BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE!

BRRRRR....

After I came into the neighborhood yesterday afternoon and stopped at that NEW stop sign,    I saw two little girls all bundled up standing at the curb behind a portable table with a sign advertising HOT CHOCOLATE.  

It's been kind of a funny winter.  First NO snow at all until New Year's Eve Day, then several storms over the last couple of months that dumped so much snow much of it is still on the ground, even some roads are still snow-covered.  More like where I grew up in Wyoming.

Usually, we have winter seasons that are pretty navigable.  I walk outside every day and have some years ridden my bike almost every day in the winter, too.  But not this year.  Because of some really cold temperatures hovering at zero and below with the high for the day only in the teens for several days, the snow never melted like it usually does.  Most days have been colder than usual.

                                                                

Yesterday was no exception....it was five degrees when I stopped at the mailbox.  I glanced over at the mini concession stand.  There were no customers. That was surprising because there was a steady stream of cars coming into Carlson Farm neighborhood which had to stop at that new stop sign just a few feet from the beverage stand.  I parked my car and walked over to order a cup of hot chocolate. 

I always stop at neighborhood refreshment stands and purchase whatever is being sold as a way to support the efforts of these young entrepreneurs.  For several summers, I helped my own little boys sponsor an annual event we called "The Nichols Brothers Five-cent Sale".  It was an opportunity for them to earn a little cash to do something fun for which there was no money in an already tight family budget.  But we never tried hot chocolate in the winter.  That took some guts to get out on a cold day like yesterday and offer warm refreshment.

The cost: $2.00/cup.  I noticed the one little girl was very careful when she turned the spigot and held the cup under it.  After all she was wearing her mittens!  Though my styrofoam cup was barely half full (and for me it's always "hold the marshmallows!"), I handed over my two $1.00 bills and thanked them profusely for being so thoughtful on such a wintery day.  At once their pink faces were wreathed in big smiles.  With my own mittened fingers, I carefully carried my cup over to the car and got in thinking I would drink it at home where I could successfully handle putting the cup to my lips.  As I drove away, I glanced up to see the little girls both waving an enthusiastic goodbye.  

I don't know how long those cute "bundles" remained at their station.  Maybe they had already sold most of their product before I came along, and there wasn't much left.  But when I got home, I got my Valentine mug out of the cupboard and poured the half cup from the refreshment stand into it. Then I added another envelope of hot chocolate mix and some boiling hot water to make a really tasty drink.  

Thanks to a couple of bold little girls, I enjoyed a fun mid-afternoon treat I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't seen them bravely selling a hot commodity on a cold day.

It didn't seem quite so cold outside after that!

ALOHA!

Some days you just never know what might be in store for you... 

I had to get a new dentist after I retired.  

My new retirement insurance is totally different than the personal health insurance I had as a full-time employee for United Airlines.  And it stinks!  The only option for vision and dental was through Cobra, and that cost me an arm and a leg for the six months I was eligible for that coverage.  So, I scheduled my yearly eye and dental checkups just before that was no longer viable.  Then I went shopping for specific eye and dental insurance.

Long story short, I found a "reasonable" insurance plan, but my old dentist doesn't accept the new coverage which I finally purchased.  I was sorry because I had gone to Dr. Martin practically since I moved to Johnstown 18 years ago.  But new things sometimes bring surprises.

There were actually several dentists in the Loveland area which accepted new patients with my dental plan.  Easy.  I chose one that was close to the area where I shop all the time.  WRONG!  I wasn't paying any attention to the directional letter and assumed it was on the east end of Eisenhower Boulevard.  Well, it wasn't.  It is on the WEST side, several miles further on the road that goes to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.  That's 45 minutes away!  It took barely five minutes to get to Dr. Martin at his office in the middle of old-town Johnstown.  Now I would have to plan my day around a visit to the dentist.

That was a bummer, and I was muttering under my breath about what a waste of time it was to drive all that distance to the west of Loveland and back home. Truly an imposition! I even contemplated switching to a different dentist on the east side of Loveland.

When I walked out of the dentist office after my first visit, I spied an antique store just about 500 feet from there that Louis has taken me to more than once.  A cool shop.  It actually has antiques instead of just old stuff that is probably 30 years old.  A lot of the items on display are older than I am, and I have seen many of them in my own home while I was growing up.

So, I thought, "Well, I might as well take a little detour and go west before heading east to Johnstown.  I deserve some kind of pleasant outcome for my journey."  But, I wasn't expecting anything like I found....  

I had been clear through the whole store, and then started right at the beginning again to take a second look.  I've found that sometimes on the first sweep I don't see everything.  That was the case this particular day.  I had almost finished the second swing through each of the aisles when I spied a stack of old post cards.  It's fun to glance through old post cards to see what the local places used to look like.  I like to see the kinds of pictures of cities and scenic places I remember seeing on those post card racks years ago.  All the gas stations had them.  And so did drug stores, restaurants, and gift shops at the tourist stops.  Lots of times in an antique store, the picture post cards are of places all over the country.  Probably someone's collection "turned out to pasture" after that person's death.  

I was flipping through them when my eye was instantly drawn to one particular one in that pile of cards.  It was a painting of a beautiful white ship steaming ahead in the ocean.  On each of the two smoke stacks was a big M.  

Lurline--Star of the Matson Line fleet

My first thought was, "Boy, that sure looks like the ship we sailed on when my dad took us on a cruise from Los Angeles to Hawaii and back when I was in Kindergarten." I pulled out my glasses and took a closer look.  In tiny letters painted on the prow of the ship was the name "Lurline".  It WAS the ship we were on for that fabulous vacation so many years ago in 1952!  It was a jewel in the Matson Line, and it was deserving of every superlative I could think of.

What a lot of memories flooded my mind.  The grandeur of the ship.  The seasickness for the first day or so.  Practice exercises with life jackets and life boats in the unlikely event of a sinking ship. The activities.  Especially the fun ones for kids.  The fancy restaurant and elegant food...of which I would only eat fresh sliced turkey breast with a half peach for garnish.  I was spoiled rotten by our waiter Sam who always brought that to me without even having to be asked.  He even gave me a gift when we finished the trip. It was a figurine of a hula girl riding a surfboard, which I still have.  The leis around our necks as we docked in Honolulu.

Then it was the 10 days we spent there in a little hut on the lawn of the Waikiki Hotel.  There were lots of those little huts for people who probably didn't have the money for a real hotel room in the hotel itself or in the only other hotel--The Royal Hawaiian, which was still painted pink when I went to Honolulu on layovers with United Airlines.

My dad rented a car with a driver who took us all over Oahu.  The North Shore, Tripler Hospital, the huge military cemetery.  We couldn't go into Pearl Harbor, though, as they hadn't yet finished mining for bombs and torpedoes.  We had to look from the shore.  Remember this was just seven years after World War II.  The luau with the roast pig and the hula show. Impressive, indeed, for a little girl of six.  We went to church in the chapel right next to the temple.  No walls.  Just screens, and the people came in shorts and flip flops. The first time I ever heard "Aloha" over the pulpit to begin the meeting.  I was aghast until my mother hastened to tell me that's how they lived and went to church.  Just different from the way we did things in snowy Wyoming.  The shopping. Oh, so many exotic experiences. 

 My favorite was the Dole pineapple factory where we picked up slices of fresh pineapple off the conveyor belt (OSHA would have a fit about that now!) and pineapple juice out of the spigot of the drinking fountains. Never even liked pineapple before that.  Became an instant fan in that place.  

That little postcard was like finding buried treasure.     My dad had wanted to go to Hawaii for as long as I could remember.  And when it finally looked like it was going to be a reality, he would listen to the old 78 record we had with Bing Crosby singing Hawaiian songs while he made the plans.  An ambitious journey for bumpkins from a small hick town on the high windy plateaus of Southeastern Wyoming. But my dad was a traveler.  Nothing or no one could dampen his relish for going new places.  I'm not sure where he went to make the plans a reality, but those many hours of daydreaming became a wonderful reality for my parents, my sister Marcie, and me.

I didn't even mention the 3-day train trip which we took going to Los Angeles and 3-days back. That plus the cruise meant No school for around three weeks.  We had lovely new clothes to wear, some of which my sister Lois sewed for Marcie and me. Everything about this whole undertaking was exciting--even in the memories.  Oh, it was a first-class experience the whole vacation!   I was so lucky!

How in the world did that little postcard of that beautiful ship Lurline happen to be in the antique store near where I currently live?  Can't even begin to imagine.  But that day's longer-than-wanted trip to the dentist turned out to be a gold mine of wonderful memories, even now after 70 years.  Life has been good!

Some new things DO bring surprises.....