A Family Story

Yesterday, a minor yet nevertheless noteworthy event occurred that has set me to thinking about my great-grandparents, Turner and Anna Hefley, whom I’ve written about before (see in particular “The Honey-Do List,” December 12, 2016).

William Turner Hefley, a 22-year-old coal miner, and 19-year-old Anna Isabelle Conley were married in 1891 and went to housekeeping, as they used to say, in Hillsboro, Illinois. By 1906, Anna had borne five daughters, of whom the third, Blanche Alberta, was my mother’s mother. (A son would finally arrive in 1915.)

By all accounts, Turner was a hard-working, conscientious fellow, well respected in the community. Although never well to do, he provided adequately for his family, and Anna managed the household well.

A good seamstress, she saved money by making clothes for the children, but she longed for a sewing machine to make the work easier and go more quickly. Turner thought $69.95 was too much to spend on a contraption, and although she argued that it would save money in the long run, he would not agree to its purchase.

Then one evening as he was walking home from work with his months’ wages in his pocket, Turner passed by the music store. On display in its window was a beautiful upright piano of dark, polished wood. He stood gazing at it, imagining his house being filled with music, his daughters taking lessons and becoming accomplished young ladies who could play and sing.

With hardly a thought, he went into the store and bought the piano, then rounded up some pals to help him get it delivered to his house where he installed it in a prominent place in the parlor.

The next day, her handbag weighed down with the coins she had squirreled away from her household allowance, Anna went to the dry goods store and bought a brand-new 1906 Singer sewing machine.

The last time I saw that piano was at my grandmother’s house in Litchfield, Illinois, in 1968.

The last time I saw that old Singer sewing machine was yesterday when my niece and her husband hauled it out of my basement and loaded it into their van. It has passed to the next generation, the fifth to own it and, I hope, to remember its provenance.

Does almost Ph.D. in musicology count?

When I have Facebook open on my PC, there are various temptations off to the right of the main postings -- games to play, headlines, today’s baseball games. I often don’t even see them, but something caught my eye yesterday – an image that looked like part of a cartoon, and it belonged to a group called Music Teachers. I like musical jokes, so I thought I’d click on it and see if I could look at the whole image.

I landed on their group page and was disappointed to see that even less of the drawing is visible. An introductory blurb welcomed all but warned that this was a closed (but not private) group whose membership “is limited to Private, Public, and Studio Teachers” over 18. There were three questions for me to answer, and if they had any doubt about me, my eligibility would probably depend on what the admins were able to glean about my musical background from my Facebook profile.

Well, thought I, let’s just see. I clicked on the Join Group button and tackled the first question:

In what setting do/did you currently or formerly teach music? If you are not a teacher, please answer the next question.  

I wrote: Private teacher of piano and guitar; Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching freshman sight-singing and ear-training.

That’s pretty good, isn't it? But, since I no longer teach, I had to go on to the next question:

If you are not currently a music teacher, how do you plan to benefit?

Um.  Well, I’d like to see the entirety of that cartoon, which might make me smile, or even laugh, which would increase my overall general disposition and health.

Ooh, well now, I don’t know – inadequate, probably.

Okay, how about – I could have the satisfaction of amusing people by telling stories, like the one about my guitar student Walter who wouldn’t stop looking at his watch, which is why even 40 years later, when I’m with someone who looks at their wristwatch, I automatically say, “Quit looking at your watch, Walter.”

What more could they want besides a former music major with some good stories to tell?

Well, we’ll never know now. I left the page, too afraid of failure even to try. I don't take rejection well. That cartoon might not have been funny anyway.

There was a third box, in which I was to write any number larger than 18, to show that I am not a robot. I doubt any self-respecting robot would try to join that bunch.

A walk or hit batsman doesn't count either

There's an outfit called Binny's Beverage Depot that sponsors some Chicago sports broadcasts. They have dozens of locations in and around Chicago, and we actually stopped at one last year on our way home from Iowa. I’ve visited a few liquor stores in my time, but I’ve never seen so much liquor, wine, and beer in one place in my life, so they're advertising catchphrase is apt -- If you can't find it at Binny's, it's probably not worth drinkin'.

For the last few years Binny’s has sponsored Chicago Cubs baseball, and one of their gimmicks is to donate $100 to Cubs Charities every time the Cubs first batter leads the game off with a hit. I say gimmick because it sounds a lot better than it is. They are hoping you don’t notice that even if every lead-off man in every one of the Cubs’ 81 home games gets a hit, they’d only have to fork over $8,100, and I think a place with 38 locations and a gazillion bottles of booze could do better than that.

But it’s not  going to cost them anywhere near that much, since even a really good lead-off hitter (according to MLB stats) starts the game with a hit only 39.8% of the time. At that rate there would be no more than 32 lead-off hits in Wrigley Field, costing Binny’s a mere $3,200.

I think you need to generous up a little, Binny.

Keep 'em coming.

Okay, so here I am, one of, if not the most fundamentally rotten person on the face of the earth. I am constantly grouchy, I take advantage of others, I piss people off on purpose, I kick dogs, I scare little children, and I wish everybody else on this planet would leave me alone and/or drop dead.

Then one day while logged in to Facebook on my tablet, I see a posting by some do-gooder that shows a pretty picture of a sunset, or a field with butterflies, or some such equally wholesome image over which in large, fancy lettering is superimposed some cocked-up bit of moralizing sophistry, such as, “He who plants kindness gathers love."

And all at once, without warning, out of the blue, in a sudden a fit of self-awareness, I realize the awful truth -- I am not kind.

So I instantly stop being a bitch and become a kind person for the rest of my life.

Because I read that homey little homily on Facebook.

Right.

Dorm Food

Today’s episode of “The Pioneer Woman” was all about what Ree Drummond called “dorm food.” What she meant by that was how your average college student could create meals and snacks right in his or her very own dorm room, assuming that dorm room comes with a refrigerator and a microwave oven.

When I was a college student living in a dormitory (in 1965), “dorm food” meant the cafeteria fare they slapped onto our trays as we passed down the chow line in the dining hall. We had special names for some of the things we were served, like Grilled Grease and Hockey Puck on a Bun. There was also a particularly offensive stew we called Gravy Train.

There was no fridge and no nuker in my dorm room -- no way to keep anything cold, and if you wanted hot water, you either had to settle for what came out of the hot-water tap in the community bathroom down the hall, or take a chance of electrocuting yourself with one of those little immersion water heaters.

My “dorm food” consisted of a jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines. In winter I could provide a quick breakfast for myself by putting one package from a box of Pop-Tarts on the radiator while I got showered and dressed, which I would then eat on my way to class.

Now who's a Pioneer Woman?

Mystery Solved

On a Sunday six years ago (January 15, 2012) I posted comments about the names of some of my grade-school teachers. You can go back and read the whole thing if you like, but the part I want to follow up on is this:

And then there is the mystery of Miss Lauschke.  She was my first-grade teacher, and she left us for a week or so toward the end of the school year to get married. When she came back, she told us she had a new name, so it was inappropriate for us to call her Miss Lauschke and incorrect to call her Mrs. Lauschke, but she was afraid her new last name would be hard for us to pronounce (like Lauschke was a bargain?) and since there was only a week or so left of school, she decided we could just call her Mrs. Anna.  I assumed at the time and have believed ever since that Anna was her first name.

Then today, nearly 60 years later, I see on that report card, where it says Name of Teacher, she has written Corinne Lauschke.

So, who the hell was Anna? 

Well, I now have the whole story, and I blame my earlier mistake on having been six years old at the time. It seems I misunderstood what she told us about her new name and also what her new name was.

Through the miracle my subscription to ancestry.com, I have discovered that Corinne Lauschke was married on April 25, 1953, to one Paul Anda.

She told us to call her Mrs. Anda, not Mrs. Anna.

I should go back and check those report cards to see what grades I got in “listens well.”

That's a good name for it.

It looks like spring is finally going to come to Michigan, which opens the door to many possibilities, not the least of which is the opportunity to enjoy outings that involve driving around more or less aimlessly on back roads to see what we can see. For a detailed description of this activity, see my posting entitled "Sploring" of August 20, 2010.

As I said in that post, we often add scratch-off lottery tickets when sploring, which requires stopping at mom-and-pop stores to buy the tickets and trading in the winners and/or buying more tickets at the next little store.

On one such occasion we ended up mostly north and west our home base, and quite a long way off. We stopped at a convenience store that appeared to be on the outskirts of a town, but we didn't know which one. I waited in the car while my wife went into the store to deal with the lottery tickets. Parked next to me was a pickup truck with an older gentleman at the wheel whose companion had also gone into the store.

Both our windows were down, so I leaned my head out and said to him, "Excuse me. Can you tell me what town this is?"

"This is Lakeview," he said.

I admit I do have a rather shameless tendency to be -- well, a smart ass, and before I could stop myself, I said mildly, "Oh, I'll bet you can see the lake from here."

"Oh, no," he said earnestly, "not from here.  But from town you can."

Good to know. Thank you, sir.