I want to thank Isabel Triest, and the coming Thanksgiving calendar, for giving me material for another Jottings.
Isabel and her husband, Ed, owned the Sunoco station on S. Washington and Lincoln Streets in Oxford for quite a few years.
Recently, she sent me a clipping about ‘grandma’s apron.? I relate it to my mother who made everyday meals into a family feast and my wife, Hazel.
Hazel prepared our family Thanksgiving dinner from our earliest days to our last Thanksgiving in 2001. Her apron hangs yet today on a magnetic clip on our refrigerator.
On Thanksgiving Day, 2001, having prepared everything, she went into the living room and curled up on the sofa room to take a nap — still wearing this apron over her nice dress.
Soon our 15-month-old twins, Haley and Trevor, arrived. Trevor went straight to Grandma, climbed up on her chest and hugged her.
It’s a scene I vividly remember. Just like Hazel’s apron is still in the kitchen, the picture of she and Trevor still hangs on the refrigerator in my head.
In the clipping from Isabel Triest is this sentence: ‘Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pie on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.?
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Ellen and Marty Carlson owned The Lake Orion Review (30 N. Broadway) for several years before selling it to me in 1972.
I hired Ellen (one of my great hires) who stayed at The Review until she moved to be near family in California.
Ellen’s 94, living in an assisted living facility.
She wrote recently, ‘I’m OK, but bored to death with old age. I’m tired of all them old people around here. Could use some new faces. I’m down to my wedding weight of 1938, not quite.?
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The desk in my den is an old roll-top, that I’ve turned into a holding area for stuff I think is worth saving.
Like my report card from Owosso High School from 1940, where my highest mark was a ‘B.? One B.
And, the card from Morrice Consolidated School, in 1941, where I got lots of A’s and several D’s in citizenship and Latin. And, the card from Vernon Public Schools where I earned several D’s in citizenship, and A’s, B’s all the other subjects.
Didn’t I improve a lot from age 12 to 16? I think I did not save my college credits for a good reason.
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Aging, being the process that it is, has me thinking I could change my name to I.P. Alot.