By: Tina Lesher
In my mother’s generation, many women were reluctant to reveal their true age. When my mother passed away almost half a century ago, I discovered that she was two years older than I thought she was.
Seriously?
Well, I could not hide my true age if I wanted to do so! In 2006, I authored a book titled “Club ’43,” about 12 women, all from Westfield, N.J., where I live, who were born in 1943. I am one of those profiled in a chapter in my own book so anyone who passed grade school math could figure that yours truly is hitting age 77 today. (Oh, and I proudly remind the others that I am the youngest of that revered club as they already have celebrated their 2020 birthdays).
Of course, I go crazy when I read newspaper articles that refer to people my age as elderly. Sorry, that fails to define those of us who still manage 18 holes on the golf course or ride all over town on a beach bike. When I labored as a journalism professor, I would tell my students to “put in the age of the person in the story, not a darn adjective that labels him as old.”
Time to Reminisce
As I move forward in my quest to retain my vitality---and my memory--- I reminisce like crazy. Example: I still chuckle when I tell people that I was transported to my kindergarten class every day in a limousine owned by the family of a classmate. And when I went to college in West Virginia, I traveled by private plane alongside a classmate/friend who just happened to be from a family that had a jet.
Not bad for a girl from Dunmore, Pa., a borough adjacent to Scranton, where a year’s property taxes when I lived there were less than what we pay for a week now here in Jersey.
What I think is really interesting, as I look back at my early days in life, is how things have changed so dramatically.
Are You Kidding, Mom?
A street car came past our home in Dunmore. The milk was delivered in glass bottles. The wash was out on the line for drying. In the summer a woman would walk down Adams Avenue, where we resided, and yell “Huckleberries for Sale” as she maneuvered a dishpan full of the fruit on her head.
Mention these things to my three offspring and hear a reply in concert: “Yeah, sure.” Translation: “Are you for real, Mom?”
In Westfield, parents have a fit if a grade school class has more than 25 students. I was one of 65 in first grade at St. Paul’s in Scranton. (Joe Biden was a year ahead of me there). We did not have art classes or any specialty courses. Phys Ed? Forget it…but we did have tap dancing once a week. All I remember is being told by the instructor to “Shuffle Ball Change.” LOL
The emphasis in grade school was on the basics. We actually learned how to diagram sentences. We pride ourselves on knowing grammar and usage. Thus, when I hear a fellow golfer say “You can hit the ball further than me,” I cringe at the two mistakes in eight words.
As kids, we walked to school---and home for lunch. The crossing guards were boys in the 8th grade! Our mothers did not pick us up if it was raining. Good reason---they lacked cars! If a family did have the resources for an auto, it was being used by the dads who went to work. So we walkers weathered the storm---literally.
Oh, try describing to younger members of the extended family how a Mr. Grimes would come to our Dunmore abode in the pre-dawn hours to “stoke the furnace” with coal stored in a large bin in the basement. That description elicits almost silence, as if I am making it up.
A Snow Day…Unreal
I was in my thirties and living in Westfield when I first heard the term snow day. I got a call at about 4:30 a.m. from a “room mother” from my child’s kindergarten class. “No school today,” she said. I figured someone must have died. Turned out there was a half- inch of snow on the ground! Repeat: half-inch!
How about TV? While today’s youngsters have a billion choices of what to watch, we had no choice when my family got its first television. I watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie just about every night on our lone channel. I did not have the opportunity to watch such current offerings as Desperate Housewives. Pity me!
And we had relatives in town---like aunts and uncles! We saw our cousins all the time. But my generation hightailed it out of the coal region and wound up in other states, pretty far from family members. So we had to communicate by phone. We actually often had to call an operator for long-distance help.
And in the words of one from a younger generation: “A phone operator? Like a real person?”
Recalling Some Birthdays
Some of my birthdays have been memorable. On my 16th birthday I passed my driver’s test. (Of course, I had been driving for years on Sundays when my father would take us kids to his trucking company yards and we would drive his car and/or a pickup truck all over the private property).
My husband, John, hosted a fun party to mark my 50th birthday. The invitations called for a Half a Hundred celebration. I thought I was OLD…
When I was teaching at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, my students brought in four gorgeous birthday cakes to celebrate on the same day my family was visiting from the states.
And when my birthday was marked on Thanksgiving Day many times, I always got a superb cake, be it a fresh coconut specialty made by Mary Sileo, our housekeeper in Dunmore, or one designed by my daughter, Melissa.
Some birthdays were memorable for other reasons. In 1963, as a college junior, I took a 14-hour bus ride home on the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. The bus stopped in many towns along the way, and yet never a sound was made by anyone. Absolute quiet out of sadness.
Well, add today’s birthday to the who-can-believe it list. Never when I was young did I think I would be wearing a MASK on my birthday. Only good news is that it covers the septuagenarian wrinkles.
That is Enough, Tina!
I could ramble on for hours about how it was in the old days, and what has since transpired, but who really wants to hear the musings of a 77-year-old? If you have read this far, you must be having a boring day. LOL.
Just wait until I am 80. I will have lots more to say…