Mary Flood mines her past for some wonderful stories, including this Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012

THE SHOEMAKER

 

By

Mary Flood

 

Mary Flood grew up, lives and works in Portland, CT.  Fortunately, or not depending on your point of view, her rather large family provides her with plenty of material.

 

In the 1960s Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut was a bustling downtown.  You could go to Bunce’s Department Store for an outfit, to the five and ten to buy a goldfish or turtle, to the New York Bakery for a black and white cookie and to the Capitol Theatre for a double feature.

I did all of those things, sometimes in the same afternoon, but one of my favorite places to go was shoe repair shop near the Jewish deli.  It probably had a name, but I don’t remember what it was.  When you walked through the door, the smell of shoe leather and cigars filled your nostrils.  A little old man who spoke broken English stood behind the counter.  It was always a little dark in there.  I was fascinated by the row of chairs, mounted high against the wall where you could sit and get a shine.  I don’t believe I ever

saw anyone actually getting their shoes shined, but it seemed like great idea.

The whole idea of having shoes repaired seems almost quaint now, but we seemed to go there fairly often. With ten brothers and sisters, getting the most out of a pair of shoes was a necessity.

What I never understood was why there were so many men in the store.  Were there really that many shoes to repair?

The chatter among these men often included a smattering of Italian and occasional yelling accompanied by a great deal of smoking.  There was so much foot traffic in and out it surely meant the shoemaker would have business for years to come.

It wasn’t until I was grown and long after Bunce’s  had been shuttered, the five and tens were closed, the Capitol theatre lobby became a liquor store and the New York Bakery was razed in a fit of urban renewal that my mother shattered my illusions about the little old shoemaker.  Apparently when he wasn’t repairing shoes, he was running a gambling operation in the back of the store.  The slightly Damon Runyonesque characters that enthralled me were in fact low level thugs and working men who no doubt rolled the dice and cried, “Come on, baby needs a new pair of shoes!”

 

Copyright 2012©Mary Flood

 

 

Celeste Behe: "Nine Kids, No Dishwasher" is one of the Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012.

Nine Kids, No Dishwasher

By

Celeste Behe

Celeste Behe, a native New Yorker, is a nostalgist who, according to one book author, "writes like Garrison Keillor would, if he were Catholic and had nine kids.” Celeste is working on a memoir-cum-cookbook entitled “Nine Kids, No Dishwasher: A Celebration of Life, Love, and Table."  This selection is an excerpt from her manuscript.

 During my carefree childhood in the Bronx’s Little Italy, cooking and cleaning were to me as unfamiliar as life below East 180^th Street, and just about as relevant.  Unlike most of the girls in my neighborhood, I didn’t know the first thing about housekeeping.  For some reason my mom didn’t inherit the gene which drives Italian mammas to teach their daughters how to hang laundry, mend woolen stockings, cut ravioli, and fetch papa’s slippers—all before the age of five.  I had only two chores, which I performed weekly.  One was to polish the brass kick plate on the front door.  The other was to tend the swan.  The swan, made of clear, hollow plastic, lived on our coffee table. It was filled with colored water which, every Saturday morning, I would pour out through a small opening in the swan’s back.  I’d then tint a fresh pint of water with my choice of McCormick food color, refill the swan, and place it back on the table.  End of chores.

            Needless to say, I had lots of time on my hands, especially during the summer months.  But I was never bored.  One reason for that was that there was almost always a celebration just around the corner—literally.  Our Lady of Mt. Carmel church, only three blocks from my house, held observances throughout the year of holy days and holidays. The street festivals, commonly called “the feasts,” were the most popular of these.  When a feast was in progress, East 183^rd Street looked like an evacuation route:  apartment buildings stood silent and empty, while their residents jammed the street in a noisy throng. The kids came for the midway games and trinkets, the teens came looking for romance, the older folks came to visit with the neighbors…and everyone came for the food.  Everyone, that is, but my mother.

Mom scorned the food stands as places where inferior goods were prepared for visiting non-Italians who—poor souls!—didn’t know what real Italian food tasted like.  She had a particular contempt for the zeppole that were sold at the feast.  Mom wouldn’t be surprised, she said, to learn that were fried in the same stuff that had kept our ’53 Ford running smoothly for over a decade.  Authentic zeppole, she maintained, were cooked in peanut oil, which was how she made them for her own family. At our house, no holiday meal was complete until those deep-fried delicacies appeared on the table.  Fresh “zeps,” as they were fondly nicknamed by my older brother, were delicious morsels indeed.  But one had to be pre-pubescent in order to enjoy them, cooled-down and greasy, as breakfast food.              

“Joe!  Where’s the zeps?”

            “It’s 8 in the morning! Whaddaya mean, ‘zeps’?  You’re not gonna eat them for breakfast, are you?”      

Well, yes, I was. And I did.  So did Joe, for that matter.

And why not?  The carbohydrate boost that kids get from eating cold pizza in the morning is nothing compared to the kick-start provided by dense, oily zeppole rings pressed into a saucer of granulated sugar and devoured with gusto.

              Zeppole hold a special place in my memory as a staple of feasts both public and private.  But it is only one of the many foods that notch my personal timeline, which begins on May 23, 1959.   In Timeline Year Five, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” tops the charts, Muhammed Ali beats Sonny Liston, and the government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling over.  I’m hooked on “Wonderama,” and I keep myself busy playing with Wendy the Weather Girl Colorforms and drawing pictures of my first crush, television’s Leonardo Lion, the King of Bongo Congo. Americans’ per capita red meat consumption is 134 lb. per year, the Gemini astronauts are swigging Tang, and Milky Way is “The Good Food Candy Bar.”  Eggs are wholesome and nutritious, so my conscientious mother sees to it that, when it comes to consuming raw eggs, Rocky Balboa will have nothing on me.  Every morning Mom prepares a sweet, eggy concoction which I drink out of a Captain Kangaroo cup with “flicker eyes.”  The stuff tastes like a milkshake, but it’s got a nice boozy kick.  Could it be liquor that puts the flicker into the eyes of the good Captain?

Indeed it could.  The punch-packing ingredient was marsala, a fortified wine imported from Italy.   So, while my peers were spooning up their oatmeal under the benevolent gaze of the Quaker Oats gent, I was swigging breakfast with a tipsy sea dog.

But considering her Italian background, it was only natural for my mom to juice up my breakfast.  And, by the time I was seven, the juice wasn’t just for breakfast anymore.  The culture of “la vita dolce,” even on this side of the Atlantic, demanded that, on special occasions, young children imbibe a small share of a celebratory drink “per buona fortuna.”  In my family, the occasion could be a birthday, holyday, holiday, or name day.  But the basic components of the celebration never varied:  pretty blue concave glasses brimful with gaily fizzing Asti Spumante, tiny barrel-shaped shot glasses filled with rich red Rosolio, and an almond-encrusted cassata to die for.   When company was present, other potent potables, such as Strega, Fior D’Alpi, Goldschlager, and Sambuca, often made their appearance as well.   I was beguiled by my requisite driblets of liquor, but not because of their flavor or potency. What fascinated me was how the stuff looked.  Like the colored water in the apothecary jars of the pharmacy window, the yellow hues, rosy tints, and golden tones of the drinks were riveting.  Even more so was their novel packaging, particularly the flecks of genuine gold floating in the Goldschlager, and the sugar-encrusted twig resting at the bottom of the Fior D’Alpi bottle. 

While I was busy contemplating the booze, the grownups around the table were busy drinking it.  Consequently, the banter would grow more animated with each clink of glasses and accompanying cry of “Salute!” Neighborhood news was usually the topic of conversation, and my mother had a decidedly unique way of disseminating it.  Whether her intention was to keep my brothers and me ignorant of certain grown-ups’ failings, or simply to mitigate the impropriety of spreading gossip, I don’t know.  But when nattering about the folks in the neighborhood, Mom would never use the natterees’ real names.    Instead, she would dub them with “code names” which would, at least to her children, make them as good as anonymous.

There wasn’t an individual in the neighborhood who didn’t have a quirk or quality, possession or profession that made him a candidate for dubbing.  The beloved local bum who was always begging for loose change was named “Dime.”  The dapper apartment superintendent with the jaunty cap was “Brown Hat,” and the owner of the white longhaired cat was called “Snowball’s Mom.” 

A typical gossiping session would sound something like this:

“I met Fancy Car this morning.  He told me that Hair Net fell and broke her hip, and had to be taken to the hospital.  The Haughty One in the rectory said that Father Nearsighted went to give Hair Net the last rites.  I heard that The Professor was at the hospital, too, probably because of his drinking.   And did you know that Coffee Grinder and Too Much Jewelry are going to be married?”

Copyright 2012©Celeste Behe

 

 

Wonderful new memoir piece by Sharon McCarthy from Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012! Perfect reading for late summer.

Carnival

By

Sharon McCarthy

 

For more than 30 years, Sharon Vidmar McCarthy has enjoyed a career in public relations and communications for Lehigh Valley businesses and nonprofits. She launched her own small firm, Surge Communications, in October 2011, assisting small business, nonprofits and individuals with social media, PR and promotional needs. Her passion, however, is in creative writing and she covets free time to write poetry and prose via several blogs

 

Growing up in the outskirts of a small town, I have a sky-full of cherished summer memories.  Each July, a flashy carnival caravan rolled in, swallowing our small village with its garish lights, boisterous noise and outlandish workers.  I loved it!  It was a cornucopia of pleasures, complete with "bad boys," ladies lacking teeth but always dangling a cigarette in their lips, decadent foods our parents didn't permit other times and untethered rides hastily assembled with a few screws and some spit. 

What drew me to it then and continues to fill the corners of my mind today, was for that one humid week in July when the Saxonburg Firemen’s Carnival came to our tiny Western Pennsylvania town - there was magic.  No, not the glittery, golden castles and unicorn kind that every young girl dreams of.   Instead it was the "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't" kind of magic.

            My friends and I would go every night, just to walk the perimeter as the calliope notes filled the air. Clockwise, then counter (because you could definitely miss something, or somebody, going in only one direction).  We were a giggling pack, showing off teased hair, experiments with makeup and our summer finest “cool.”

Part of the magic was the overnight transformation of a previously pockmarked, cracked concrete lot into a vivid portrait of mad delight. Dripping in razzle-dazzle, it was a whirly dervish, a canvas upon which we could act out our new adolescent boldness.  

Since it was fleeting, we had been issued a dispensation, special permission from the universe:  Blowing kisses to cute boys we barely knew, sneaking inside a dreary, pitch-black tent to have our palms read, devouring cotton candy until our tongues were blue and our insides queasy, and accepting dares to flirt with the ferris wheel operator until he agreed to stop us at the very top for an extra, extra long time.  And, from that vantage - our entire world was spread before us - trumpeting our arrival; beckoning us to the dance.  Sitting aboard a rocking ferris wheel car stopped at the top on a hot summer night, manifests confidence in the heart of a 12-year-old girl. Breathless, she encounters her power and she embraces it. She is a beaming Queen with a candy apple scepter.  She is Athena aboard her stalwart stag.  A fearless lioness force builds within her. She, too, could be a fire-eater!

*****

Just as quickly as it was assembled, the carnival's music went silent each third Sunday in July to continue its tour to some southern Virginia town.  I always asked my Dad to drive by the grounds so I could see where (and if) it had been.  I was struck at how tiny the vacated grounds looked -- naked, barren.  Snow cone papers strewn about, black tire marks, the pungent smell of burnt oil and rubber. 

            I grew quiet and mourned the carnival’s passing and all that it had birthed.  Turning the car around, my Dad reminded me that evening we would enjoy the first juicy sweet corn of the season, freshly picked from our garden. Harvest time was coming and with it a new school year, promising exciting challenges and opportunities.  I knew the Carnival would return -- a perfect summer ritual; a harbinger of future adventures that may include volunteering for the sword thrower!

 

Copyright 2012© Sharon McCarthy

 

 

A great memoir piece by Cathy Hilliard from the Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012

The Tarot Card Lady

By

Cathy Hilliard

 

This small piece of memoir begins Cathy's journey to Ireland and the adventures she encounters during her two years of living there. Cathy belongs to the Bucks County Writers Workshop and would like to thank her fellow members for their suggestions and encouragement.

 

Early September 2002, Wilmington, Delaware

The digital clock on the stove read 7:25 p.m. I debated whether or not to be a couple minutes late in case she wasn’t prepared. Nancy seemed apprehensive about having visitors. A few minutes passed as I flipped through a stack of mail. The clock read 7:29 p.m. I quickly got distracted looking at my newly re-finished kitchen. It had taken several years, but finally I'd removed much of the white paint on the brick wall, had a ceramic tile floor installed, and distressed the cabinets. I loved my little home. The distraction was just enough time to get to 7:30.

I closed and locked the back door and hopped down the concrete steps. Cutting across the back yard, I leapt to the driveway from the small, wooden retaining wall, and walked towards the street. The sweltering heat of mid-Atlantic summer had started to lift. Evenings had turned into cool, comfortable nights perfect for sleeping. I hesitated at the end of my driveway, giving Nancy more time. Nancy's next-door neighbor, Chris, had advised me to have a reading, “just for the hell of it.” The pragmatic side of me—the one that believed nothing until I saw it with my own eyes—had always been suspicious of that sort of thing. Eventually, though, my initial reluctance to meet with Nancy developed into irresistible curiosity.

I crossed the street and stepped into Nancy’s yard which was directly across from my driveway. Wild geraniums and ivy spread all around her house. After my fretting about perfect timing, I didn’t even have to knock on the door. Nancy stood waiting in the open entryway to her house. 

She smiled when she saw me. “Hello, Cathy. How are you this evening?” She wore a long, flowing, purple skirt and a loose-fitting, black linen shirt that fell easily over the skirt. Tonight her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Freckles covered her high cheekbones. She looked nowhere near her seventy years of age. “Come on inside.” She stepped aside to let me in. “Have you seen the place since I moved the shop into my house?”

“No, I haven’t.” 

The house was a flea-market full of knick-knacks, antique jewelry, and vintage clothing, including a lamp that would be perfect for a desk in my upstairs sitting room. I glanced around in amazement at the items filling the large space that once functioned as a living room and dining room. All of this used to be in Nancy's costume shop at the Booth's Corner Farmers Market in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, just north of the Delaware state line.

“Where are all your cats?” I asked.

“Oh,” she answered, “I’ve moved them all out to the back room and back porch. They would break everything if they were in here now.”

The only time I had been inside Nancy’s house was five years earlier to see a litter of kittens. There had been twenty-two cats in the two rooms. The kittens were flea-infested, even though their eyes had not yet opened. Nancy defined “animal lover.” She adopted every stray cat she found, neutering and vaccinating all of them. The entire Bellefonte neighborhood raccoon population also dined nightly in her back yard. The house she and her husband shared was a mere bungalow like my own, and there were two dogs there in addition to the large cat residence. 

The sweet smell of incense disguised the odor of cat urine that could have overwhelmed the house. A small table with two proportionately tiny chairs on either side sat on the right side of her “shop.” A green, flowery tablecloth covered the table which was flush with the wall. 

“Why don’t you have a seat here?” Nancy pulled out one of the small chairs. She sat in the other chair across from me and wasted no time with small talk. “Now I’m going to tell you the things I see. I try to only tell positive things. If I see anything negative, I tell those things as gently as I can.” She dealt the cards onto the table. There were different figures on each of them. Since I knew nothing about tarot cards, none of them were significant.

She pointed to the first card. “The Ten of Cups,” she explained. “You have a very positive feeling about you. It’s as though you actually have a guardian angel with you all the time.” I nodded slowly, suspiciously. “This guardian angel will keep anything really terrible from happening to you, even if you go through very difficult times.” That seemed a typical enough tarot card prediction. She turned the Ten of Cups over, pointed to the second card, and continued, discussing my job.

“This is the Seven of Pentacles.” The figure on the card was upside-down. “There’s something that isn’t quite right about your job right now. You like it, but there are some things you don’t agree with there.” Was there anybody who didn’t feel that way about his or her job, I wondered? “Is there anybody in particular where you work that you don’t feel comfortable with?” she asked. The real question was how many people did I feel comfortable with at work? 

I shook my head. “No, I don’t really think so.” 

“I see there is a person you work closely with that you would never tell any secret to, because that person would run and tell everyone. Do you know anybody like that at your job?”

I smiled in spite of myself. Even though that was another generic statement, I worked with somebody who fit that description exactly. She was the friendliest of all my coworkers, but I wouldn’t normally disclose something strictly confidential to her. “I do, I do know somebody just like that, actually.” Being able to somewhat relate to her statement allowed me to relax into the straight-backed chair.

“You’ve had a very trying time the past year or so,” she began, straying to a different topic, something any semi-observant neighbor would notice. “But things are starting to get better.” My husband and I had split up a year and a half earlier.

Nancy returned to my job, mentioning that something would happen to me in a couple weeks at work. “Do not tell anyone about it.” She carried on with more general predictions: that my parents were healthy and would continue to be, that I would be healthy myself, that money would not be an issue for me. She emphasized the money aspect. “Your very nature will prevent you from having financial troubles.”

I smiled again. She gave me a questioning look, her eyebrows raised. “I’m very careful with money,” I explained. Surely she might have perceived that, living across the street from me for five years.

She didn’t reply. Instead, she kept with her findings. “This is the Two of Cups which signifies romance. In three weeks, you will meet your soul mate.” Of course I would. No tarot card reading was complete without predicting a soul mate. I nodded for her to resume. “This is somebody unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. You will find that this person thinks very much like you. You will meet him in a very social place.”

Nancy repeated her final prediction several times which came from the Chariot card. As I walked out the door to return to my house, she mentioned it again. “You’re not going to stay in your house. Not only are you going to move out of your house, you’re also going to be moving out of this state.”

Leaving my house was the last thing I would consider doing. I had spent the past two years laboring over my house, making it exactly what I wanted. I surprised myself by answering, “I’m not going to move. I love my house.” I didn’t think I would actually react to anything she said.

“Oh no, you’re moving. And the reason for the move is a very good one. You’ll be here through the winter, but this spring you come and see me and tell me where you’re going to be moving.”

I walked through her yard on the tiny stone path that led to the street and turned to close the small, iron gate. 

Nancy repeated one last time, “Remember to come and see me about where you’re moving.”                            Copyright 2012©Cathy Hilliard

one of the "Best of the Memoir Writing Conference 2012"

Eclipse

By

Peggy Fagan

Peggy Fagan is a writer, chef, gardener, & pie baker extraordinaire. She writes, cooks, gardens & bakes in Upper Bucks County, PA with her sweetheart, Gregory & their 2 dogs, Gus & Grady.

When I was a child I used to talk to the moon.  Mr Moon, I called him. It was always on those late rides home from family gatherings. I'd sit in the back seat and look at the moon through the car window and carry on long rambling conversations. I would tell Mr. Moon about my day, who I saw, what we did, what we ate. I felt safe. I felt like Mr Moon would protect me. Between the moon glow and the sound of my parent's murmured conversation in the front seat, I would fall asleep and awake the next morning with a vague memory of Dad carrying me to bed and Mom tucking me in. I always loved the moon, and I still marvel at the bright-as-day beauty of a full moon night.
     Many years ago, sitting on a bench outside of a cafe in Lucerne, Switzerland, I gazed at the full moon shining over the Alps surrounding the lake and told my traveling companion of my childhood chats with Mr Moon. As we sat sipping hot cocoa, a shadow appeared and to our amazement and delight we witnessed a total eclipse. We sat for hours immersed in this once in a lifetime event made all the more magical by it's unexpected occurrence and our beautiful surroundings.
     Tonight, my alarm woke me at 1am, and I got up (early, even for me!), and made some hot cocoa. The wind was blowing and my chimes were ringing like so many church bells this Winter Solstice morning. I could see the beginnings of the eclipse through the bathroom skylight. I shed my robe and scampered out into the frigid night to the hot tub. There I sat watching as the Earth’s shadow covered my beloved Mr Moon. The water vapor rising from the tub caused the moon's glow to shine and shimmer as the shadow crept across it’s surface. I sang a bit and talked to the stars as they peeped out brighter as the moonlight faded. I thought of Winter Solstice bonfires, and the scraps of paper we would throw in to the flames, our troubles to burn away. I asked Mr Moon if I could throw my troubles behind the shadow to disappear and worry me no more. As I sat and pondered what to toss up to the moon I realized that my troubles are few. I have a home with a warm stove was awaiting me, my sweet love safe under the covers, my health is good, I have a job I enjoy (for the most part), I have friends I love and family too. So instead of my troubles to hide, I sent my hopes to shine down with the returning light of the glorious moon: hopes for peace, an end to strife and pain, for love to fill the hearts of mankind, for safe passage for all of those in harm's way. Those are the wishes I sent up to Mr. Moon, a tall order to be sure. But there is magic in the world, I have seen it and felt it and so I will choose to believe.

Copyright 2012© Peggy Fagan