Boys will be boys

I've had a most excellent day today with my two grandsons, Nathan and Connor! It actually started last night with popcorn, Harry Potter, and a sleepover and continued into today with breakfast at Chick-fil-A, playtime at Monkey Joe's, toy shopping at Target, and the 3-D version of the movie "Monsters v. Aliens." We capped it off with some time at the park in Fayetteville followed by snacks and Bug Juice at the gas station store.

I think they had a really good time, but they couldn't possibly have enjoyed it more than I did. I had forgotten how much I miss dirty sweat socks, grubby hands, and giggling over phrases like "I could eat an ELEPHANT," and "Who farted?" At some point during the time we spent in the car, the conversation turned to GameBoys and what kind of games their Daddy played when he was a little boy. That got me thinking...

We traveled a LOT when my boys, Bryan and Benjamin, were little. With Dad in the Navy, it was not only inevitable, but expected. One of my favorite trips was a visit to England in the fall of 1986. We were living in southern Spain at the time, and at $10 a ticket, we couldn't resist hopping a MAC (Military Air Command) flight from Madrid to Mildenhall (by way of Aviano, Italy and Ramstein, Germany). It was a long flight in a cargo plane that I've mostly forgotten except for one memory. The Air Force crew flying the plane were some of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Mindful of these three little kids they had on board, they were kind enough to invite Annike and Bryan up to the cockpit to watch as we made our nighttime flight over the English Channel (I don't remember if BJ made it up there or not--he may have been asleep at the time). Anyway, Bryan happened to take his brand new GameBoy up to the cockpit with him and the flight crew were fascinated with it. I wasn't in on the conversation, but somehow they talked Bryan into letting them borrow it and I think they put the plane on autopilot for the next hour or so while they had a go at Doctor Mario or whatever game Bryan had with him at the time!

We landed safely at Mildenhall and spent the next couple of weeks driving the length and breadth of England, Scotland, and Wales. It was a terrific trip (and the impetus for finally potty-training BJ!). After almost three weeks of stuffing five people and a massive sack of "nappies" in a car the size of a Mini-Cooper, Randy had had enough. The minute we got back home to Spain, BJ was out of diapers. But that's another story!

Suffice it to say, I can't begin to express how much I miss those days that I thought would make me nuts at the time! Here are a few pictures taken during that trip.

Thank GOODNESS boys will be boys!

Beware of falling fruit

The girls and I were hiking in beautiful Waimea Valley during our January trip to Hawaii when I spotted this sign. Naturally, my first thought was "oooh, this would make SUCH an excellent blog post title!" I've been waiting ever since for fate to hand me a day to match. It was today.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I work in the archives of the Atlanta History Center, smack dab in the middle of the most posh neighborhood in Atlanta. We are free and open to the public but thanks to our location, we are generally (and mercifully) free from the, shall we say, interesting patrons that find their way into many public libraries. Our patrons almost exclusively fall into one of four categories: a) elderly folks researching their family histories, b) students of all ages conducting historic research, c) absent minded professors intent on getting their next book published, and d) spouses and domestic partners of those in categories a through c that get dragged along for the ride.

I guess I need to add a new category, coined by one of my co-workers, for the woman who visited us today: Wackadoodles. We wondered if she really belonged with us when she floated to the reference desk, signed in using a made-up patron number and the name "Fatima," and proceeded directly to the computers. My co-worker walked over and asked her if he could help. She said, yes, would he bring her a cup of coffee? When he explained that we allow no food or drink, she sort of sniffed as if she'd suddenly found herself seated in a sub-par restaurant, and turned her attention back to the computer. For the next several hours, we watched as she intently surfed the internet, filled out online applications and printed dozens of real estate listings while alternately mumbling to herself, wadding up paper balls and tossing them across the table, and making odd gestures at the computer screen with her hands.

Now, I should probably point out that mumbling to oneself and making odd gestures at the computer screen is behavior that we frequently see from a lot of our patrons--in fact, it's behavior we occasionally indulge in ourselves. I think it's part and parcel with being a history geek. This woman was not a history geek. At one point, when I walked past her, I noticed that she was most definitely not conducting historic research on the net. The hot pink logo on the screen (in the shape of a bunny's head) gave it away. People may read Playboy for the articles, but I doubt they have much to do with history.

It wasn't until she started walking laps around the Reading Room and pulling books from the shelves to stack them in odd piles on the tables that we finally decided it was time for Fatima to leave. After security escorted her off the property, we found that when she wasn't with us, she had been alternately scattering papers around the atrium of our building and trying to clean the bathrooms. She left what looked like a hypodermic needle in the ladies room--further investigation determined that it did not contain a needle and that she had apparently been using it to whiten her teeth (when she wasn't cleaning the bathrooms and surfing porn sites on our computers, that is).

So. I guess it's to be expected that while working with the public you're occasionally going to stumble upon a nut or two. I could write a book about some of the wacky people we deal with on the phone and via e-mail. But this is the first up-close-and-personal experience I've had and I have to admit it was a tad unsettling. I felt sorry for her. Maybe she just has a cell phone with AT&T...

I'm on MyFace now! No wait...Spacebook? FaceSpace? Oh yeah--FACEBOOK...sigh...I'm too old for this...

It's been an odd month already. I spent a wonderful three days in Tampa with my most adorable Hannah last weekend (and her Mommy and Daddy) and Benjamin got me all hooked up with MyFace...er, Facebook, which I think might be kinda cool. I promise to post some terrific pictures of my trip and my baby Hannah in a much happier post tomorrow. And I promise to get excited about Facebook. But not now.

Right now, I'm feeling pretty much like my poor dashboard hula girl (photo above). She was a perky addition to my daily drive, wobbling at just the right moments and reminding me of our Hawaiian adventures even while I was stuck in traffic. But I guess the Florida sun was too much for her--we left the car parked in one of Tampa's mall parking lots for just a couple hours. When we returned, the glue that held her together had completely melted. One gentle turn out of our parking space and she sagged to starboard--another turn and she slipped sadly to the floor, trailing her grass skirt and wobbly spring behind her. Poor thing, I know just how she feels...

You see, I've had to do battle with the dreaded AT&T Customer No-service Department no less than TWO times in the past month. TWO TIMES. This is enough to drive anybody to drink and since I don't drink, it's been enough to drive me stark raving nuts. The thesis couldn't do it but AT&T certainly did.

It all started...well, let me back up. My pathological hatred of AT&T dates back many years and covers more altercations than I can cover in a single blog post. This most current round began innocently enough. About five inches of nonstop rain last month resulted in the need for my septic tank to be pumped. (Don't get me started on septic tanks or this huge house I own that has become the quintessential white elephant/albatross around my neck). Anyway, the tank needed pumping. To do this, the septic tank guys had to bring a small backhoe into my yard. The procedure went smoothly enough until they came across my phone line which some AT&T moron had laid right across the top of the tank. This isn't the first time normal maintenance of my home has resulted in a cut phone line. They laid the phone line about 3 inches under the soil right along the back of the house when it was built. Just after I moved in, a friend tried to rototill the ground around the foundation in the back yard so I could plant some flowers and the rototiller cut the line. THAT experience left me without phone service for days and the AT&T morons who came to fix it, completely tore up the brand new sod in my front yard. But I digress.

SO--after the great septic tank debacle, I had no phone, no internet, and was, of course $400 poorer for the whole septic tank repair thing. TWELVE calls to AT&T later, using my Verizon cell phone, I finally managed to get a real person on the line. For the first eleven calls I was only able to reach a recording--some sickeningly cheery woman's voice that continuously chirped, "I'll just ask you a few questions so that we can determine what is wrong with your phone" and then the line would go dead. The first few calls I managed to get past that question without losing it. Along about call number 5, I found myself screaming into the receiver, "I KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY F*&^ING PHONE, THE F*&^ING PHONE LINE IS CUT!!!" Anyway, after twelve calls, I managed to reach what I assume was a real person. This one had all the personality of a tree stump, but miracle of miracles, I was only without phone service for about 24 hours. By the time I got home from work the next day, the phone line was fixed.

But they weren't finished with me yet. Did I mention I have a Verizon cell phone now? That's the only reason I was able to call AT&T from my house--I previously had AT&T cell phone service and was only able to get a signal at my house if I stood in my bathtub and stuck my face through the window blinds. But that's a whole 'nother story. Suffice it to say that I changed cell phone providers last December to Verizon and have been blissfully happy ever since.

Until I tried to pay my final AT&T cell phone bill. I have always paid it online so I went online the day we came home with our Verizon phones and tried to pay the final bill. I was locked out of my online account. The message said that online services were only available to current customers. So I called AT&T to find out what I owed. They told me it was over $200. This is more than twice my normal bill, so I asked for an itemized bill to be sent to me. They said sure. Two weeks later, I get a single sheet bill with nothing but the total amount due, plus a few dollars because now it's late. I call again. Please send me a full itemized bill. Sure, no problem. Two weeks later, another single sheet. I call again. Can't you just allow me access to the online version, I ask? No, can't do that, but we will send you a full itemized bill. This time, I'm smart enough to at least write down the name of the idiot I spoke to. Almost a month passes. I get home from Tampa to a message on my answering machine. AT&T has sent me to a collection agency. After a most unpleasant conversation with the collection agent that concluded with him hanging up on me, (I confess, I was NOT nice on the phone) I call the collection agency a second time. This time I'm given to a supervisor who tells me quite frankly that AT&T will probably never send me a full bill but it would be best if I dealt with AT&T directly because there's nothing much they can do for me.

TWO AT&T customer disservice supervisors later, I still have no online access to my account, no full itemized bill, and no assurances that they will ever send one. By now, you've probably been reading long enough for Jimmy Buffet's "The Asshole Song" to begin playing. I apologize for that, since this is a G-rated blog, but I felt the song was just too perfect to pass up. It's my Ode to AT&T.

So yeah, I suppose I should be all excited about MyFace or SpaceFace or whatever the heck Benjamin signed me up for, but to be honest, I'm still too ticked off. Those of you who read this blog AND participate in Facebook, feel free to post your comments about your Customer Disservice experiences on my wall. In the meantime, I guess I should just be grateful that my toilets flush. Too bad I can't flush AT&T down my toilet...but ya know, that would SO be worth another $400 septic tank repair...

Southern comfort...

It doesn't snow very often in my neck of the woods--about 25 miles south of Atlanta--but when it does, it's an event. The joke is that whenever the local weather guessers predict even a sprinkling of the white stuff, every grocery store across the metropolitan area is immediately innundated with people who, for some odd reason, clean out the shelves of every carton of milk, every loaf of bread, and every case of beer. Bread. Milk. Beer. This is the mantra, apparently, of Atlantans and the required provisions for dealing with an inch or two of snow. I don't know what they do in Alaska when it snows, but I think it's safe to say that folks there don't careen wildly through the streets to the nearest Piggly Wiggly and then elbow each other out of the way to fill their grocery carts with bread, milk, and beer.

Anyway, what we Atlantans generally hope for is enough snow to cancel school and close businesses but not enough to have to shovel since none of us are ever prepared for the snowfall that we do, occasionally, get. Case in point: snow started falling this morning on my way to church. Big, fat, squishy flakes that immediately melted on my windshield. By the time I left services (early, by the way), it had switched over to serious snow and was about an inch and a half deep on every surface of my car. Do I have a snow scraper? No. Do I have waterproof outer garments or shoes? No. What I did have was a single stray CD case that Benjamin had given me with a collection of classical/church music. Out came the CD. I used the case to scrape the fluffy stuff from my windshield but by the time I got a small section cleared, the CD case disintegrated and my hands were nearly blue. (No gloves, either.) I realized too late that I should have done the passenger window as well but it was too cold to get out again. SO, like a complete and total moron, I opened the window and then tried to push the remaining sheet of snow out before it quavered slightly and then collapsed in a heap on my lap. Smooth...real smooth.

That's what we southerners do in the snow--we improvise. Bryan improvised with an aluminum coke can one wintry morning a few years ago. A couple hundred dollars (and MANY months later), Jacey ended up with a new windshield--it turns out coke cans are NOT intended for snow removal but they DO leave a lovely web of deep scratches on the glass.

SO. I'll curl up with my ancestors, some good old movies, and a few cups of cocoa this afternoon and enjoy it. It's STILL coming down and they're forecasting up to four inches by the time the storm heads on up the east coast. It really won't do me any good since I'm off tomorrow anyway. But it's fun while it lasts.

The only down side of the whole thing is what it does to the early spring vegetation here. My poor, poor daffodils!!

Time warp...

If you'll forgive me just one more brief Hawaii-related post--

We had a fairly short list of "must do's" for the trip--Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Center were the top two on the list--but you know I just couldn't go to Hawaii without taking care of one family history related task.

In a previous blog, I wrote a little about my darling grandmother, Dardy, and shared a wonderful picture of her dancing the hula (complete with grass skirt and lei) on a deserted Hawaiian beach sometime around 1930. I neglected to mention that I also have a shot of my mother at about age 3 in much the same outfit, although clad just a tad more scantily (no top). We just could NOT resist trying to replicate those photos for the next two generations! (Oh, and thankfully, neither Dardy nor Mother wore coconut bras although those were readily available in all the shops!)

SO, without further ado, here are FOUR generations of Shutt women doing our best to hula amid the palm trees of Oahu...Mary Robbins Shutt, Margaret Osburn Shutt, Linda Susan Hardy VerHoef and Megan Trijntje VerHoef. (A special thanks to Annike for the clever photoshopping to convert our 2009 shots into sepia tones! Oh, and I should tell you the one of me is not for the faint of heart--you might wanna skip down to Megan in a hurry...;-)

By the way, we did not bring the grass skirt home and I'm SO sorry I didn't...Tuesday is Mardi Gras at the archives and I would have LOVED to wear it in the parade (and you thought librarians were boring--wait'll you see the pictures of THAT...)

Hallowed ground...

I have spent a good many years studying World War II history. Not exactly sure why it holds such a fascination for me--perhaps it has something to do with the way it makes me feel close to my Dad, who I lost in 1990.

At any rate, I've been extremely lucky to have actually visited a few places that have had special significance for me as I studied the war in the European Theatre. My 2006 trip to High Wycombe, England, included an unforgettable, behind the scenes, quite personal tour of the former 8th Army Air Forces Headquarters where my Dad spent the war. More recently, here at home, I've driven down the same streets that German prisoners of war walked through during the summer of 1945 on their way from their camp to the packing shed where they canned peaches in a tiny town just a few miles from my house--that experience ultimately led to my master's degree since my study of the camp was the topic of my thesis.

Many years ago I watched a television program about the USS Arizona. It included video of the drops of oil that are still rising to the surface from the wreckage, just a few feet below the water. Some say the drops are tears--that the ship still weeps for the loss of her crew. I was awestruck. Some years later, while visiting the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., Randy and I stood transfixed as we listened to videotaped interviews with the men who survived that day--first responders who talked about pulling men from the flaming water, sometimes leaving the victim's skin behind. One corpsman remembered that there were so many burn victims that day, the hospital dispensaries ran out of alcohol for sterilizing equipment and wounds. Some intrepid sailor solved the shortage by separating the local Officer's Clubs from their entire stock of booze; they used the stuff in place of medicinal alcohol.

Anyway, Pearl Harbor sort of became my quest. It's been at the top of my bucket list for decades now and I just wanted to see it more and more the older I got. It was everything I had heard about and more. One particular surprise was the fact that the introductory film that visitors are shown while they wait for the Navy launch to take them across to Ford's Island includes actual footage of the first Japanese torpedo hitting the ship at just before 8am, December 7, 1941. I never knew such footage existed. Most of us are familiar with the now famous photograph of the ship's tower, listing horribly to starboard as it burns out of control.

But seeing the ship as it looked moments earlier, before the attack, when 1,177 men were still looking forward to their Sunday activities, and then seeing that torpedo hit--

Here's a few photos we were able to take during our brief stay on that hallowed ground...

Three's the charm...

SO. I guess I had a lot of reasons for wanting to go to Hawaii (after all, who wouldn't want to go) and I'll be sharing a few of those reasons in future posts. But the fact that our trip was spectacularly successful is really something of a miracle. You see, it's the third time I have tried to make the trip. To say that the previous two tries were unsuccessful is sort of like saying that the Titanic was buoyancy-challenged.

My first attempt occurred somewhere around January of 1980. Mother and Daddy rented a large home in Maui for the purpose of having a family reunion. At the time, Randy and I were starving college students so they graciously paid our way to the islands and even provided us with a little bit of pocket money. We were not able to take Annike, however, and as a new mom who had never been separated from her little darling for more than a few hours, I was totally panicked at the prospect of flying a few thousand miles (each way) over water and spending a whole week away from my baby. Had any of us known what was in store, we could have saved ourselves the trouble and spent the week at home, sitting under a warm shower, shoving money down the drain.

We arrived in Honolulu on a Saturday afternoon, took a white-knuckle special over to Maui, and settled in for a week on the beach. Sunday was cloudy, but warm--and coming from the snow and near freezing temperatures of Utah, we didn't complain. Monday it hit us. According to newspaper accounts, it was the "worst disaster to hit Maui since World War II." Some tropical cyclone spun out of the eastern Pacific and slammed into the islands with a vengeance. Apart from spending day after day stuck in the house, the only two clear memories I have of the trip are trying to find an open store to buy groceries and watching a car parked near the shoreline get washed out to sea, and later watching the floodwaters rise up to our calves INSIDE the rental car while we made a mad dash to the airport for yet another white-knuckle special back to Honolulu. It was like something out of a cartoon--we opened the doors of the car at the airport and a little Niagara Falls spilled out of each opening. I don't remember how much Daddy paid the rental car company for the damage, but it was significant. Here's a picture of our first day:

And here's a picture of what the rest of the vacation looked like:

Total. Freaking. Disaster.

Many years later, Mother and I got to talking about trying to go again. Her sister, Mary Pleasants, had been born in Hawaii and Mother had lived there briefly before Pearl Harbor and the two of them had been back many times and just loved it. Mary was able to book us rooms at the Hale Koa (the luxury hotel reserved for military members and retirees) right on Waikiki beach so we decided to make it an estrogen fest and go together along with my girls, Annike and Megan. We were scheduled to leave from Charlotte on December 24, 2003, but the girls and I were going to drive up to Charlotte the night before and spend the night with Mother and Mary in order to catch our flight the next morning. While we were packing, we got a call from my cousin, Lynn, that mother had been admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pain and that we'd best come now. A frantic three and a half hour drive later, I arrived at the emergency room to be told that she had slipped away just about twenty minutes earlier. I've always wondered why I was able to travel from Athens, Greece, to Los Angeles in time to see my father before he passed away, but was unable to drive 260 miles from Atlanta to Charlotte in time to see my mother.

SO. Not only did we never make that trip, the simple thought of going always tended to bring back the painful memory of losing mother. God, she was SO much fun! Always ready to travel, always ready to get up and go. Here's a favorite picture of her, on one of her many trips with Grand Circle Travel (this one might have been the trip to China--not sure):

We completely dropped the idea of going until just a couple of months ago when my "bucket list" started calling again (more about that later). I gingerly began thinking about it, quietly began talking about it, made the reservations while holding my breath and keeping all fingers, toes and eyes crossed, but only Annike was brave enough to go public. Benjamin thought it was supposed to be a surprise for Megan because she never said a word about it until he finally asked her the day before she was to leave. She told him she couldn't bear to hardly think about it much less talk about it lest the Hawaiian Vacation Gods were listening and decided to slam dunk us yet again.

BUT. Three is aparently the charm. Every single day there, I thought of Mother and Daddy and Mike and Randy and how they all should have been there to enjoy it this time.

But we did our damndest to enjoy it for them. Aloha!