. And what an introduction to the cast! I don’t know when it was that we moved from the introduction and into the show. Maybe it was all show.

... on the way into the theatre ...
We bought tickets for two shows:
Knives Out and Cyrano de Bergerac.
What a pairing
No use in driving to the theatre twice.

Well, that is it from me, though there is much more to say. Wyona said to me, “They didn’t spend a lot on costuming.” I had to say, right, no pearls in that show.

 I reserve the right to say only pearls of the metaphorical kind.

I heard Tonia laughing a number of times. 

Sometimes she laughs when I was not laughing. I didn’t get the joke about Steve Martin, for example.

For a more complete review click here to get to The Hollywood Reporter.

And now a few more deep, slow breaths.

Arta

Borrowing Dental Floss

Richard dropped by yesterday to borrow some dental floss.

"Take as many packages as you need," I said, continuing, "I never run out of dental floss."

"I just need enough to help Alice pull out her tooth."

"There are easier ways.  Just let her bite your finger as hard as she wishes."

"Nope.  She wants the traditional way of using a string."

I didn't know how that all worked out until Richard sent me this picture.

I can't figure out why there is so much blood given the very small size of that tooth.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #4 Blanche Fisher Scoville

I don’t have a lot of images in my mind for my Grandmother Scoville. I would want her to be in my list of 80 precious memories. She died from leukemia when she was 54 and knowing that fact and then watching my mother die at the age of 55, I came upon the idea that I would die when I was in my mid fifties as well. No one could have been more surprised than me, passing through 55 and still be well and able. As I have moved through the intervening years, I have often thought of the early demise of my mother and my grandmother, and tasking myself with living my own extra years for both of their lives. It is pleasurable to live a day doubly, well, one half for Wyora and one half for Blanche.

Blanche had long hair which she would braid and then coil to the top of her head.

This image is of her striding along the street and being captured by a street photographer, a job that entailed catching a photo of someone walking along the street and then handing them a card, telling them where they could go in a few days to look at the image and then buy it if they choose.

This was a popular way of catching a snapshot in the 1940’s and ‘50s.

Why seeing this image of her is important to me, I don’t know.

Perhaps because I saw so little of her, knew so little of her. She was a widow in her young forties and still had 6 children at home when her husband died. The Raymond Sugar Company paid her $50 compensation for his death. Yes, I didn’t ever really know enough about her.

Still, I am curious.  What do you think she has clutched to her side, under her left arm and I wonder if I have her eyes?

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #3 Dixie Cups and Jackknives

In the early days of my childhood, there was an annual Dominion Day pot-luck church picnic at the Crescent Road Park. For the first time, I saw men whom I had previously only seen in dark suits, white shirts and conservative ties, now madly hopping in gunny sacks across the park, or tying two of their four legs together for a 3 legged race, and then falling miserably on the ground in their haste to beat each other across the finish line. I couldn’t figure out why older men would do that.

As well, Dixie cups of vanilla ice cream were served at those picnics – small containers of melting ice cream served with wooden spoons attached to lid of the ice cream.

The lid, one could pull off with a small round cardboard tab.

I can still feel the taste of the wooden spoon in my mouth.

Perhaps I licked mine more than most people.

Finally I own my own jackknife.
I have been wondering why I have been
carrying it around with me on the side of my walker.
Finding it a bit heavy, I have stored it elsewhere.
No game of mumbley-peg in my future.

That park rims the brow of the Crescent Hill and is only a couple of blocks away from the church. The original building was finished back in the early 1940’s. People who donated money to the church had their names painted on some of the bricks that and when I was small, I could go looking along the outside walls of the church to find those names, peering up under the bricks.

As well, my father would play mumbley-peg with the 12 year old boys out on the lawn when Sunday School was over.

When I was small I was on the circle of onlookers. I was there wondering if I would ever get a jackknife of my own so that I could play that game, although I was not sure I would be invited in, since I thought it might be a game associated with having the priesthood.

Good Parking at Costco

You can always get good parking at Costco if you go on a day when Costco is closed, which is what happened to Wyona, Chelsea, Zoe and me today.

An empty parking lot? Greg had asked Wyona if Costco weren’t closed today.

Zoe Bates and Arta Johnson, shopping at Winners

She told him they are only closed on stat holidays. I guess Family Day stands in for a stat holiday now.

We were saved by the fact that A&W was close by and that Zoe had her coupons with her. 

Zoe always has coupons with her, so we sorted those out, enjoyed the darling wire trays that the French fries are served in, and the icy beverages, before we headed in to Winners.

... Chelsea, the sonnet woman ...

I enjoyed the lunch specials a lot because I had a chance to interview Chelsea Bates about the courses she is taking.

 How about English 252.2 – specifically the sonnet.

“Are you kidding,” I asked. “You must get to look at sonnets from every time period! What is your text book.”

Falteringly she said, “The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Is there such a title.”
“Oh my gosh. I can hardly wait to get my hands on that book,” I said. “Know any sonnets yet?”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” she says in almost a whisper. "That is the only line of that sonnet I know."

Yes, … thou art more lovely and more temperate … I had forgotten how quickly those lines can come back to a person.

We had a lovely afternoon at Winners, though the poetry discussion was even more fun than shopping was.

Chelsea and Wyona shopped for some winter clothes for school, enough that Chelsea doesn’t have to do her wash so often. At least that is what she wanted.  Enough clothes to last until the next wash.  Wyona knows how to get 25 items in a cart and be off to the change room to help get those clothes on and off someone else's body so that trying on clothes is not so much of a chore.

Zoe and I went up and down the isles of Winners as well – Zoe buying some French meringues. And I got carried away at the Easter decoration isles.

“How can they continue to make so much cute stuff for Easter,” I asked Wyona.

“Yes,” she said, “and our job is to get home and get out all the stuff we already have, so we don’t continue to buy more."

They dropped me off at home and I began to pull out my Easter decorations.

As well I came inside to look for Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 which I just had to read again.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
     So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #2 Calgary -- urban and rural

I was an urban children who grew up in a rural setting.

The city spread in front of me if I looked out of our southern windows, nestled down there in the valley, a city of 25,000 when I was born.

If I walked down to the street car which ran along fifth avenue, I could ride to the centre of Calgary for a 5 cent bus ticket.

Our house was on the edge of the city in a new development called Hounsfield Heights.

My father built there after my sister, Bonnie, had been hit by a car when we lived over on 4A St.

... shooting stars ...
Latin: Dodecatheon jeffreyi

Image courtesy: http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/flora/

Behind our new house was a field full of crocuses in the spring, shooting stars and fireflies in the summer, bunches of willows where we could build forts in the fall, and in the winter, a fabulous sledding hill started just where our backyard ended.

My father tethered a Shetland pony in the field behind us in the summer time.

Comet was the horse’s name. The pony belonged to my brother, Earl, though I curried the coat of that horse as though the pony belonged to me. Now that I think of it, I could also put the blanket on the pony’s back, put a saddle on it, and then ride up to the riding Academy which was also out of the city.

There was prairie all around our house. We got the morning milk from a farm that was four blocks away. Earl would ride the pony and I would hold the milk steady in the wagon that was hitched behind it. I don’t know how the division of labour ended up that way, but it did.

In retrospect I have learned that I was a freer child than most of my cohort who lived in the city. After my Saturday’s work was done, I was free to walk down to the Plaza theatre for the cowboy matinee.

Later I graduated to going downtown, sometimes for a double feature: one show at the Grand and another down at the Hitchin’ Post.  I am not sure that my mother knew where I had gone or when I would be back, except that it was  usually before dark.

So that is about it for the second day of memories of my childhood, experiences I would not have wanted to miss on my way to my eighties: lots of Roy Rodgers and Gene Autrey B movies and a pony in our backyard.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: # 1 The House on Fourth Street

... no little girl looked more like her dad than I did ...

I have early memories about living in a white picket-fenced house at 1419 6th A St North West.

From there the milkman would deliver to a number of his customers, up and down the street.

The house isn’t as important as the memory of watching a horse pull the milk wagon come down the street and stop at our house.

... Arta, circa 1945 ...

The horse had on blinders which my mother may have called blinkers, horse tack to prevent the animal from seeing what was behind him.

I used to study the mouth of the horse, its teeth and especially the sticky secretions that hung down from its nostrils.

The whinny of the horse frightened me, but that element of fear must be what drove me to sit on the steps day after day and watch until the milkman came to deliver the milk.

My Grandmother Blanche Scoville lived at the bottom of the hill on Memorial Drive. My mother would walk us from 12th Avenue to the brow of the hill, and then we would follow a dirt path that zig-zagged down to the Bow River and then over to grandmothers. After a good rain rivulets of water would widen small trenches that cut through that walking path. My mother would hold my hand as we would jump over them, when the hills was drier and we were on our way to grandmothers. That fear of leaping over seeming chasms hasn’t gone away.

... behind our 4 A St home ...
Note the fabulous ruffle down the front of my mother's dress
And can my father's tie really have been that short!

Living in this house is the first place where I practised my religion, in this case what I had been taught to believe about praying to God – explicitly, that he would answer my prayers.

One day, the test came when I asked my mother for 5 cents to go to 16th Avenue and buy an ice cream cone at Jenkins, the corner store.

My mother said no. Not to let that be taken as the final answer, I remember kneeling down and asking my Heavenly Father to send me an ice cream cone. I was mystified when the day went by and no ice cream cone appeared.

Two no’s.

The second one really hurt.

Arta

Eighty Memories for Eighty Years - Prologue

Arta, Sumarga and Sumin
Do I look nearly 80?
The answer is yes.

I have been thinking about my approaching birthday.

I am welcoming the decade ahead of me called the eighties.

Octogen-
arians.

That is what people are called who are between the ages of 80 and 89.

On approaching that significant “80” number I began wondering if I could list 80 memories that have been significant to me over those years, memories that have made me happy to be alive.

Some of them events might even be labeled insignificant, but they will be mine.

I am going to do one memory for each year of my life. I have some rough notes since I have been thinking about this for about a month: notes scribbled in the early morning on a scrap of paper before I have even washed my face; notes penciled on the back of my cheque book while waiting in a doctor’s offices; and hastily written paragraphs done late at night when I want to capture just one last thought and know that my fingers can fly quickly over the keyboard of my computer. So far I can only come up with 74 items for my list. Until this morning, I could only come up with 40 items. I was beginning to panic. Would mine be the life only half lived?

Now it is late evening and my list is healthier. Well, if not healthier, at least longer and I find myself wondering if I can carve out the time to make a rough draft of my intentions, let alone edit my words. I am not going to hold myself to a bar that is too high. If I keep my expectations so low that just one sentence is all I expect of myself, then I will be successful. So now, rolling out of my 70’s and into the 80’s – one memory a day from now until my birthday.

On that day my grandchildren from next door and I are going to have the party of my life. Lots of ice-cream. Just them, their parents and me. We are going to have ice cream for the appetizer, ice cream for the entre and ice cream for dessert. They can hardly wait. I feel the same way.

I told them that between now and then we will have practise sessions getting ready for my party.

We have had two of those already, and I am learning something from them.

They don’t want cones.

They like their ice-cream in a clear glass footed sherbet dish. I hope I can convince them over the next eighty days to graduate to the Pilling way: ice-cream heaped to overflowing in a cereal bowl.

Until then, 80 days of blogable memories that mean something to me.

Arta

Celeste Vaughn is baptized

Moiya and David Wood drove down to Washington because Celeste Wyora Vaughn was getting baptized this weekend.

Desiree had kept the baptismal dress that her mom made for her.  So Celeste got to wear a heritage dress, one made by her grandmother.

You see Celeste here on the steps of her new home.

One perfect Saturday.

Arta

Southern Stardust Big Band 20th Anniversary Valentine Concert

... Art and Marcia trip the light fantastic ...

On Tonia Bates' Facebook page she first invites everyone to the  Southern Stardust Big Band 20th Anniversary Valentine Concert at the Austrian Canadian Club, February 15, 2020.

Then she posts links and pictures of the event, which I have lifted to this space in case anyone didn't see them on Tonia's Facebook page.

Tonia says, "Always a great time! ❤️  Lurene singing and Tim playing the trombone. My parents and all of us dancing!"

So here are some links below and some pictures in case you didn't take a peek.

Lurene singing

Trio Sings

In case you haven't heard this number for a long time, here the Trio Sings Boobie Woogie Boy of Company B.  Now that would have been fun to dance to.

And this is a link that should be called, "How to Dance you feet off in your 70's by Greg and Wyona".

If the links aren't enough, here are some pictures to enjoy:

Not to miss Tim he is the trombonist, second row,
whom you can hardly see in the picture.
But he is there in the second row of the band.

Tonia and Zoe Bates at the
Southern Stardust 20th Anniversary Dinner and Dance

Marcia Bates, Art Treleaven and Wyona Bates rest for a minute.

A good time was had by all.

(As photographed by Tonia put on her Facebook page)