Tag: Steinhoff family

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Thoughts of Flags and The 4th

After seeing the great job Bill Adams did with his license plate American Flag, Mother said she’d like to fly a flag in front of the house. We were always big on putting up flags on holidays, but the flag holder Dad was using in this photo was taken down when the house was covered with vinyl siding some years ago.

Mother swore that there was a flag holder on one of the walnut trees on the east side of the house, but I rooted around through the ivy (hopefully not the poison variety) growing on the tree and couldn’t find it. On the way back from learning about fly repelling in Jackson, I stopped at the Ace Hardware at the bottom of the hill for a new flag bracket. The screws that came with it were too short to go through the bracket and bark, so I had to scrounge some longer ones from the basement.

Mission accomplished.

Just about the time I shot the last screw in, Mother gave out a triumphant shout, “I KNEW that flag holder was here on the tree. I was right.” Indeed, she WAS right. The holder was right there on the tree where she said it would be. The only thing was that the tree had grown around it so much that you’d be lucky to stick a matchstick in it, let along a flag pole.

My First Grade Flag effort

I know there are some photos of me with a flag because it was my daily ritual to put the flag up first thing in the morning when I was kindergarten age. The first thing I ran across was this piece of artwork from my First Grade Scrapbook. Dad was working on a job in Kennett at this time, so he told me to save all my school papers and remember what I had done that week so he could put it in a scrapbook.

Here’s the scrapbook entry

Sept. 11, 1953 – We were allowed to draw or do what we wanted for awhile and I practiced on some addition and wrote the alphabet with a picture of a Flag in colors under my writing. Mrs. Kelpe is telling us a story on Pinky the Pig which she did not get to finish. We got a surprise today and it was a free ticket to get ice cream. The kids that had marks behind their name even got a ticket.

Note that I already understood the elements of a good story: food, scary mystery and explosive action. It was clear that I had a much better future in math and literature than art. If you don’t believe me, take a look at my sketch book from Ohio University’s Art 101, a required course for photo students.

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How to Repel Flies (Maybe)

Mother and I were cruising around Jackson scoping out yard sales and looking for something for me to shoot. Out on 34 west of town, we saw a sign on a small BBQ stand that said Fresh Strawberry Pie. We pulled in to sample it  The joint doesn’t have a name out front, but Google Maps show it as Cook’s Bar-B-Q & Catering at 1931 West Jackson Blvd.

Right next to the order window was a note that said not to compare them with the guys at the north end of town. That would be Wib’s, a Steinhoff favorite for five generations. They implied that Cook’s actually puts meat on their sandwiches and that they are cheaper. Well, a challenge like that has to be checked out.

On the plus side, the sandwiches DID have a fair amount of meat on them and they were cheaper than Wib’s. On the con side, at least for me, the pork was shredded, not sliced, and it was “wet.” It had more the taste and feel of a Sloppy Joe than what I would call a good barbecue sandwich. The sauce was nowhere as good as Wib’s and the meat wasn’t as tasty as Hamburger Express in Cape. Barbecue is a highly personal choice, so some folks may prefer it.

The strawberry pie, on the other hand was excellent. Good crust and made with fresh strawberries.

Why are those bags of water hanging there?

But, that’s not the reason I’m writing this. When we looked up, we saw a Ziploc plastic bag, obviously freshly filled with water hanging over our heads. Inside the bag were several pennies. The bags were tacked to the overhang with heavy upholstery tacks. When our server slid open the screen-covered window to hand us our order, I said, “I bet I’m not the first person to ask this, but what’s with the plastic bags of water?”

Not wanting to engage in a lengthy conversation, she said, “It’s for the flies,” closing the window before I could observe, “Must be working, then. ‘Cause there’s plenty of them.”

While we were sitting at the outdoor table eating our pie and shooing off the occasional fly, a fellow walked by who elaborated on the bags. “They’re supposed to keep the flies away. It’s got something to do with the way the fly’s eyes work.”

When I mentioned that there still seemed to be a lot of the winged creatures flying around, he said that he had just put the bags up. The one over our heads was the first one to go up, he explained, and he said he could already see an improvement on our end of the seating area. I was going to take his word for it.

Mother was intrigued by the idea

Mother kept coming up with all of the places she could put up the bags and wondering if shiny pennies would work better than run-of-the-mill pocket pennies. Should you put them over the door to keep the flies out or do you put them on the inside to run them away? If you did both, would the ones entering and the ones exiting have head-on collisions, killing them all? Weighing all of the possibilities kept her occupied the rest of the afternoon.

I did a quick Google search and found that one of my favorite debunking sites, Snopes, had addressed this issue and found it —WHAT?!?!?—“Undetermined. ” You’ll have to read their conclusions for yourself. It’ll be good practice for you to know how to find them to check out your own hoax questions.

I should have shot them the first time

Anyway, after kicking myself for not taking a picture of the magic bags, Mother and I saddled up the pony and drove back over to Jackson. After standing around for several minutes waiting for someone to open the magic screened serving window so I could tell them what I was doing, I got tired of waiting, shot my photos and left. I didn’t REALLY need another piece of that strawberry pie. I DID ask another customer if she had heard of the concept and she said, “My mother has them hanging in her garage.”

We ended up at Mario’s Pasta House where our lasagna was good as always, served promptly by friendly and attentive wait staff. (I started to type “weight staff,” thinking, obviously, of the size of the portions.)

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Fireworks on the 4th

Christmas with its presents, Easter with its egg hunts, Halloween with its trick-or-treating candy, your birthday and the Fourth of July (fireworks) were the biggies when I was a kid. Sure, there were religious and patriotic overtones to the holidays, but, be honest, what did YOU think of?

One year Dad ordered a huge box of fireworks through the mail. When it arrived – and I mean a HUGE box – we all gathered around and unpacked it piece by loving piece. We were admonished NOT to pull on the fuses or they might not work. We weren’t allowed to open any of the individual packages and we certainly weren’t allowed to jump the gun and actually light anything early.

The funny thing is that dad used REAL dynamite on his construction jobs, but he was as excited about the 4th of July as we were. (By the way, how do you like Brother Mark’s bright red, get-away-fast shoes?)

Cherry bombs and M-80s

I don’t recall exactly what was in there. I’m sure it had cone-shaped fireworks, all kinds of rockets, Roman candles, bottle rockets and fire crackers from the lady fingers all the way up to the two-inchers. For the little kids, it had carbon snakes and sparklers. It might even have had the mighty cherry bombs and M-80s.

Launching cans

Our big thing was to see how far we could launch cans. The small cans that frozen lemonade came in were perfect for the smaller crackers. We quickly learned that the M-80s and cherry bombs wouldn’t send the can in the air. It would blow them up on the launch pad.

To keep from burning up a gazillion matches, the fireworks stands would give you cork-covered sticks – punks- to light the fuses.

Even fireworks can become boring

Shooting cans in the air and lighting firecrackers one at a time was fun, but quickly became boring. The next step was to twist together the fuses of half a dozen firecrackers so you could try to get them to all go off at the same time “like a stick of dynamite.” Of course, that never happened. the first one to go off would cause the others to scatter or it would blow out the other fuses.

Dad considered it bad form to light whole strings of firecrackers. Until, of course, even HE got bored playing with them. He usually suspended them from a tree branch so they’d writhe, pop and flash in the air. This was particularly good at night.

Dad wasn’t big on picnics

I don’t know how many times I heard him grouse, “Six days of the week I sit on the ground chewing sandwiches full of sand. I don’t plan to do that on Sunday.” I guess the 4th didn’t fall on a Sunday, so my grandmother, Mother, Brother David and Dad are gathered around the table in our backyard.

Don’t go back too soon

When we lived over on Bloomfield road, Dad got half of the instructions right. The “light fuse and get away” part he understood. He didn’t bother to read the section that said, “If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why.” One of those cone fireworks came to life when he was checking it, causing us to hold off lighting the rest of the fireworks until he returned from the emergency room.

I don’t remember what the exact nature of the injury was, but he never shot off that particular type of firework again.

Writing with sparklers

The date stamp on the front of the print says JUL 1960, so I must have shot this with my trusty Kodak Tourist II folding camera set on Time Exposure. I’ve got some shots filed somewhere where my brothers spelled real words in the air. I didn’t bother: my handwriting looks like this ALL of the time.

Two more generations

Wife Lila captured Son Matt and Grandson Malcolm shooting off fireworks in 2008, when Malcolm was four. He’s not exactly sure how he feels about the noise.

Y’all be careful out there

  • Light fuse,then get away.
  • If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why
  • If you’re in a drought area (I’m talking to you Florida and Texas), don’t be shooting off fireworks. The house you save might be mine.
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Capaha Pool: Erased

Wife Lila and I hadn’t been back to Capaha Park since the pool was razed. When we pulled into the loop, there was an audible gasp from the seat next to me.

The pool where she had been a lifeguard for 10 years had been erased. The city didn’t even have the tact to leave behind a reminder like the oval that had been the old pool in the background of the photo.

Fighting back tears, she said, “I don’t know how you can feel this way about something that’s not a person.”

Salvaged half a brick

There were a few brick fragments sticking out of the mud from last night’s rains. The first one I brought her was red, but neither of us could remember any red brick being used in the building. Later, Bill /Jacqie Jackson, Lila’s lifeguard colleague said that there was one course of red brick used as an accent in the pool building.

I’ll have to take his word for it. It must have been used in an interior wall, because I don’t see it in any of the photos I took just before the wreckers moved in.

I went back to retrieve a tan brick that was more like we both remembered.

Laurie scored brick and fence cap

Lila gave Jacqie her half-brick because Niece Laurie Everett, of Annie Laurie’s Antiques fame, scored her a whole brick and the cap off one of the fence posts while demolition was in progress.

Earlier stories about Capaha Pool

 

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