My Historical Life

Some of my (distant) cousins and I get together via email occasionally to share any small new finds - we found most of the major stuff - and just to check in generally. We are scattered from Ireland to Scotland, New York, England and both the east and west coasts of Australia. We were discussing what we would be looking for first when next year the 1921 British census is released. That got me to wondering when the 1950 US census will be released: 2022! I may have to disappear for most of next year...

One of my cousins was saying that she'd turned her attention for once to her husband's family history. She described his family as dysfunctional but didn't say why. Aren't we all, I'm thinking. She said that her mother-in-law was finally opening up about the family and that an uncle was gathering family photos, remarking that no one had ever wanted them before. We all treasure our skeletons far above all the 'normal' folks in our families so my cousin may manage to turn that family's self image around. 

I have always been in awe thinking about my grandparents and all that they survived: WWI, the influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, WWII, the polio epidemic and the pre-antibiotic era, not to mention that women only got the vote in the US in 1920. I've been a bit excited - weird, I know - to be living through a pandemic myself - and I was damned determined that Bill and I would survive. Then I got to thinking that actually I've lived through a lot of other things. 

I was in the third grade when JFK was assassinated (I skipped first grade). I remember having our Spanish lesson in front of the television when the principal came in and changed the station from the PBS channel to show the news about it. We were all sent home early that day. I remember thinking I should be happy to get let out early but I was sad and a little bit scared about what all this meant.

My generation at school narrowly missed the Vietnam war. I remember growing up hearing all the foreign names every night on the news and double digit reports of deaths almost daily. I was nearly numb to it up until high school when I realised people I knew might be in those casualty figures. A lot of my friends would be going to college and thus exempt, but not everyone could make the grade - or afford the tuition. 

Then there were the civil rights rights, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby. My parents were sympathetic to the plight of black people but we worried about whether the violence might impact on us. Judge Luther Bohanon determined that Oklahoma schools would be desegregated and this led to a certain amount of violence in high schools. Something like three deaths occurred in the early 1970s. This led to high school councillors proposing that kids could graduate early if they avoided study hall periods and earned extra credits in summer school. This charted my future: I took English Literature one summer and Algebra the next and I graduated in 1972 rather than 1973. I turned 16 two weeks after graduation and grown up life began for me when most had to wait until 18 or 19. I stumbled a lot.

I remember the US Presidents during my lifetime, though I can't name them in order. I didn't take much interest in politics - it just made people yell at one another - until Clinton. People were outraged at the influence Hillary Clinton had with her husband. I thought that sounded like a great reason to vote for him even though I knew nothing about his policies. I've learned more about the political history of the US by reading John Kenneth Galbraithe's World Economy Since the Wars and Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. I was fascinated to read about things that happened during my lifetime that I only heard in passing at the time. 

I'm conscious that in the 1990 census I found myself as the main bread-winner who was also the Responsible Person in the family. My then husband had brought me a surprise 20-month-old step-son 17 days after our wedding and then informed me that 'child-rearing was woman's work'. So when I filled out the census form, I put myself down as head of the household. No doubt his son's descendants will remark that I must have been a difficult person. With any luck, I'll live long enough to see the release of the 1960 (76), 1970 (86) and maybe even the 1980 (96) US censuses!

And now I've lived through Trump and Brexit. We are now in the Covid Pandemic and the sixth mass extinction (climate change). It will be interesting to see how things unfold. 

Had you ever considered your Historical Life?

Paris to Versailles 1996

A friend of ours found time in lockdown to go through some old photos and came up with these, from September 1996, my first ever visit to France. I went with the running club I'd joined just a few months previous to run a race between the Eiffel tower and the Palace of Versailles, a distance of about 15 km, or a little over nine miles. One of the the best weekends I've ever had cost me about £200 if I remember right.

We took a train from Newcastle to London, then got the brand new Eurostar to Paris. A lot of the trip is a blur for a number of reasons. I know we had to register for the race but I don't remember doing this. I vaguely remember the cheap hotel rooms we had. 

This was the first big race I'd ever done. The race began under the Eiffel Tower and (as they said) typical of the French, it began about an hour late. This meant a lot of people needed to pee, having intended to begin fully hydrated. I remember loads of plastic bottles filled with urine along the start. Also trees draped with discarded clothing and plastic bags, worn to keep warm at the start. I was pleased to know that race organisers would collect the debris and donate the clothes to charity.

Bill ran along side me as I wasn't experienced at races. I remember a lot of forests and him making me walk up the hills, to be sure I'd manage the distance. We arrived at the finish after who knows how long. My main recollection is of tall wrought iron fences in front of grand buildings. 

Somewhere I have more photos from the finish. Everyone was very pleased to be at Versailles. Kath was especially pleased because she had traded her club t-shirt with a guy who gave her his French Foreign Legion t-shirt. She felt she'd definitely come out ahead.

I'm guessing a bus must have returned us all to Paris. As soon as we'd showered and changed Jane, who was familiar with Paris, took us to an amazing restaurant, Le Bouillion Chartier.  The queue was long, but worth the wait in the ind. The food was great, but one thing that stuck in my mind was that the waiter scribbled your order on your paper table cloth in a very nonchalant fashion. Also, the men's loo was in a corner with only a waist-high door, a big surprise. Fortunately, the ladies room had more cover.

The next time Bill and I went to Paris, we went back to Chartier and it didn't disappoint. I remember on that trip an elegant older woman in a fur stole, heels and what looked like an alligator bag walked past with such a slow, deliberate walk one couldn't not watch her. The whole restaurant stopped to watch her. 

After our group of 10-12 runners finished eating, we hit the town. Jane was our tour guide and we walked everywhere. Nothing was open, but we went and gawked at it anyhow. I remember the Seine and the Louvre and Notre Dame. I remember being really tired after the race and full of food and red wine. I think this anaesthetic was the only reason I could continue walking until 3 am. 

Somewhere near Notre Dame cathedral there was a mime who caught our attention. He appeared to be a very short gentleman standing on a trash can. He was very engaging and pulled all sorts of stunts to amuse us. Somehow I ended up standing near him for a photo and he signalled that he wanted a kiss on his cheek. After much insistence on his part, I stretched up to peck his cheek and he turned his face at the last second, surprising all of us. That got the biggest laugh. The only Frenchman I've ever kissed.

At one point in our wanderings I was desperate for a loo and everyone told me to just squat between two parked cars; they said everyone in Paris did that. I argued that I might be in Paris but I was still an American and I just couldn't do that. Fortunately Jane knew where there was a 24-hour McDonald's and it turned out I wasn't the only one.

We travelled back the next day on the train and celebrated Jane's birthday. We had the train car to ourselves. I stayed awake long enough to have some cake and toast her birthday and then I was out for the rest of the train journey. Somewhere there are some dreadful photos of me unconscious, with my head down on the table. I don't care, I had such a great time.

The Great Sewing Room Reveal - Part I

Another thing that happened at the end of last year was that in late October, following a lovely visit by Simon & Simone, Bill decided he was ready to tackled re-decorating my sewing room. I was rather nervous about this, but I was determined to have it more how I wanted it than it has been the last 15+ years. As usual, I've captured it in the beginning of disarray - even more than the usual state of this room... 

The main thing I wanted to capture was Bill's version of 'coffee and cream'. It's my fault for not being more specific and for leaving him to choose the colours. Also my fault for just living with it for all these years. I thought it was so nice of Bill to do all this painting and I couldn't bring myself to ask him to change it, though he certainly would have - with very little grumbling even.  Anyhow, I meant to have something like the colour coffee with a lot of milk in it (cafe au lait? taupe?) and a sort of creamy off-white. Instead I got what I would describe as custard yellow with chocolate woodwork. Truly hideous in my opinion. In addition there was some ancient green carpet that had suffered over 20 years of use and abuse. It wasn't expensive to start with so I can only describe it as extremely flat.

So, we had to empty the room enough that Bill could do some painting. You know how you never realise how much stuff you own until you move? Well, my sewing/ crafting/ miscellaneous stuff took over the the dining room (same sized room below this one), the tops of the wardrobes in our bedroom, and most of the upstairs landing as well as the bathroom (some of the drawers ended up being stacked on the rim of the bathtub). 

I knew I wanted a very pale pink - just a warm white, really, and grey (currently one of my favourite colours). This pink-ish colour has worked well in the dining room, but did I go get the colour code off that can in the garage? Heavens, no. The first coat of paint was a truly icy shade of icing white pink (think 1960's lipstick). I don't know how a warm colour can be cold but, trust me, it was. I did what I should have done to start with and we made another trip to the DIY store. 

I had envisioned some other shades of not-quite-white on various parts of the walls (to coordinate with the various shades of linen scraps I was thinking of for curtains) but didn't have a definitive plan so ended up with the single colour pink on the walls, white woodwork and a very dark grey ceiling, all the way down to the picture rail. I know coloured ceilings are weird, but I love to play with my 10' high ceilings and since the walls are light and the floor and ceiling are both dark, it makes the room feel even larger than it is (something around 12 x 15 ft).  My mom showed me that trick when I had my first house that had 12' ceilings. (It also had French doors between the living and formal dining room, 10' high windows, and more than one door in most rooms, all of which were way fun; sadly it was in a really bad neighbourhood, so not a smart buy. I definitely learned a hard lesson there). 

I had never seen the wood floors before this and I did think they were lovely (well, potentially). However, we live in a semi-detached house, meaning it is attached to another house, sort of like a two-story brick duplex in American terms. In spite of the brick walls and double glazed windows, the chimneys help convey sound from one side to the other. I also know from hearing some former neighbours having noisy afternoon sex - but stopping when I called out to Bill - that neither side has much privacy if one takes up the carpet. I lost no time in informing the new neighbours of this when they came to our last Thanksgiving party. I figure if I don't want them to have bare floors I shouldn't either. They haven't heeded this request entirely - we hear every one of that child's temper tantrums and I guess they get to hear me coughing all day.

I kept the large mirror, but put it on the wall next to the sewing machine in hopes of reflecting more light.

The windows face East and while the back of the house is quieter than the front, I like to sleep in on those long summer days when the sun is up at 4.27 AM. I can't remember the last time I sewed much before noon, but I was always looking for ways to string up the curtain completely away from the window to maximise the light on my work. For this reason, and because I'm lazy and this is a low priority for me, I've yet to select or make any curtains, there is only the roller blind and it's never been pulled down, unless by overnight guests. I like the view from the window as well as the light that comes in. 

I'd never seen the tile hearth of the fireplace either. I hadn't realized it was actually set into the wood floor; I'd imagined it had been a marble block like the ones downstairs and that that it had been removed. The upstairs fireplaces were one of the 'original' features that I loved. The black part is painted, but it is actually cast iron so that when the coal fire was lit the whole structure would radiate heat. The tiles are quite Art Nouveau and you know I adore that style.  

The lighting in the pictures of the fireplace demonstrates how dependent the room is for light from the windows. I never much appreciated natural light until coming to Britain. I knew a lady in Oklahoma whose office had no windows and she thought it had the benefit that she always assumed the weather was good (she is ever the optimist, Doris). I don't know much about local authority (sort of a town council) planning rules, but I believe that a room without any window is not considered inhabitable. 

Of course, either side of the chimney breast are alcoves, just over a foot deep. In my first house the fireplace in the living room was flanked by bookshelves with glass doors and small windows above. 

I thought that was fabulous, but the this wall is against the other house so windows aren't possible and I don't like to pin myself down with built in bookshelves. Even I don't need floor to ceiling shelves 4 and 5 feet wide (yet). Especially when I already had a wall of shelving.

When I bought the house, this wall had shelves and hanging space with sliding doors in front, one of which was a full height mirror. The closet was great except that the depth was determined by the door frame and it wasn't deep enough for a grown up's hanger with clothes on. Being petite and narrow shouldered, I find that children's hangers work fine for me and so I gradually took this closet over, pushing Bill into 2 wardrobes in other rooms (but only after we had moved out of this room into the front bedroom). 

And Another...

Well, what can I say? You find what you like and that's what you do. 

Funny enough, these used to be my favourite colours, back when I was in school, though they've never particularly suited me. Mostly I liked brown, I think because I thought it made me blend into the back ground - definitely wallflower material...or maybe just a mouse. I still don't mind brown, thinking of it as a variation of my mouse brown hair.

I think another reason I liked these colours is that my Grandmother (Mom's mom) always liked them. I only knew her with beautiful white hair, but I think perhaps she may have had reddish brown hair when younger. In real life, Mom's hair was likely a middling brown but when I first knew her (does that sound right?), and for all the years until she went grey, she had auburn hair. Both Mom and Grandmother surrounded themselves with earthy colours.

And it didn't hurt that they were way popular in the 1970s, when I was a teen. I don't wear earth colours any more, but these colours of yarn were what I had on hand, so they were what I used - in diagonal rows with brown trim all around.

Past Imperfect

I just finished a Julian Fellowes' novel (see the title of this post). I've passed it up time and again in charity shops as I wasn't that thrilled by his novel Snobs.  I'm a simpleton in my story preferences: I want the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose. Fellowes is far more complicated than that. Long ago I worked out that American-style thinking takes the practical A to B route. Things don't work that way in Britain or in Europe as a whole. I get the feeling they don't trust simplicity here.  In spite of having the end of this book reflecting complex social consequences that avoid white and black hats, I have to say I think this is perhaps my favourite of his works, including my beloved Gosford Park (he wrote the screenplay) and even Downton Abbey.

I'm thinking that Past Imperfect is a book to read at any time in your adult life, but perhaps best appreciated after the age of 50. I say this in part because as part of a prologue about the story behind this book, the author says

...each of us - those of us who live into our fifties anyhow - must negotiate our way through three, or even four completely distinct historical periods before we are allowed to rest. Periods with different philosophies, different truths, different social mores, different clothes.

Of course the underlying theme of most of Julian Fellowes' work is about the changing / unchanging fate of the upper classes in Britain. Other than living where I do and touring grand houses, my life has zero to do with Britain's upper classes, but it instantly hit me that I have actually experienced - negotiated - several historical periods. It's an odd realisation.

Growing up in suburban Oklahoma we were behind the times by about 10 years. I remember the stringent social rules of the 1950s/early 1960s, when ladies wore headscarves and my school clothes were shift dresses Mom made from my aunts' discarded circle skirts.  Children were seen and not heard, respectability was everything and most mothers were at home.

Then there were the late '60s and the 1970s. Fellowes remarks in his book that most of what is attributed to the sixties actually happened in the 1970s. I was so pleased to read that, as this is how I remember it.  As my year at high school edged towards draft age during the Vietnam war, we all seemed to split into groups with labels: hippies, bookworms (the pre-nerd word) jocks, cheerleaders, rednecks, soc's. The rich kids only came to my school in the summer to make up classes they'd failed at their private schools. I took up with a few of them as I worked towards early graduation. Funnily they seemed to find comfort in my mother's company. I was undecided where I fit with these labels and changed my clothes like costumes, drifting briefly everywhere except among the athletes; who knew I would one day run marathons? After high school I favoured ragged bell bottoms, peasant blouses and long hair, but had ambitions to attend college, not 'drop out'. I rebelled against the prim and proper rules, against having authority lean on me, but not against learning or earning.

Desk at Dyrham Park

Then the eighties, nineties and naughties all seemed roughly the same to me: my corporate life in suits and bobbed hair.  I loved my work and put most of my energy into it. Making poor choices of spouses meant work life  was usually more pleasant than home, at least until Bill.  It seemed to me that when I came to Britain in 1995 they were just really getting into the swing of 'work hard, play hard, spend it all' when I had settled more into the frugal lifestyle which didn't pick up here again until the Great Recession. There were apparently other recessions but they were under my radar. I was busy at work during the day, busy at night school evenings and weekends. Busy working to improve my future, to keep my brain engaged on something other than my home life. Most people I knew worked long and hard at whatever they did, trying to get ahead. Those with families struggled to balance work and family commitments. Eventually I realised that work and home had finally reversed for me: work was a nightmare, sucking my time and energy for its own purposes. I finally preferred to be at home.

I retired in 2007. I don't dress up much these days. I don't allow others to use me to to their own ends. As soon as I have that creepy feeling of being dragged against my will, I leave. Frugality is fashionable again, at least it is in my crowd.  I get the feeling that labels are 'important' again: politics are polarized, you either have or you have not. I don't see this as positive at all.  Here in Britain religion seems more about enjoying community than about exercising power, but I can't say I'm well informed. I feel wealthy not to have to work any more but I live carefully, conscious of my erratic income. My perception of society today is from the vantage of retirement and this has to be a skewed point of view. I'm not sure what are the social mores, the truths of today except that people seem to worry more about their employment security. The social safety net that existed in Britain for the past half century is eroded. I'm grateful to be out of the rat race, but though I'm reasonably far from the financial edge, I feel these are precarious times.  I wonder if there will be another period of relative tranquility in my lifetime.

Do you ever have the sense that you have 'negotiated several distinct historical periods'?

Hanging Out

When I was very young, Mom and Daddy liked a local bar where they could play shuffleboard (that would be deck shuffleboard, I believe).  This practice declined when I got older and couldn't be content with stacking beer caps; I think laws got a bit stricter too.  

Tea with Lucy

 
When I was growing up I spent a lot of time in dance studios, either taking classes or waiting for my parents (who were photographers) or my dance teacher (Mom's best friend). 




I spent quite a bit of time at friends' houses playing in their rooms or in the back yard.  As a child, my entire street was populated by young families with children and we all rode bikes up and down our street, with cars having to give way. 





When I got slightly older my friends from dance class, and somehow the same aged kids of my dance teacher's other close friends too, took turns holding parties that involved a lot of dancing.  Mom let me paint anything I wanted on my bedroom walls and so my friends would come over for a 'slumber and painting' party, sort of an 'at home graffiti' thing.  





Before school some of us hung out at a donut shop near our bus stop.  In the summer, my girlfriends and I walked our dogs a lot, stopping at the regular haunts, usually convenience stores, for cold drinks - Slurpees, I think they were.  




When I was older, my best friend and I practically lived at a pool hall where her big brother worked. My mother was right to worry about this place, I'm grateful to have been left unscathed.  Most of my spare cash went into the juke box, but I learned a lot from my people watching there.  I left them all behind when I started university.





In the summers, we spent every day we could cooking ourselves at the local pool.  For a couple of years my best friend's father managed the local YMCA and I found myself there a lot.  Our local shopping mall, a square with the library, the dry cleaners, a donut shop, the supermarket, a shoe repair shop, a coffee shop, a Mexican restaurant, a few dress boutiques and a convenience store was a gathering place for kids.  

Here in Britain kids seem to hang out in parks after dark or at local football (soccer) club houses, sometimes at Metro stations or a skateboard park. Most are glued to their electronic gadgets, so I'm not sure it matters much where they congregate, since they largely seem to ignore one another, but I'm sure this is not actually the case.  I read about a shop owner who was tired of the kids hanging out around his place and he played a high frequency sound that older folks can't hear to drive off the kids; another just used classical music. 





When I joined the running club, a bunch of us gathered at the pub afterwards one or two nights a week.  I couldn't keep up with their rounds any more than I could keep up with the running; fortunately I didn't need to.  When retirement gave me my precious gift of spare time, it became one of those challenges again to figure out where to hang out.  



The local community centres in the villages up and down the coast all have groups that meet for all sorts of reasons:  dance, exercise, crafts of a wide variety.  I hang out with sewers and knitters and crafters.  Mind, I quite like hanging out at home with Bill, just pottering around, cooking or gardening or going for beach walks.



I know other ladies do coffee mornings at their church or visit stately homes, take bus tours around the region. When I meet up with friends for lunch or a day out, we tend to hang out by visiting charity shops, museums, galleries, coffee and gift shops and lately sewing and craft shops.  

Simply Fabrics, Wallsend High Street

As Womens' Institute members we can visit WI meetings most nights of the week throughout the month and we've enjoyed visiting a couple of other groups to see what they do. 



  

As much as we like the posh places, I find loads of history and interesting things in the not-so-posh places as well.  You know, where you're happy during the day with lots of people around but wouldn't like to be alone after dark.  I do feel that only staying in one's comfort zone leads to a very one dimensional life.  One day Lucy and I visited Wallsend, a mixed bag of a place (birthplace of Sting).  We went to the coffee shop at Wallsend Hall.  It is the former home of Sir G B (George Burton) Hunter, a Tyneside shipbuilder.  It's now an NHS hospital, but I've no idea what goes on there.  We just went for tea and teacakes.  We liked the mismatched tea cups; the vintage vibe is quite popular these days.

Lunch with Vivien

Then we went to find a small fabric shop that has moved around a lot; I loved their window display. Another day I took Vivien there to show her a possible source for remnants.  She and I also went to North Shields for lunch to a very quiet restaurant with a fun lounge area by the bar.  



Where did / do you like to hang out?

Tightwad Gazette Revisited

I owe Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced decision) a lot, in fact I need to thank her for pretty much my entire lifestyle these days.  She's the one who taught me the game of frugality.  It started out as a means of survival (take a spend-thrift second husband with a good-weather dependent income; a surprise 20-month-old step-son - yikes! the price of diapers, not to mention daycare!; a secretary's salary; a recently deceased father who left thousands of bills at double-digit interest rates along with a house worth keeping; oh, and an ex-husband who let the house we shared go into foreclosure...with my name on the mortgage; did I mention I was working on finishing a master's degree in night school at this time?). 

Amy didn't just share tips about how to save money, she wrote brilliant editorials that helped me develop a different attitude.  She changed how I looked at money; at goals; at other people, particularly The Jones's; at other resources such as time, energy and various materials; at advertising and at the consumer society in general.  She championed the use and development of creative approaches and of tightwad experiments.  She taught me the guidelines of the game and made frugality fun.  There was also a hefty helping of respect for the environment and gratitude for the gifts of a loving family and being raised with a work ethic.    If you haven't ever read The Complete Tightwad Gazette, I can't recommend it highly enough, even if you don't feel you need to be frugal.  Interestingly, the used prices on Amazon.com/co.uk suggest that people are taking her ideas more seriously these days.  Not that I've ever owned the book myself.

I still cherish my original, now tattered, newsletters.  In the years that I barely kept my head above water, I looked forward to receiving each issue like a drowning person welcomes the life raft.  

Beyond survival, tightwaddery became a means to get what I wanted (to own a home in my new city, Salt Lake City, where the rents were double those in OKC and house prices were soaring).  My mom died less than two years after my dad, I left my hometown of 35 years for a new job (I'd finished the master's) and my marriage was increasingly hard work; we didn't share the same goals at all.  Playing the game was a welcome distraction from sad realities. 

When the marriage finally ended, I wanted to keep the house I'd scrimped and saved for.  This meant saving up again to pay out half of the equity, almost half the original price in only a couple of years.   My ex had a small house in OKC we'd re-mortgaged together for a better interest rate.  I'd learned from my first experience and required that he take my name off that mortgage before I paid him the $17,000 equity I owed.  It took him a while to arrange that, giving me just enough time to save up.    

When I moved to the UK,  my rent income was useful in helping to save for a deposit on a house here.  I lived in one room near work for 10 months, while saving and searching for another house.  I eventually paid off the SLC house in 8 years, not in the 15-year life of the mortgage (I saved $44,000 in interest by chosing a 15 rather than a 30 year mortgage).  In the UK I took a 30-year mortgage but paid off the house in 10.   Can you see why I like Amy's game? 

The game of frugality eventually allowed me to leave an increasingly stressful job and to retire at 51:  I had a paid-for home, some rental income, a sizeable savings account and zero debt.   Mind, I don't discount Bill's contribution to my retirement, providing a backdrop of added security in the event my resources failed (rent income/expenses are not entirely reliable).   Also, one of the best of Bill's many sterling qualities is that he understands and likes to play the game.

I'm now in a position where I need to re-evaluate my goals.  I have reached most of the ones I've had in the past.  I think I'm in a pretty secure position, but I want to check.   My finances are a bit scattered - chasing interest rates here in the UK could be a full-time job - and I need to pull myself together a bit.  Amy also wrote about reaching this point.  I want to go find that editorial and remind myself what she had to say.  Gretchen Rubin talks about 'spending out', something I have been trying to do a bit of lately.  In a conscious way.

In addition to doing this stock-taking, I have pulled out my dear old newsletters and re-organised them by month.   Instead of doing the chronological journey through Amy's publishing career, I have all of January's advice together.  There are many of her ideas I've yet to try. 

Some have to do with raising children, buying fuel for stoves or buying and maintaining cars.   These aren't for me (Bill has decided ideas about what car he wants to drive and I leave that entirely to him).  I've never much pursued the pie and cake ideas before, but Bill would enjoy eating these.   As the mother of six children, Amy's ideas about efficient organisation and use of time were always practical and why I still read some mommy-blogs these days.  I will look forward to re-reading her advice about tightwad decorating (start with cleaning and re-arrange what you already have).   I may not incorporate a great many new ideas into our routine, but I'm certain to come away with my frugal habits shined up and my happy resolve strengthened.

You see, it's not a game for me anymore, it's part of how I am.   And whatever words some people like to throw around like 'cheap' or 'dreary', today I have a relatively comfortable, low-stress, contented life in a place I love, with people I love.   I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have been able to do that without the tools Amy gave me.  Making careful, conscious choices about money made me focus on what was important to me.  Whatever unhappiness there was on the road to here, I'm very pleased and grateful to be in the position I am today. 

Thank you, so much, Amy.

55 Today

This is my birthday party in 1960. The stringy-haired blonde kid is me. The grown up lady is my Aunt Rita. She would have been just shy of 16 there. The little boy on my right (your left) is Tommy, from across the street. My first crush. Isn't he cute?

Never mind. My current crush, with a remarkably similar hair cut - you know, Bill - is taking me to dinner tonight. We're going to Avanti.


I've searched and searched for any words of wisdom I might share about turning 55, but I don't have any.   All that comes to mind is that getting older beats the alternative and I'm still having a great life.  

I'm crossing my fingers that this statement will hold true for most of my remaining days. 

Dimwit Day

I'm pretty useless at jokes, me.  Can't remember them, can't tell them, don't get them half the time.  One joke I will always remember is the one I heard my Uncle Pat tell my parents one weekend when I was a child.  They laughed heartily and I tucked it away, happy to finally have something to share at my first grade classroom's 'show and tell'.  In spite of the fact that I didn't have a clue what it meant.

There were these two rabbits, see, picking their way through a carrot patch.  The first rabbit would choose a carrot and then the second rabbit would join him.  Then the first rabbit would find another and the second rabbit would follow.  By and by, the first rabbit said to the other, "Don't eat that carrot, it's pithy.'  The second rabbit asked, 'How do you know?'  The first rabbit replied, 'Because I just pithed on it.'

When I stood up and told my joke, no one laughed.  I wasn't particularly embarrassed, I just remember shrugging my shoulders and going to sit down, having encountered yet another of life's vast mysteries.  When Mrs. Cartmill called my Mom to tell what I'd done, they apparently both thought it was hilarious, but after Mom explained what the joke meant I remember blushing so hard it hurt.  

I didn't do any more public speaking for the next seven years, and even then only because my English class required it.   I wasn't scarred for life, thankfully.  I'm actually a fairly confident public speaker now and have been for some time; I just make damned sure I know what I'm talking about.

So here's wishing you a happy April Fools' Day with hopefully no terribly painful jokes.  The origins of this day make for an interesting read, if you're curious.  Apparently you should be safe after noon.

Cars Loved & Left - to Present

The final part (for now) of a four part series.

I lived my first four-and-a-half years here in England without a car.  I bought my house because it was near a Metro and happily hopped on buses where the Metros didn't go.  However, I had an evil boss and was keen to escape to a job in Morpeth.  I took driving lessons and two driving tests and bought a P-reg Peugeot 106.   Here in the UK, ordinary car license plates, ie not 'vanity tags', tell you the age of the car and the place of manufacture.  You can read all about that here if you like.   

My red (1996) Peugeot was a challenging drive, heavy as anything and without power steering.  In spite of a standard transmission that I pushed hard, I felt sure the other drivers would run me over every time I got on the A19.

I paid cash for this and subsequent cars in the UK.  Banks would give me a personal, unsecured loan if I lied and said I was buying appliances and music equipment, for example.  However, if they knew I was buying a car, the bank would require me to take out a car loan and there were penalties attached to paying it off early.  I think that is despicable and I'm too stubborn to give them that much authority, so over here I've always bought two-or-three year old cars and paid cash.

I did manage to get up to Morpeth, and enjoyed a lovely drive into the countryside against the prevailing traffic and a peaceful, if frantically busy time, at work.  I enjoyed the drive even more in my S-reg VW Polo.  The Peugeot 106 was just too bulky and I felt endangered in it.

I can't remember if it was and 3- or 5-door (I think it's strange to count the hatchback as a door, but there you are) but it was this strange blue-violet colour and I referred to it as the Purple Polo. It had plenty of pep, but mechanical problems led me to trade it for another.

As you can see, a lot of cars over here are pretty much of a muchness:  small boxes of only slightly varying shape.  One can buy larger cars, but they hog the road and make people think ugly thoughts about the drivers, so it's not recommended.  Park the wrong car in the wrong place and it may even be 'keyed'.  That doesn't mean unlocked, it means a long ugly scratch down the side, made with a key or similar sharp object.  I've never bought anything but ordinary little boxes as a car has come to mean only one thing to me:  (mostly) convenient transport.  I say mostly because parking restrictions in some places can make having a car an outright liability.

However, it was the arrival of March/April  and my need to renew insurance, safety inspection (called MOT - ministry of transport) and road tax that caused me to sell my last car just a couple of weeks ago.   I don't know if you'll have heard about this in the US, but the European Union has ruled that basing insurance premium based on gender is discrimination and so women's car insurance costs are set to skyrocket.  I thought the costs were already scandalous given my no claims record.  You cannot buy only liability car insurance here, or at least the premium is no different to full cover, so I couldn't get under £250 and of course they inched up every year anyhow.  

It was another Peugeot - this time a '52' reg (they changed their system when they got to the end of the alphabet) 206.  It happened to be an automatic with only 15,000 miles on it when I bought it seven years ago.  The fact that it only had 21,000 miles is another reason not to own a car:  I simply don't drive it often enough.  I did shy away from getting rid of my 'independence', though I knew Bill's car would normally be available to me.  He doesn't drive his much more than I did mine these days, actually.

I put off selling it and made Bill come with me for moral support.  We didn't discuss the price I would ask and he thought I could have got more, but I just wanted the transaction behind me, a sharp amputation.  Once done, however, there hasn't been much phantom pain, I must admit.  I've only given it perhaps a second and third thought and nothing more.  It truly was surplus to requirement.  I wouldn't say I'll never own another car, but it looks unlikely in the foreseeable future.  The way I look at it I've got several hundred pounds - not to mention the price of the car - extra cash to play with.  I can get a lot of bus/metro trips out of that...

Cars I've Loved and Left - Part II

Obviously, being Part II, this is a continuation from Part I.  About two years after I got my first car it developed problems other than a crumpled side and a wonky tailpipe.  For a while I drove one of my Dad's cars, a 1964-ish Pontiac Catalina. It was sort of navy blue but the oxidising paint gave it a sort of iridescent multi-colour look.  

It had power steering and power brakes, which were way fun, but driving it was sort of like wearing a dress with a 25 foot train for everyday: there was just too much of it!   I felt much the same about the long bench seat in front.  I had to slide into West Texas to unlock the passenger door.  

By then I was waitressing at Pizza Hut.  One night I was driving home after closing, about 2am and some guy who was keen not to miss his flight back to Army duty decided he needed to turn left from the right hand land.  I was in the way.  The damage he did to my car - something to do with the wheel - was more expensive than the car.  It is likely that neither of us had insurance back then either.  My Dad had the habit of buying clunkers and driving them til they died, so this wasn't a huge loss, and he happened to have a spare for himself.  Still, public transport in OKC was next to non-existent so I needed another car.

As usual, my Aunt Rita had a car to trade off, a 1972 Volkswagon Karmann Ghia.  I took out my first car loan to buy it from her.  My Dad co-signed my loan with Associates Finance.  He called them loan sharks - it will have been a ridiculous rate of interest - but they were the only folks he could do business with.  That was one of my early financial lessons:  people with bad credit pay through the nose.  I remember the payments were 'only' $83 a month, but the seemed to go on forever. 

The Karmann Ghia (named Gretchen - the only car I ever named) was noisy on purpose - it had something called 'headers' that made it growl a little instead of the rin-tin-tinny sound Volkswagons normally made.  It had a standard transmission with a stick shift on the floor.  It sounds daft now, but that stick shift was so cool to me back then.  The engine was in the rear and the 'trunk' wasn't big enough for anything, but it had a cute little hidey-hole behind the back seat which folded down.  It was low to the ground and wonderfully fun to drive, but I was terribly irresponsible with its upkeep.  When it developed motor problems my Dad identified a good mechanic through a work contact.  

Eddie re-built the engine of my Karmann Ghia for me.  We also dated for a while.  Eddie drove my dream car:  a 1969 Chevy Corvette.  

We'd go out to eat and on the way I'd ask him to drive on and off the freeway just so I could enjoy the feel of the car hugging the road on those sharp turns.  

He was a nice enough guy and we had good times together.  I think his day job was something to do with airplane mechanics and he made pretty good money.    But then he traded his Corvette for a '68 Mustang Shelby Cobra.  He obviously felt he'd traded up, but Shelby Cobra did nothing for me.  I thought those fin-things behind the windows looked like shark's gills and they gave me the creeps.

I'm sure it wasn't just about the car, but more that at some point I decided I didn't want a permanent relationship with grease-stained hands, an ex-wife and two small children.  I moved on, but not before Eddie had found me a different car to drive:  a 1968 Datsun Roadster convertible.    

I liked Eddie, but I left him rather easily; when I left Gretchen I sat in the driver's seat for the last time and blubbered.  I felt so sad and so guilty for trading her in.

A little while later I dated a guy who drove a rag top Cadillac.  An older model, green, nothing to get that excited about.  I could be snide and say 'him or the car', but there was one perfect, happy day, driving with the top down in the hills around Lawton with Lovely Rita blasting.  

I enjoyed my Datsun, in the sunshine.  The top was tricky to get up and down - 'up' being the more important part with Oklahoma's sudden showers.  Also, I decided convertibles were a bit dangerous.  

One Friday after work I had a whim to drive down to Ardmore to spend the weekend with a longtime girlfriend.  On the way I encountered a truck driver who was attracted to my car.  Or maybe it was the long blonde hair or the tube top and cut offs on a 20-year-old.  He would get in front of me and slow down, but would speed up when I tried to pass.  After a while I got well and truly fed up and did 93 miles an hour (without a seat belt) to get rid of him.  Between the tricky top and that nasty experience, I was lukewarm on the car thereafter.

For a while I had a roommate, Missy, who drove a new Mazda RX-7 with the rotary engine.  That will have been around 1975-1976.   She let me drive her car once; it was a dream, but it cost more money than I was prepared to pay for a car.  By that time I'd moved out from home and had to pay for boring things like food and utility bills.  

Did you love and name your cars like pets?