Elliptically Speaking

For many years Ox and I took exercise by walking – at Mint Springs and up Bear Den Mountain.  These walks gave me enormous pleasure.  We got a stationary bicycle, from a company that sold used athletic equipment, to supplement our walks. After time, my knees hurt when I walked and I started making excuses not to go.  I continued to bicycle in the middle of the kitchen.  Eventually,  the bicycle broke and Ox moved it to the front porch. 

We found ourselves in Sears one early January.  Sears would deliver the NordicTrack Elliptical Exerciser they had on sale.  I thought that this kind of exercise would be easy on my knees.  Ox bought the thing for us.  We set it up in our kitchen. 

 

Ox put a wooden apple crate on top of a wobbly old cart we had; he set up a heavy old television on top The construction looked very Dr. Suess, but the television was at the exerciser’s eye level.  I elliptically exercised for many weeks but my knees always hurt more after I used it than they had before.

The exerciser was very long when extended for use; when folded up it only took up a third of the kitchen.  Ox found the exerciser to be a useful coat rack; I used its uprights as plastic bag dryers.  It divided the kitchen into two alleys. 

Many years later, long after my two knee replacements, I got fed up with the Behemoth that ate up our kitchen.  I asked Ox, “If I can find someone who’d use it – could we please give the exerciser away?”  He assented.

When she heard it was up for grabs, a friend said she’d like to have the exerciser. Her son was coming home with his truck soon, and he’d help her get it.  My friend and her son came and got to work. The son, a very cheerful and strong young man had almost single handedly gotten the machine into his beautiful new truck before I even knew they were here.

Now we had a tipsy, heavy old television in the kitchen and a lot of space.  I begged Ox to let me find a good home for the television.  Seeing the camel’s nose in this request, he balked.  We had words.  Finally I saw that I asked too much.  Then I remembered that the television had a slot in it for VCR tapes.  We moved the crate to a new and stable little table in kitchen, tightened up the screws on the old cart.  The kitchen now holds two people at once.  It is now a room that has a television/tape player, space to do Tai Chi, and two new VCR tapes to show me how.  Hooray!

Louise Schwab

Louise came to live with us when I was about 7, after Mrs. Evanwood left us alone one night while my parents were at a party.  When the parents came home, Nancy, then about 12, was in charge.  Three hours later Mrs. Evanwood came home drunk, with a sailor friend, and said to my mother “I suppose this means I’m fired”  Mother said “It certainly does.”  Daddy took Mrs. Evanwood to a hotel and paid for that night.  She collected her belongings the next day; we never saw her again.  Louise’s first job was to help Mother clean Mrs. Evanwood’s room, which was to be Louise’s, they removed many empty bottles from under bed.  Louise must have known, from that point, that she would be treasured by the Surr family.

When my mother interviewed Louise at her younger sister’s house for the housekeeper-babysitter-cook job, Mother was ushered into the living room where Louise was sitting on the sofa.  This concealed Louise’s bad leg; she had suffered a leg injury as a child and arthritis attacked the spot.  She wore old-lady lace-up black shoes all the years I knew her.  Louise’s sister later told my mother that their father had been German and their mother Mexican-Indian.  Louise and her sister had grown up in Texas.  Her sister suggested that Louise had suffered rough punishment by her father that accounted for her bad leg.  The family had lived in a remote, and rural part of Texas.  Louise didn’t have much schooling.  Occasionally, when Louise was stressed she would mutter words in a Swabian dialect.

I had thought that Louise had always been old.  When I see pictures of her from when she first came to our family, I see that she was young then.  Louise was my second mother.  Our own beautiful Mother was kind but not energetic.  She conceived me unexpectedly when she was already tired with a feisty five-year-old, Nancy, and a two-year-old Jack.  The picture I have of me as a baby shows a colicky, screaming, red-faced newborn.  I made my mother even more tired.  Happy Polly was born 5 years after me when everyone had recovered from too many children. Louise had a vigorous need for family that made her a wonderful mother to us.

Louise was, first of all, Catholic.  She was my first religious influence.  She loved animals, and suffered when she thought they weren’t treated well.  She loved the Surr children with a love that was sometimes fierce.

I was the family dog-lover.  My parents had allowed me to choose my first dog, Bootsie, a gentle German shepherd mix, at the pound.  Bootsie was supposed to be fed at dinnertime.  I thought that this meant after my dinner.  Louise almost always fed Bootsie during dinner and then complained bitterly about my neglect of the poor dog.  When Bootsie was run over by a bus, Louise told me, and she cried too.  Louise told her rosary for Bootsie and me.

Louise had few things growing up.  She collected small figurines and salt and pepper shakers.  These came in all disguises, but mostly as small animals, fruit and other edibles.  We often found unique salt and peppers for her for birthdays and Christmases.  She crocheted skirts and attached them to plastic doll tops to make toilet paper roll covers.  She gave these to Mother on special occasions.  Mother, a classicist, would cringe but put them over toilet paper rolls anyway.  In her spare time, Louise crocheted many doilies and starched them, made many Afghans and created other handwork.

My relationship with Louise was not always smooth.  Louise loved to cook oatmeal cookies, her gift to the family.  I was the great cookie finder.  When my siblings discovered this talent I was often delegated to find the most recent batch.  We, sometimes I, quickly demolished Louise’s caches.  There are, after all, only so many places to hide a batch of cookies.  Louise squawked “You children don’t know how lucky you are!”  She was right.

My family usually ate in the dining-room.  Although Mother was a talented cook we mostly ate good food that Louise cooked.  Louise always cooked fish for us for Friday dinner.  Louise ate in the kitchen breakfast booth.  She listened to the Grand Old Oprey during dinner; as the children cleared the table we’d hear Louise chuckling at the antics of Cousin Minnie Pearl.  My dormant pleasure in country and western music comes from that time.   

When the parents went out to dinner we got to eat in the breakfast room with Louise.  This was a great treat, not only because of the radio, but also because Louise’s rules were more relaxed than the parents’ rules.  When we ate with Louise the fare was often hamburgers, vegetables and mashed potatoes, with cookies and ice-cream for dessert.  Nobody ever snapped stray elbows on the table at the breakfast booth.

Three years after Louise joined us, when I was 10, we moved to Redlands. Two years later, my best friend, Julie Ann, died of cancer in San Diego.  Our family attended the funeral.  I shared a bedroom with Louise at the hotel in San Diego.  Louise and I cried together, and again, Louise told her rosary.  I think that we cried all night long.  I saw that Louise’s rosary comforted her.  Louise always comforted me.

Her bedroom in the new house was on the ground floor, as was Nancy’s.  Fifteen-year-old Nancy complained that Louise would spy on her when Nancy and her date were parked in the driveway.  Our Father insisted that his dating daughters only park with their dates in our driveway.

Louise often took me to Mass with her.  This continued until, moved by friends’ books of the Saints, I decided to be a saint when I grew up.  I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, but I thought that being a Catholic first would help, and that being a nun would help even more.  My parents insisted that they would not allow me to convert, nor to take the veil.

When we moved to Redlands our Sundays grew complicated.  One parent or another had to ferry Nancy to the Presbyterians (a social choice), Jack and Polly to the Episcopal Church (Jack had a beautiful soprano voice; he was in the choir), me to a variety of churches, and Louise to the Catholic Church.  Many Sundays after church Louise got a ride from Daddy to her sister's house in Coleton.

The combined churches of Redlands, perhaps trolling for converts, held an annual Church census.  My father didn’t approve of the intrusion.  He happily welcomed the census takers into the house and hit them with the full history of our church-going.  To Daddy’s delight they skipped our house the following years.

English friends of my parents gave them a Staffordshire bull terrier bitch, Russet.  This breed had been bred secretly as fighting dogs in England.  Father, not knowing that his friend intended to breed Russet with his own dogs, had Russet spayed.  The friendship survived with only a little strain.  Russet was ugly and sweet-natured.  My friends called her “Toad”.  Russet was officially my dog, as the family dog-lover, but she was really Louise’s baby.  The friend who gave us Russet often complained that the dog was getting fat.  Daddy once brought Louise some untouched butter on his plate.  Louise said that she’d give it to Russet.  Daddy expressed surprise, “You know that dog is too fat.”  Louise replied, “Oh I don’t give it to her straight; I always put it on a piece of bread first."  Russet was very well loved.

Before I left home, mother hired Isabel to clean the house once a week.  Louise continued to cook and be present for Polly.  Louise and Isabel became friends.

One by one we left home for college.  Louise had memories of us.  She didn’t have letters from me, who had received so much love from her.  I loved her, but wrote letters to no one.  My writing skills were non-existent.  The computer now remedies some of my writing deficits.  One of my abiding regrets is that I left this good and loving woman when I left home.  When we children made flying visits home Louise always expressed greatest joy at seeing us.  She was always there for us.

While I was living in New York, Louise became too fragile to live without nursing care.  Mother and her sister found a nursing home in Riverside, run by Seventh Day Adventists, who took loving care of Louise.  Seven other infirm people lived there.  I visited her there with Mother on a stop at home.  Louise was cheerful, wheel-chair bound, weak and still feisty.  That was the last time I  ever saw Louise.

Crozet Fireman's Parade

Yesterday Betsy and Jackson came to the Crozet Fireman's 6th of July parade. We erected our chairs in the shade of the Field School's new trees right across from the mouth of the parade. We could hear the bagpipers and fire engines practicing. The sky was cerulean, the clouds puffy and the air delicious.

I love this parade, a mixture of my home town, politics and commerce, young beauty queens, fire engines from the valley and our surrounding counties, anybody in a fancy vehicle, and children throwing and scrabbling for candies.

While we watched the lyrics "This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. . ." kept sounding in my head.

After the parade we returned home to eat turkey dogs, ice cream and strawberries, blueberries and peaches. Jackson and I built Stonehenge with blocks and Jackson made a light-catching tower to go with it.

 

Kite Flying on the Appalachian Trail

When I was very small, Nancy and Jack won the Smallest Kite that Can Fly division of San Bernardino’s annual kike making and flying contest.  They made the small kite with toothpick crossbars.

At Assateague we saw a man fly a nine foot wide kite with a large spinner for a tail.  The kite line was attached to the man’s big toe.  That rainbow colored kite set up kite-envy in me.  EBay sent a new colorful kite suitable for children and amateurs to Crozet.  Today Ox and I went up to Jarman Gap, in the meadow on the Appalachian Trail, to try it out.  The wind was gusty and mild.  Each of us managed to get the beautiful kite to fly to the extent of the line that came with it.

This ain’t your grandfather’s kite world anymore but kites are still lots of fun to fly!

Edward Vincent Surr

In my photo, Grandpa stands in a wool overcoat and a fine fedora on our Southern California driveway. He wears a handsome full, white mustache with a grin underneath. A large white duck I’d won at the Orange Show stands behind him, its beak open in a raucous squawk. The duck and the man were on cordial terms, but then everybody was on cordial terms with Grandpa.

Grandpa was born in England; he moved to San Diego with his family in his late teens. Great Grandfather’s family paid Great Grandfather to live outside England after he went bankrupt. Bankruptcy was not respectable in those days.

Grandpa wrote much of his own life story in an autobiography called Part of My Life. Grandpa wrote often and lots. He wrote poetry for the San Francisco Chronicle; he wrote political treatises; he wrote many letters to various editors; he wrote charming letters to his children, sisters, brothers, and grandchildren.

Grandpa was a Socialist   He was pleased when he lost the election for Judge of Alameda County, because although he ran on the Socialist ticket, 5,000 people voted for him.  I used to envy my cousins Justus, Jeremy and Gaea who lived in the apartment downstairs; they huddled for hours on the stairs, eavesdropping on Grandpa while he conversed with all the great Socialists of his age. Justus, Jeremy and Gaea became politically canny.

After working as a bootblack in the Hotel Del Coronado, a cowboy, a rancher, a travelling hardware salesman, and a clerk in a lawyer’s office, He found his vocation in the law. His decision was, no doubt, helped by the fact that firm’s principal told him “Surr, You’ll never be a lawyer!”

Grandpa made an interesting if spotty living defending poor people accused of crimes.  He helped a Mormon family sue the undertaker who stuffed their son’s corpse with Hearst newspapers, ensuring the son an eternity of intimate proximity to yellow journalism.  

Grandpa became stone deaf, which made courtroom work difficult, although he grew adept at lip reading. He then hired out to research for other lawyers. Grandpa irritated Grannie because he thought it rude to send his clients bills. Occasionally a client would pay him anyway. Once the unbilled fee was a sizeable one. Grandpa decided to buy a Galapagos Island for sale at the time, until an English friend persuaded him to invest in a device that lit small lights on empty theater seats. The Surr children never got to live on the Galapagos Island, because the theatre seat device failed to give Grandpa any return on his investment.

Grandpa owned a large, slightly run down house on Berkeley’s Panoramic Way. The house was a kid’s dream. Besides three other apartments full of interesting people, it held dandy features, like a thousand stairs to the street, the dumbwaiter (an elevator for us) and the milkman’s box. This inside/outside box held the empty bottles for the milkman to remove and kept the morning’s fresh cream shaded. The box also held secret codes and other hidden things for us. 

Off the living room was Grandpa’s sleeping porch with a view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. Grandpa’s chair was a Victorian armchair, covered in a gray plaid wool, which had a beanbag ashtray on its arm. Grandpa was a messy smoker, and ashes were liberally scattered around the right side of the chair.

Grandpa loved the Berkeley hills and all who lived there. A large and beautifully colored book of western snakes was often open on the table beside his chair. When Daddy suffered Bright’s disease as a boy, and could not walk for several years, Grandpa carried him all around the Berkeley hills, pointing out the exciting wildlife and plant life. This gave my father his enduring love of the real world, which Father then gave his own children.

Grandpa rode to his law office by train across the lower Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Several times he took me with him into the city. He would park me in the office law library with a large stack of plain paper and various writing instruments. This would keep me very happy for long periods. 

By mutual agreement, when I grew bored with drawing and writing, and after warning the secretary of my intention, I was allowed to explore San Francisco. Grandpa was well known in the city and many eyes looked out for me. My favorite place to go was Chinatown. There I would sometimes buy a paper fan or a small ceramic ornament imprinted “Made in Japan”  I’d always go back to the office around lunch time, and often was taken back to Chinatown to a restaurant lunch.

At the end of Grandpa’s day, we took streetcars and the train back to Berkeley. Grandpa would stop at a bakery on the way home, and get small bags of cookies. When he reached home, he’d ask any present children “Were you good children today?” On our assurances that we had been, he would solemnly hand each child a small bag saying, “Discipline is a system of punishments and rewards.”  I don’t remember Grandpa doling out any punishments.