Quilts

Quilts

Noel Laflin

11-30-18

Tomorrow will mark the 30th anniversary of the first World AIDS Day.

Many years ago, I used to seek out quilt panels honoring friends who died from AIDS-related complications. The quilts would frequently be on display around the country on this day. When I would finally spot a familiar name, I would stop, marvel at the love that went into the making of the quilt, and give humble thanks for having known or loved the young fellow in question.

Over the years the quilt has grown to more than 48,000 individual panels, and weighs an estimated fifty-four tons. It is the largest piece of community folk art in the world.

There was a time when friends and I stood on a raised platform and signed the names of those who had died as they were read aloud from the podium. Many signers were on hand to relieve one another as there were so many names to be read.

I just went to the site where one can look for an individual's quilt, as there are several I would like to see once more - and in some cases, for the first time. A photograph will do for now.

The site was down due to unprecedented numbers of folks trying to do the same thing.

It's good to know that many are still remembering.

Irvine Park

Irvine Park

Noel Laflin

11-21-18

My very first memory of Irvine Park was probably sixty years ago when my brother made the family breakfast there one Saturday morning.

It must have been for a Scout cooking advancement of some sort as I distinctly recall the taste of Bisquick dumplings and the sweet aroma of burning wood.

I remember the drive to the park, the tree-lined roads, brilliant sun burning away the early morning mist, and due to the hour, having the place pretty much to ourselves that day.

The park has not changed all that much since then. You can wander and note wood grills heating up, smell the hot dogs sizzling, walk or bike the back roads, and marvel at how those old oaks still reach across a narrow lane and bring welcome shade to those who travel them.

I am lucky to live just minutes from the park and love every photo adventure while there. And there have been many. With any luck, there will be many more, as this is probably my favorite place to explore. It never gets old. The only thing getting older is me.

But, I will always be most nostalgic for that first visit - and the youngster who took it all in for the very first time.

So, wherever your travels take you this long holiday weekend, be it far or near - be safe – slow down - and if you are fortunate enough, take a back road or two, as nostalgia for just such a trip may be in your future too.

Family Plots

Family Plots

Noel Laflin

11-24-18

After my father died I came across paper work he’d kept regarding four cemetery plots he had purchased in November, 1959. He was always a stickler for record keeping - must have been the accountant in him, which he was.

He had put down a twenty-five dollar deposit and made twenty-five dollar monthly payments for the next two years. His final payment was submitted on October 31st, 1961 - Halloween.

And although he was an accountant by trade, he did have a great sense of humor, as well as an appreciation for irony no doubt.

Lied to as Children

Lied to as Children

Noel Laflin

11-23-18

Billy The Kid was born on November 23,1859. He would die at the hand of sheriff Pat Garrett in July of 1881.

Now, I mention this only because an old cousin-by-marriage claimed to have met The Kid as a child. In fact, he even claimed to have helped hide him in their New Mexico barn, shortly before he was killed.

I always believed his story while growing up. That is until we recently found out that this beloved old cousin was actually born in 1885, four years after the death of William H. Bonney - aka Billy The Kid.

Huh, our old cowboy cousin lied to us kids.

I’d call him out on this if he were still with us, but he’s been dead for forty-five years already.

As some stories just should have been true, I’m going to pretend that our old cousin merely lied about his age instead.

Mashed Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Noel Laflin

11-22-18

As it’s Thanksgiving Day, I have mashed potatoes on my mind - my mother’s version, in particular.

We as a family must have just taken those potatoes for granted, as it wasn’t until a friend of mine, Jim, joined us for the traditional feast some forty years ago and couldn’t get enough of those creamy, buttery spuds.  We all looked at him as if he were the young Walter Cunningham boy that Scout and Jem invited home for lunch in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Unlike Scout, however, we did not mock his indulgence. 

He must have had five or six helpings, and spoke fondly ever after of that meal, even if I do not recall him eating anything else that day.

My mother said afterward that Jim would be forever welcomed in our home.

In Passing

In Passing

Noel Laflin

11-17-18

In the mornings they sometimes rush along when late - but oftentimes they just walk- young mothers and wrinkly grandmothers, some stoically pushing a stroller over a rocky path, all the while keeping kids with backpacks in line - the kids kicking at stones, laughing as they go.

Hours later, the elders return - many bearing large umbrellas to ward off the afternoon sun.

And soon, those same children of the morning, escorted along by their parents, or uncles, or aunts, or older sibling, or grandparents, are retracing the steps home – many of the elders speaking in Spanish - the kids answering in both Spanish and English. Often, there is laughter and the holding of youngsters’ hands.

It’s a scene I witness time and again as I wander the pond, camera in hand, with hopes of capturing some new critter in passing.

I like these folks, my neighbors of thirty-five years, as they remind me of another era, where most did walk to and from school.

Maybe it’s our neighborhood, as the majority of both young and old live in modest, or less than modest circumstances. There is no extra car, let alone any car for many of them by which to be driven to and from school.

So, they walk, as I once did eons ago, as it was just expected of us.

And sometimes I catch them in passing too.

Notes of Apology

Notes of Apology

Noel Laflin

11-16-18

I had the money for dinner, but on his dare we left without paying. Dine and Dash - I had never even heard the term before, let alone found the nerve to do so until that night.

On the way home we staged a phony fight in a convenience market and stole two bottles of cheap wine in the chaos.

And somehow, we got away with that too.

In teenage fashion, we later drank the wine.

And that is when he stole a kiss from me.

I had never been kissed by another boy before but did not mind the theft.  Consequently, I returned it with newfound passion.

With dawn came the task of driving my fellow thief from my home to his.

There was no mention of the kiss.

But it was all I could think of.

Later that week, I stopped by the restaurant we’d stiffed and slipped a ten dollar bill on the counter with a note of apology.

I left four dollars near the register of a neighborhood convenience market.  There was another apology note attached as well.

The stolen kiss was eventually discussed and then sloughed off by the other as a drunken episode that would never be revisited.

And although I was sorry about several things in regard to my behavior that night, and tried to make amends, the return of his kiss was never one of them.

But here would never be a note of apology on that issue.

Sky High

Sky High

Noel Laflin

11-13-18

I’ve been trying to imagine the first Homo sapiens and just how long ago they lived. I don’t even know what took me down this rabbit hole this morning. But, as often happens, one article leads to another.

Then I came across this reference by Wisconsin professor John Hawkes who says to imagine you’re holding your mother’s hand, your mother is holding her mother’s hand, and the chain continues all the way back 300,000 years. “What we’re talking about is about 10,000 to 15,000 [people] in a row — the population of a small town is what connects you to that time frame,” he says.

I like when someone paints me a picture like this. Ronald Reagan did so once when he was trying to explain just how much a trillion dollars is. I was watching that 1981 broadcast when he said:

“A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars, incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.”

So now I’m wondering just how high in the sky ten-to-fifteen thousand hand-holding Homo sapiens might reach.

If I find a good illustration, I’ll let you know

Sister Susi

Sister Susi

Noel Laflin

11-11-18

Sister Susi just left, and I am already missing her.

We had her with us here in the Southland for eleven days, but the time flew by much too quickly, of course.

Siblings can be either a torment or a blessing. Susi has always been the latter.

We spoke and joked and would sometimes mention a memory that the other did not recall which made for new and interesting family lore – usually something to smile about and stick away in the family memory treasure trunk.

We spent more than a few hours reviewing family ancestry, pulling out two old books filled with photos and detailed information. We moved to laptops and followed family lines all the way back to the year 1425. We Norwegians come from hardy stock and baptismal records have stayed intact apparently.

We stumbled over the recall of a few lost relatives, their faces remembered, but their exact relationship to us still a mystery. It will give us something else to research – Susi in Oklahoma, and me here at home. We are always up for just such a challenge and love the detective work that lies ahead.

As expected, it was a wonderful time together, but as I said, gone too quickly.

Susi always cries when she leaves. She always has, and God willing, she always will.

Me too.

They Built a Cabin In the Woods

They Built a Cabin In the Woods

Noel Laflin

11-8-18

Photo taken by Tom David, Summer 1974

They built a cabin in the woods,
Those lads of yesteryear,
And when they saw what they had done,
They gave a mighty cheer.

I Like This Bird Quite Well

I Like This Bird

Noel Laflin

11-8-18

I like this bird quite well you know, 
Perhaps because it's small,
And fast and smart and sharply dressed,
Okay, I like it all.

Civic Lessons

Civic Lessons

Noel Laflin

11-7-18

Class took place every Saturday morning as I pushed an old hand mower across his front yard.

They continued for the required hour as I edged the sidewalk, weeded rose beds, and eventually swept up.

Erik would stand close as I worked, quizzing me on state capitols, amendments, preambles to the constitution and what it meant to live in this land.

He would frequently bring out a folded copy of our local newspaper and point out the numerous spelling errors which he had circled in red ink. He would often swear, in German, at the ineptitude of proofreaders, before moving on to the editorial section of the paper, asking my opinion on one political stand or another. As I was only ten and frequently had no opinion on such subjects, he promptly gave me his.

At the end of my session he would nod at my finished work, lay a shiny silver half dollar in my hand - sometimes a Franklin and later a Kennedy - and make me promise not to spend it.

Paper money was for spending, he would say, but silver was for keeping.

And there were other lessons learned as well.

Erik would sometimes remove his cap and tap his bald head so that I could hear the metal plate placed there by British doctors in 1917. He’d been a fifteen-year-old cabin boy aboard a German merchant marine vessel when it was blown out of the water by the English during the Great War. He was no sailor, merely a kid trying to stay alive during a hellish time. He was fished out of the sea by his captors, treated for injuries, and spent the rest of the war learning English. When the armistice was signed, he returned to Germany, fell in love, married, and immigrated to the United States with his wife during the height of the depression that swept through Germany in the twenties. He worked in a US defense plant during the Second World War, and eventually settled in as our neighbor in 1951.

I became his gardener when I was strong enough to push a lawn mower. I became a captive student of history on that same day too apparently.

I am not sure what is taught on front lawns nowadays. And there is probably no push mower involved either.

But I still quietly celebrate the lessons of one old neighbor who had once been a boy fished out of the sea during a war that he wanted no part of.

And I never spent a single one of those shiny half dollars either.

Paper money is another issue altogether, however. But a promise is a promise.

Flags

Flags

Noel Laflin

11-3-18

They were found rummaging through the old warehouse one Friday afternoon, looking for the right flag to sacrifice later that night.

“That one looks too new,” one staff man said, even though it only bore forty-eight stars in the field of blue.

“And this one is way too big,” said his buddy. “It would take ten guys to hold it in place.”

“Along with a giant fire to boot,” his friend replied.

And so the two searched on, pulling triangulated-folded flags off the wooden backroom shelf, reading a tag - if one were attached, stating from whence it came - reverently unfolding each one, examining, refolding and returning it to the dusty shelf, until the perfect candidate was selected.

Their final choice was the first one after all. The tag said it had flown over the U.S Capitol in 1957. The giant would be saved for some special occasion.

“I wish we had more ratty-looking choices,” said the first friend, as they headed back to their cabin, the perfectly folded flag tucked under his left arm. “Folks would understand its need for retirement more easily if they could see the tears and rips.”

“Well, we’ll just have to leave it to Freddy to come up with a good reason,” replied his friend, as they strode into staff hill.

“Do you ever really understand his speeches before we burn a flag?” asked his buddy.

His friend stopped and thought for a moment.

“No, not really. But he’s really good at it. I guess that’s all that counts.”

Waltzing Matilda

Waltzing Matilda

Noel Laflin

10-31-18

A far away ice cream truck was playing “Waltzing Matilda” about an hour ago.” Wispy strains of the tune were drifting throughout the neighborhood and into our open windows on this fine, perfectly nice Halloween afternoon.

Normally the trucks are spewing out nursery rhymed themes or inappropriately timed Christmas carols.
Noting the day, I should be envisioning witches and pumpkins.

Instead I am whistling Australia’s unofficial national anthem and looking up words like billabong, swagman, and coolibah tree.

But thanks to Wikipedia and posted lyrics to the original poem and song, I learned that there is a ghost calling from the billabong, so maybe the song fits the day after all.