My father relaxing at the end of a hard dayThis picture holds quite a few memories for me...
There is the front door of the living room in our home in Liberia. It was a screen door, and the flies outside considered it a nasty contraption contrived by humans to ruin their day. It had a spring on it, so it slammed whenever anyone went in or out. (I can still hear that slam so clearly!) There was also an inside wooden door which we almost never closed in the daytime just to allow a little more flow of air through the house.
I can see that old uneven cement floor which my mother gazed at ruefully when people were coming to visit. It was poured in two layers. The mixture for the first layer was made with less-than-normal cement and lots of pebbles to save money. On top of that, there was a very thin cement-rich layer. The builder was sure this would provide a beautiful smooth floor for the least amount of money. It did... for awhile... until that smooth top layer wore off in spots leaving rough porous brown patches interspersed with shiny dirty-green spots of the remaining top coat. It was a killer on the knees when scrubbing it, too!
There is the "Big Chair" which matched the Settee and Small Chair and Gray Table. It had wonderful wide arms for resting a book or writing a letter. My father loved to lie down on the settee for a few minutes after lunch and supper. He would take one of the back cushions and prop it against one of the arm rests to make a wedge for his back and head. Then he would lie down, put one leg up on the back of the settee, and there he would snooze. "Fifteen minutes is all I need, Margaret!" he would say, and he would be up and out the door again to get back to work.
On the wall is the paint-by-number picture of horses which Gord painted as a kid. The matching one must be on another wall somewhere! Totally unused to the many toys and such that are everywhere here, we thought that picture set was just amazing and waited anxiously to see the finished product!
And the kerosene lamp... We did not have electricity for more than a few hours at night, and many times not at all, so when the little generator was off, we each had a lamp that we took with us wherever we wanted to go in the house. My dad made two matching lamps like this, one for Carol-Ann and one for me, to sit on the little mantel in our bedroom or be used throughout the house during the evening. He took old metal pressure lanterns and cut the bases off to provide the kerosene reservoirs. Then he soldered on a bracket for holding the chimney and three brass-colored legs on the sides of each lamp. Since we sometimes wanted a light behind a chair for reading, he made wooden holders for the lamps. The wooden stands had 3 legs just the right distance apart to match the legs on the lamps, and in the top of each of those wooden legs was a small beveled hole. The legs on the lamps fit into those holes and held the lamps safe and secure. What a genius!
I am proud to say I have my lamp right now sitting on a shelf in my dining room!
A lot of memories in one little picture!
6 comments:
How does one even start commenting on THIS!
My oh my! Well, lemme start with the lamp. You know, after I had been in Canada for a few months, one night I got into bed, pulled up the covers, leaned over the bedside table and blew with all my might on the lamp sitting there! Then, when it continued to shine, I fell back into bed laughing till the tears came! Some habits took a long time to die!
The other thing I wanted to comment on were the flies! I remember Mom giving the order to us to go kill flies because it was almost meal time! We had a chameleon who sat on the curtain rod over one window and helped with the job -- such a fat little fellow! never at a loss for a snack on his window screen! It was not uncommon for us to kill way over a hundred flies in just a few minutes! Sometimes you could even get "seven at one blow"! Ha! I know "seven at one blow" will make you laugh, J! I can't remember where the saying came from -- I think it was a story in one of the school readers -- but we made it our own when it came to killing flies!
Of course, yet again, Google had the answer! Believe it or not, it's a Grimm's Fairy Tale: Seven at One Blow
Ha ha ha, Carol-Ann! I love that lamp story. I'm sure you told me before, but I forgot it!
Let me see... "seven at one blow" came from the reader, yes, I think a story about a man who wanted to seem very strong and mighty and could kill "seven at one blow!"
Do you remember the story about me and the fly at the dinner table?? A fly came and sat on the table by me, so I raised my hand and slowly, slowly, slowly brought it down until I thought I could get him...Smack! And there he lay with his twitching legs in the air! Victory was sweet that day!! Of course, no one had been watching what I was doing until my Smack! on the table made all the dishes rattle. I guess everyone must have been shocked, because there was dead silence, then Mum said, "Jeanette, would you like to go and wash your hands!" (Notice: There is no question mark because it was not a question! It was a stern command!) And I went! Ha ha ha!
I posted my comment, and then realized you must have been commenting again at the same time! I'll have to check that out!
Only us-uns knows wheres thems flies had been ... sittin' in the bathroom bucket they were, and lickin' their chops as proof!
Well it sounds like you both have a good start on your book . . . :-)
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