Glory Days

I've posted that when Terry and I travel we take along CD's of "Road Music".  For a few years we subscribed to satellite radio but discovered we like our own choices better. So, on our Charlotte trip, we were listening to a "Greatest Hits of Bruce Springstein" and his song "Glory Days" played.

Glory Days

I had a friend was a big baseball player

back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was

Chorus:
Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Well there's a girl that lives up the block
back in school she could turn all the boy's heads
Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by
and have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband Bobby well they split up
I guess it's two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times,
she says when she feels like crying
she starts laughing thinking about

Chorus

My old man worked 20 years on the line
and they let him go
Now everywhere he goes out looking for work
they just tell him that he's too old
I was 9 nine years old and he was working at the
Metuchen Ford plant assembly line
Now he just sits on a stool down at the Legion hall
but I can tell what's on his mind

Glory days yeah goin back
Glory days aw he ain't never had
Glory days, glory days

Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days

The third verse isn't sung on this 1985 video, but resonates so much now because of all the closed automobile factories.

We've all know the sports jock that lived his best days in High School.  The one voted "most likely...." but it didn't happen for him.  We've seen the woman still wearing the same hair style she had at 17, but now she's 35, or 45 or 55.   

It got me thinking about my own glory days.   Do I count High School as one of them?  Sure!  Dates on Saturday nights...Football games and dances... Mom bought my clothes and  paid my bills. ....Glory Days.

Looking at the road I traveled, I would say my first marriage was not the best use of my time... accept I came out the winner in that too, because I walked away with a precious little girl.  

Terry played football in high school and college.  He was a marathon runner when we met.....Glory Days

After we  were married, he gave that up.  Too time consuming and we had our younger girls.  I distinctly remember knowing those were "the good ole days".   Three daughters to share memories.  Sippy cups and security blankets.  Soccer and basketball games. Family dinners and vacations,   School clothes shopping, and prom dress hunting.  Senior pictures and college graduation.    Glory Days.........

Now that my mother has been gone for 5 1/2 years, and I have moved 5 states away, I long for those family get togethers.  The many holidays, summer cookouts, graduation open houses, Birthday celebrations.  Any excuse and all excuses just to get together to spend time with one another.

  Glory Days....

When I took my break from blogging, my sister ( YFS - Your Favorite Sister)  thought I needed to plan a trip.  I needed to do something to shake the doldrums and cobwebs out of my brain.  So we did. 

 My Mother and Father both only had one brother each. Both have passed away.    They, in turn, have one child each. (Actually my Mother's brother has another one when he was in the Air Force, stationed in Scotland, but we have never met her.)  After not seeing either girl for decades ( they both live in other states) my sister tracked them down this winter.  Thank you Facebook. 

So, in June, my sister and I are meeting in Tampa to spend a few days with one of the cousins and her family.  I believe she is about 15 years younger than us.  She is married and has a young daughter, about 8 I think.  See, I really do need to know her better.  We will spend a couple of days at a hotel on the beach with her and her Mom, that we both adored, for "girl time", as well as at her house.  ( The Uncle and Aunt divorced... long story) I have not seen the Mom since I was about 20 years old.  After that, my Uncle brought our cousin to Michigan for a visit when I was about 40... She was a teen.

My sister is planning on inviting my father's niece, the other cousin, up to Michigan from her home in Missouri, sometime this summer too.  She really wants to hear the "growing up" stories about her father (who passed away when she was a teen)  from my father..his brother.   I  would like to be there for that too.  We'll see how that works out.

This is a whole new experience.  Connecting with long lost relatives and vacationing with my sister.  You know what this sounds like to me?  Yep, you got it.

Glory Days

What "Glory Days " do you most cherish?

Gotta Go Get Christmas Hugs

I'll be gone for a while.  I have to to north to collect my Christmas hugs.  I have not seen my family since last Christmas . It tears at my heartstrings so you can imagine how overjoyed I am to be with them all for a few days. 

I am gladly trading  my  50 - 60 degree temps for teens and single digits.   I will have lots of love to keep me warm.   (After I wrote that I saw on  one daughter's Facebook page that it is 50 there too.  Yay!  I don't want to drive in a blizzard!) 

                                          Merry Christmas and have a very Happy New Year

Christmas Trees in My Life

             These trees are from 1955 and 1956.  I was  5-6 years old and my sister was 3-4 at the time.

 This one was 1955.  That means my mother was only 25 years old and Dad was 28.   My parents had moved to Michigan from Missouri so there were no big family gatherings for us.  My mother was only 18 when she came north.  I asked her once, not that many years ago,  "wasn't that difficult?"  She kind of shrugged and said, "That's just the way it was."    I think she must have some to terms with it all ago.

1956

These trees were real.  They were tall and thin or short and fat.  They smelled like pine.  We put up the tree about two weeks before Christmas and we always opened gifts on Christmas Eve night.  My father was a 2nd shift worker for GM and did not want to get up in the wee hours with 2, and soon to be, three children.  I never had a traditional Christmas morning until I had daughter # 1.

Move ahead now to 1967.  I was a Senior in High School.  You can faintly see that same small rope of silver tinsel.  I think the curtains are still from the 50s as well.  This as a particularly festive year with  a construction paper chain hanging from the ceiling.   That TV is the one my brother shot with a BB gun when he was about 8.  Oops!  It was resting on his lap and he pulled the trigger.  It left a ping ricocheted bullseye about the size of a quarter.   We lived with it another 10 years.

On into the 70's we had some pretty regular trees.  Nothing much different than these.  I don't know what struck me senseless in the 80s when I thought these trees should come home with me.

There is nothing redeeming about this tree.  We continued with the family tradition of random strings of tinsel and the hanging icicle kind.  You can see clusters of bulbs hanging at 3 year old level.  Holy cow that thing is ugly. 

It was in this house that I discovered Clair Burke's  Applejack & Peel  fragrance candles and potpouri.  It's almost impossible to find now.  I had to order some on line.  It just smells like Christmas to me.

This is no better.  There appears to be two large sections out of each side of the top.  Even that stategically placed red tinsel  and the 5 link construction paper chain, cannot distract your eyes from this poor sad thing.  Somewhere around this time frame, no one wanted to go on the wagon ride and slug through the snow in boots and heavy coats.  What this Mother thought was making memories was not being appreciated by my young crowd. 

After the tree mutiny,  Terry and I would go get a cut tree and wrestle that thing into the holder and then into the house. 

We moved to  South Carolina from this house and then returned a couple of years later.  We still had live trees and the girls helped put on the decorations.  When I was a Mall rat, they would often put it up by themselves and I loved that even more.  No, I can tell you what I loved the most.  I always had to work the day after Christmas and they would take all the decorations down and it would be all put away by the time I got home.  That was such a gift.

I was a little late coming the fake tree decision.  I fought it but it really is easier. 

I burned Yankee Christmas candles so there was the fragrance of pine in the air, along with the Applejack & Peel.   We lived in this house for 8 years and I kept that green living room and burgundy furniture all that time.  Only the gifts changed.  The tree stayed the same. 

I miss those poor sad trees.  My daughters don't talk about that fake tree.  They remember the live ones.  The lopsided, needle shedding,  living room engulfing real trees.   You need to experience walkng across the carpet in July and getting stabbed by an errant pine needle.  Try as they might, there is no candle that really has that Christmas tree smell.

Childhood Foods

I was watching HGTV the other night and saw "The Best Thing I Ever Ate/Childhood Foods"  so Terry and I started talking about what we remembered from our childhood that really spoke of home, comfort and memories.

For him it was his Mom's cinnamon rolls with icing. (He says icing and I say frosting)  The other thing was her chili followed by cheesecake with strawberries.  It reminded him of fall weather when the four brothers and Dad would be outdoors cutting wood, putting it on the splitter and stacking it to get ready for winter in northern Michigan.

For me, I thought of that little box of crinkle cut french fires that I would cook after school to eat while I watched "Dark Shadows" (which Johnny Depp (Barnabus Collins) is remaking, by the way).  Mom was not known for her cooking but she did make awesome fried chicken.  My sister (YFS/ Your favorite sister) shared the crispy chicken liver with Mom.  I never knew YFS liked that.  I sure didn't.   She also remembered Brown sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts when she was in High School.

So, I asked my daughters.  They always got to request what they wanted for their Birthday dinners so I was expecting lasagna, nachos, homemade pizza, or clam chowder...the things they asked for then.  No... that's not what happened.  What I got was "Otter Pops" and Coco Wheats from daughters 2 and 3.  Daughter number one said "I'm pretty sure I was raised in the same house they were and I do not know what Otter Pops are."   She remembered good ole Kraft  mac and cheese while she watched Electric Company on TV.

So I had to look up Otter Pops.   Oh, yeah, now I know.  They were right.  We had those all summer, every summer. You could get a box of 100 for $2.99 I swear. 

So be careful what you ask your children.  The answers are never what you expect.