My Friend Hazel

Hazel Pontius Collmer was the first “elder” in my life, other than my grandparents. I encountered her in the late 1970’s, when she was making the best of her twilight years at Beechwood Retirement Home, having out-lived two husbands. The driver who ran errands for the residents used to bring her paintings in for framing when I worked at a nearby frame shop. She included detailed notes on the type of framing she desired and we all adored her dreamy little watercolors.

One evening I had gone over to Beechwood to see my paternal grandmother, who lived in the wing with the dementia patients. Grandma was a lovable little dear but she really did not remember who I was and this made for unsettling and abbreviated visits, motivated more, I must admit, from familial obligation than anything else. I remembered that Mrs. Collmer lived there as well so one evening I decided to try and find her.

Thankfully this was in the days before all of the “privacy concerns” so I asked for and received her location. I knocked on her door and introduced myself as her framer. She chuckled and responded that she had always assumed her framer was a man but she looked me up and down and must have decided I was OK because she invited me into her small apartment. She was watching MacNeil/Lehrer (quite a refreshing change from the game shows blaring away in the rest of the building) and she shushed me until the segment she had been viewing was finished. It was a story about the first woman to be appointed the head of an Ivy League university.

Mrs. Collmer shut off the television, turned to me and asked, “Now, what would you have worn for an interview like that? How would you have done your hair?” She thought that the woman had not looked businesslike enough for such a distinguished position. Mrs. Collmer always dressed impeccably: she had a wardrobe of beautiful dresses, matching shoes and handbags, her hair was always perfectly coiffed; she always seemed to look like she was heading out the door to attend a concert at the philharmonic or perhaps conduct a board meeting.

By the time I met her, she was ninety-something and I was thirty-something and we soon became fast friends. I would go visit my grandmother for five or ten minutes and then spend several hours with this delightful woman who soon insisted that I call her Hazel. She had moved into the retirement community after the death of Mr. Collmer, her second husband who had been her first love. This was the best story!

When she was in high school she was friends with and eventually the beloved of Mr. Collmer, who was a year ahead of her. He went away to college after he graduated, and they corresponded regularly. He told her stories of his new roommate, a Mr. Pontius, and he told Hazel, “I am bringing him home with me for Thanksgiving, he is a grand fellow - you will just love him!”

Of course, much to Mr. Collmer’s dismay, Hazel did indeed fall in love with Mr. Pontius (and he fell in love with her). They were married for over fifty years until his passing, whereupon Hazel serendipitously reconnected with Mr. Collmer whose wife of many years had also passed on. So the childhood sweethearts were reunited (in their seventies) and married for over a decade.

Hazel’s room was decorated with the best pieces from her art collection and her favorite furnishings. When she had moved into Beechwood in her eighties she knew she needed something other than her musical pastimes to keep her occupied, so she took some watercolor classes from James Kuo at Rosary Hill. Dr. Kuo was delighted with her bright spirit. A medical condition caused her hands to be quite shaky so he convinced her to paint clouds and skies and seascapes and foliage - not try to aim for straight lines - go with the flow, as it were. Soon I had framed so many of her paintings that I convinced her to have a one-woman show at the Rosa Coplon Home that lent its wall space to local artists for month-long shows.

Hazel Pontius Collmer and me.

 The residents and staff at Rosa Coplon could hardly believe that this artist was older than most of their residents! Hazel displayed her works there three years in a row and sold quite a number of pieces each time (I bought quite a few myself). At the last show she made a personal appearance at the opening, gave a brief talk, and ended up by demonstrating her daily exercise routine. My dad was holding a microphone for her and he really had to scramble to keep up with her contortions.  Someone asked her how it felt to be so old. Hazel replied, “I will let you know when I feel old.”

Hazel had been born in 1888; she was one of the first generation of women to pursue education beyond high school. Mr. Pontius worked in the upper echelons of management in the YMCA and they traveled all over the world on for both business and pleasure. She played the violin and sang in choral groups. She was straight-backed and tall (she had much better posture than I did!), and she strode through her kingdom with a slender silver-headed cane (which I now have in my possession). Every night before she went to bed she walked down every hallway of her entire building complex and checked to make sure all of the exterior doors were locked and secure.

I remember she told me she was always so excited each time a new resident moved in to Beechwood. She lived with the everlasting hope that someday she would find a kindred spirit - someone who could discuss great books and music and world affairs, and someone who could hear well enough to carry on the conversation. Someone to talk to, a friend her age, a peer – that is what she sought and I do not think she ever found such a person. That may be why she and I became so close – she was desperate! She did give me the perceptive advice not to marry my second husband (which I of course ignored) and today when I look at a plastic grocery bag or a plastic container of any kind, I think of her comment almost thirty years ago that someday such items would be abandoned as being wasteful of the planet’s resources.

In 1985 she fell, broke her hip and her daughter hastily arranged transportation to Buffalo so she could make preparations to move her mother back with her to North Carolina to be close to the rest of her family. Humor usually pops up in the darkest of circumstances and I remember laughing that even though Hazel was suffering from the sudden alteration to her circumstances in addition to the discomfort from her shattered hip, she still managed to be fashion-conscious enough to chide her 75-year-old daughter for carrying a purse that did not match her shoes. Her daughter responded, “I am sorry, Mother, but I was in a hurry to get here to be with you!”

After she moved out of Beechwood, I saw her one last time. I drove down to Asheville with all of her possessions shoehorned into my rusty old van. Although I had a delightful stay with her daughter in an enchanting old farmstead in the middle of a wild and beautiful woodland, visiting my dear Hazel in the inhospitable hospital setting was just not the same as our vibrant get-togethers from days gone by; she was suddenly small, powerless and forlorn - such a pale imitation of her former effervescent self. It was a heartrending visit.

Hazel passed away in 1986 at the age of 98.

 Seascape, Hazel Pontius Collmer

Kitchen Nightmares or Why I am not a Cook

The Bishop’s Wife

My mother was never a good cook on her best days but when company came for a meal she pulled out all of the stops and tried her best to deliver edible hot food to the table in a timely fashion.

This was of course complicated by the fact that more often than not these company meals were served right after church on Sunday and folks expected to walk in the door of the parsonage and take a seat at the dining room table. Mom was expected to be present at the church service, of course, and yet there was this meal she was supposed to be preparing from scratch.

The meals were usually based around roast chicken or roast beef. Mom had those two down pretty good – she could throw in potatoes with the meat and over boil up some green beans or carrots pretty fast when she made the mad dash to arrive home before our guests. Her best dessert consisted of store-bought angel food cake, layered in chunks with great dollops of vanilla ice cream and blobs of chocolate syrup and then re-frozen in an angel food cake pan and served with Ready Whip. No baking, no cooking – only assembly required – mom loved recipes like this!

Methodists don’t have a lot in the way of a church hierarchy – the men my mom lived in fear of having to feed were the District Superintendent (DS) or horror of horrors, the Bishop. The DS was more of a regular fellow and had a closer relationship with the ministers – saw them more frequently, perhaps because he oversaw smaller territories than the Bishops.

One day the Bishop and his wife were scheduled to visit our church – the Bishop would preach the sermon that morning and then they would eat Sunday dinner with us, and they would be off to their next function.

Mom had foolishly decided to venture outside of her established repertoire of roast beef and roast chicken – she told dad to buy steak. Dad was not very pleased with the cut of the steak that was available but mom became determined to serve this. It was not a really expensive cut of meat and after her usual routine of a lengthy and low temperature cooking procedure, the steaks ended up very much akin to shoe-leather.

During the meal there was little conversation as everyone was occupied with the cutting and the attempts at chewing and then swallowing this very dry steak. My mother was mortified by all of this and tried gamely to move on to dessert by clearing away the dinner plates. The Bishop’s wife was still sawing away at her steak and my mom gently told her, “That’s OK, you don’t have to eat that.” The woman stubbornly hung onto her plate and said, “I’m going to finish this if it kills me.”

I remember that the Bishop and his wife beat a most hasty retreat right after dessert that day.

Breaking the Mold

My grandmother (mom’s mother) was a fabulous cook – her specialties were just about everything – roasts, pies, cakes, cookies, and casseroles. She had her written recipes but she was a “pinch of this” and a “dash of that” kind of cook – running on sheer instinct.

This instinct skipped my mom’s generation (as well as mine!). Mom suffered mightily for this imagined flaw in her character: after all, she was a Minister’s Wife and she felt she was expected to possess many talents to serve each parish as the preacher’s helpmeet. Other preachers had wives who played piano or organ, sang in or led choirs, taught Sunday School – but mom’s health and her shyness precluded any of these.

Mom struggled with cooking – she had the decorating and clothing aspects of entertaining down cold but the food part eluded her. Church food committees soon learned that it was best to just ask her for a nice Jello salad. Of course in her unceasing endeavor to make a good impression (for the sake of my father), she usually made the attempt to create a Jello mold.

Lime Jello, green grapes, banana slices, canned pineapple chunks – these were the main ingredients of the Jello mold. That part was doable. The tricky bit was the unmolding of the ring. Manys the time when mom resorted to slipping the pan into a sink full of warm water – to encourage the Jello ring to depart the mold. Of course the pan would sink into the sink and water would dissolve the Jello and green grapes and banana slices and the pineapple chunks would be found floating lazily in the sink full of green-tinged water. And mom would be found flung across her bed, weeping.

The Birthday Cake

Dad and I arrived back home in Albion very late one evening – we had been out visiting hospitalized church members all the way over in Rochester. It was Dad’s birthday, October 13, and we had been gone all day – we had pretty much forgotten about celebrating.

We entered through the back door into an almost completely dark house (most unusual since my mother usually kept every light on in the place when she was alone). Mom was nowhere to be found but there, in the corner of the kitchen, on top of the chest freezer and illuminated by one gooseneck desk lamp, was a cake.

This was not just any cake: this cake had a rusty orange zinnia with a broken stem drooping in the middle of it. A large white candle kind of angled out of the cake like a cannon. The white frosting was flecked with chocolate cake crumbs; the frosting was all over the cake plate. There were little birthday candles stuck here and there into the cake’s frosting and we also found several egg shells and a spoon wedged into this amazing creation. A few pieces of the cardboard cake mix box were also sticking out of the frosting.

Mom soon emerged from the darkened dining room and related the story of this cake. As usual, it was a layer cake that she had tried to bake. And as usual she had encountered problems removing the layers from the pans. When she had finally succeeded in prying the chunks of cake out of the pans, they really weren’t in “layers” anymore so she tried to “glue” everything back together with frosting. A few toothpicks inside to hold everything in place – voila!

Mom always had trouble with layer cakes because the layers never came out of the oven flat or even – they always dipped in one direction or the other – that is why she had to use toothpicks to hold the layers together. It was many, many years later that I discovered that ovens came with leveling feet – and that my poor mother’s years of problems over unlevel cake layers was not her fault but the fault of unleveled parsonage ovens!

But on this day in October this particular birthday cake was not cooperating with her and soon crumbs were in the frosting and frosting was everywhere. First she got mad - then she got creative. And because enough time had elapsed between when she made the cake and when dad and I came home, we all had a good laugh over the cake and cut it up and ate it. We just had to be really careful and watch out for those toothpicks!

The Best Christmas Ever

1952 was the year I turned six. I could steal a line from Dickens and say it was the best of times and the worst of times. My mom and I were taking turns being sick; she with what I now believe to have been severe and frequent migraines and me with the usual array of childhood maladies such as chicken pox, mumps, measles, croup, etc. I remember one event which resulted in my dad carrying me across the park in front of our parsonage to the town doctor who painted my mouth with some ghastly purple stuff. I found out many years later this purple stuff was gentian violet used as a cure for thrush.

I also remember having to be dosed with a daily spoonful of cod liver oil because I “needed iron.” I could never figure out what the iron had to do with the medicine, but my mom and I arrived at an unusual ritual for my dosing: I used to crouch under the kitchen table for this hated spoonful and she would thrust the spoon under the table. I was very happy to be pronounced well enough to be rid of it - although I can still recall that hideous oily taste. *Shudder*

In spite of all of these ailments, my folks and I shared a wondrous life together. Dad was the quintessential poor country preacher (who one summer painted the parsonage to supplement his meager salary) and mom, in training to be agoraphobic in addition to her other illnesses, was very lucky that the church was right next door to the parsonage (she hated having to ride in the car, always got motion sickness). She occupied her time trying to decorate the old farmhouse/parsonage and sewed clothing and curtains when she could get out of bed.  I guess we did not realize how awful our lives were so we simply enjoyed life and each other.

The school was just up the road and I could walk the half block or so and come home for lunch from kindergarten and then first grade. Part of our family lore, told to me many times, was that when I first started school I kept leaving and coming home because I wanted to “help my mommy” since she was so sick. My folks and the school officials had to convince me that it was OK for me to be gone a bit each day and that mom would be all right without my ministrations.

It was in this town also that my parents were forced to buy their first television, to keep me home at night. The neighbors two houses away used to invite me over after supper to watch Hopalong Cassidy and not unlike millions of other boomers, I was immediately sucked in to the Cowboy Way. The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and of course, all of these famous TV cowboys had famous TV cowboy horses: Topper, Silver, Trigger and Champion.

It was love at first sight! I wanted a six-gun, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots…and I wanted a horse!

Little by little I acquired the six-gun (but no holster, alas), and some sort of straw hat that masqueraded as a cowboy hat. But no horse seemed forthcoming. We could not afford a horse, of course, and my dad tried ever so gently to persuade me that the parsonage committee would not take to having to clean up after a real horse.

In the fall of 1952 I was suddenly banished from the basement. This did not bother me a great deal, as I recall, because it was one of those creaky old scary basements with the low-hanging furnace pipes and the finished part just kind of trailing off into dirt. The church basement was the same and I still have nightmares about it. I remember waking in the night hearing strange noises coming from the cellar but these also did not seem to bother me and any alarums of the night were forgotten in the light of day.

Well, as it turned out, my dad had decided to build me a rocking horse. He took pieces of wood from a sturdy old rocking chair and one of the men from the church cut out the head from a piece of plywood. My dad did all of the rest of the work himself, including the glossy black paint. My mother then made the thick black yarn mane and tail. Dad even managed to find some scraps of leather and rivet together a bridle.

My dad was not known for his skills with tools. Oh, he could handle a paintbrush all right, but he had never been one with any skill, knowledge or love of saws, planes, drills, screwdrivers, hammers and the like. (My paternal grandfather had been the tool guy who worked on the railroad; I have his toolbox today, with his initials in Morse code painted on the outside.)

So the fact that dad was able to create such a magnificent rocking horse for me was all the more amazing. My Black Beauty was so well built and sturdy that even though I weigh many times more today than I did back then, he still holds my weight. I marvel at the skill that came so unexpectedly from my dad’s love for me and from his desire to make me happy that year at Christmas.

Sidi-Maree

 

♥Sidi-Maree♥

July 17, 1994 - December 13, 2009

I was hoping to be able to have the strength to write a little today about my dear little Sidi and how much it meant to me to have had his glowing presence in my life.  But every time I try to think of what to say about his life I find that words fail me.  Imagine that.

Maybe next year.  

Rest in Peace my dear little man, you are always in my Heart. 

Spam and Pop Tarts

A while back I described my anti-bucket list including two of the places anyone would be least likely to find me being any Disney park (apologies to my friend Chickie) or viewing the movie Titanic.  Now the news has provided me with a new non-destination that absolutely completely tops my list:  a cruise ship.

Imagine, if you will, cramming a small town of 5,000 strangers into a floating monstrosity and put it out on the cold deep ocean.  Bad enough, right?  But now take away their electricity so there is no light, no air conditioning, no hot water, no hot food. Free booze, though.  Great for a bunch of drunks in the dark.  Fun?  Wow! The military has to send helicopters with emergency food (the delightful aforementioned Spam and Pop Tarts.)  Egad.  What could possibly be worse?

I am composing this entry in my mind as I drive home this evening, after hearing the news story on CBC radio.  I arrive home to see a madly blinking light on my answering machine.  Oh goodie!  Messages.

Well, it turns out I have three detailed messages for a person named "Monica."  Monica and her husband and child have been confirmed in their reservation on the ninth deck of a Holland America cruise ship.  YIKES!

So I called the 800 number and left a message for this earnest employee, Lily, and told her my name was not Monica and that all afternoon she had just been leaving all of these messages on a wrong number.  

I was polite and refrained from telling her that she could not put me on the ninth deck of a cruise ship if she offered to pay me.  No matter how much Spam and Pop Tarts they were planning to serve.

Bon voyage, Monica!

Mighty Hunter, Leaf Bringer, Deer Scarer

Siobhan, my six pound black and white cow cat is many things.  She is the Mighty Hunter who brings me dead (and sometimes still alive) mice onto my bed in the morning.  She also manages to lure birds in through the chicken wire and she has captured snakes and crickets and June bugs.  

When there are no rodents to capture she makes as much of a fuss bringing in dead leaves and stalks of weeds.  I call her the Leaf Bringer.  Some days she brings in so many leaves I need a rake for my living room carpet.

This evening I glanced out my back door to see a doe and her two half grown twin fawns slowly working their way towards the cat enclosure.  One fawn kept stamping her front hooves, alternating legs nervously.  All three tails and all six ears were twitching with the tension.  What was catching their attention?  It was Siobhan, who was seated calmly in the enclosure.

Suddenly Siobhan leaped onto her platform  and all three deer scattered into the forest like leaves in a whirlwind.  So now my little girl has another name:  Deer Scarer. 

The Governor's Inn

Beginning in January of 1970, although we were still folkie regulars at the Limelight Coffee House, we also patronized another little club which presented completely different but equally remarkable music. This was the Governor’s Inn, located on Sycamore Street on Buffalo’s East Side. The Governor’s Inn was a blues club and charming owner James Peterson was a jack-of-all-trades including used car salesman, blues musician, bartender, and part-time decorator - I will never forget when he redecorated and put glitter on the ceilings (at least in the ladies’ room!). James had connections to Willie Dixon and the Chicago blues scene which resulted in national acts coming to perform including legends like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. On one memorable evening Buddy Guy plugged in his guitar with a really long chord and made his way down off the stage, meandered through the crowd, out the front door and into the intersection, still playing!

My then-husband Paul and I started going there originally with a couple of Canadian friends who attended Canisius College (a professor had first taken them to the place), and then later mostly by ourselves. We were drawn not only by the well-known acts but also by our favorite house group, The James Peterson Blues Band, which ultimately featured James’ five-year-old son Lucky on keyboards and guitar. Father and son were both dazzling. I recently discovered that little Lucky was playing Bill Doggett’s Hammond B3 organ, and a love for that unmistakable sound has been embedded in my brain ever since.

I don’t know how they managed to squeak past the liquor board with a kid running around in the bar but Lucky was in attendance most of the times we were there - he used to play with his toys behind the bar. I remember one night seeing his little head going down the length of the bar and I could not figure out how he was managing to walk so smoothly - turns out he was riding his tricycle! I also remember another evening when he rode up to our table on his trike and as I was talking to him he suddenly leaned over and sank his teeth into my arm - then he giggled madly and made his escape pedaling furiously. Good thing I was wearing a winter jacket and he still had his baby teeth!

In the same span of time that found Lucky riding around on his tricycle in the Buffalo night club, he was also releasing his first record album (produced by Dixon) and the  accompanying splash of publicity resulted in appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show and reviews in well known magazines.

Some evenings we brought friends with us, but Paul and I were usually the only people of pallor in that audience and it was upon the rarest of occasions that anyone would pay any attention to us whatsoever. Despite the racial tensions of the times I always got the impression that it was the love of the blues  that united all souls in the audience. One gentleman (I won’t name him) seemed to take it upon himself to act as our “guardian” - every week he would seat himself at our table and just nonchalantly hang out with us. His companionship was enjoyable and I never really thought anything of this until one evening when a patron who was more than a little inebriated staggered up and loudly insisted on buying me a drink. Our protector said softly, “The lady does not want a drink,” and then he ever so casually readjusted his suit jacket to reveal the hand gun tucked into his belt. The unwanted drunk disappeared as swiftly as he had arrived.

Another character who livened up the place was Mingo. Mingo was a snake charmer, costumed as a sort of a low-rent genii who, in addition, pranced around performing various feats of fire- and glass-eating. His huge boa constrictor was usually draped around his neck and he kept other snakes in a big basket. How he loved to scare the ladies! He snatched empty glasses off of tables, taking big bites out of the rims and he also ate light bulbs. I never did find out if he actually worked for James or if he just showed up sporadically at the club to work for tips. Mingo was also memorable to me for the last time I saw him - he was lurching down the sidewalk in front of 644 William Street (where I worked back then). He looked to be under the influence of something and he presented an exceedingly raggedy figure in the unforgiving light of day. I later read in the paper that his boa constrictor had been lost inside the walls of his rooming house.

The last calendar notation I found of  going to the Governor’s Inn was in August of 1972 - a lot of things were happening in my life in those days and I kind of lost track of how much longer the club even existed. But after all these years, Lucky Peterson, a child-star survivor, and James Peterson are still going strong as acclaimed bluesmen. Lucky lives in Texas, according to his Wikipedia page, and James is in Florida.  I hear that every so often Lucky comes to  Buffalo for a performance (although the last time went to see him was in 1980 when he was only 16 years old). But sometimes I just can’t help but wonder whatever happened to Mingo.