old memories

Welcome to my corner of the internet for a Saturday afternoon chat.

Can I pour you a cup of tea or coffee? Maybe a glass of juice or just plain water?

I was out of honey all week this past week which meant I had to sweeten my tea with sugar. Yuck! It was awful.

I was so thankful to The Husband for picking me up some local honey yesterday I made myself a cup of tea even though it was humid and sticky.

Last Sunday we spent the day at my parents for Father’s Day where we helped my dad clean out the pool to try to get it ready for Little Miss and me to swim in for a couple of months this summer.

We were supposed to go back and help again this week, but Dad was either busy or the weather wasn’t great or, well, I completely forgot. This next week we will help again and hopefully, the pool will be ready soon.

Dad bought a robot to clean the inside of the pool. You start it up and lower it in the pool and the idea is that it rolls around the bottom and picks up all the dirt, leaves, and other messy stuff.

Dad decided he was going to name the robot Stella as a bit of a joke because he kept forgetting the name of the therapist that helps during his therapy boxing class. He dropped her in at one point and came back in the house and I went out to get a shirt from the car I wanted to change into before I started skimming the pool. When I started to the car, though, he told me I had to hurry and help him find Stella.

“Our pool is so dirty, she’s probably full already. Hurry and help me find her because she has the pool so stirred up, I can’t see anything and she might burn her motor out.”

So, The Husband and I ran to help. My way of helping was to yell “Stella! Stella!” like I was Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire while my dad and husband searched for the robot and eventually found her. They used the end of a cane to scoop her out because the hook she came with hadn’t been put together yet.

Later in the afternoon we went inside and searched for photographs of my grandfather to use for a video that I want to pair with audio we have of him singing at a fairground near us. I had already made one video for my dad, which I shared on here last week, but I had another song and wanted to add more photos since that was the original plan for the other video.

The audio was transferred, I think, from a reel-to-reel years ago.

While looking through the photos, we found photos of my grandparents when they were young, my grandfather singing, my grandparents on their 55^th wedding anniversary, my grandfather with his arm around some Hawaiian girls when he and Grandma visited Hawaii, and him with his cousin when they were young boys. The Boy looked at the photo of him hugging the Hawaiian girls with wide eyes but I explained that visitors are greeted when they arrive by young ladies and gentlemen with leis to hang over the necks of the visitors.

After we left my dad found a pile of photos of him singing and acting at community events.

If you haven’t guessed already from my writing that I have audio of my grandfather singing, he was a well-known local singer who performed for local community and fundraising events. We also have a recording of him singing at a local television station but for some reason, we only have the audio and not the video.

I know I mentioned last week that I never had the opportunity to get to know my grandfather because he died when I was 2. I only know him through stories, his poems (of which we have tons), his journals (which mainly consisted of him writing about the weather and the errands he ran that day so nothing super personal), and photographs.

On Tuesday Little Miss was able to meet with a friend who she normally only talks to online (through a kid-safe video chat). The girl’s family came to town for a dentist appointment for her dad, and we met them by the soccer field behind the dentist’s office. After the appointment, I took Little Miss and her friend to a local restaurant for ice cream. Then they explored the tiny stream that runs by the restaurant. Little Miss was looking for crayfish – which I learned this week many of you refer to as crawdads. We didn’t have a net to catch one and she was afraid it would pinch her when she tried to pick it up so we are going to get a net soon and take her to a creek where she can catch one.

I wandered out into our yard later that day to photograph our roses because I know they will be gone soon. I miss it so much when our roses are gone. I miss the flowers and really need to take some lessons from my neighbor on how to grow them because she has beautiful flowers all summer long.

On Wednesday Little Miss had a short Summer Reading program at the local library (a book read and a craft) and The Boy went to a sleepover and birthday party for a friend.

On Thursday, The Husband took Little Miss to gymnastics and I watched a special with James Cameron on the 25^th anniversary of the Titanic movie. I’m going to write a separate blog post about that one because – I have issues with it. Ha!

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing what I did Thursday which was washing dishes and doing laundry but not actually getting to the folding of the laundry. Ahem. But I did get it washed at least. On Wednesday I even hung laundry out on our clothesline, which I don’t know if I will do again because it was all stiff when I took it off for some reason.

Yesterday was very, very humid and rainy and today was supposed to be more of the same, but so far it feels much better. I am a fan of rain when it is cold out, not when it is all sticky and gross and makes my head feel icky.

Little Miss is having some friends over today and a planned sleepover with them, which will be her first time having a sleepover. Well, second, but we had to take her friend home in the middle of the night that first time. This time she is having two friends over so hopefully it goes better.

We are supposed to have rain for the next week, which will be great for the farmers and the ground, but will sort of stink because The Husband has the whole week off from work and we were going to go to a local state park which also features a lake we can swim in, but it looks like we might not be able to do that because of the rain.

How was your week last week? Do anything interesting? Let me know in the comments and tell me if you’ve found any good teas to try. I’ve written down a few of your suggestions and have been adding them to my shopping lists to try in the future.

My son received a record player with all the bells and whistles for his 15^th birthday this past weekend. It was a gift from us (his parents) and his grandparents (my parents).

It is a record player that also plays CDs, utilizes Bluetooth (so you can send music off your phone to it), and has an AM/FM radio. The record we ordered him hadn’t arrived yet but he wanted to try the sound out, so he plugged it in and sent a few songs to it from his phone.

In the meantime, my dad drug out a few old records he’d had stored away, and we decided we’d try those.

In the next couple of hours, me and my parents had more fun with that record player than my son did, although later he did say he was actually enjoying our delight. My dad found a couple of records that a cousin of his grandfather’s had recorded in the 60s in Nashville. He and my mom hadn’t heard these songs probably since the 70s or 80s, they weren’t sure when. They had record players over the years but don’t have one now and haven’t since I was a kid probably.

They also had records from a family friend who recorded some gospel songs and enjoyed listening to those too. And then I found an LP of With or Without You by U2, which my brother owned and we put that on for a listen too.

I ended up using my phone to record the songs by my dad’s cousin for my dad to share on Facebook. The player does have the capability of transferring from vinyl to mp3 but we have to install the software to a computer first so we decided to record a video on my phone instead.

The image isn’t steady because I’m dealing with vertigo again and it was really bad while I was trying to record it, but the music was recorded and that was what mattered.

The interesting thing was that my aunt called to wish my son a happy birthday and when I told her about listening to the music, she said she had actually found one of the records in a pile of papers earlier that day. We thought she might like to hear it as well, so we put the phone on speaker and she was able to listen in as well, hearing the music for the first time in probably 30 or 40 years. She turned 89 the next day so it was an early birthday present for her.

It was really a joy for me to see the joy the record player gave to my parents and aunt but also to those on Facebook who are related to the man who was singing and was also delighted to hear the songs.

The singer’s name was Bub Robinson. I wish I knew more about him and the songs. What I do know is that he did not hit the big time, though I wish he had because his voice was better than many of the artists out there today, but he did continue to perform locally, including with his son and I think occasionally with my grandfather, who was also a singer.

Now if we could find the records that feature my grandfather singing, I would be over the moon. He died when I was two and I’m sure I’ve heard recordings of him before because I can hear his voice in my mind somehow. He was sick with cancer when I was a baby and my mom said I was afraid of him because of his deep voice but that right before he died (in a bed at the home my parents now live in), I leaned over and kissed his cheek. She said he was delighted.

My dad has the records somewhere of Grandpa singing, he thinks, and he also has reel-to-reel home movies from the 60s of my grandparents which I really hope to see before the year is out.

If anyone knows where an old projector can be purchased, let me know in the comments. It would her nice to have another afternoon of delving into the past but this time we won’t steal my kid’s birthday gift to do it.