Linen, the smell of fresh crisp clean white linen, You can't capture the smell of linen in a bottle though they try. When I think of linen, it's with a bitter sweet sigh, I think of my childhood memories of good times gone by.
Napkins, candles and table cloths, white with white design, Ready for Sunday dinner with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents so fine, Pot roast, chicken, mashed potatoes and strawberry rhubarb pie. Linen, fresh clean memories, happy times gone by.
Life was livable and children were sweet and quiet and shy, Streets filled with bicycles and roller skates, marbles and jacks and kites in the sky. Air filled with sounds of horns and whistles, a baseball cracking off the tip of a bat, The shouts of children with laughter and glee, wonderment of all that.Running after the ice cream truck with a ringing bell, Cones and Eskimo pies, and Popsicles as well. Little girls secrets from boys they'll never tell, Linen, crisp linen, good memories, and oh such a fresh smell.
The front yards had white picket fences and trellises with climbing Tea Roses, Bachelor Buttons, Daisies and Hollyhocks, sweet aromas filled our noses. Pansies and Tulips, hear the soft sounds of humming bees. The back yards had bird houses posted to Willow, Oak, and Maple trees.
Robins and Bluebirds on branches hidden amongst the leaves, And always clothes lines and clothes pins gripping white linen sheets waving in the breeze. Crisp white clean linens spreading out against the blue sky, So many memories of wonderful times in my life gone by.
Author Eileen Clark
When I was eight I walked to school in the city of Hartford Connecticut every day with my two older brothers Bernie and Dick. We walked on the cement sidewalks and the rule was, never step on the long crack that separated each sidewalk square. Some of the large cement squares had many cracks in them so it was a real difficult task to keep moving and not step on one of them. You had to keep moving along fast, you couldn’t take your time checking ahead before you put your foot down. You just could not step on one because you would really hurt your mother, that’s what we honestly believed. Quite silly don’t you think, well maybe not all the kids my age played this game.
Our winter boots were always black and for a girl I considered them to be very ugly. We all had them, black up past your ankle rubber boots. Little girls did not have red blue or pink boots back then like they sell today, or possibly it was the not so financially well off kids that didn’t have boots in colors. Thing is, I don’t even remember seeing them in the big department stores. We did most of our shopping in the Sears & Roebucks catalogues and I never saw any pretty boots for kids in them either.
The boots had snap type clamps from the middle to the top and often because it was too much trouble or we were just lazy, we never buckled them up just slipped them on and off we’d go.
I loved to walk on the huge high snow banks along the side of the road where the plow’s piled it up after clearing off the roads. It was fun trudging along on those banks pushing one foot after the other down, my whole leg would be swallowed up into the snow. I had to work hard to pull my leg up and out of the snow wiggling my leg back and forth to pull it up only to clump the other foot and leg down almost to my hips into the snow bank again.
We never gave a thought about the fact that walking on these snow banks was very dangerous and any time we could slip off falling towards the road and oncoming cars would run over us, we would have been killed!
Sure enough it was bound to happen, one day up came my foot with no boot! I quickly looked down the hole that my foot was buried in only to see snow. Of course snow will fall back into the hole as my foot comes up. I frantically searched, pulling snow away with my freezing red numb fingers. I was in a terrified state by now, still pulling snow away from where I thought the hole might have been to where my boot still just might be, all the time knowing I was as good as dead, I couldn’t find my boot.
Yes, my father would kill me when he got home from work. In matters like this, my mother would not kill me, she just got sick. Here’s how it would go, ” I’m sick, you have made me sick over this, I just can’t take any more, now I am sick.” It was right after the second world war and we were poor, everyone was poor for a while in that period of time, so I was not going to get a new pair of boots this winter.
My feet were going to freeze every day back and forth to school, and in the play yard, and in my backyard, and at my girlfriends back yard, all winter long, frozen feet, and of course I did get the spanking from my father that night when he got home from work. He had a brown leather strap hanging on a nail behind the kitchen stove. He made it at his workplace.
My spanking, my mother reminding me that I was indeed killing her, and my feet getting wet and very cold every day, I feel I was duly punished and never walked on snow banks ever again, ever.
On the school shoes the soles would separate because in time the rubber would wear down to the thread and the thick thread holding the two pieces together got exposed and would disintegrate. With every step I took it was flop flop flop, it was embarrassing! My father would glue them together, put a clamp on them, holding them very tight over night so they would be ready to wear the next day. That glue job lasted about a month then came unglued. Mom would say live with it.
I stayed in the bedroom, one at the top of the stairs
It was my uncles when he was young and had few cares
He's in the army now serving far away from his home
His mom and dad, my grandparents, live here alone
I'm now in his bedroom spending time by myself
Either looking at the big ticking clock on the shelf
Or staring out my window at the house across the way
The one with blue shutters and no children there to play
Grandma and grandpa don't have any yard swings
They don't have any pets, don't even have toys
I brought my doll, my jacks and a few other things
On this street live old folks, no little girls and boys
Is it my imagination because of something I want there to be
Because it looks like a young person is looking back at me
Then I see her smile, she moves and her eyelashes flutter
At last I have a playmate in the house with the blue shutters
Author Eileen Clark
This poem comes from my childhood and I did stay often at my grandparents house while my brothers were in school. Unlike today where grandparents have a bedroom set aside for their grandchildren filled with toys, video games, TV’s and computers. My grandparents saved the Sunday funny papers for us. My grandpa had a couple of puzzles up on the closet shelf that he brought down when I came for a weekend and he always bought me Neapolitan ice cream. I brought my doll, jump rope, and a coloring book with my box of crayons. There was a white house next to my grandparents house and it did have blue shutters. I did sit on the edge of my uncles bed looking out the bedroom window and wishing there were kids living in that house. The part I made up was that their actually was a child in that house, there wasn’t but how I so wished there was. My grandparents did live in a neighborhood with very fine houses and older well established people residing in them, there were no children living on that block or any streets near by.
Bought a dog a year ago, Thought id’ be some company ya know. Needed some noise and scuttle in the home, Wife’s been gone and I’m so alone.
Thinking bout the trouble I’m in for, Cleaning up the messes on the floor. Feeding n’ grooming, worming n’ shots Costing me more then I even gots.
It’s been a year now and trouble he be, But I got more then that, I got loyalty. I got a friend now tried and true, Got all that when I bought Billy Blue.
My hands are like lobster claws Just one of my latest flaws I can't pick up, hold onto, or grab That's why I've become such a crab
Because of the things I use to do I tell my oldest daughter Like the ocean color I'm feeling blue I now am a fish out of water
Still I have so many blessings like the white sands near the sea Someday, I'm gonna be back To the young person I use to be
Author Eileen Clark
This was one of the first poems I wrote, I have rheumatoid arthritis.
If it should be, that I grow frail and weak, And pain should keep me from my sleep, Then, you must do what must be done For this, the last battle, can’t be won. Don’t let your grief stay your hand, For this day more than the rest, Your love and friendship stand the test. We’ve had so many years, What is to come can hold no fear. You’d not want me to suffer, so When the time comes, please let me go. Take me where my needs they’ll tend, Only, stay with me to the end And hold me firm and speak to me Until my eyes no longer see. I know in time you’ll see it is a kindness you do for me Although my tail its last has waved, From pain and suffering I’ve been saved. Don’t grieve it should be you who this thing decides to do. We’ve been so close, we two, these years, Don’t let your heart hold tears. Smile, for we walked together for awhile.
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