family – shoutforjoy.us

30 years have passed and so little has changed.

Today (October 3, 2023) marks the 30th anniversary of my mom, BJ’s, passing. From August on of 1993 comprised a season from hell for us. I will try to get the dates right. It may require a re-edit once I call April, or Bethann gets home from work. On August 4, two days after April’s 17th birthday, she broke her leg with a spiral fracture, when she stumbled on the top landing of the attic steps from her bedroom. She started her senior year in high school in a wheelchair with a cast from her ankle to her hip. We had to borrow our friend Nancy‘s hospital bed, and place it in the living room, since April obviously could not handle steps. Since Nancy no longer needed a hospital bed, she used April’s flat bed.

On September 4, Nancy was found dead in that bed of an apparent heart attack. She was 50 years old. Her family asked me to handle her funeral and the burial of her ashes, etc. I took a several days off of the job I had just started with an auto parts company in Macungie to do this. I had just returned to work. It was a bright, warm day, the 13th or 14th of September. I was riding my Honda Helix scooter down the main drag of Macungie. A car ran a red light to my left and made a left turn into the left turn lane, next to me. I started honking, because I did not have room to move right and I did not know what this driver intended. At the next intersection, while I was honking and flashing my headlamp, a landscape truck ran the stoplight to my left. I hit his front, right fender and went airborne! I flipped three times at different angles to the earth. I rolled off the hood of the truck on the way down. My bike was still running. The anti-freeze was flowing toward me. I started to scream. I did not know what was broken, but did not want the radiator fluid to get into my wounds, so wanted someone to move me quickly.

Thankfully, a member of the volunteer ambulance crew worked at the bank across the street and had witnessed the whole thing. He was already on his way out the door before I hit the ground. I shattered my right ilium and fractured my pelvis, and got some cuts on my left arm and hand. I think that was September 10. The ambulance took me to Lehigh Valley Hospital. This was back when they just had a rotation of doctors with various specialties on rotation in charge of the ER. On my day, it was a hand specialist. He kept hovering over the scratches on my hands. They got stitched up beautifully! I kept on telling him that they were not the problem. My hip was the problem. They took an x-ray of my hips. They gave me crutches and told me to walk out of there. I screamed like bloody hell! They gave me another Percocet and told me to “buck up.”

I don’t know where or if I slept that night. The hospital ER called me the next morning and asked me if my hip hurt. I said, “No shit, Sherlock! I was only screaming as I left last night.” They asked me to come back to the ER. I said, “Why don’t I just schedule a CAT scan?” They assured me they weren’t going to make me wait around all day, but get me right in, since their gurneys are uncomfortable, and I had to get a ride with a neighbor who had a Lincoln Continental, since there was no way I could fold myself into our Subaru Justy. We were there for over eight hours! I determined there and then to avoid Lehigh Valley Hospital if at all possible!

At this point I needed a hospital bed and April could graduate to her flat bed, albeit, still in the living room. Nancy didn’t need her bed anymore, so someone retrieved April’s bed from her apartment. I used the hospital bed in the dining area and April used her bed in the living room. Bethann answered the phone, “psych ward” if she was upstairs and “orthopedics” if she was on the main floor. My doctor, Priscilla Benner, loaned me her cordless phone, so I could keep it at my bed, so we didn’t have any more injuries from trips and falls. The mailman delivered our mail directly to my bed. I was supposed to be horizontal for three weeks.

My mom died on Oct 3rd. So, it was a day or two over three weeks and Bethann and I were flying to Phoenix for BJ’s funeral. The airline seated me exactly opposite to the way I requested, so that my right leg was cramped behind the bulkhead. We had an extra hour delay on the runway. They offered a complementary beverage as an apology. I chose an O’Douls. What a mistake! I ended up puking out the door of Joan Bucher’s van when Les pulled over on the way home from the airport. That was my last O’Doul’s.

I have had six strokes, many (~50) TIAs, a brain bleed, and a couple of seizures. I have gone for several years without a neurologist. I thought I found a decent one. Then I read her notes on our visit. She had not listened AT ALL. She got things exactly opposite of what I had said. She ordered unnecessary tests, because she had not listened to my recounting of my history, nor had she read my chart. So the things she got right, she treated as if they were amazing new discoveries that she had made, instead of what we had found out at HUP in August of 2011.

I am allergic to 13 different medications, and have at least two auto-immune disorders. I cannot afford to have doctors who are sloppy and careless.

Now, directly to the headline. When I was nine or ten and sick with something, my mom made an appointment with our usual family doctors. The practice had grown to include five physicians. We went there in time for our appointment. We waited for over an hour. My mom was livid. She went to the desk and let them know what the problem was, and that it was unacceptable to have a sick child sitting in their waiting room for that length of time and unacceptable for Dr. Towne to treat us this way. We were leaving. We would no longer ever see Dr. Towne; would advise Dr. Linke to let him go, and will return when someone is ready to see her son or would go directly to the pharmacy. These are her son’s symptoms. We left.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with another neurologist. He rescheduled three times to better fit his schedule. I was instructed to show up 15 minutes early. This irritates me! Doctors routinely do this. Why don’t they just set the appointment time as 15 minutes earlier? It’s a power play. On two accounts: 1) It’s disorienting. You now have two times in your head to remember. 2) It establishes the idea that you are arriving earlier and are waiting for him or her, establishing the fact that he or she is more important than you are.

Tony and I were ushered into the exam room at the quarter of time, went through the preliminaries, BP, chart corrections, etc., then waited until more than 45 minutes after the scheduled start time of the appointment. In other words, we were there over an hour. I had had it. The memory of my Dr. Towne non-visit had returned to me and I left in a not very graceful fashion.

It was not until after I had gotten home and realized the date that the full impact of perhaps why the Dr. Towne and Mom incident had seemed so immediate at the neurologist’s office. And I said some things at the neurologist’s office that my mom did not feel comfortable saying publicly as a woman in the 1960s would have, but I am pretty sure she said to them later, privately. She and my dad met in law school. She worked as a legal secretary at various times. Lawyers have to keep schedules, as well. There are ways to keep schedules and handle multiple important issues and people. Good legal secretaries know this. Good doctors know this. Skilled surgeons, who have to show up on time, know this. Not everything that needs to be said needs to be said by you, or needs to be said now. I believe sloppy schedules are largely the result of arrogance.

Afterword:

Today, (10/7/2023) I received an email from the neurologist, from a donotreply account, that said that I had missed my appointment. I emailed them pointing out that I was not the one who missed the appointment, rather it was the doctor who had. Furthermore, he had made my point regarding rudeness and arrogance by sending an email from a donotreply account, as there was no way to have a true two way, equal conversation using that.

Following Directions

My earliest memory of following directions in school was a kindergarten lesson. Mrs. Richardson gave us each a square piece of colored paper. We had scissors. She told us to round off the corners of the square. We would thus make a circle. I meticulously rounded off the corners of my square. What I ended up with resembled a television tube. I informed Mrs. Richardson that her instructions were faulty. She pointed out to me the other students’ results, which were various circular to egg shaped pieces of paper. I said they may be more circular, but they obviously did not arrive there by following her instructions. They just took the paper and scissors and cut circles.

She apologized and promised to do better in the future. We got along just fine.

When I was born, I did not come with a warning label. My parents rarely, if ever, intervened in any of my conflicts with teachers or administrators at school. My mom or dad would get a call, and they would say, “Take it up with Ford.” Or in high school, “Take it up with Cranford.” Needless to say, adults were a little shocked to hear that kind of response from parents, especially from two who were legally trained and were so involved in politics and the school board, etc. I was the youngest of four. I think it was a combination of my parents were tired of dealing with petty bureaucrats, and the fact that they knew that I could hold my own with these people any day. I guess they were right. After all, I had publicly humiliated both of our US Senators and sometime VPs on their international policy positions in open fora by the time I was 15. (Hubert Humphrey & Walter Mondale) But I digress. This is about following directions.

When I was in high school, I worked as a bicycle mechanic and part-time manager at my mom’s bicycle shop. She had a sewing machine and vacuum machine shop next door. One evening, she and my dad went out for dinner and left me to watch both shops. There was a door between the two. A couple came in. They were interested in a Viking/Husqvarna sewing machine. They asked me if I could show them how to sew a buttonhole. I told them, quite honestly, that I had never used this machine and had never sewn a buttonhole, but that my mom always told me “‘If you can read, you can cook’, so I will look it up in the manual.” That’s what I did.

I sewed a perfect buttonhole step by step and cut the slit. I was amazed! Instead of being impressed, these people were angry. They told me that I was trying to con them; and that I had certainly done that many times before, to make it look so easy! I assured them, that that was the first time I had ever sat down in front of a Viking sewing machine. Viking just wrote their instructions that well. They could try it themselves and have the same result. There was no convincing them. They left angry.

Sometimes, you just can’t win. I have replayed that scene in my mind countless times through the years. I don’t know if the price was too high, if I was too pretty, or what the problem was.

One thing I know: the directions were spot on!

And I know how to follow directions!

Just ask Mrs. Richardson.

The Youngest

Concordia students seeing me off at the train station, Taken with my Brownie camera. It didn’t have a focus feature. I don’t know how it sensed the residual alcohol in my system.

As the youngest child of four I was always referred to as “the baby” of the family. My older sister, Alison, would delight to introduce me as her “little brother” once I was at least five inches taller than she was. She is four years older. Tic, the oldest (six years older than me) went from beating me up regularly, to taking me along on his dates without warning them. This happened at least four times. All but once, the girls would spend the evening talking and dancing with me and ignoring him. I think that was his intention. These girls were ones that my mom had set him up with. I always had a good time. The one girl who was not put off by my presence was a farm girl in Wisconsin. We went to the drive-in movie to see Psycho. I was in the back seat, and kept leaning over the back of the front seat saying, “psycho!” Tic had a hard time deterring this girl, even with my assistance.

Sue Ann was short and I was tall. I surpassed her height when I was in 5th grade and she was in 7th. Many times people either thought we were twins or dating. At one ski resort, the man setting up the T-bars thought we were on our honeymoon! We set him straight in a hurry! We were 15 and 17. Of course, we were in snow gear. She took me to her jr. high dances at Carl Sandburg. I would dance with five or six girls at a time. The silly 7th and 8th grade boys were all lined up against the walls, afraid to make a move. I would help her and her friends with their math and algebra. I was a year ahead in class. They were a year ahead of that. It didn’t matter. I have a freakish thing for math. I had “Elementary Functions” in my junior year of high school. It was basically intro. to calculus. Mr. Kadieski was giving a notebook test to grade our homework. I never bothered with homework, but aced the regular tests. He said, “This next one is a gimme. It’s the quadratic equation.” I said out loud, “Oh oh!” The other students were incredulous. They asked me how I got this far without memorizing the quadratic equation. I said, “I don’t know. I just look at the problems and I solve.” My brain plotted them on the Cartesian graph. The answers were always right. They hated me.

How does this relate to my siblings?

When my parents took a vacation to Hawaii, they asked Jean Hosterman to watch us while they were gone. Jean was in graduate school for her psychology degree. She took the opportunity to give the four of us a battery of tests. She let it slip that on the intelligence tests, we tested equally on the raw scores. She was flabbergasted. Tic was slightly above average for his age, which meant that my eleven year old self tested as a slightly above average 17 year old. She gave me a whole bunch more tests with blocks and puzzles, etc. Thinking back, this, along with the Iowa test I had taken the year before, set me up to be my dad’s greatest disappointment.

Tic went to Concordia College in Moorehead, MN, for a couple of years after high school. One weekend, I took the train from Minneapolis to visit him. I was twelve or thirteen. Tic shared a two room suite in the attic of Brown Hall with Curt from Dent, MN. One night that I was there we went to an upper classman’s off-campus, basement apartment with a bunch of theology students. They started me off with a Singapore Sling. Then I had a Whiskey Sour followed by a Screwdriver. Now, I was all of 95 pounds and 5′ 9″, maybe. I still remember the discussion we had about Luther, Melancthon, etc. These guys and gals were amazed! I not only didn’t pass out. I kept up with them or bested them in theology and church history. When it was time to go, a couple of the guys were sympathizing with my brother, figuring I was going to be a mess the next day. We went up the basement steps to leave at about 2am. There was snow on the ground. I took a step straight off the back of the steps, falling headlong into the snow. I slept in a recliner they had bought at a yard sale, until 4pm. I was just fine when I got up. It’s the family curse: no hangovers.

Tic’s real name is Thomas Ingham Coulter. Our dad gave him the nickname, Tic, from his initials. I don’t know if he still uses it. Ali and Tic don’t talk to me. When Sue Ann killed herself, my dad was so ashamed he convinced her husband and kids not to tell anyone else. Tic knew, however. The funeral was creepy. Ali and I knew something was amiss. I sat with Ali and her husband. When we processed out of the church, Ali grasped my hand tightly and said, “What the fuck just happened, little brother?” My dad had invited the extended family to dinner at a restaurant near the church. Last minute, I was invited and seated with my step-sister, Kris, and her wife. My dad had figured I would be offended by this, since I had been a fundamentalist Baptist the last time he had paid any attention. I found out later that he was not going to invite me at all. My Uncle Pete (Cranford Arthur) suspected as much. When my dad invited him, Pete asked him if he had invited “young Cranford”. My dad told him no. Pete insisted I be invited and that he and Barb would not come if he did not invite me. My dad relented. Pete and Barb did not come. They were so upset. I had a great time with Kris and her wife.

Ali called me from Minnesota a couple days after I got home to Pennsylvania to discuss her suspicions regarding Sue Ann’s death. Death certificates are private in Minnesota. She and I started to investigate on our own. After a month and a half on the phone for an hour or so every night, we finally got in contact with Sue Ann’s friends who had discovered her body and suicide note.

“Did your mother drink?”

On Saturday, I was taking a break from wrestling with the lazy Susan. I was sitting on the Jimmy Hoffa bin on the front porch with our good friend and co-quarantiner, Tony. He is one of the many people who has encouraged me to write my life story in a book. So I shared with him a few more chapters. This is one of them. Oh yes, the “Jimmy Hoffa bin” is what we call the plastic poolside storage bin that we use to store our recycling and our garden tools, etc., on our entry porch. We nicknamed it that, because it is large enough to hide a body in.

As I mentioned previously, my dad built the house in Golden Valley in the summer of 1961, where I lived from first grade until Bethann and I got married in July, 1975, after my second year in college. Until we bought our first house, just after Thanksgiving, we lived in a tiny, one bedroom apartment on 19th and Upton in Minneapolis. I was going to grad school full time in the mornings. We were both working full time, 3pm to 11:30pm in housekeeping at North Memorial Medical Center. I am the youngest of my parents’ four children. The other three were already out of the house and had houses and kids of their own (or at least on the way). So my parents decided to sell the big house with the big yard, and move into a condo on the other side of Golden Valley.

One large house with six people for fourteen years can accumulate a lot of stuff. One Friday afternoon in October, between school and work, B.J. called. (B.J. is my mom. It’s short for Betty Jane.) She said, “We’re having a garage sale tomorrow. If you want any of your things, come early, so you can buy them. The sale starts at nine.”

Now my other siblings are all older than I am and had been out of the house for years. They had been living in their own houses, with real closets and attics and garages. So they had room to put things and opportunity to retrieve things that they may have wanted to keep. I had been out of the house for three and a half months. During that time, I had gotten married in Pennsylvania, started seminary full time, taking Greek and Hebrew and a senior theology elective, and was working full time.

My car wasn’t nearly this nice. It was about 18″ long, went straight forward and turned left in reverse.

I arrived at B.J.’s garage sale at 8:30am. I helped bring up the last of the stuff from the storage closets in the basement. I said good-bye to my childhood toys and games. I thought twice about buying my large “remote control” red sports car, but decided I had been too old for it when I bought it the first time. (Remote control is in quotes, because it had a 6′ cord from the controller to the car.) I think that all I went away with was a few books, some brass bells, and the chalk painting of my grandpa Ingham’s horse, Lady, which Wathena, his wife and my godmother, had given me when I was 10.

When I was done telling Tony the story, he looked at me and asked, “Did your mother drink?”

When life gives you lemons …

It was just about a week before we got slammed with the coronavirus pandemic that Bethann finally got all of her remnants and bits of fabric neatly sorted on the two 7 foot tall bookshelves we had purchased at Goodwill for $7 each. I had spent hours cutting up boxes from the state store into ~9″x11″ pieces, so that fabric could be wrapped on it, pinned and filed on a shelf by color. Bethann has sold a number of pinwheel swirl dresses, patchwork dresses, various quilted things, etc., as well as making many gifts for our grandchildren and others.

COVID-19 hits. At first, Goodwill stays open. Bethann works there part time sorting donations. On Monday, March 16, they meet with the employees and say that they plan to continue to stay open. That evening, she got an email saying that Goodwill is closing everything at midnight, due to COVID-19. On Wednesday, the owner of the cottage industry where she works sewing six hours a week tells her that she is ill and it would be better if she did not come in. By the end of the week, the governor shut all non-essential business down.

face masks by Bethann Coulter — 40 Face masks for Souderton Mennonite Home /Cranford’s Minion mask / Bethann’s butterfly mask

We have all this fabric! We have loads of elastic! We have sewing machines! We don’t want to be in the same room all of the time! We would like to be productive! Do we make lemonade? Of course not! That would be silly. She makes beautiful face masks. Last week, we delivered about 75 to Grand View Hospital (some adult size, some children size). Today, Souderton Mennonite Home picked up 40 and a family picked up four. She is busy making more.

And yes, she made masks for household members, as well. We wear them whenever we leave the house. Someone told me that a cloth face mask will not help. This is NOT true! A double layer, cotton face mask is 60% to 80% effective to stop the spread of virus. An N95 face mask is %90 effective. It is true that it does not so much protect the one wearing it, as it protects those around them. The best way to stop the spread of this thing is to assume everyone has it. This means we all should be staying home. And when we really need to go out for something, we should wear a mask.

Sewing Shite Shirts

My mom, B.J., as I mentioned before, taught me that if I could read, I could do anything. This was most literally demonstrated to me in my experience with sewing clothes. In About 1972, when I was in high school, I was working for my mom as a bicycle mechanic, salesman, and pretty much managing BJ’s Bike Shop in Brooklyn Park, MN, adjacent to BJ’s Viking Sewing Center, where she sold Viking Husqvarna and New Home sewing machines and Eureka vacuum cleaners.

One evening, she could not staff her shop, so I had to look after both stores. There was a door between them, so I could hear the door chimes on either side. A couple came in to look at a Viking sewing machine. They wanted to see how it did buttonholes. I told them that I had never used the machine and had never made a buttonhole in my life, but I would attempt it by following the step-by-step instructions in the manual that came with the machine. I sat down in front of the machine, turned it on, positioned the fabric, lowered the presser foot, opened the manual to the proper page, went through steps 1 through 5 and made a perfect buttonhole. I was astonished! They were not impressed. They were upset. They thought I was conning them and that there was no way it could be that easy. They felt I had to be an expert, when, in fact, I was a rank beginner.

After that I played around with little projects like making little book bags out old jeans legs and such. My first real sewing project was several years later. It was a pair of rusty maroon jeans. I tend to sew like my mom cooked. Sure, she always read the recipe; then improvised. On that first pair of jeans, I eliminated the outside, side seams. This meant I had to use the pattern to figure out curved darts from the waist band to my hips, where the side pockets insert. It meant I had to configure a whole different layout for cutting the fabric. I also stitched my initials in a sort of double line wave on the back pockets, instead of the boring zigzag the pattern called for. I mean if one is going to go to the trouble of making one’s own clothing, why would one want it to look like it came off of a store rack?

My second project was a pair of faux suede, dark green jeans. This time, I made them fitted to the knees, then straight down. I put a different style “CC” on the rear pockets. One day at Finland Mennonite Church, the man behind me asked me if I would make him a pair, only he wanted his initials on the pockets. His name was Chet Cassel. I said I had to maintain my artistic integrity and I could only sign them with my own initials.

The family on our front step on 4th St., East Greenville, July 1983. I’m wearing the outfit I made.

In 1978, I sewed myself a long, flowing, navy kaftan out of shiny, swimsuit fabric. I was working full time and going to seminary full time. A mentally handicapped neighbor came to our door and I answered it wearing it. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were a priest.” I told her I was in seminary. Then it dawned on me, that she was referring to the kaftan. In 1982 I made myself a set of Indian style drawstring pants and shirt in green and light green stripes. My friend’s NY Italian father asked her “Who’s the giant cucumber?” when we visited Manhattan. I walked with Bethann and our friends through Central Park, China Town and Little Italy, dressed in them.

In 2014, our friend, Kork Moyer, read about shite shirts and shite shirt nights in pubs in England. He is a rock musician. He said he really wanted one. I felt the same way. So, that August, while visiting our friends, Marie and Pete Mattson, in Lewes, Delaware, we went to Mare’s Bears Quilt Shop to pick up some fabric for twirl dresses. I spotted some beautiful avocado fabric. I love avocados! I use them a lot in my cooking. Then I found a gorgeous bundle of Robert Kaufman fabric fat squares. I persuaded Bethann to let me use my vacation mad money to buy these to make myself a shite shirt. I added to these bits of eggplants, corn, tomatoes, and peppers fabrics for the pockets and cuffs for a total of 15 different fabrics. I used 9 different buttons from Bethann’s stash. I have gotten comments everywhere I have worn this. I have shown it off at a few different fabric and sewing machine shops and received oohs and ahs. They seem to be amazed that a man was able to do such a thing. This was my first project on the serger machine. I also did various fancy topstitches over all of the seams in metallic gold thread to add a little more pizazz. I finished it the evening of September 17, 2014.

We showed my shirt to Bethann’s boss, Kathy, and her husband, Steve. They hired us to make him a short sleeved one. I did the major part of picking out the fabric. I pieced the fabrics together, topstitched the seams. The featured photo above the headline is the fabric at that point. Next I laid out the pattern and cut it out. Bethann assembled and finished it. It was finished on September 17, 2019, exactly five years after I finished mine! I modeled it for photos before Bethann delivered it today. Kathy and Steve were delighted! Steve is a pharmacist. I hope he wears it to work.

Bubble blowing class

For a few summers when I was little, the six of us would pack up a pile of gear and supplies into the back of my mom’s ’59 Pontiac station wagon for a week or more of family camp at Camp Lawton on Deer Lake near St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. Just about everyone in Epiphany Episcopalian Church of New Hope, Minnesota, went. Epiphany was the third of the four churches my parents started, which is pretty unusual for a functioning agnostic and a Buddhist atheist.

There were all sorts of classes and activities for various age and skill levels; crafts, hiking, archery, fishing, swimming, etc. We all ate together. We had campfire together, then the children went to bed. There weren’t any beds. We were in sleeping bags on the old wood and canvas cots we brought from home. We did not necessarily go right to sleep. The parents stayed up for some late night conversation and libations. Did I mention it was an Episcopalian camp? Sometimes, we would mix it up and kids would “trade families” staying overnight in friends’ tents. We learned about how to do graffiti on the canvas by writing on it with toothpaste. The toothpaste would bleach it. Also, if you pressed on the canvas when it was raining, it would leak at that spot; a useful skill to annoy a bullying, sleeping, older brother.

There was a wood-fired sauna near the lake. We could get real heated up, working our way up to the top bench, then run down into the lake for a good shock to the system. This was on the “men’s” end of the beach. It was only designated this way for the moonlit skinny dipping. Some of the men would go full Finnish style in the sauna on those occasions. The women and girls were on the other end of the beach (about 50 yards away). My mom pointed out how, at that distance, in the moonlight it looked like everyone was wearing swimsuits, you know, with their tan lines. Sure, mom.

The stated topic was bubble blowing. Since we are finally at the lake …

Every year I had swim lessons I was in the beginner class, leaning over in knee deep water, blowing bubbles, turning my head, taking a breath and blowing more bubbles. I could never get out of bubble blowing class, because I could never float without moving my hands. My feet sank! I am now 64 years old. I still cannot float without moving. My feet still sink. I have heavy feet! I could never pass the test to go out to the floating raft to play and dive off with the rest of the kids my age. It got to the point where when it came time for bubble blowing class, I ran up the hill to our tent and hid under my cot, crying. It was no better when I went to Camp Manitou, the YMCA day camp. As part of their program we had swim lessons in the YMCA in downtown Minneapolis. We had to swim naked! They said that was so they could see who did it if anyone peed in the pool. It was not the best experience for this boy at nine years old, who could only blow bubbles and doggy paddle.

This was ridiculous! I lived in Minnesota, which is Sioux for “Land of Lakes” and I couldn’t swim! Finally, in 1966, the Golden Valley Country Club built a pool. My folks were very active there. In fact, my dad, Charlie, was president for a couple of years. The pool was open 9am to 9pm, 7 days. I basically lived at the pool. I was 11. I taught myself how to swim by mimicking the old folks who were swimming laps morning and evening. They were members of the “Mile-a-Week Club.” I also watched the swim team practice and tried out the other strokes. The pool opened the end of May. By the end of June I joined the swim team and the Mile-a-Week Club. I was the only child in the club. I still could not float unless I was moving. By the end of July, I was swimming two miles a day. A mile is 71 lengths of a 25 yard pool. I was never a speedster, but I could beat anyone on the team for distance. Also, whenever the coach wanted to demonstrate the form of a stroke, he would have me do it. He would use me at meets to compete in the long events above my age class where there were few or no entrants from other clubs. I was always entered in my maximum allowed events, so even though I wasn’t super fast, I racked up a lot of points for being there and finishing. Sometimes it made the difference between winning and losing a meet.

When I was 13 or 14, our family bought a lake place on Loveless Lake in Polk County, Wisconsin. Once a summer, I would swim around it, about 3 miles, with my sister, Sue Ann, guarding me on our waterbike.

The other day I swam four lengths of the pool. By the end, I was going so slowly my feet were sinking. It’s hell to get old.

Fun-A-Day 2019 project

I started participating in Fun-A-Day two years ago in the Lansdale Fun-A-Day and started the Perkasie Fun-A-Day last year. For each of those, I painted a separate piece each day. They were rather ambitious undertakings. This year, I started with the idea that I was going to work on a single painting every day during the month of January. I decided I didn’t like the painting that I started and changed my project. If it isn’t fun, what’s the point? The project I landed on is actually something I had been doing every day during the month. I just needed to document it. So, here goes.

I am sprucing up the rented house we moved into on December 15, 2018. This may involve painting original artwork.It has already included painting two doors.

1/1/19 and 1/2/19: I mounted my Three Stooges portrayal on canvas of our grandsons on the bathroom door on the 1st. I mounted the life-sized canvas I painted two years ago of our granddaughters on the wall between the bathroom and sewing room doors on the 2nd.

1/3/19:
I arranged the icons for the prayer corner in our bedroom and hung photos and mirror/shelf.

I also hung paintings on the bedroom door using Velcro Command strips.

1/4/19: On Friday, I painted the dough box “Brazilian Tan” to match the kitchen backsplash. I also painted both sides of the front door. It had never been painted. It was still Slumlord Gray.

1/5/19: On Saturday, I painted the remaining, tired, yellow wall in the bedroom white and hung family pictures there. I also hung a shelf I made and painted the day before, in the sewing room, hung pictures around it, and elsewhere in the room.

I hung my self-portraits and other creations in the hallway and back entry room.

Then I arranged more family photos and my art in the living room. Bethann sewed Velcro ‘hooks’ on the quilted valance that our daughter, Rosalie, made for our bedroom on 5th St. I mounted it on our headboard with adhesive Velcro fuzz.

1/6/19: On Sunday, I spent time unpacking the back entry, while the paint on the desk chair was drying. I also put the first coat on the soffit above the cupboards.

1/7/19: Today, I cleaned the first, original painting we ever owned, a horse race, and repainted the frame, and hung it in the back entry.

This project is fun and creative, and even beautiful.

New Year Letter 2019

Dear Friends,
We moved on December 15, so didn’t get any Christmas cards out. We only put a couple of Christmas decorations up. The Christmas over the door swag has lain on various places on the front deck, since we could find no place to hang it. We had to move out of our tiny house on 5th and Spruce, Perkasie, in a hurry. In late October, black mold bloomed all over the house. It was making us sick. The roof leaked and it was damp. The landlord had never told us there was a dehumidifier in the utility room under the house. It had turned off, due to a clogged drain hose. We had never seen the utility room. At any rate, we moved to a slightly larger place seven blocks north, still in Perkasie. It was the only place we looked at. It was the only place in our price range. A bunch of friends and family helped us move, including two strong, very polite young men, whom we had never met before. They even used their pickup truck to help. We are not completely unpacked, but Cranford spent the last few days of 2018 painting the living room, kitchen, hallway and bathroom. We have spent the first few days of 2019 hanging photos, paintings, needlework and icons. We miss having our granddaughters and Lydia and Vincent living across the street. They had already moved to Souderton in October.
Last summer was a joy! On just about every sunny day, the girls walked across the street to ask us to go to the pool with them, and to the new zip line in the park, or to the library. These were all within two blocks south. On most Saturday mornings, we would walk with Lydia, Isabella and Brigitta to the Perkasie Farmers’ Market, two blocks north. Cranford spent most of the summer (June 1 – August 24) painting a 100’ long mural on the retaining wall between our yard and Dave & Tammy Opalkas’ yard. There are photos, etc., at www.perkbirds.com.
Bethann has been learning patchwork quilting from Rosalie. Bethann took early “retirement” from Social Security, so she doesn’t need to work full-time. She took a half-time teller position with QNB bank, that comes with benefits. She continues to sew beautiful clothing for our granddaughters and fun pajamas for our grandsons.
Last January, Cranford painted every day for Perkasie Fun-A-Day, which he started. He is in the throes of it again, this January. Last year he tried to paint a “hope” everyday. Two of those pieces, plus another have since been shipped to a patron on the west coast of Ireland. This January, he is working every day on a single painting of a winter sunrise through the windows of our new digs. You can view his progress on the Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 event page on Facebook.
Healthwise, we are doing OK for people of our age and condition. We had no major health crises last year.
We hope that you and yours have a healthy and happy 2019. Thank you for your friendship. Feel free to stop by our new digs. We now actually have room for a few more people at the table.

Peace & love,

Cranford & Bethann Coulter
400 Ridge Ave.
Perkasie, PA 18944-1143

Bethann’s cell: 267-497-0267
Cranford’s cell: 267-497-0268

The Kindness of Strangers

We are moving this weekend. We reached out on Facebook to ask for people to help us move and to come with their pickup trucks. We do not have a problem doing this, because through the years we have helped countless people move (including several who were moving off of the street into apartments). I have helped roof friends’ houses, parents of friends’ houses, and friends of friends’ houses. I have done wiring, installed phones (back when that was a thing) and painted for friends, relatives and friends of relatives. I have helped build decks, additions patios and driveways. I have even helped build and install a few docks in my misspent youth. I am not saying this to boast. This is just what one did in the culture I grew up in. It was a culture of sharing and mutual care. Implicitly I knew that if I ever needed help, people would be there to help. And just like me, they would not expect pay or even a commitment to help them specifically at any time. They, like me, just knew that in a culture of paying it forward and mutual care, no one is in it alone.

We never considered whether or not someone who asked for help were handicapped or economically disadvantaged or prosperous. If someone asked for help and we were able to help, that was enough reason to say yes. It was unthinkable to say no. These work parties were almost always memorable, fun and joyous happenings. We made new friends, learned new skills and had a great sense of accomplishment. We may have been tired and dirty when we were done, but it was a satisfied tired and dirty.

I know that some of you who will read this will think that it is just fond reminiscences of another old man talking about the “good old days”. However, the response we have received to our call for moving help indicates that this aspect of our culture is still alive. We are so grateful!