The wash line

I was sitting in my basement the other day remembering how my mother would hang laundry up to dry down there when I was a kid.  The basement was where the laundry went when you couldn't hand it outside for what ever reason.  My mother had four wash lines tied up down there and you could hand a lot of laundry out there.  I just could never figure out how she got it down there.  The stairs to the basement are so narrow that you have to twist and turn to get past the inside wall on one side and the house foundation on the other side.  I can't imagine how she managed this carrying baskets of laundry.  I can barely do it without hurting myself while not carrying anything.  There were also two lines outside.  The downstairs one was easy enough to use, you just walked out the backdoor and there it was.  The one upstairs was a different story.  To use this line you had to hang out the kitchen window, twist to the side and stretch up to reach the line.  You also had the problem that the roof slanted down right beneath the window so you had to double things up to keep them from dragging along the roof and getting filthy.  When I was old enough to help I would climb out the window and stand on the roof to hang things up.  I never managed to learn the twist and turn thing she did.  I could never reach the bloody line and she was shorter the me!!!   I was remembering all this the other night sitting in the basement.  The ropes she used as wash lines are still there although you can't use them now because of all the stuff piled up under them.
Mom died about 14 years ago, sometimes it seems like yesterday, but I can still see all that laundry in my head.  I have a dryer now.

Daddyisms

My husband is known for saying things that may make sense to him but leave everyone else laughing.  We call these silly statements daddyisms.  It's gotten to where the kids just wait on the next one.  It can be especially hard to keep from laughing when he spits one of them out in the middle of an angry rant.  Our oldest daughter has actually taken to keeping a running of list of them.  The following of the daddyisms started one day when he decided he wanted to go to the mall. 
I don't remember why we were going to the mall Daughter #2 thinks it was to see Santa.  Anyway trying to get four kids ready to leave the house when half of them don't want to go and the other half can't decide what to wear can be quite an ordeal.  After what felt like hours we were finally ready to leave when son #1 remembered that he didn't have his money and that reminded son #2 that he also had money he wanted to take.  This meant waiting while they dug the money out of their hiding places and out of total frustration daddy yelled
            YOU DON'T NEED MONEY THERE IS NO PLACE FOR YOU TO SPEND IT.
 Son #1 just stands there staring at him while the rest of us are laughing our butts off and daddy has no idea why.  I blurted out Did you hear what you just said, and started laughing again.  Finally daughter #1 says between laughs there's no place to spend money at the mall.  Which started everyone laughing again including daddy.  After that we all waited for the daddyisms.  They keep us laughing and him annoyed.

The Duke

Living in New York City makes for some strange possibilities.  You never know who or what you might see.  I was a teenager, finally old enough by my mother's standards, to explore Manhattan on my own.  I was tramping down 6th Avenue looking everywhere but where I was going when I noticed a big guy standing next to me.   This guy had to be at least a foot taller then me and he was close.  He was making me nervous.  I took a step into the street and a big hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me back just as a cab barrels past where I had stepped.  I turned around to thank him and found myself staring into the face of John Wayne.  He smiled at me and gave me a wink and walked off.  I stood there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot for what felt Like ages watching him disappear down the street, head and shoulders above everyone around him.  For years afterwards my brother would bring up how I was too stupid to ask for an autograph at the same time that he was accusing me of making it up.  Me, I'll remember that smile for the rest of my life.  To this day I still love a good John Wayne movie. 

The monster in the night

After my uncle died and my grandmother went into a nursing home my parents made a bedroom for my brother downstairs.  Before that my family lived on the second floor of the house which consisted of a kitchen, my parents bedroom and a living room.  My brother and I slept in bunk beds up against the wall in the Living room.  After that the downstairs was made into my brother's room, a sort of sitting room and a utility room.  I was still sleeping in the living room upstairs.  The only television we had was in that room.  One weekend my brother wanted to watch a program that came on very early in the morning on a Saturday.  He didn't want me bugging him and I didn't want to wake up that early to watch a program about the air force.  So I was going to sleep in his room for that one night.  I was excited about it because not only did my brother have a big bed but I had never been alone downstairs before.  It was like a camping trip.  This room has two entrances.  One has sliding doors that lead in to sitting room.  The other had two doors on hinges that lead in to hallway and the outside entrance into the house.  I had the sliding doors closed and the other doors open.  You could see out into the hallway when you were sitting or laying on the bed.  I ate a snack, listened to some records ( my brother had the better record player) read comic books and went to sleep.  At some time in the morning, 2 or 3 o'clock, something woke me up.  The room was totally dark.  Nothing like I had ever seen before.  In the room I slept in there was a street light right outside the window and the room was never dark.  This room was further in the house and blocked by a wall.  There was noises in the hallway or rather in the porch leading into the hallway.  There is a very heavy wooden and glass door between the hallway and the porch.  There is no way to open this door without making a lot of noise.  The noise, which sounded like something shuffling, moved from the porch into the hallway without opening that door.  We had no pets in the House e at the time.  I looked toward the open doors and didn't see anything.  It was so dark that I don't think I could have seen anything.  I could hear the noise but it didn't really sound like anything I recognized.  Not exactly like footsteps but sort of.  Whatever it was stopped just outside the doors to the room I was in.  While I watched the doors it seemed like there was a darker mass against the dark of the hallway.  Then I saw it.  Sort of a face with red glowing eyes.  It was taller then my father by maybe half a foot or so.  I stared at for several seconds confused.  Then the red glowing eyes focused on me and suddenly I was very scared.  This was something I can't explain.  Even all these years later as an adult I can't explain what I saw.  i wanted to scream but nothing would come out.  I heard a growl, low and deep and the eyes moved closer to the doors.  At that moment something else passed me through the closed folding doors by the bed.  I felt it more the saw it.  It blocked the eyes by the other doors.  I could still see them but they stopped coming toward me.  finally they seemed to just fade away.  That was when i started crying. Loudly and my mother came running down the stairs.  She shivered when she passed through the door and commented that the room was cold.  I tried to explain about the eyes but Mom thought it was just a dream and told me to go back to sleep.  I spent the rest of the night huddled under the covers staring at the doors but I never saw it again.  As far as I know no one else ever saw it either but my brother did complain about the room being cold sometimes.  

The Air Force Museum

When I was 8 my father gave in to my brother Billy's begging and decided to take us to the Air Force museum in Dayton,Ohio.  Billy was 6 years older then me and was mad for airplanes.  He would sit out in our backyard and listen to the airplanes flying overhead for hours at a time.  We lived near two major airports so there were always airplanes flying over head.  It didn't matter how high up they where he could tell what kind of plane they were by the sound of the engine.  He had been begging my father to take him for what seemed like years and finally my dad agreed.  Dad took a day off on a Friday so we could drive to Ohio.  We would spend Saturday at the museum and drive back on Sunday.  Yay! a whole weekend.  That was a big deal in my family. Friday morning we piled into the station wagon, me, Billy, and my parents, while it was still dark out.  It had to be about four in the morning.  Billy and I climbed into the back with our blankets and toys and books and promptly fell right back to sleep.  How my father was able to drive at that time of the morning I will never know but every car trip we took started out the same way.  In the dark.  After a gazillion stops to use the bathroom, to eat or just to stretch we make to
Ohio and a motel where my father went right to bed and my brother and I got sent out to play in a really crappy playground that was nearby.  The next day we got to go to the museum.  I have to admit that I really don't remember all that much about the actual museum.  I really couldn't have cared less about airplanes or the air force for that matter.  I was just happy to be someplace other then home and it meant a few hours not under the overprotective watchful eyes of my mother.  My father had decided that Billy and I could walk around by ourselves as long as we stayed together and promised not to leave the museum grounds.  So off we went in one direction while my parents went in another.  I spent hours listening to my brother explain every minute detail of every airplane and engine and everything else we saw that day and what do I remember of all of that? The pigeon and the rock.  The pigeon was a stuffed carrier pigeon that had had it's leg blown off during WW1 but had managed to deliver it's vital message anyway.  I loved that pigeon.  Mainly because it was the only animal it the whole place and while Billy loved airplanes I loved animals.  I dragged him back to the pigeon over and over all day long.  The rock is a different story.  Part of the museum was a path outside the building and the rock was on this path.  It was getting close to the end of the day when we found ourselves running into my mother by this rock.  She told us to wait by the rock while she went and got my father who was somewhere inside the museum.  So we waited and waited and waited.  You have to remember that this was before cell phones so there was no way to find each other except by running into each other.  After about 40 minutes Billy decided to go looking to Mom himself.  Two minutes after he left my father comes walking back down the path by himself.  After explaining about mom and Billy he leaves me by the rock and goes looking for the two of them.  Now remember I'm 8 years old and I don't like being left alone by this rock so after a couple of minutes I go off looking for everyone else.  At some point after that my mother,father and Billy come back out to the rock only I'm not there.  (I learned the rest of this later)  Dad goes in looking for me and I of course came back out.  Mom goes looking for dad, Billy goes looking for mom, Dad goes looking for Billy and this goes on and on until the place is practically ready to close.  At some point I got fed up with looking at a rock and decided to look at the pigeon again.  At this point the security guards start chasing everyone out of the museum.  It turns out that the pigeon is right at the entrance to the building and everyone has to go past me to get out. When we finally got back to the car we were all exhausted from this game of cat and mouse we'd been playing for hours and my father turns around and says from now on we meet at the pigeon.  Forever after that is was a running family joke that whenever we went some place as a family we would designate a "pigeon" to meet at.

The explanation

This is my first blog so I'm hoping this goes well.  I named this An ordinary life because that is what I have, an ordinary life.  Most of us will live an ordinary life.  We can't all be famous.  Most of us will not be remembered by anyone other then our own families.  Even those memories will fade in time.  That doesn't mean that we are not important.  We all have a life to live, people to touch, stories to tell.  These are my stories.