Pumpkin Faces

I love the kind of stuff that stores put on sale after a holiday, and last year's Halloween clearance at our local Kmart did not disappoint. That is when I bought three wonderful bags of body parts.

By "body parts," I mean little plastic eyes, teeth, noses, and other colorful facial features. Their purpose is to make a Mr. Potato Head look-alike out of your pumpkins. The three bags, all containing different pieces, gave the kids and me several dozen objects with which to give our leftover pumpkins one last spooky hurrah. The results, as you will see, were quite captivating.

The pumpkin faces were funny enough in and of themselves. But before I snapped a photo of each child with his or her Mr. Pumpkin Head creation, I told them to try to mimic with their own faces the expressions they had created on their pumpkins. Here is what Sooby, Pooh, and Bootsie came up with:

There are two shots of Sooby because she was our most prolific purveyor of pumpkin art, and I just couldn't pick between the two. You can clearly see that the kids had a great time with our little post-Halloween pumpkin episode--but, in all likelihood, the one who had the most fun was Googie.

And now, off to the closet where last year's pumpkin-face parts are stashed in a three-pound plastic coffee container. There may be leftover pumpkins this year too, and I need to be ready.

Disclaimer: No pumpkins were totally demolished as a result of this activity.

Bootsie's Pink Lemonade Birthday

Even though I lived it over half a century ago, I remember many things about my childhood quite vividly. When it comes to the goings-on associated with specific birthdays, however, I remember very little, and there are no pictures to nudge my memory.

I have clear recollections of only my sixth and tenth birthdays. Mom threw a surprise party for my sixth birthday, and that was also the year I got to appear with Happy the Clown on "Birthday Party," a half-hour program broadcast from the TV station in our small town.

Specifically, I remember winning the game of musical chairs on that program and, secretly, lamenting that the grand prize--a large jar of peanut butter--fell a little short of the something more glamorous I had envisioned. But I got over it--and the peanut butter, I'm sure, glued together many pairs of square Krispy saltine crackers that summer.

I begged a long time to have a party for my tenth birthday, and Mom finally caved. At that one, I remember all my friends gathering around our dining room table while I opened presents--although the only present I can actually name is a Nancy Drew mystery book titled The Whispering Statue.

So, Bootsie, chances are, you may not recall much about the great time we all had at your house nearly three weeks ago on the day you turned four. That is why I want you to be able to come here to Googie's Attic years from now and see a little about what went on then.

First, you asked for a "lemon cake with pink icing," and your mama gladly complied. That day, Pa-pa and I picked up your cousin Beenie and made the three-hour drive to your house to watch you blow out your candles and share some "pink lemonade" yumminess. Here is what it looked like:

This dessert capped off a great menu, also chosen by you, of turkey, dressing, and sweet potatoes--a little preview of Thanksgiving that your daddy cooked up for us.

The unveiling of the presents came soon afterward, and you hit the jackpot this year. Pa-pa and I brought you a couple shirts, a Buttercup (a horse from Toy Story) flashlight, and a Lamb Chop puppet. Your great-grandma sent along a puzzle.

Mama put together the cutest assortment of playthings based on a Little Red Riding Hood theme. Along with a basket and the storybook, you got a reversible doll that could be the wolf, the grandma, or Red Riding Hood herself. The best part was this bright red cape that was just your size:

Another big hit was the Little Mermaid guitar that Beenie brought for you. While you spent a lot of time that night tripping your way through the woods to Grandma's, the rest of us pretty well fought each other for a turn at the guitar, which you are demonstrating here:

Sooby, Mama, and I even burst into a spontaneous rendition of "Dooley," a bluegrass song from the old Andy Griffith Show. Pooh caught us on video with my iPhone, but with any luck that particular performance may be lost over the years.

It was definitely a night and a party to remember, and it makes me sad to realize that as the years roll by, your own memory of this fourth birthday will likely grow dim. By the time you get to be my age, many years from now, you may not remember it at all.

So you will just have to look at these pictures, read this story, and trust me when I say that your fourth birthday was a wonderful time for our family. You were the queen of the evening, and it is an immeasurable blessing to see you happy and excited and thriving in your four-year-old element.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl. Your pink lemonade birthday will be a hard one to top.

Smokey Makes History

As a Baby Boomer, I grew up in a generation of kids who loved their bears. Of course, by the time I arrived on the scene, "The Three Bears" had long been prominent in the kiddie lit world, and the market had been saturated with teddy bears. (Mine was named "Sandy.")

But with the arrival of our family's first black and white TV in 1958 came "Dancing Bear" on Captain Kangaroo and the  "pick-a-nick"-basket-stealing Yogi ("smarter than the a-a-a-average bear") who, along with his sidekick Boo-Boo, modeled for us many clever ways to outsmart forest rangers. It was at about this same time that I first became aware of Smokey, who convinced me that I and I alone had the power to prevent forest fires.

Every year since I can remember, I have seen Smokey at our Missouri State Fair, held every August in my hometown. He is a staple in the Department of Conservation building there.

This version of Smokey is a large mechanical creature, decked out, as the song says, "[w]ith a Ranger's hat and shovel/and a pair of dungarees."  Against a backdrop of forest timber, he stands ready to deliver a little mini-lecture on fire safety in his gruff bear voice anytime a little forefinger dares to reach out and push his button. After a number of such button-pushings, Sooby poses with Smokey at last month's Fair:

As it turns out, Smokey celebrated his milestone 70th birthday on Aug. 9, the third day of our Fair. Hoai-Tran Bui in USA Today (7 Aug. 1014) identifies Smokey as "the face of the longest-running public service campaign in the U.S." Conceived primarily for children, Bui reports, Smokey came about due to the danger forest fires could pose in the western U.S. due to enemy fire during World War II.

The lovable bear's popularity got a further boost a decade later when a cub saved from a New Mexico fire was dubbed "Smokey" and given a home in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. "Smokey even had his own zip code to accommodate all his fan letters," Bui writes.

Smokey's image has kept pace with the times and with modern technological trends. Not only does he have his own website, but he also has a place in today's social media. According to an Aug. 11 post on the CBS News website, Smokey has "joined Facebook and . . . has nearly 25,000 followers on Twitter."

The grandkids and I had a good time talking about Smokey's birthday. The occasion added a little something extra to our visit to the Conservation Building this year, although little Zoomie still prefers to keep a safe distance between himself and any bear,

When I told the kids that Smokey is just about the same age as Pa-pa, that really made them think. But then, when one of them asked me if Smokey had any grandkids, I had to do a little quick thinking of my own.

"I'm pretty sure he does," I said. "They probably had a big birthday party for him in the forest before he came out here to the Fair."

Happy Birthday, Smokey. Thanks to you, CBS figures the number of forested acres destroyed by fire is less than a third of what it was when you were born in 1944. Keep up the good work, my furry friend, and we'll see you at the Fair again next summer.

Teenage Girl Chickens

Last Saturday Pooh and I were sitting in his mama's van waiting for her to fetch us a couple hot drinks from their small-town coffee shop. On a day that, technically, was still supposed to be summer, the morning temp had registered 39.

Pooh had just finished a soccer game that pretty well froze his fingers and ears, and I had tried to keep warm by pacing up and down the sideline while he dribbled and kicked. (Let the record show that he scored the first goal of the game, which his team went on to "win" 5-4.)

With Mama stymied by a long line of frozen soccer fans and slow service, it occurred to Pooh and me that we would be warmer if the side door of the van were closed. (Yes, we are that astute.)  But when I got out to shut it. I was reminded that their van doesn't have a push-button door like mine does. I was standing there puzzling over how to close the door when Pooh suddenly yelled, "Pull it!"

I am always amazed by the triggering process whereby some random sensory stimulus pulls a seemingly unrelated thought up into the consciousness. In this case, I immediately associated "Pull it!" with the word pullet, meaning a young chicken.

From there my mind tripped down a neural pathway where I found a long-hidden game my dad used to play with us. Of course, I had to share it with Pooh, so I clambered back to where I could reach him strapped into a back seat and began.

I touched his forehead with a forefinger and said, "Rooster," his nose and said, "Pullet," and his chin and said, "Hen." Then, as Dad did with me many, many times, I went back to his nose and asked, "Now, what did I say this was?"

"Pullet," he said, and I said, "Okay," before giving his nose a little tug. Pooh cackled at the joke in his best chicken fashion--but he didn't know what a pullet is.  To get my facts exactly right, I consulted Mr. Google before explaining.

"A pullet is a girl chicken that is not quite one year old," I paraphrased. "She hasn't lost her feathers yet, but she has already started laying eggs." We both pondered this. "It's kind of like a teenage girl chicken," I added.

Pooh marveled that a chicken could be a teenager in just a year. I marveled at the timing of this spontaneous little episode on the day that marked the third anniversary of Dad's passing. It was almost as though he had come back for a moment to laugh and play with us.

I finally got the door shut. The drinks arrived, coffee for me and hot chocolate for him. The magic of the moment was gone, but the memory of it is still as warm and delicious as the first sip of coffee on a cold morning.  

The August Tradition

If you find the month of August little more than a hot, boring hunk of time sandwiched between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, you need to spend some time where I live. For those of us here in my little hometown, August is synonymous with the eleven-day extravaganza known as the Missouri State Fair.

I have been to this Fair every year that I can remember. As a little kid I didn't think much past the carnival on the midway, but since then I have grown to appreciate the cultural significance of the much broader fair-going experience. Among other things, I have realized that a ninety-pound watermelon is a thing of beauty and that eating a corn dog is an art to be cultivated.

Over the years I have heard quite an impressive line-up of concert performers, mostly rock and country, who have sung and played in our outdoor grandstand. There are so many I can't remember them all, but at the moment I specifically recall Alabama, Three Dog Night, James Taylor, George Jones, Brooks and Dunn, Sarah Evans, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, the Oak Ridge Boys, Hank Williams, Jr., and the list goes on.

The arrival of six grandchildren over the past seven years has added a new dimension of Fair enjoyment that looks something like this:

We are minus the two youngest in this particular photo, but here you see Pooh, Sooby, Beenie,  Bootsie, and me on a route of exploration soon to include a petting zoo of exotic animals (who will gobble a $5 cup of feed out of our hands) and the amazing, life-size pair of cows sculpted (in the manner of the painting American Gothic) from a huge block of butter and housed in a refrigerated chamber at the Dairy Bar.

You would think I might grow tired of the Fair after sixty or so years of going there every August like clockwork. But, no, it is a much-loved tradition in our town in spite of the crowds and the traffic and the flies it brings in. And with this new generation coming on strong, I don't think the Missouri State Fair is a habit I am in danger of breaking anytime soon.









 

Zoomie Hops Aboard!

Well . . . "hops" might be an overstatement. After we had talked all week about "riding Thomas," I don't think the Amtrak that came whistling and roaring into our local station on July 4 was quite what Zoomie had envisioned in his little two-year-old head.

Yeah, scratch "hops." When Zoomie, Bootsie, and I climbed aboard the Missouri River Runner at 12:46 p.m., he pretty well had a death grip on my neck and was trying to climb me like a tree.

But all was well once we were aboard and seated and got out the Fruit Loops. The thirty-four-minute train ride would take us thirty miles down the road--er, track--toward the kids' home. The plan was that Pa-pa would meet us at the next station in the van, we would grab a quick lunch, and it would be nap time all the way to Topeka.

For a little boy who loves trains, I hoped that this train ride, a slightly-late second-birthday present, would be a dream come true. Here, you can see he was feeling no pain. (The protruding tongue is what happens when, prior to picture-snapping, I say, "Where's your happy face?")

I am happy to report that our plans stayed pretty well on track with only one major derailment that involved a major diaper "event" after lunch at McDonald's. I won't go into detail, except to say that during the course of diapering two children and six grandkids, I have never had an experience quite so--well, let's just say--comprehensive, and leave it at that. (I apologize for the fact that I was preoccupied and therefore unable to document with a photo here.)

Just how memorable this event was is evident even today when Zoomie himself recalls our train ride. Inevitably, when asked about the train, he will also mention the "beed poop."

I may be able to talk about it myself some day after the therapy sessions have ended and the McDonalds' lawsuit has been settled. Meanwhile, I will take comfort in the certainty that Zoomie's birthday train ride will have a permanent place in the Annals of Googiedom.    

Bootsie's All-Holiday Cookies

It was July 3, and Bootsie had been staying here at Googie's for almost a week. In that time we had more than done justice to Pla-Doh, bubbles, storybooks, and the swimming pool. She was going home the next day. What, I asked her, was the one thing she wanted to do that we hadn't had time for?

"Bake cookies!" she said, and that set me to wondering.  What kind of cookies do you make to celebrate the Fourth of July? My cookie cutter collection offered something for just about every other holiday, but there was nothing shaped like a firecracker or a watermelon slice. Whatever to do?

As it turns out, this was not a problem for Bootsie. She surveyed the collection and selected an array of cutters based on how pretty the colors were: that gave us, among other things, a blue gingerbread man, a red heart, a green clover, a red heart, a purple Easter egg, and an orange leaf.

Add a roll of ready-made gingerbread cookie dough bought for a buck at the after-Christmas clearance and a couple leftover jack o' lantern plates, and we were ready to go. If we couldn't find a cookie cutter to celebrate the holiday at hand, well then, we would just celebrate all of them.

The enterprise was teamwork at its best. Googie did the rolling; Bootsie did the cutting (usually, I might add, from right smack in the middle). Googie transferred the shaped dough to the cookie sheet . . .

. . . and Bootsie added the sprinkles. Googie popped the cookies in and out of the oven . . .

 . . . and Bootsie performed the milk test for quality control. Happily, she was glad to report no rejects. When we were finished, we had a plate of cookies for Googie's house . . . 

. . . and one for Bootsie to take home on July 4.

With only a slight stretch of the imagination, Bootsie and I rationalized that the Fourth of July should be a celebration of all things American, including the holidays we celebrate as a family throughout the year. The fireworks and burgers at her house the next night were fun, but Bootsie and I couldn't think of a better way than our cookies to top off the holiday meal as well as her week-long stay at Googie's.