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There is a small group of gringos here around David who meet weekly to practice speaking our Spanish. I enjoy going because we’re all a bit hesitant in our use of the language so we aren’t overwhelmed with the rapidity with which the Panamanians speak. There are times when I hear them on their cell phones and I think to myself “there’s no way the person on the other end can understand what’s being said it’s going so fast.” Then I think, too, that it has something to do with the cost of making a cell phone call. It’s well known that people here will often call a number and hang up as soon as it starts to ring on the other end. That way their phone number shows up on the other person’s phone and they aren’t charged for a call and they expect the other person to call back on their dime. Therefore, when they are actually talking on on the phone they do it as fast as they can so they can hang up without spending too much on the call.

Anyway, the group starts at 10:30. I can’t really take the ten o’clock bus. It takes about 45 minutes to get down to the “lavamatico” (laundromat) where I need to get off and then there’s a bit of a walk to the meeting place. Taking the ten o’clock would mean showing up at least a half hour late. So, I have to catch the nine o’clock bus which means I’ve got to hang out somewhere for about three quarters of an hour before the meeting starts.

Yesterday I went to the little “fonda” across from where the bus stops. A “fonda” is a kind of restaurant. I figured I’d have a cup of coffee and read my Kindle for a while.

I’ve written about how good the coffee is here in Panama. Much of it is grown within arms reach of where I live. I enjoy Finca Ruiz Italian roast and every now and then I go to their store in Boquete to get some of the other beans they offer but which aren’t available in the super markets. They’re also about double in price to what you can buy at El Rey or Super Barú but every once in a while I like to treat myself to a special cup. I buy the whole bean coffee and grind each batch fresh though I do have about four pots- worth pre-ground and sitting in the fridge in case I wake up and the electricity is off and I can’t use the grinder. The stove is gas.

So, I order my coffee, knowing it’s not going to be freshly ground beans or Italian, French or Espresso roast, but can you imagine my horror, here in the heart of coffee-land, when the lady behind the counter tossed a heaping tablespoon full of INSTANT coffee into a Styrofoam cup and added hot water? What a sacrilege! Why didn’t the coffee police swoop down on this little fonda and instantly haul this woman away to some dank, dark dungeon and punish her severely? Surely this had to be some serious breach of the penal code, no?

Obviously I won’t be going there again. There is, however, a few blocks away, another little fonda that I’m going to get to some day and I want to get a picture of the place. The name of it is ¿Dónde está José? Where’s Joe? Gotta love it.

When I was a kid this was the saddest day of every year. No, not September 6th. Some times the saddest day could come as early as the 2nd of September. It didn’t really matter. It was the dreaded Day After Labor Day. (For those who don’t live in the States, Labor Day there is the first Monday in September, so, like Mardi Gras and Easter, it’s a movable feast.) Summer was officially over and it had nothing to do with solstices. The Day After Labor Day was the day we literally packed up our tent, left Nickerson State Park in Brewster, Massachusettes, on Cape Cod and headed back “home” and  school. Since I went to five different schools in my first seven years there was a special dread of leaving the park.

As the last day of school approached each day seemed to be a week long filled with the anticipation of returning to the park and the summer seemed as though it would last forever. Labor Day was so far away. On that last day of school my mom and dad would be waiting outside. My mom would be driving the Ford station wagon, a woodie, and my dad would be in the old Chevy panel truck with Philbrick’s Catering in big gold letters on the side and the family coat of arms on the driver’s side door. Hitched up behind the truck was the trailer my mom and dad would stay in. My brothers and I would live in a tent. And perched proudly on top of the truck would be the 8′ pram my dad had built in the basement with a shiny coat of white paint each year waiting to join the small flotilla made up of our boat and those of the Brenners and Cullums.

In those days, the late 40s and early 50s, you could reserve your spot each year and stay the whole summer. You can’t do that now: no reservations and two weeks max. While each Fall was a new school and fighting for a place in the pecking order, summer was always the same in Area Five. Just above our camp site were the Bolducs with their daughters Suzanne and Julie and then the Larabees with their son Don and across from them the Taylors and their son Tony who was only one hour older than me.  Down the slope a ways were the Brenners and their daughter Susan and the Cullums with their son Fran and daughter Jan who had had polio and was confined to a wheel chair. Up from them were the Morrises and their daughters Sara Ann and Jeniffer (oh did I ever have a crush on Jeniffer, completely unrequited). My uncle Bill and aunt Stephanie with their daughters Helen and Lois pitched their tent across from the Morrises. I always knew where I fit in in the summer.

Back then it took about three hours to drive from Watertown, just outside of Boston and where, I found out a half century later, both the Philbricks and the Eatons had settled in the 1630s, to Nickerson. As we drew closer to Bourne and the Cape Cod Canal you knew you’d left the city far behind and the wonderful scent of the pine woods would start filtering in through the car windows.

Our tent was literally just steps away from Flax Pond.

There was great fishing in that pond. There was bass, pickerel, perch and catfish, but we called them hornpout, and were they great coated with cornmeal and fried up for breakfast with blueberry muffins with the blueberries picked off of bushes just a few feet away from the camp site.

Eventually, and inevitably, the day would arrive when there were only two weeks left of summer. The last two weeks of school dragged on for an eternity, but those last two weeks of summer flew by in the blink of an eye and then it was all done.

The day after Labor Day was always the saddest day of the year.

In today’s “Freshly Pressed” I clicked on to Amanda Rudd’s Blog post where people have inked their favorite literary quotations permanently into their skin.  From there I went to http://tattoolit.com/ and got hung up on the page after page of photos of people’s tattoos. I’m not a big fan of tattoos in general, but I’ve found some of these rather interesting.

One that I particularly like is”

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. –The Buddah

My friend, Omar, who writes, hosts, the blog Lingua Franca recently had a post that said that Hewlitt-Packard disclosed plans to stop making smartphones and tablet computers running on Palm’s software.  HP is also looking to get rid of its personal computer business in a sale or spinoff.

That HP might be getting rid of their personal computer business is a bit disappointing to me. Two of the three notebook computers and one desktop unit have all been HPs and I have only had minor problems with any of them and usually after much hard use. For instance, the notebook I’m using to write this I’ve owned for about four years. The only problem I have with it is that I can no longer write to the CD though I can still read CDs without any difficulty. I have an older HP notebook that I brought with me here to Panama as a back-up to this one. It went through some very hard use and the CD component is completely dead as is the sound card. Except for those two problems it works just fine. I’ll be in the market for a new computer in the not too distant future and if there are no longer any HPs to buy I don’t know what my alternative will be.

My first contact with HP came back in the winter of 1973/74. I was living in Chicago then and was working as a “head hunter” for a firm that specialized in computer geeks. We only dealt with the higher echelon of these geeks: systems analysts, department heads, that sort of creature. No programmers. It wasn’t essential to the job I held to actually know anything about computers, simply the buzz words associated with them.

Now, this was back in the days when computers were monster machines. They took up whole floors of huge buildings and ate up in a day more electricity than Niagara Falls could produce in a month. They gave off so much heat that the spaces they occupied had to be kept so cold that you could store sides of beef alongside them and technicians in white lab coats were like religious acolytes scurrying around with huge reels of tape needed for the machines to do their calculations.

One day I made a call to an HP geek whose name I’d gotten from another geek. After getting his CV out of the way I asked him what he was working on at the present time.

“Oh,” he said, “it’s an exciting new project to make ‘mini-computers.”

“Mini-computers? What the hell is a mini-computer?” I asked.

“It’s a computer that people will have on their desks.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, not at all. We’re working on a project where everyone will someday have their own computer sitting on their desk.”

“Yeah, sure thing, loser,” I thought to myself. “Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out for ya.” And I quickly wrapped up the phone interview because there was absolutely no possibility of putting this whacko in another job.

My how times have changed.

This doesn’t relate to the story above but it made me laugh out loud when I saw it:

Spokesman says Texas Gov. Rick Perry running for president

Last August I did a post about New England architecture specifically to answer a question concerning what are known as “Saltbox” houses. I also rambled on about the house I grew up in and an explanation of the three different kinds of Cape Cod houses…Half-Cape, Three-Quarter Cape and Full-Cape.

Yesterday my brother Jeff sent me a letter concerning the post and included some information that was new to me.

In regards to our old house I was led to believe it had been built before the Revolution and even after Jeff’s letter exactly when it was built is still murky. However, this is what he says about it.

I’ve always had a keen interest in history so about the time dad sold the house I went to the County Registry of Deeds to look into the records on our property.

Where it said “when built” it had 1812 with a question mark which could indicate the original records are missing and the date is unknown.

From what I’ve picked up the ell (kitchen)  (note: that’s the small part of the house on the right side) is actually the original part of the house and the full-Cape section was added on either late in the 18th or early in the 19th century.

I believe I picked up the following information from our next door neighbor Mrs. Williams.

She was a Nickerson from Eastham and a 5th generation descendant of Nickersons who came over on the Mayflower.

Local hearsay dates the kitchen portion prior to 1650 perhaps 1635 or there about.

If you remember, Skaket creek and the Great Marsh of Eastham was through the woods just across Namskaket Road in front of our house. Almost directly across from our house on the other side of the Great Marsh is the old settlement of Eastham. It’s the first settlement on the Cape and founded by members of the Plymouth colony.

Supposedly, a supply ship crossed from Plymouth once a month with trade goods and supplies bound for the Eastham settlement. Because they where using an open vessel and need quarters while in port what became our kitchen where quarters for captain and crew of the supply ship on the Eastham run.

Why they quartered across the creek from the settlement and not in town doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps, being rude low-class type sailors, nobody wanted them quartered in their homes or visa versa.

I resent the implication that sailors are crude and low-class types. I’ve always tried to be polite whenever possible.

I also remember mom wanting dad to do something about redoing the floor in the living room. She thought they where ugly because they were painted dark maroon with varied colored paint spackles (it’s an old NE method of hiding dirt on flooring) and wanted something lighter.

To save a lot of work dad decided to take up the old floor boards and refinish the under side. Some of the boards were nearly two or more feet wide indicating old growth lumber. The uneven saw markings on the underside indicated they had been pit sawn rather then mill cut dating them possibly very early 1800s.

Dad found several coins under the floor one being a Canadian 1/2 penny dated 1832 I think (which I have but can’t seem to find to verify the date).

There were also roman numerals about 4-6″ high chiseled into the face of several of the boards.

Dad carefully re-laid  the boards then lightly sanded and clear finished them leaving all the markings intact.

Later someone told dad that the boards may have come from the old salt works on the Bay. The works produced salt for salting cod fish and where disassembled sometime in the 1800s. 

Old pictures of the time show the salt vats marked with Roman Numerals. Apparently, boards soaked in salt water when dried are more durable and good for flooring.

Old frugal Yankees wouldn’t let such good tough lumber like that go to waste. So it’s highly probable that the living room floor was from a recycled salt vat.

Years later Jeff visited the house and discovered the subsequent owners had refinished all the floors including sanding out all the Roman numerals in the living room floor. I shocked them when I told them what those markings indicated. In dismay they told me they wish they had found and talked to me before they had done so much damage.

I remember the original floor and how, just after we moved into the house (I was 11 or 12) we had painted them maroon and what fun it had been dipping sticks into small yellow, green, blue and red paint cans and dribbling them all over the floor. I always thought they looked pretty nice.

It was my understanding from the town’s “unofficial” historian that the boards were, in fact, from the old salt-works but I was under the impression that the works had been dismantled before the Revolution and that the timbers had been incorporated into several of the houses around us, including the half-Cape across the street, a photo of which will be shown below.

Now, here’s something I didn’t know that Jeff had in his letter…

A last cultural note that has a bearing on the different styles of the “Cape Cod” house.

In the old days it was the custom for a father to provide a dowry for a daughter. Apparently a common Cape Cod dowry was to provide a half house to the newly married couple.

(A fine example of a half-Cape. It was owned by a tiny woman named Netty Silva and sat across the street from our house. It, too, had timbers from the old salt works.)

As the husband’ s fortunes increased with his family size so did the home they lived in. Thus, a starter half house turned into a three-quarter Cape

Or a full-Cape…

(Note: The difference in the house designations depends on the number and positioning of the windows in relation to the front door. Half-Cape: door and two windows on the side. Three-quarter Cape: door with two windows on one side and a single window on the other.  Full-Cape two windows on either side of the door. A house with a single window on either side of the door is NOT truly a full-Cape. )

Another common NE element is a barn attached to the rear of the house using an ell.

One could do all the husbandry tasks without going outside to reach the barn.

I have been in such houses where one will find a well head and the outhouse either in the passageway to the barn or in a corner of  the barn proper.

In the last week I’ve received the following link from three different friends who know that I am a child of rock & roll and that I especially love good, old-fashion, whore house piano. The link is always presented as “rare footage of Little Richard when he was just starting out in the music biz’ … from some movie with Van Johnson ..”

Well, I hate to rain on everyone’s parade (if you believe that statement you probably also believe in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and that Republicans only work for the interests of ordinary people) but that’s NOT Little Richard.

It’s Frank Isaac Robinson who was known in his early career as Sugar Chile Robinson. He won a talent show at the Paradise Theatre in Detroit at the age of three, and in 1945 played guest spots at the theatre with Lionel Hampton. That clip is from the movie No Leave, No Love. In 1946, he played for President Harry S. Truman at the White House at the, shouting out “How’m I Doin’, Mr President?”

Here’s a clip from when he was playing with Count Basie’s band:

He stopped recording in 1952, later explaining: “I wanted to go to school… I wanted some school background in me and I asked my Dad if I could stop, and I went to school because I honestly wanted my college diploma.” He earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Michigan.

He gave up music for a long time In recent years he has made a comeback as a musician with the help of the American Music Research Foundation.

Little Richard (née Richard Wayne Penniman) on the other hand didn’t begin performing on stage and on the road in 1945, when he was in his early teens although he and his family performed in local churches as The Penniman Singers. At that time he was called “War Hawk” because of his loud, screaming singing voice. In October 1951, he began recording “jump blues” records for RCA Camden.

Little Richard’s first film performance was in Allen Freed’s movie The Girl Can’t Help It in 1956:

The original title of the song was “Tutti Frutti, good booty” but was cleaned up to “Tutti Frutti, aw-rooty”

While the song hasn’t changed in the intervening half century Little Richard sure has:

In early October 1957, on the fifth date of a two-week tour of Australia was flying from Melbourne to appear in front of 40,000 fans in concert in Sydney Shocked by the red hot appearance of the engines against the night sky, he envisioned angels holding up the plane. Then, while he performed at the stadium, he was shaken by the sight of a ball of fire that he watched streak across the sky overhead. He took what was actually the launching of Sputnik 1 as another sign to quit show business and follow God. The plane that he was originally scheduled to fly back home on ended up crashing in the Pacific Ocean which he took as confirmation that he was doing what God wanted him to do and he quit at the height of his career.

rom October 1957 to 1962, Little Richard only recorded gospel music:

As we all know he returned to secular music in the ’80s. Little Richard is a complicated guy and if you’re interested there’s a great biography of him on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Richard

You can also read a lot more about Sugar Chile Robinson, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Chile_Robinson

Class dismissed, children. There will be no test on this subject.

My cyber friend, Linda, has a new post on her blog titled “Let the Haunting Begin.” Her mom died Friday and, well, read her post to find out what the title refers to.

It got me to thinking about haunting. I think horror story writers over the centuries have done a terrible disservice to haunting and given it a bad rap. Why does a haunting have to be a bad thing? The dictionary defines the word haunt as, “to visit habitually or appear to frequently as a spirit or ghost.” Also, “to recur persistently to the consciousness of; remain with”…”to frequent the company of; be often with.”

I don’t subscribe to any formal religion but I do believe that the soul is immortal. I believe that there is something that happens to that soul after it’s finished with these mortal remains and I believe that soul has the ability to haunt us and visit those of us here as a spirit or ghost. To “recur to the consciousness of” we who remain behind, but I don’t believe those visits are accompanied by strange noises, the clanking of chains or poltergeist shenanigans. I think they’re more subtle than that. Let me give you a couple of personal examples.

A couple of years ago my roommate, Kevin, was fixing our dinner of hot dogs and baked beans. This happens to have been a traditional New England dinner at one time. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this fare for supper but for some reason THIS time it reminded me of a family story about my mother’s brother, Howard, and the first dinner his new bride, Betty, prepared for him. Howard, it was told, loathed hot dogs and baked beans for dinner. So, you’ve probably already guessed what his blushing bride put on the table that first night. Of course his reaction was “why this is absolutely delicious, dear.”

Why should that story have come so vividly to mind that evening? I hadn’t thought of Howard and Betty for years. But in telling that story to Kevin my aunt and uncle’s memories came flooding into my consciousness. I remembered the Thanksgiving dinners my family and theirs had shared half a century earlier. I remember Howard giving my brother Gary a set of his old golf club which changed Gary’s life. He went on to become a golf pro and the first director of Golf at the Olde Barnstable Golf Course on Cape Cod. And I remember Betty’s radiant smile and easy good nature. The memories of them lingered with me for most of that evening.

A week or so later I got an email that said my Aunt Betty had died, and the stunner was that she had died the same day that all those memories came flooding back. Howard had died years earlier, and Betty had been afflicted with the cruelest of all illnesses, Alzheimer’s and hadn’t uttered a word to anyone for close to 20 years.

I am TOTALLY convinced that her spirit, freed of the constraints of this world, came and visited me that evening to say goodbye.

When I wrote to my cousin Jeannie to tell her I was sure her mother had paid me a visit she didn’t poo-poo the idea. She told me she completely believe it had happened and told me about an incident that happened to her. Howard was a die-hard birder. Kept logs of his sightings and all that. On the first anniversary of his death Jeannie was washing the dishes from her lunch when a Baltimore Oriole, Howard’s all-time favorite bird, came and settled on the windowsill where she was working. She said the bird stayed there for about five minutes looking at her before it took off and she said she had no doubt whatsoever that it was her father come to visit.

Hauntings can be very subtle and we have to be open and receptive to them when they happen. I believe they are VERY real. So, Linda, it might take a while before your mom comes to haunt you. She will. Just be ready to say hello.