The Adventures of Nellie and Doris: The One At Candy's Kwik Shop

Across the street from my house in SE Portland there was a small market.  Well, it looked small but when you entered it was like Dr. Who's tardis phonebooth. It went on forever.

Anything you needed was in that store. Need a ham for Thanksgiving dinner? Yep, got that.  Need the coldest beer and freshest popcorn in town? Yep, got that. Need eggs, cigarettes, milk, pancake syrup? Oh yeah. Video games and fresh donuts, along with freshly brewed coffee. We even had an ATM machine, hot dogs on a spit, freshly baked cookies. And candy...lots and lots of candy.

The store became a Minit Mart about a year after I moved into the neighborhood. None of us were happy that some corporate store was moving into the space.  After all, it used to be a real market with fresh butchered meat from a meat counter. That was before my time, but yeah it used to be real. And along comes a Minit Mart. The previous owner came over to my house, sat on the front step, and told me about the sale. He apologized but said it was time to move on. But hey! That new Minit Mart turned out to be owned by the greatest couple in the world: Bill and Candy Field.

I got to know the owners quickly. I was working for Portland Public Schools as a Special Education Aide. My first year at college, I continued working for PPS but then summer came along; I was out of work. I had been hanging around the owners of the store in the daytime and the night clerks later on, so the owners gave me a job. I started working nights--3:00-closing. It was the best place to be! I was able to learn all the neighborhood gossip, meet all the kids up and down the area, and could have my kids sleep in their own beds at night.  After all, I was right across the street.

My kids were taken care of by Nellie on the weekends and after school. She would then help them brush their teeth and go to bed at night at our house.  It worked out pretty good.  As school started, they became latchkey kids.  They would come home, come over to see me at the store, and then go over Nellie's for dinner and homework. While they would visit me at least once a day, they were not allowed to hang out at the store while I worked.  As they got older, they would come over and grab something like Reeser's 49cent burrito or a hot dog for an afternoon snack.

After a while, Bill and Candy needed a weekend morning clerk. Nellie asked for the job.  Now the truth was that Candy was unsure of Nellie as a clerk. She thought Nellie was too soft and didn't have the gumption to toss out someone who needed to be tossed out. That was the surprise of Candy's life...Nellie came from strong gumptions.  That woman tossed out more shoplifters than any other clerk, including Bill. She was used to spotting the "untrusted" out there because some of her husband's family were...hmmm...how does one say this...cheaters. Shoplifters. Free-hand shoppers. She could spot one anywhere.

So there the weekends were: Nellie opened the store and I closed it. We were taught to walk around the store and face the products on the shelves when the store was slow. We were so used to doing this that we would go into any store and start facing their cans and goods as we shopped. 

Some years down the line, Bill and Candy bought out Minit Mart and turned the little store into Candy's Kwik Shop. While they had some losers working for them here and there--the one who quit a morning gig by leaving a note on my door...I had to get up and dress, open the store until Bill or Candy could get there.  Or the one who had "hurt his foot" and had so much bandages and gauze around it that it looked like a basketball.  I sent him home and worked. He never came back. Or the woman who worked maybe one weekend and quit to work at a 7-11 across town. No notice; just quit--while they had a few losers, the majority of the workers were loyal and great.  My younger son started there as a bottle boy and began on the till after he turned 18. My friend Stewart started working weekends to my nights before Nellie came on. At one point every neighbor kid worked there, either as a bottle boy, stacking the coolers, or sweeping the lot.

And who was in charge of the neighborhood on all those weekends? Yeah. Nellie and me.

and the beat goes on
peace~~~

 

Nellie and Doris Adventures: Mutt and Jeff

 

My family moved to Portland in February, 1976 and settled into a small two-bedroom house in lower SE. It had a nice-sized front yard and an open lot connected to it. It was a few days after moving in before we could get any heat turned on. There was a small market across the street--Minit Mart--and as I introduced myself, I mentioned our lack of heat to the owners during this February freeze.  The owner of the store rushed home and brought me an electric heater to use until our gas was turned on. Hmmm...so this was the type of neighborhood in which we moved, a neighborhood that cared about and helped one another.

That first spring, I happily started a little garden while the boys were napping. I grew radishes, lettuce, and something else that was easy to grow. I was NOT a gardener; know that right up front. Gardening got me outside in hopes I could meet some of my neighbors.

Now that the weather was nicer, I noticed that there were a bunch of kids about my boys' ages.  Next door from the empty lot were three boys: Steve, Richard, and Tommy. Across the street one house had three kids: Teresa, Arty, and Troy. And next door to this house had three kids: Stephanie, Missy, and Robbie. I had never lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids, not even growing up. This was great!

I decided we needed a little How Do You Do potluck in the neighborhood, so I invited the families over for a neighborhood party. I met and had great friendships with Shirley and Nellie until the day they died. This potluck event turned into something we all did together for many many years. 

As a neighborhood, we had many adventures--store hold ups, neighborhood rival family fights in the store parking lot, cars crashing into the small apartment kitty-corner from my house. The list goes on. But these stories of adventures are with my wonderful beautiful best friend Nellie. We went everywhere together. I might suggest we do something and Nellie would agree. Or she had an idea and I'd jump into the game. And we'd pack up the kids and off we'd go. For example, in the ultra hot of summer, we would decide to walk up to Mt Scott Park for a swim. Great idea! The kids and we could get out of our cranky moods and get cool. Of course! Great Idea! After all, it was only 1.5 miles! The problem was the 1.5 mile walk home.  And there we were, once again hot and cranky.

I knew that Nellie was shorter than me, but then most people in my life were. Since I hit six foot tall in high school, I just stopped paying attention to heights

between people. Yeah, the downside was it did stop me from dating way back then because most the boys hadn't reached their full height yet, but I actually liked being tall. I will admit that one of the problems with being a 6 foot young woman in 1968 was that store-bought dresses were just not long enough to satisfy the "no more than two inches above the knee" dress code we had in high school. Plus these legs were long and I got sent home many times to change my clothes (as a side note, I didn't go home but drove to the beach for the day instead.  Hey! They sent me home!). By the time I was in my 20s, I wore what I wanted and I loved to wear platform shoes. 

As I said, I stopped paying attention to differences in heights...that is until one day we were walking around in the neighborhood and the sun was behind us. And there that height difference jumped in our faces. Nellie came almost to my shoulder.  That was when I started calling us Mutt and Jeff.

With all my heart I wish I could still walk the streets (hey! those quarters add up!) with my beautiful friend Nellie Barney.

and the beat goes on
peace

Perseverance, Laughter and Love

As we move into our 24th year of marriage, I have started paying attention to all the little things that make us work so well together. I remember reading a light mystery series way back then where the star judged her relationships by two aspects: he makes me laugh and makes me “come.” And we thought that was a great start.

We do have things in common.  He plays music and I play the radio.  I make quilts and he uses them. He prefers to stay home and kill monsters on the computer and I make up for his loss of outside world interaction.  I dislike working in the yard and…well let’s just say one of the first questions I ever asked him was, “Do you like yard work?” And when he said yes, I announced, “I want you BAD.”  Perfect.

But it’s less our “things” in common as our outlooks on life, philosophies, our views of the world. We share a love for family, love for animals, for humanity.  We share world views, share a desire for kindness, for honesty. He has a rather dry sense of humor to my more slap-stick out-there funny-bone. But we still find the other hilarious.  He’s goofy to my sheer sophistication.  

Okay that last one wasn’t true.  But he is goofy 🙃 

The trust we have in one another comes from a deep place.  He was the first man who has never tried to change me. Ever. Oh yeah while he might like a few changes, he’s never voiced them nor tried to steer me toward them. He accepts me who I am: free-spirited living life out loud surviving hippie. As I accept him as he is: an introverted computer geek surviving hippie.  

We are now recovering from COVID. Thanks to a bazillion vaccines and Paxlovid, that recovery is going well. Slowly, but well.  The lingering COVID fatigue has reminded me how much we rely on one another day-in and day-out and how much we do for each other.  When my right knee was so bad that I could only crab-crawl up the stairs to bed, Doug took over doing the laundry, which is located in the basement.  Since he is two days behind me in COVID recovery, I pushed myself today and changed our fever-sweated sheets as well as took the towels to the basement. It had been a minute, but I remembered how to work the washer *wink*

We have split the household chores.  I cook because I’m better at it and he cleans up.  As I’ve been cleaning up these past few days I thought about how I simply leave my few dishes in the sink for him, leave the cooking mess for him. But then he leaves the bed unmade for me.  

My mother said he was a real gentleman (and that he had a cute butt…did I want to know my mom was looking at my partner’s butt!?) and he is (and he does lol). My bouts with cancer—he’s right there.  My flair ups—he’s right there. My cranky times—he’s in hiding.  His few illnesses—I’m right there. His autoimmune flair ups—I’m right there.  His few cranky times—I’m right there in his face.  Yes, he is smarter at some things than I am.

Oh yeah, and he is the Trivia King. I used to think between us we knew just about everything.  When I didn’t know something, he could fill-in. Nah. He’s so much smarter than me.  Except for pop culture; there is where I shine. I always knew reading People Magazine would be a useful activity. Each night as we eat dinner—we try to eat dinner together every evening—we pull out a box of Trivial Pursuit cards and ask questions.  We get into conversations over stuff. We laugh at our ignorance. We think we will remember the answer the next time.  We never do. 

What makes a relationship last as a strong unit? I can only speak of ours. Perseverance. Trust. Honesty. Love. Laughter. Plus we really like one another.

The Invisibility and Shame of Being Poor

 

I was recently driving along an area of SE Portland near where my sons and I grew up. On the corner of the street was a church and seeing it brought back a memory of standing in a long line, waiting to receive "Government Cheese." I was so happy to receive such a boon.  I was given cheese and butter and pasta and flour and powdered milk. And that night my sons and I feasted on the sweetest macaroni and cheese around.

My sons and I lived in poverty for many years. When their father left, I was the sole supporter of my two sons. At our divorce, it was decreed that their father would give me $200 a month in child support. At the time, I had no other income and applied for welfare and food stamps. 

I've always been the kind of person who does what she needs to do in order to get through whatever needs to be throughed (yes, I made up that word); therefore, I took what I could in order to feed my kids and pay the bills. I plucked on. 

Food stamps are interesting. They came in a little packet/tablet like the tickets used to come for rides at Disneyland--"A" rides, "B" rides--but instead they were one dollars of play money, five dollars of play money, or 10 dollars of play money. And I would tear what I needed out of the packet. We also received in return as change "food stamp coins," just to make sure we were spending all our stamp allotment on food.  I was grateful of these stamps because they assured my sons would eat.  Of course I was grateful but we who had "government handouts" needed to demonstrate that gratefulness. Otherwise, we just looked like a gimmiegimmielazyscumbags. This show of gratitude was an unwritten rule when in the Welfare Office, the grocery store, on the street in line for government cheese.

The unfortunate thing about food stamps was that the people in line behind you were aware that that you were using food stamps to buy groceries. I could hear the people behind me whispering (just loud enough for me to hear), as they looked over my groceries, "Hmmm...wish I could afford to buy some of these things..." or "Huh huh living off my money...." Food stamp people need a thick skin, needed to be able to smile and simply take their groceries out to the car.

The boon of government cheese was such a wonderful thing. We really did eat well from this give-out. Driving past the church the other day, I remembered the long line outside the building. I remembered how people driving past would either stare or purposely not look.  Like the signer-guy near the freeway entrance.  Most people don't look at them, hoping eye contact isn't made. Or the person riding the bike carrying bags of cans, the man wearing dirty clothes that don't fit very well, the thin dirty-faced young teen. Our behavior is truly a bimodel distribution of interaction. We who are poor are either ignored or people felt they had the right to stare or make comments. From this experience in line for government cheese, I learned to smile and pop a peace sign to the "signers" to let them know they are seen and are a human being.

In those days of mid-1970s, I mostly just plucked along, trying to ignore the stares and the comments. You do what you need to do. I eventually found placement through Welfare with Portland Public Schools Special Education Program as an aide. Welfare set me up with C.E.D.A., a program that was created in the early-1970s through President Johnson's Economic Act of 1964. 

This gimmiegimmielazyscumbag worked as an aide, got a part time job across the street of our house at Minit Mart (which became Candy's Kwik Shop), collected newspapers to take to the recycle center (they used to pay for papers), swept the store parking lot, became the weekend aide for my partner, who was a quadriplegic, started college and worked in the Speech Communication department office. 

Did I do all this in order to overcome the stigma of poverty? Maybe a bit. I was happy to get off welfare and delighted to stop using food stamps, to be judged by the community because of my income status. I was glad that my sons no longer heard the not-so-veiled comments about our food choices. But the reality was that I was also a woman who did what she needed to do in order to take care of her family. I have always been a take-charge-of-my-life person who didn't want circumstances to rule my life. 

Next time you pass a guy holding a sign near the freeway entrance, give him eye contact, a smile and the peace sign. Tell him that he is seen, that he is a human being. Show the world some love.

and so it goes
peace~~

Do Your Ears Hang Low?

 

 

 Do your ears hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie ’em in a knot?
Can you tie ’em in a bow?
Can you throw ’em o’er your shoulder
Like a Continental soldier?
Do your ears hang low?

 

 

 

I have never given my ears much thought. They sit there on the side of my head and give me music and bird twitters and sweet nothings. I've thought about my little toe much more than my ears. I feel I have been neglect. I mean, the ears do so much and I have just never paid much attention to them.

Oh, I had my ear lobes pierced when I was in high school. I remember admiring them in the mirror. And then I had a second piercing sometime in my twenties or early thirties. I then became allergic to any metal for about 30 years, so earrings weren't thought about; thus, no ear itself thoughts.

But lately...well when I hit the sheets at night and settle my head in the pillow, I find my ear lobes fold over a bit uncomfortably. Here I am, all snuggled in, and I have to move my hand under my head and flip back that earlobe.

I mean, c'mon. After age 30, people tend to lose lean tissue. Your muscles, liver, kidney, and other organs may lose some of their cells. Bones may lose some of their minerals and become less dense.

We shrink down while we age. I used to be six foot tall. Now I'm 5'11, maybe even 5'10.5.  I'll never cop to it, but yeah. 

Yeah, we are getting shorter and our ears are getting longer. 

But wait! There's more!

Not only is our ears starting to sag, so is our nose! Noses and ears are made of cartilage, a flexible tissue that’s harder than skin but softer than bone. It wears down over time and doesn’t give as much support to the skin on top of it. Your skin also loses elasticity and firmness over time, and it tends to sag. Loose or sagging skin over a weaker cartilage frame makes ears and noses look longer. 

Well, that's the story. In looking up this information, I discovered when "old age" starts.  Typically, the elderly has been defined as the chronological age of 65 or older. People from 65 to 74 years old are usually considered early elderly, while those over 75 years old are referred to as late elderly. According to AARP, those under 30 believe old age hits before a person turns 60. Middle-aged respondents cited 70 as the start of old age while those 65 and older put the number closer to 74.

Thank gawd I just turned 71...
not old yet!

peace~~~