I don't know if it was Petticoat Junction or Green Acres that did it, or if it rests on the fact that there isn't an ocean within a day's drive, but we Midwesterners have learned to accept our yokel status. Some of us have even learned to enjoy it!
My very favorite part of being labeled a yokel is what I call “Bijou-ism”. If you remember, Sam Drucker's General Store and the Shadey Rest Hotel often hosted discussions about whatever Clara Bow or Wallace Reid movie was playing at The Bijou, while the rest of the country was exploring the sexual mores of the 60's with Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate and Franco Zeffirelli's bawdy depiction of Romeo and Juliet. Land o' Joshin', those high fallutin', ankle-showin', painted-faced floozies of the silent era were enough to give a good girl from Hooterville the vapors, even though Billie Jo's, Bobbie Jo's, and Betty Jo's hooters were the reason half of their viewers tuned in weekly.
Relocated Midwesterners are similar to reformed smokers. Reformed smokers are frequently more sensitive to the smell and health hazards of secondhand smoke than folks who never smoked at all. The remoteness of past smoking habits causes them to transpose their sensitivity into insensitivity of the smoking rights of others. Yin/Yang on that one, as far as I'm concerned. A reformed smoker having an insensitivity contest with a smoker borders on entertainment.
Relocated Midwesterners, over time, develop Stockholm Syndrome in their non-Midwestern neighborhoods. They begin to adopt the attitudes and stereotypical non sequiturs that have misled residents in other parts of the country for years. Here's an example of a conversation between a non-Midwesterner and me.
(Circa 1995) “Are you on the Internet?”
It's hard to resist milking these situations.
“The what?”
“The Internet. It's a big system where you can connect to other people by electronic mail, and look for information on just about any subject.”
“Get out. What's this called again?”
“The In-ter-net. I-n-t-e-r-n-e-t. Tell your friends about it. You'll probably hear more about it in your area in a few years.”
“How much hay can you fit into the In-ter-net?”
“Very funny.”
“I know. You're funny, too. I was calling because I wanted your e-mail addy. I've done a little cyber-research and have a few things to forward to you.”
You can Google “Bijou”, you know. It comes up as a University of Iowa site that has served as a source for independent, art house, foreign, and classic films since 1972. Of course.
It's sort of eerie, but transplanted Midwesterners and others believe there are special editions of Vogue and Time for Midwesterners. They think we get the ones featuring the latest in pantaloons and gee-gaws, and details of how the Tennessee Valley Authority promises new hope to our remote rural areas. Following this train of thought, we get grainy black and white installments of World News Tonight, with anchors like Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntly keeping us up-to-date on starving children in China and how to stock a fallout shelter. Thank heavens for The Bijou, where for ten cents we can escape the pressures of The Cold War.
When we learned the happy news that The Dot would be added to our nest, we called to tell Hubba's sister Jan the good news. Jan had been living in L.A. for several years by then, and no, we didn't have to yell into the phone like an old Jimmy Stewart movie.
“H-h-h-hello...? Can..can...you hear me?”
We shared our information, breathlessly happy over the event only eight months hence. As she and I exchanged pregnancy symptoms (her daughter was under two at the time), she asked, “Would you like me to send you any books about being pregnant? I can get all sorts of them here.”
“Gee, Jan. Let me check.” (turning away from the phone) “Hubba? When does that Wells Fargo Wagon come through again?”
I didn't need any help with that, anyway. My parents signed the card and put it back in the plain white envelope so I could see the movies they showed in the fourth grade. The ones in high school were a little more explicit. Finger-snapping boys were gathered around a juke box, while the voice-over warned good girls of the possibilities of being picked up by a “hood”. It was Bijou-quality, I tell you.
One of my favorite Bijou-isms occurred during a phone conversation with my own sister, now living in North Carolina. We were discussing possible Christmas gifts for The Barn and The Peg. Being quaint Midwesterners, and with The Barn's Norwegian heritage to boot, she had a no-brainer gift idea for them. Perhaps they would enjoy a copy of Lake Wobegon, and apparently, she felt that needed some 'splainin'.
“Have you ever heard of The..Prarie...Home...Companion?”
They always slow down their speech, elementarizing their enlightenment for the benefit of the inbreeds back home. It was as if Garrison Keillor didn't broadcast from the Midwest, at the former World Theater (now the renovated Fitzgerald Theater), just a three-hour drive from my house. Even some Midwesterners get caught up in the stereotype. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul have been called “The Manhattan of the Midwest.” Pathetic. I sure hope that wasn't Garrison's fault. He briefly lived in New York, and everyone there thought he was, well, hip. Go figure.
On one visit to Decorah, my sister actually asked that we venture into the country so she could photograph pigs and take the photographs back to her friends. I think she was living in Boston at that time. No pigs in Massachusetts, you know. Gotta show 'em how funny it is that the yokels have them in Iowa. Arnold Ziffel would have been embarrassed. It turns out you can Google Arnold Ziffel, too, which brings us back to Hooterville. There is an urban legend that the cast of Green Acres actually roasted Arnold up to celebrate the last episode of the series.
Which reminds me...
Decorah is one fabulous place to eat. Hubba and I prefer foods cooked from fresh, and we have many fresh foods available to us for home preparation. There are numerous organic and good ol' country gardeners who keep us well-stocked, not to mention the size of our local frying hens, the marbled leanness of our angus beef, the juiciness of our pork-the-other-white-meat, the youngness of our veal, and the tenderness of our lamb. We also eat (get this) tofu. Uh-huh. We do.
We have four chef-staffed kitchens in Decorah, where the food is cooked from fresh. There are no stomach aches after one of those meals, and the proportions belie the fact that there's plenty more where that came from. My brother from the Pacific Northwest was here over Thanksgiving, and we took him to La Rana for dinner. La Rana, a chef-staffed Mediterranean bistro, serving up small plates of quality fresh ingredients at decent prices. If he would have been able to stay longer, we would have had lunch at Hart's Tea & Tarts or The Dayton House, and another dinner at The Victorian Rose in The Hotel Winneshiek (http://www.hotelwinn.com/). Yum E.
My brother didn't have any incredulous quotes to add to my list, but he conceded that none of the diners there were concerned with the volume of hay we could fit into La Rana.
At the table next to us sat Ellen Dolan, the soap opera actress who plays Margo Hughes on As The World Turns. Ellen was visiting her hometown of Decorah for the Thanksgiving holiday with her husband and daughter. Her brother Kerry moved back here about ten years ago and married his high school sweetheart (and my bosom buddy) Pat. I betcha Ellen could haul 'em in down at the local Bijou, as she did in New York when she appeared in Graceland while simultaneously bringing Margo to life on the small screen.
We could just as well have eaten at Ruby's Country Kitchen or The Family Table Restaurant. Both of them specialize in the comfort foods of the Midwest, which usually means mashed potatoes and gravy and, of course, pie. I know how to guarantee that The Barn will say, “Yes”. All I do is ask him:
“Do you want ice cream or whipped cream on your pie?”
"Yes."
See? Some yokel behaviors serve us well. They are the habits of our region, and they distinguish us as being level-headed and unconcerned with putting on airs. Even those Midwesterners who put on airs are accepted in spite their foolishness -- everyone sees them sneak in for a piece of pie at The Family Table, anyway. They may think the Joneses are judging them for their less than down-home habits, so we pretend not to notice their clandestine behavior. We don't want to embarrass them if they ever come to their senses. After all, everyone here stands in the same line down at The Bijou.
Capturing Zen
Ah. Sweet relief.
There is a beveled excitement in life, so many things to try, to learn, to be about. And yet, I maintain the odd belief that I can fit more into a day than the clock allows. Though the absurdness of this is proven daily, I can't seem to learn the simple lesson of the boundaries of time.
Every morning is a misty map of possibilities, dawning into focus. I hit the deck at five bells and proceed directly to an hour of exercise. I seldom repeat the calisthenic routine; “rut” and “Kari” do not dwell in compatible universes.
My brain is wide awake in the early hours of the day, and exercising allows me to flexicate both mind and body. I frame the order in which the day will evolve. I get the general outline right, but quickly slip into a variation of preconceived notion-sickness, something akin to magic thinking.
For instance, ignoring any limitation, I envision cutting out a quilt before lunch. In my mind's eye everything is all set up, ready to go. The fabrics in my fantasy are without wrinkles or folds. What a marvelous think-way to start the day! I seriously like where I am, both mentally and physically, between five and six in the morning.
Then the phone rings and one of my schools needs a sub. I need to put away the pile of stuff on top of the sewing machine. My PDA alarm warns me of an appointment. Oops! I'd better get out of these workout clothes and into the tub. Whatever the interruption, I'm either not geographically located near a sewing machine or a quilt, or I am tending to other duties as they arise before me. It's noon, and I didn't get the quilt cut out.
The beauty of this system is, I can fantasize the whole, peaceful, spirit-renewing scene like clockwork. The five a.m. folly. When the day actually produces some quilting time, I am all the more appreciative of it. My heart rate, breathing, mental acuity, and spiritual strength are in synch. Enlightened. Intuitive. Meditative. Zen.
I recently anointed and knighted myself The Cake Mistress. As most people around me know, cake is my favorite food, and I don't even think it's officially a food. The ingredients in cake are certainly related to food, but the combination that makes them cake tends to remove them from the realm of sustenance and into the realm of near licentiousness. Well, not all cakes can make that claim, but The Cake Mistress's cakes can!
I don't dawdle in false modesty when it comes to my cakes. I'm a picky cake eater, so if I think it's good, it's good. Crowning myself The Cake Mistress seemed obvious to me. I created The Cake Mistress as a vehicle by which I can coo over and compliment the chef, that being me, whenever I get a taste of one of my own really, really good cakes. Admittedly, this braggadocio is a little awkward for the initiate.
Cake Taster: OoooOoo! MmmmMMM! That is soooooo good!
Me: I know.
Cake Taster: Wow, I think that's the best cake I've ever tasted!
Me: The Cake Mistress knows what she's doing.
Cake Taster: The Cake Mistress? Where is she?
Me: You're talking to her.
The history of The Cake Mistress comes from my authentic need to occasionally eat a piece of divinely good cake. About fifteen years ago, I acquired a nagging urge for a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing, and I was often disappointed by what I found in my regional cake-world. I didn't want to have to leave the Midwest over cake.
But I'm just being silly. We have the cakes of my dreams in the Midwest, but they're usually in big cities. Potluck cakes often come from The Cake Doctor cookbook. Lots of times they're fabulous fakes, like some of my diamond-wink-wink jewelry. I wanted real-food, made-from-scratch cakes at my disposal. Guess I'll just have to make 'em myself, I reasoned.
I went in search of a recipe for chocolate cake. I found one, and after I made it several times and toyed with the balance, I got it right. Rich, moist, dense, it was my first stop on a trip to paradise.
The next rich, moist, dense cake was a winner the first time around. I found a recipe for carrot cake from a very reliable source. I tried it out on friends we'd invited for dinner, and the smacking sounds around the table when dessert was served bordered on the grotesque. I've never had to alter that recipe one iota, and with the dark chocolate cake and the carrot cake successes, I had uncovered the heretofore undocumented cake-baking gene.
I began voraciously reading cake recipes. I've always been partial to non-fiction anyway, so I wasn't alarmed. I would try some of the recipes, and found a pattern in the ones that weren't just good, they were stupid-good. Stupid-good is my description for how perfect some cakes can be. Rich, moist, dense. Stupid-good.
This sort of surprised me. I am a child of the 60's cartoons and television shows, where the virtues of light, airy cakes were extolled. Beaver or Opie could get into big heck if they slammed a door at the wrong time near June's or Aunt Bea's ovens. There went another 60's sitcom falsehood to wad up and trash. My cakes aren't light. In fact, the recipes I've tried for cakes that are light are boring, boring, boring. Why would you waste your cake calories on some light and airy impostor?
Self-taught and tutored by The Peg, I can now scan a recipe and decide whether it's a keeper or a bore. Most of the time, that is. I recently had a cake-tasting session for a lemon cake I was auditioning, and it wasn't up to snuff.
So, as my repertoire of rich, moist, dense cakes grew, so did my need to unload a few of the leftovers on friends. No one complained, like, ever. I soon discovered I didn't want a whole cake around the house, I just wanted to eat one good piece of cake a couple of times a month. A routine developed where I would make birthday cakes for whomever told me they had a birthday coming up. I figured if I gave them a cake, they'd feel obligated to give me just one piece. All I really wanted was one piece, or maybe two, so Hubba could have one. I kept getting better and better. Again, pardon the lack of modesty, but we've covered that ground already.
Someone, and I truly don't remember who, suggested I sell my cakes. Really? I mean, I know they're good, but I have no desire to start decorating cakes, which may be what people would expect. I don't even have a desire to eat decorated cakes. Rich, moist, dense is my idea of cake, and I don't require buttercream roses or carrots, unless they're on top of a rich, moist, dense cake.
I tested the concept. I picked out a few people and events and made cakes. I fed cake to the unsuspecting, and before they had a chance to compliment the cake (which they would do for the presence of the fat and calories alone), I asked them if they would buy a cake like that. I got a unanimous, euphoric thumbs-up. I told them the cakes are labor intensive and the ingredients are expensive, so would they pay extra for that in a cake? It's not like people can't get cake around here. They just couldn't get one of these. The usual response was, “I just want to know I can get one of these when I get a nagging urge for one.”
Déjà VU, Baby! I feel that pain!
I thought about it. I researched the market for good cakes made by home bakers. I talked to Shirley, the local cheesecake guru, who has been selling cheesecakes for a number of years. She was encouraging, and we agreed we'd cooperate and send each other business. If someone asks me for cheesecake, I give them Shirley's number, Shirley does likewise with requests to her for layer cakes.
The next step into this madness was finding a supplier for Hollywood bakery boxes. You know the boxes, the pink bakery boxes for “The Hollywood Touch”. I scu-reamed in delight, and the decision was made. I would sell cakes.
More specifically, The Cake Mistress decided to sell cakes. I have no idea where I came up with the name of my alter ego, but when I was writing a brochure with cake flavors and descriptions in it, I got all third-person and bashful. When I say braggy things about my cakes, they just come from my mouth and float invisibly in the air. When I get them out of my head and into black and white (or in the case of my brochures, black and pink), it's different. It's better to just blame The Cake Mistress.
So, here I go again. I now have a state-licensed, cake-baking kitchen. I'm getting busier, baking and subbing and doing all the other fun stuff I think I can do. I hope to get it narrowed down to baking cakes and quilting, which means I'll get to quilt -- the cake baking is just the icing, so to speak. A life of rich, moist, dense cakes, and vibrant, provocative, functional quilts. Zen.
Even this busy life presents moments to capture Zen. When I'm handing out samples of cake at the Co-op, sharing the little treats is a bonus to seeing friends work together, or meet there for Kristin's noon-time special. I capture Zen. When the home schoolers ring my doorbell, bringing in a whirl of lint, laughter, and learning, I capture Zen. This evening, a quiet time to work on T-man's quilt, will envelope me in my Zen, where my soul rejoices and I give thanks for my busy life. The memory of flute choir rehearsals and children's singing voices will accompany my reverie, and I'll thank God for the blessings this busy life brings.
Ah. Sweet relief.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
There is a beveled excitement in life, so many things to try, to learn, to be about. And yet, I maintain the odd belief that I can fit more into a day than the clock allows. Though the absurdness of this is proven daily, I can't seem to learn the simple lesson of the boundaries of time.
Every morning is a misty map of possibilities, dawning into focus. I hit the deck at five bells and proceed directly to an hour of exercise. I seldom repeat the calisthenic routine; “rut” and “Kari” do not dwell in compatible universes.
My brain is wide awake in the early hours of the day, and exercising allows me to flexicate both mind and body. I frame the order in which the day will evolve. I get the general outline right, but quickly slip into a variation of preconceived notion-sickness, something akin to magic thinking.
For instance, ignoring any limitation, I envision cutting out a quilt before lunch. In my mind's eye everything is all set up, ready to go. The fabrics in my fantasy are without wrinkles or folds. What a marvelous think-way to start the day! I seriously like where I am, both mentally and physically, between five and six in the morning.
Then the phone rings and one of my schools needs a sub. I need to put away the pile of stuff on top of the sewing machine. My PDA alarm warns me of an appointment. Oops! I'd better get out of these workout clothes and into the tub. Whatever the interruption, I'm either not geographically located near a sewing machine or a quilt, or I am tending to other duties as they arise before me. It's noon, and I didn't get the quilt cut out.
The beauty of this system is, I can fantasize the whole, peaceful, spirit-renewing scene like clockwork. The five a.m. folly. When the day actually produces some quilting time, I am all the more appreciative of it. My heart rate, breathing, mental acuity, and spiritual strength are in synch. Enlightened. Intuitive. Meditative. Zen.
I recently anointed and knighted myself The Cake Mistress. As most people around me know, cake is my favorite food, and I don't even think it's officially a food. The ingredients in cake are certainly related to food, but the combination that makes them cake tends to remove them from the realm of sustenance and into the realm of near licentiousness. Well, not all cakes can make that claim, but The Cake Mistress's cakes can!
I don't dawdle in false modesty when it comes to my cakes. I'm a picky cake eater, so if I think it's good, it's good. Crowning myself The Cake Mistress seemed obvious to me. I created The Cake Mistress as a vehicle by which I can coo over and compliment the chef, that being me, whenever I get a taste of one of my own really, really good cakes. Admittedly, this braggadocio is a little awkward for the initiate.
Cake Taster: OoooOoo! MmmmMMM! That is soooooo good!
Me: I know.
Cake Taster: Wow, I think that's the best cake I've ever tasted!
Me: The Cake Mistress knows what she's doing.
Cake Taster: The Cake Mistress? Where is she?
Me: You're talking to her.
The history of The Cake Mistress comes from my authentic need to occasionally eat a piece of divinely good cake. About fifteen years ago, I acquired a nagging urge for a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing, and I was often disappointed by what I found in my regional cake-world. I didn't want to have to leave the Midwest over cake.
But I'm just being silly. We have the cakes of my dreams in the Midwest, but they're usually in big cities. Potluck cakes often come from The Cake Doctor cookbook. Lots of times they're fabulous fakes, like some of my diamond-wink-wink jewelry. I wanted real-food, made-from-scratch cakes at my disposal. Guess I'll just have to make 'em myself, I reasoned.
I went in search of a recipe for chocolate cake. I found one, and after I made it several times and toyed with the balance, I got it right. Rich, moist, dense, it was my first stop on a trip to paradise.
The next rich, moist, dense cake was a winner the first time around. I found a recipe for carrot cake from a very reliable source. I tried it out on friends we'd invited for dinner, and the smacking sounds around the table when dessert was served bordered on the grotesque. I've never had to alter that recipe one iota, and with the dark chocolate cake and the carrot cake successes, I had uncovered the heretofore undocumented cake-baking gene.
I began voraciously reading cake recipes. I've always been partial to non-fiction anyway, so I wasn't alarmed. I would try some of the recipes, and found a pattern in the ones that weren't just good, they were stupid-good. Stupid-good is my description for how perfect some cakes can be. Rich, moist, dense. Stupid-good.
This sort of surprised me. I am a child of the 60's cartoons and television shows, where the virtues of light, airy cakes were extolled. Beaver or Opie could get into big heck if they slammed a door at the wrong time near June's or Aunt Bea's ovens. There went another 60's sitcom falsehood to wad up and trash. My cakes aren't light. In fact, the recipes I've tried for cakes that are light are boring, boring, boring. Why would you waste your cake calories on some light and airy impostor?
Self-taught and tutored by The Peg, I can now scan a recipe and decide whether it's a keeper or a bore. Most of the time, that is. I recently had a cake-tasting session for a lemon cake I was auditioning, and it wasn't up to snuff.
So, as my repertoire of rich, moist, dense cakes grew, so did my need to unload a few of the leftovers on friends. No one complained, like, ever. I soon discovered I didn't want a whole cake around the house, I just wanted to eat one good piece of cake a couple of times a month. A routine developed where I would make birthday cakes for whomever told me they had a birthday coming up. I figured if I gave them a cake, they'd feel obligated to give me just one piece. All I really wanted was one piece, or maybe two, so Hubba could have one. I kept getting better and better. Again, pardon the lack of modesty, but we've covered that ground already.
Someone, and I truly don't remember who, suggested I sell my cakes. Really? I mean, I know they're good, but I have no desire to start decorating cakes, which may be what people would expect. I don't even have a desire to eat decorated cakes. Rich, moist, dense is my idea of cake, and I don't require buttercream roses or carrots, unless they're on top of a rich, moist, dense cake.
I tested the concept. I picked out a few people and events and made cakes. I fed cake to the unsuspecting, and before they had a chance to compliment the cake (which they would do for the presence of the fat and calories alone), I asked them if they would buy a cake like that. I got a unanimous, euphoric thumbs-up. I told them the cakes are labor intensive and the ingredients are expensive, so would they pay extra for that in a cake? It's not like people can't get cake around here. They just couldn't get one of these. The usual response was, “I just want to know I can get one of these when I get a nagging urge for one.”
Déjà VU, Baby! I feel that pain!
I thought about it. I researched the market for good cakes made by home bakers. I talked to Shirley, the local cheesecake guru, who has been selling cheesecakes for a number of years. She was encouraging, and we agreed we'd cooperate and send each other business. If someone asks me for cheesecake, I give them Shirley's number, Shirley does likewise with requests to her for layer cakes.
The next step into this madness was finding a supplier for Hollywood bakery boxes. You know the boxes, the pink bakery boxes for “The Hollywood Touch”. I scu-reamed in delight, and the decision was made. I would sell cakes.
More specifically, The Cake Mistress decided to sell cakes. I have no idea where I came up with the name of my alter ego, but when I was writing a brochure with cake flavors and descriptions in it, I got all third-person and bashful. When I say braggy things about my cakes, they just come from my mouth and float invisibly in the air. When I get them out of my head and into black and white (or in the case of my brochures, black and pink), it's different. It's better to just blame The Cake Mistress.
So, here I go again. I now have a state-licensed, cake-baking kitchen. I'm getting busier, baking and subbing and doing all the other fun stuff I think I can do. I hope to get it narrowed down to baking cakes and quilting, which means I'll get to quilt -- the cake baking is just the icing, so to speak. A life of rich, moist, dense cakes, and vibrant, provocative, functional quilts. Zen.
Even this busy life presents moments to capture Zen. When I'm handing out samples of cake at the Co-op, sharing the little treats is a bonus to seeing friends work together, or meet there for Kristin's noon-time special. I capture Zen. When the home schoolers ring my doorbell, bringing in a whirl of lint, laughter, and learning, I capture Zen. This evening, a quiet time to work on T-man's quilt, will envelope me in my Zen, where my soul rejoices and I give thanks for my busy life. The memory of flute choir rehearsals and children's singing voices will accompany my reverie, and I'll thank God for the blessings this busy life brings.
Ah. Sweet relief.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
How Many Quilters Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?
Q: How many quilters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. We like to press on (in) the dark side.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Quilt humor. Okay, so I admit it is weak quilt humor, but it's intended to remind us that quilting isn't a solitary experience. We even drag non-quilters into the mix, and we benefit from their naive wisdom.
“This needs something. Any suggestions?”
“I need you to pick out the backing fabric. I'm stuck among these choices.”
“Can you draw a cricket for me? I need one for this quilt.”
As I consider the number of times I have asked Hubba or the offspring for help when making a quilt, I am reminded how much nicer the outcome is when a quilt has bits and pieces of my family in it. The poor souls who live with me certainly have a lot of lint shoved in their faces, and perhaps osmosis shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. They seem to understand the task when I ask for help.
It was Hubba's unsuspecting comment, “Oh, a bee for Burns,” that brought about the embroidered bees on all succeeding quilts. Now, the first thing recipients of my quilts look for is the bee. In fact, when I show a quilt I made to just about anyone, they say, “Now to find the bee -- I know it's here someplace!”
The Peg wasn't a quilter, but she was wonderfully creative with the garments she made. What's more, she guided us to creative functions, and my sisters and I designed most of the clothes we wore from a fairly early age. The challenge was before us with every garment; we had yards and yards of fabric to choose from, and boxes and boxes of different patterns.
“Can you get a vest and a skirt out of this fabric. I'd like the vest from this pattern here only longer, but please make the neckline from this pattern, not the rounded one on the the first vest pattern. And I'd like the skirt to have gores, not an A-line. This gore skirt pattern is too small for me now. Can you make it work?”
She could. Her results taught us how many possibilities there are in the world of design, and how ordinary people like the Onerheims at 415 Quincy Avenue could make our own ideas into something beautiful.
What's more, it was fun! The Peg always seemed up for the task. When simple shifts and “tent” dresses were in vogue, she could make us something new to wear in one evening.
“Kari, if you make dinner and do the dishes, I'll make you a dress for school tomorrow.”
Once she made me a psychedelic mini-dress in a loosely woven, hopsack-type fabric that bore a large geometric pattern in carrot orange, grape juice purple, and lime green. That same evening, I made meat loaf, baked potatoes, and a green bean casserole, and loaded the dishwasher after dinner. We joked about that dress for the rest of her life, saying it as the first time she put a green zipper in a purple dress with orange thread.
My sister Jeanie was voted “Best Dressed” in high school. Small wonder. She created very stylized designs, and The Peg and she would sew them up together. For instance, the movie Bonnie and Clyde was released about this time, and she designed an outfit inspired from the film. In a twist, it was a Clyde-like outfit – a vest and skirt in navy pin-stripe, a dark blood-red blouse, and a necktie made from the same pin-striped fabric. They pulled it off flawlessly. Jeanie always looked impeccable, tall and slender, hair down to her waist, and dressed to the nines.
When I got carried away with one of my prom dresses, The Peg told me she wouldn't work that hard on another dress until it was my wedding dress. Yes, I did design my wedding dress, and the The Peg made it. I intend to make a quilt out of it someday.
The group of home schooled children I'm teaching are learning similar lessons of design and quilting. They are making quilts from recycled and reclaimed fabric, and gathering that fabric was a design challenge in itself. Lydia's mom has sewed in the past, so the two of them went through her mother's stash and selected a few whole pieces of cloth for consideration in her quilt. Lydia has a very good eye, and understanding scale and color is instinctive with her. She appears able to see the big picture, even as a ten-year-old, as she comprehends how once piece relates to another, and that the finished quilt will be a composite of how each piece functions within the scheme. At our last meeting, Lydia had her pieces all cut out and numbered into rows, ready for sewing. In doing so, she spontaneously incorporated her own personality into the process. She clearly grasps the concept of being an important part of the whole scheme of life.
I called Lydia's house one day, and her paternal grandma was there with her. Lydia's mom was gone for a few days to help her own mother recover from an accident, and when I called, Lydia and her grandma were working on arranging her cut squares. They were moving them around, finding the pattern they found pleasing, and sharing quilt and fabric thoughts with one another. I flashed back to the times The Peg and I spent together on similar pursuits, and I mentally thanked her soul in heaven for teaching me.
Boy Aidan has an eye for detail, and he likes big, splashy prints with lots of contrast between dark and bright colors. Boy Aidan brought some of the most luscious, textured fabrics along with him the day we shared fabric choices. It seems Boy Aidan's mother is a bit of a closet fabriholic herself, and she will buy used clothing at The Depot (Decorah's version of Good Will or The Salvation Army) strictly for the sensuousness of the cloth. In our fabric-sharing session, Boy Aidan unfurled the most divine blue velvet choir robe, and everyone in the room gasped! It was just his size, and many children his age would have hoarded that piece for a Harry Potter costume. Boy Aidan saw it differently – it was perfect for a quilt to nap under, keeping precious spots of this heavenly softness within arm's reach, to comfort the user from a demanding world.
When we started cutting out fabric, we dug through a very large collection of fabric, still in the incarnation of clothing, to see what was useful there. Chris from The Depot had donated these items for the home schoolers, and our children were more than delighted with what they found. I encouraged them not to overlook the elements unique to the fabric source. For example, you can't buy fabric off the bolt that has buttons or collars or pockets, any of which would make marvelous, creative additions to a quilt. Boy Aidan got it. He was as eager to look for buttons and embroidered or appliquéd treasures as he was for the more obvious explosions of colorful fabrics. Each find was a new treasure, but as he did with the Harry Potter/choir robe, he didn't hoard them. Gentle Aidan shared his finds with the others, negotiating and distributing this bounty as he saw fit by the lights in the eyes of his friends. The tranquilness I observed as he rationed his precious discoveries was contagious.
Girl Aidan and Anna came to the fabric-sharing session with an intergenerational collection of fabrics that gave me goosebumps. They had clothing from grandparents and mom, and even a darling baby outfit from their little brother Kai. Girl Aidan knows herself, and she tempers her choices for joy rather than conflict. She is guided by an inner unselfishness that allows her to see the beauty in the meaning of things, not just in the surface design. When she was examining Kai's baby outfit for a place in her quilt, she chose an area with a small figure that she hoped he'd eventually recognize as being from his infancy. Elsewhere she found a clever little pocket that looked about blocksize for her quilt, and together we carefully measured and cut it out. When she showed Anna there were two pockets, we repeated the process for her little sister.
Girl Aidan and Lydia share an awareness of their own awakening strengths. They both recognize that they are capable of making the quilt they are working on, and they want to be responsible for its completion. Their families respect their claim to the process, and jump in where they are needed and stand back when they aren't. The Quilt Dance, we could call it. And while they're dancing, they are also singing. Both of them have powerful voices, strong and true, and they sing while they work, entertaining themselves and the rest of us with melodies they find pleasing to repeat.
Anna is amid it all. If her middle name isn't Lark, it should be. Or maybe her nickname could be The Starling, as described in the book King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz. The starling is a happy and gentle bird that will follow wherever a loving soul leads. Anna isn't so much a follower as she is trusting, and to borrow a saying from a plaque at a craft show, she will bloom where she is planted. The next time we meet, I'm going to spend most of my time with Anna. She is a bud in the spring, a cocoon in the fall. She is definitely Anna, and she is percolating her personality, waiting for the blend to become distinct. She knows she will have a quilt when she's done with the group. She will work on it and learn new things, and I predict the importance of her quilt project will fade in and out for a few years, until she can appreciate her efforts. Then, it will change from a showpiece to a descriptor of Anna, and she will wonder how she ever made it happen. When that moment occurs, she will know if she wants to make another, and if she does, it will be spectacular.
Some experiences and emotions are difficult to relate. It's much easier to repeat a humorous exchange of conversation, and then editorialize on its key points. But what word can I use to describe a learning atmosphere filled with peace and excitement, rambunctious serenity and satisfied bewilderment? It's the sum of members of a family, of a community of shared dreams, of a place where everybody matters. That's where I teach people to make quilts.
Q: How many quilters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: At least one family, but it's open to anyone who wants to share the light.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
A: None. We like to press on (in) the dark side.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Quilt humor. Okay, so I admit it is weak quilt humor, but it's intended to remind us that quilting isn't a solitary experience. We even drag non-quilters into the mix, and we benefit from their naive wisdom.
“This needs something. Any suggestions?”
“I need you to pick out the backing fabric. I'm stuck among these choices.”
“Can you draw a cricket for me? I need one for this quilt.”
As I consider the number of times I have asked Hubba or the offspring for help when making a quilt, I am reminded how much nicer the outcome is when a quilt has bits and pieces of my family in it. The poor souls who live with me certainly have a lot of lint shoved in their faces, and perhaps osmosis shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. They seem to understand the task when I ask for help.
It was Hubba's unsuspecting comment, “Oh, a bee for Burns,” that brought about the embroidered bees on all succeeding quilts. Now, the first thing recipients of my quilts look for is the bee. In fact, when I show a quilt I made to just about anyone, they say, “Now to find the bee -- I know it's here someplace!”
The Peg wasn't a quilter, but she was wonderfully creative with the garments she made. What's more, she guided us to creative functions, and my sisters and I designed most of the clothes we wore from a fairly early age. The challenge was before us with every garment; we had yards and yards of fabric to choose from, and boxes and boxes of different patterns.
“Can you get a vest and a skirt out of this fabric. I'd like the vest from this pattern here only longer, but please make the neckline from this pattern, not the rounded one on the the first vest pattern. And I'd like the skirt to have gores, not an A-line. This gore skirt pattern is too small for me now. Can you make it work?”
She could. Her results taught us how many possibilities there are in the world of design, and how ordinary people like the Onerheims at 415 Quincy Avenue could make our own ideas into something beautiful.
What's more, it was fun! The Peg always seemed up for the task. When simple shifts and “tent” dresses were in vogue, she could make us something new to wear in one evening.
“Kari, if you make dinner and do the dishes, I'll make you a dress for school tomorrow.”
Once she made me a psychedelic mini-dress in a loosely woven, hopsack-type fabric that bore a large geometric pattern in carrot orange, grape juice purple, and lime green. That same evening, I made meat loaf, baked potatoes, and a green bean casserole, and loaded the dishwasher after dinner. We joked about that dress for the rest of her life, saying it as the first time she put a green zipper in a purple dress with orange thread.
My sister Jeanie was voted “Best Dressed” in high school. Small wonder. She created very stylized designs, and The Peg and she would sew them up together. For instance, the movie Bonnie and Clyde was released about this time, and she designed an outfit inspired from the film. In a twist, it was a Clyde-like outfit – a vest and skirt in navy pin-stripe, a dark blood-red blouse, and a necktie made from the same pin-striped fabric. They pulled it off flawlessly. Jeanie always looked impeccable, tall and slender, hair down to her waist, and dressed to the nines.
When I got carried away with one of my prom dresses, The Peg told me she wouldn't work that hard on another dress until it was my wedding dress. Yes, I did design my wedding dress, and the The Peg made it. I intend to make a quilt out of it someday.
The group of home schooled children I'm teaching are learning similar lessons of design and quilting. They are making quilts from recycled and reclaimed fabric, and gathering that fabric was a design challenge in itself. Lydia's mom has sewed in the past, so the two of them went through her mother's stash and selected a few whole pieces of cloth for consideration in her quilt. Lydia has a very good eye, and understanding scale and color is instinctive with her. She appears able to see the big picture, even as a ten-year-old, as she comprehends how once piece relates to another, and that the finished quilt will be a composite of how each piece functions within the scheme. At our last meeting, Lydia had her pieces all cut out and numbered into rows, ready for sewing. In doing so, she spontaneously incorporated her own personality into the process. She clearly grasps the concept of being an important part of the whole scheme of life.
I called Lydia's house one day, and her paternal grandma was there with her. Lydia's mom was gone for a few days to help her own mother recover from an accident, and when I called, Lydia and her grandma were working on arranging her cut squares. They were moving them around, finding the pattern they found pleasing, and sharing quilt and fabric thoughts with one another. I flashed back to the times The Peg and I spent together on similar pursuits, and I mentally thanked her soul in heaven for teaching me.
Boy Aidan has an eye for detail, and he likes big, splashy prints with lots of contrast between dark and bright colors. Boy Aidan brought some of the most luscious, textured fabrics along with him the day we shared fabric choices. It seems Boy Aidan's mother is a bit of a closet fabriholic herself, and she will buy used clothing at The Depot (Decorah's version of Good Will or The Salvation Army) strictly for the sensuousness of the cloth. In our fabric-sharing session, Boy Aidan unfurled the most divine blue velvet choir robe, and everyone in the room gasped! It was just his size, and many children his age would have hoarded that piece for a Harry Potter costume. Boy Aidan saw it differently – it was perfect for a quilt to nap under, keeping precious spots of this heavenly softness within arm's reach, to comfort the user from a demanding world.
When we started cutting out fabric, we dug through a very large collection of fabric, still in the incarnation of clothing, to see what was useful there. Chris from The Depot had donated these items for the home schoolers, and our children were more than delighted with what they found. I encouraged them not to overlook the elements unique to the fabric source. For example, you can't buy fabric off the bolt that has buttons or collars or pockets, any of which would make marvelous, creative additions to a quilt. Boy Aidan got it. He was as eager to look for buttons and embroidered or appliquéd treasures as he was for the more obvious explosions of colorful fabrics. Each find was a new treasure, but as he did with the Harry Potter/choir robe, he didn't hoard them. Gentle Aidan shared his finds with the others, negotiating and distributing this bounty as he saw fit by the lights in the eyes of his friends. The tranquilness I observed as he rationed his precious discoveries was contagious.
Girl Aidan and Anna came to the fabric-sharing session with an intergenerational collection of fabrics that gave me goosebumps. They had clothing from grandparents and mom, and even a darling baby outfit from their little brother Kai. Girl Aidan knows herself, and she tempers her choices for joy rather than conflict. She is guided by an inner unselfishness that allows her to see the beauty in the meaning of things, not just in the surface design. When she was examining Kai's baby outfit for a place in her quilt, she chose an area with a small figure that she hoped he'd eventually recognize as being from his infancy. Elsewhere she found a clever little pocket that looked about blocksize for her quilt, and together we carefully measured and cut it out. When she showed Anna there were two pockets, we repeated the process for her little sister.
Girl Aidan and Lydia share an awareness of their own awakening strengths. They both recognize that they are capable of making the quilt they are working on, and they want to be responsible for its completion. Their families respect their claim to the process, and jump in where they are needed and stand back when they aren't. The Quilt Dance, we could call it. And while they're dancing, they are also singing. Both of them have powerful voices, strong and true, and they sing while they work, entertaining themselves and the rest of us with melodies they find pleasing to repeat.
Anna is amid it all. If her middle name isn't Lark, it should be. Or maybe her nickname could be The Starling, as described in the book King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz. The starling is a happy and gentle bird that will follow wherever a loving soul leads. Anna isn't so much a follower as she is trusting, and to borrow a saying from a plaque at a craft show, she will bloom where she is planted. The next time we meet, I'm going to spend most of my time with Anna. She is a bud in the spring, a cocoon in the fall. She is definitely Anna, and she is percolating her personality, waiting for the blend to become distinct. She knows she will have a quilt when she's done with the group. She will work on it and learn new things, and I predict the importance of her quilt project will fade in and out for a few years, until she can appreciate her efforts. Then, it will change from a showpiece to a descriptor of Anna, and she will wonder how she ever made it happen. When that moment occurs, she will know if she wants to make another, and if she does, it will be spectacular.
Some experiences and emotions are difficult to relate. It's much easier to repeat a humorous exchange of conversation, and then editorialize on its key points. But what word can I use to describe a learning atmosphere filled with peace and excitement, rambunctious serenity and satisfied bewilderment? It's the sum of members of a family, of a community of shared dreams, of a place where everybody matters. That's where I teach people to make quilts.
Q: How many quilters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: At least one family, but it's open to anyone who wants to share the light.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
Where Quilt Ideas Come From
I was born a dork. When I was growing up in Ottumwa, Iowa, Allen Chickering down the block didn't only call me a dork, he added a last name.
“Hey, Dork McFork! What's new?”
Sometimes he'd come out of his house, look up the block, see me, and call out, “Doooo-rk McFoooooo-rk!” In the case of Allen Chickering, it was clearly an it-takes-one-to-know-one situation. I'm sure I earned the nickname as a result of the Clubhouse Incident.
We neighborhood kids were building a clubhouse in the Chickering's back yard. The Crick was only a block away, and occasionally people would dump stuff there. The Crick is actually a creek, but for some Southeast Iowa twangy reason, we had a different pronunciation of the word.
We'd hear the grown-ups talking about how disgusting it was that some people would dump things in The Crick, but we never really understood their beef. We thought most of what we found to be quite useful. It took us some time, but we were able to retrieve a supply of discarded boards, with nails already in them, and stacked them behind the bushes (that's booshes to the natives) near the alley at the back of the Chickering property. We had nail removal sessions, when we would carefully whack and pull the nails out the way they went in, and save them in a Velveeta® box for our own future use.
We acquired some roofing shingles, but I doubt those came from The Crick. They were nice and new, and not a dumpable commodity in the 1960's. We probably just stole those from someone's garage. Most of us had parents who had been through The Depression, so discarding perfectly good things was unheard of. The Peg re-used “tin foil” many times over, and would wash out the baggies she used for the half-sandwich lunch she brought when she taught Home Ec at Charles D. Evans Junior High. Today's recycling efforts have nothing over The Barn and The Peg.
The clubhouse idea wasn't a front burner issue. We would fit it in between whiffle ball games in the street in front of the Chickering house; or, the massive, hours-long, multi-block Hide 'n Seek team events; or, our “spying”, which meant running around after dark, hiding in booshes, and creating a world of intrigue from looking into the windows of our neighbors, as they sat, unsuspecting, in their living rooms watching TV or reading. You have no idea the number of murdered bodies we surmised had been hidden under front porches or in The Crick, as part of either a JFK assasination conspiracy, or a KGB plot to determine the location of all the Fallout Shelters within the city limits.
We didn't have a club anyway. We just wanted a clubhouse because some of the kids our ages on TV had them. We'd organized a few neighborhood General Stores whenever someone got a new refrigerator and we had the big box. We sold candy to each other from inside, after we laid it down longwise and cut a service window into one “wall” of it. That was fun, but cardboard couldn't withstand the wear and tear of the Quincy Avenue neighborhood kids. It got hot in there, too, which melted the Popsicles and the Hershey bars. A well-built clubhouse was the only way to go. Maybe we'd even air condition it, we dreamed.
This was during the years when Jimmy Carter was peanut farming in Georgia, and was perhaps gearing up for a run for the governor's office. I don't think Habitat for Humanity was even a twinkle in his eye. Our marathon clubhouse building sessions, and others like it all over Baby Boom America, no doubt prepared the country for contributing our rudimentary carpentry skills for the common good.
The final design of our clubhouse was impressive. It had two single-file rooms and a front porch, and would sit six kids comfortably. I say “sit” because we couldn't stand in it. There was at least one open, glassless window, possibly designed for potential use as a General Store. We built the whole thing ourselves, but the process was not without pitfalls.
I was up on top of the clubhouse roofing when I hollered out my need for more shingles, or boards, or nails, or whatever I needed. Everyone was occupied, so I jumped down from the roof to fetch what I needed.
EEEEEEE-YYOOOOOOOWW! The pain shot through me like a knife, which makes sense, because I landed on a nail, a long old rusty nail that had been overlooked during Phase One of the operation. It had been sticking out of a board, pointing up, until I covered it with my right white gym shoe, which had been converted to “street shoes” now that the school year was over. When I picked up my foot, the whole board was attached to the bottom of it, like a horrible farcical snowshoe of torment. All the other dorks were too shocked to know what to do, but someone finally yanked it out, and then everyone helped me limp home, as I wailed in pain and fear.
The Barn called the doctor, and we immediately went to the emergency room to have it checked out. They cleaned it up and bandaged it, but said we'd better keep an eye on it for awhile. The Barn must have been worried, because his sister Margarette had suffered a fate that lasted a lifetime when a bicycle ran over her toe. Within days the pain worsened, which necessitated a return visit to the doctor. Most of the bones in my right leg had become infected, which was what the doctor had hoped to avoid.
They admitted me to St. Joseph's Hospital, where I stayed for a week. They wrapped my right foot in endless gauze bandages, then covered it with two hot water bottles, and wrapped several towels around that to keep in the heat. They changed these bandages three or four times a day, which was a lengthy process. Because of the weight of this dressing, I couldn't move very much on my bed, but the pain in my left hip from the recent tetanus shot kept me still, too. The shots I got in my other hip each morning weren't fun, either, but didn't have the pain of that tetanus bomb.
After four or five days, the hot water bottles came off and I was allowed to explore the pediatric floor in a wheel chair. I hung out with another kid who was in for a broken leg, and we got yelled out by the nuns for having wheel chair races in the halls and leaving skid marks. Since I was Lutheran, I didn't understand the level of sin to which I had sunk, but my opponent was Catholic, and he advised me to do some concentrated praying over the matter. The fact that his dad was one of our doctors didn't seem to have earned him any indulgences. I had incorrectly assumed both his religious and genealogical heritages would have some pull when he talked me into the lark.
As far as Allen Chickering and the Dork McFork moniker, it was a traveling trophy. We returned it to Allen right after he got the headphones for his new stereo. Headphones were new to the home entertainment world in the 1960's, and we were all up in Allen's room trying them out. You could wear them while the music blared for everyone else in the room, or you could listen to music without bothering others. I'm sure Allen's mom had insisted on purchasing them the minute they came out. We were passing them around while the music blared, enjoying how far technology had come.
When it was Allen's turn, we turned off the sound in the room and let him sing loudly while air-guitaring and head banging, 1968-style, to Joe Cocker singing, “A Little Help From My Friends”. We pretended to be enthusiastically enjoying the music along with Allen, but Mark Weatherstone was secretly recording the spectacle on a hidden cassette recorder for our future entertainment. It was hilarious. Dork McFork, at the pinnacle of bufoonery. What was even dorkier was all of us little McFork wannabes replaying it for months, laughing uproariously. We were one big neighborhood of dorks, but not just any kind of dorks. We were dorks with a last name.
I haven't made a quilt to commemorate any of these events. There is no clubhouse quilt, no hospital quilt, no spying quilt. There is no Dork McFork quilt, or Allen Chickering quilt, or Crick quilt. It's only because I haven't made them, not because they aren't good ideas for quilts. These stories tell a personal history to my descendants who may never travel to Ottumwa, Iowa, but they also tell the story of what life was like at that point in history, in the Midwest, perhaps all over the country.
Stories such as these that can inspire quilts. Quilts themselves are stories, and I encourage you to think of your personal stories when you plan your designs. They are worth the telling, and the chance to be told and retold for many lifetimes.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
“Hey, Dork McFork! What's new?”
Sometimes he'd come out of his house, look up the block, see me, and call out, “Doooo-rk McFoooooo-rk!” In the case of Allen Chickering, it was clearly an it-takes-one-to-know-one situation. I'm sure I earned the nickname as a result of the Clubhouse Incident.
We neighborhood kids were building a clubhouse in the Chickering's back yard. The Crick was only a block away, and occasionally people would dump stuff there. The Crick is actually a creek, but for some Southeast Iowa twangy reason, we had a different pronunciation of the word.
We'd hear the grown-ups talking about how disgusting it was that some people would dump things in The Crick, but we never really understood their beef. We thought most of what we found to be quite useful. It took us some time, but we were able to retrieve a supply of discarded boards, with nails already in them, and stacked them behind the bushes (that's booshes to the natives) near the alley at the back of the Chickering property. We had nail removal sessions, when we would carefully whack and pull the nails out the way they went in, and save them in a Velveeta® box for our own future use.
We acquired some roofing shingles, but I doubt those came from The Crick. They were nice and new, and not a dumpable commodity in the 1960's. We probably just stole those from someone's garage. Most of us had parents who had been through The Depression, so discarding perfectly good things was unheard of. The Peg re-used “tin foil” many times over, and would wash out the baggies she used for the half-sandwich lunch she brought when she taught Home Ec at Charles D. Evans Junior High. Today's recycling efforts have nothing over The Barn and The Peg.
The clubhouse idea wasn't a front burner issue. We would fit it in between whiffle ball games in the street in front of the Chickering house; or, the massive, hours-long, multi-block Hide 'n Seek team events; or, our “spying”, which meant running around after dark, hiding in booshes, and creating a world of intrigue from looking into the windows of our neighbors, as they sat, unsuspecting, in their living rooms watching TV or reading. You have no idea the number of murdered bodies we surmised had been hidden under front porches or in The Crick, as part of either a JFK assasination conspiracy, or a KGB plot to determine the location of all the Fallout Shelters within the city limits.
We didn't have a club anyway. We just wanted a clubhouse because some of the kids our ages on TV had them. We'd organized a few neighborhood General Stores whenever someone got a new refrigerator and we had the big box. We sold candy to each other from inside, after we laid it down longwise and cut a service window into one “wall” of it. That was fun, but cardboard couldn't withstand the wear and tear of the Quincy Avenue neighborhood kids. It got hot in there, too, which melted the Popsicles and the Hershey bars. A well-built clubhouse was the only way to go. Maybe we'd even air condition it, we dreamed.
This was during the years when Jimmy Carter was peanut farming in Georgia, and was perhaps gearing up for a run for the governor's office. I don't think Habitat for Humanity was even a twinkle in his eye. Our marathon clubhouse building sessions, and others like it all over Baby Boom America, no doubt prepared the country for contributing our rudimentary carpentry skills for the common good.
The final design of our clubhouse was impressive. It had two single-file rooms and a front porch, and would sit six kids comfortably. I say “sit” because we couldn't stand in it. There was at least one open, glassless window, possibly designed for potential use as a General Store. We built the whole thing ourselves, but the process was not without pitfalls.
I was up on top of the clubhouse roofing when I hollered out my need for more shingles, or boards, or nails, or whatever I needed. Everyone was occupied, so I jumped down from the roof to fetch what I needed.
EEEEEEE-YYOOOOOOOWW! The pain shot through me like a knife, which makes sense, because I landed on a nail, a long old rusty nail that had been overlooked during Phase One of the operation. It had been sticking out of a board, pointing up, until I covered it with my right white gym shoe, which had been converted to “street shoes” now that the school year was over. When I picked up my foot, the whole board was attached to the bottom of it, like a horrible farcical snowshoe of torment. All the other dorks were too shocked to know what to do, but someone finally yanked it out, and then everyone helped me limp home, as I wailed in pain and fear.
The Barn called the doctor, and we immediately went to the emergency room to have it checked out. They cleaned it up and bandaged it, but said we'd better keep an eye on it for awhile. The Barn must have been worried, because his sister Margarette had suffered a fate that lasted a lifetime when a bicycle ran over her toe. Within days the pain worsened, which necessitated a return visit to the doctor. Most of the bones in my right leg had become infected, which was what the doctor had hoped to avoid.
They admitted me to St. Joseph's Hospital, where I stayed for a week. They wrapped my right foot in endless gauze bandages, then covered it with two hot water bottles, and wrapped several towels around that to keep in the heat. They changed these bandages three or four times a day, which was a lengthy process. Because of the weight of this dressing, I couldn't move very much on my bed, but the pain in my left hip from the recent tetanus shot kept me still, too. The shots I got in my other hip each morning weren't fun, either, but didn't have the pain of that tetanus bomb.
After four or five days, the hot water bottles came off and I was allowed to explore the pediatric floor in a wheel chair. I hung out with another kid who was in for a broken leg, and we got yelled out by the nuns for having wheel chair races in the halls and leaving skid marks. Since I was Lutheran, I didn't understand the level of sin to which I had sunk, but my opponent was Catholic, and he advised me to do some concentrated praying over the matter. The fact that his dad was one of our doctors didn't seem to have earned him any indulgences. I had incorrectly assumed both his religious and genealogical heritages would have some pull when he talked me into the lark.
As far as Allen Chickering and the Dork McFork moniker, it was a traveling trophy. We returned it to Allen right after he got the headphones for his new stereo. Headphones were new to the home entertainment world in the 1960's, and we were all up in Allen's room trying them out. You could wear them while the music blared for everyone else in the room, or you could listen to music without bothering others. I'm sure Allen's mom had insisted on purchasing them the minute they came out. We were passing them around while the music blared, enjoying how far technology had come.
When it was Allen's turn, we turned off the sound in the room and let him sing loudly while air-guitaring and head banging, 1968-style, to Joe Cocker singing, “A Little Help From My Friends”. We pretended to be enthusiastically enjoying the music along with Allen, but Mark Weatherstone was secretly recording the spectacle on a hidden cassette recorder for our future entertainment. It was hilarious. Dork McFork, at the pinnacle of bufoonery. What was even dorkier was all of us little McFork wannabes replaying it for months, laughing uproariously. We were one big neighborhood of dorks, but not just any kind of dorks. We were dorks with a last name.
I haven't made a quilt to commemorate any of these events. There is no clubhouse quilt, no hospital quilt, no spying quilt. There is no Dork McFork quilt, or Allen Chickering quilt, or Crick quilt. It's only because I haven't made them, not because they aren't good ideas for quilts. These stories tell a personal history to my descendants who may never travel to Ottumwa, Iowa, but they also tell the story of what life was like at that point in history, in the Midwest, perhaps all over the country.
Stories such as these that can inspire quilts. Quilts themselves are stories, and I encourage you to think of your personal stories when you plan your designs. They are worth the telling, and the chance to be told and retold for many lifetimes.
Copyright © November 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
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