Ghosts, Pie and Fresh Cream

The one pie my Grandma Bartlett made that I thought was strange was funeral pie. It's actually just raisin pie. Of course if you lace any dried fruit with brown sugar, eggs, cream and brandy and bake it in a good crust and top it with real cream or homemade ice cream you've got a winner. 

I think what freaked us kids out was the family story that went with it.  Tale of the black dog.... circa 1912.

The Bartletts were Irish dirt farmers from way back and kept the Irish tradition of the family wake for yrs. My Aunts Catherine and Virginia were around 8 and 10 when a cousin of theirs died by drowning. 

It took a couple of weeks to find him and the corpse was found in a seated sort of pose. So poor cousin had to be tethered inside the coffin so he wouldn't sit up. 

My aunts just wanted the grown ups to stop drinking and wailing and serve out the mountain of food (out in the yard behind the house of course.... cousin was ripe.) Grandpapa heard them fussing and sent them out with the promise of extra funeral pie if they were good . 

So escaping the stinky death house, they went to see the tethered horses in front of the barn. While they were talking to the horses, a huge black dog the size of a Great Dane appeared  on the path to the house. 

The girls walked up to see the dog and he came towards them and started circling them very slowly. As he circled he got smaller and smaller and vanished. 

They ran screaming back to the house as the body was finally being taken away in the horse drawn hearse. All the drunk adults thought it was cousin on his way to Hell. Apparently cousin was a dick. The ghost didn't seem to put a damper on the festivities and Virginia and Catherine got a whole pie and a little pot of cream to themselves because cousin scared them.

Holiday Decor 1960's style..... the computer card wreath

 As I was about 9 or 10,  the image in jumped out at me in all it's silver glory. McCall's Needlework and Crafts always had the best Christmas projects.  I loved making every tacky decoration. If I found a box of computer cards at a thrift store, atheist or not, I would make one of these for my door.

1.Cut a circle out of fairly heavy piece of cardboard.
 2. Fold a computer card's 2 short ends and staple them. Flip  the card over so the stapled side is now the back.
3. When you have a big pile, you can start stapling  the cards ....pointy end out following a long the outer edge curve of the circle. Each successive row is  stapled in the open spot between the 2 points like shingles. Don't be stingy with the cards. The whole point is to make this monstrosity of Holiday gaudyness as fat and obnoxious as possible.

4. I personally prefer a gold or silver spray paint, to make a nice background for the even gaudier glitter balls, elves, candy canes and tiny glitter penguins that you arrange artistically in the center  of your wreath ....AFTER you wait a bazillion years for the 2nd or 3rd coat of spray paint to dry.  Yeah, they never say it takes a bazillion years for things to dry properly in craft magazines.

5. After the paint's dry, try a few arrangements of your glitter stuff or boring greenery. But Mom! SPARKLY IS BEST! AND THEN GLUE EVERYTHING DOWN WITH WHITE GLUE.... AND  WAIT ANOTHER BAZILLION YEARS for the GLUE to DRY!

Of course now there are GLUE guns to get burned on, but wait time is cut by a bazillion. I don't know how easy finding IBM cards is now, but I have seen them in thrift stores on occasion. I'm told big index cards will work, that seems sacrilegious.

Supplies
Cardboard
IBM computer cards
1 or 2 cans of spray paint... if you find those pink cards that need extra coats.
A bunch of little decorations for the center
Craft GLUE or a GLUE gun
Wire to make a hanger so you can hang this masterpiece up
Stapler and staples

Really?! Did the prop dude hit a Woolworths Sale? Thoughts on the Original Dark Shadows

 My first Actor crush was Johnathan Frid. I raced home from school to see him every day in lovely atmospheric black and white. On one fateful day a terrible thing happened.

Dark Shadows was filmed in color. Now I'd love Frid no matter what, but the show lost so much atmosphere cos the colors of the accents on the sets and the clothing were very raw.

The one thing that really annoys the hell out of me? The loud obnoxious turquoise candles in the old house. I mean come on! Barnabus wanted everything to be just as he remembered it when he and Josette were alive. You can't tell me tallow candles came in 1960's turquoise.  I just don't believe it. Barnabus was always looking for an excuse to knock the crap out of Willy. Those candles should have sent him into a rage.

I know it's just a tv show and I'll always watch Dark Shadows, but damn those candles! Oh and the ugly bag dresses and the boxy wool boucle suits!
                                                                               

 

Yeah, okay there's a bunch of annoying things. But one place I loved in black and white or color was Sam's art studio. I adored the windows, and all the paintings around.....even the old sofa.

So, do design faux pas bug you when you watch a favorite show from your childhood?

Brilliance and Beauty

When I was in fifth grade, I ordered a wonderful book from Scholastic Books.  Now when I was in school from 1966 to 1978 disabled kids were shunted off to special programs or schools or warehoused.  My cerebral palsy is minor so I went to regular school, which was

good and bad.

I got a good education in 2 areas, physically normal people are often assholes to people who are different and most importantly a good education that prepared me for college. My Dad always said "It's better to out run idiots mentally." But this brings me back to why this book was also a turning point for me.r

Not being around other disabled people made it difficult to judge the extent of my impairment and I missed out on seeing other disabled folks work a rounds to compensate for the parts of their bodies that worked differently. Reading about Charles Proteus Steinmetz helped me visualize a different disability and how another person handled it. I went from The Man Who Tamed Lightening to books on Helen Keller, Louis Braille, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale (The Lady With The Lamp....I loved that one) and Follow My Leader... A book about a boy my age who lost his sight in an accident.

So, without Steinmetz I might have been a scared kid forever. I love science, biology especially, but excel in art. I will always use anatomy etc to design my dolls, so he helped make me a better artist and a stronger person.

He was probably the start of my ideas on relative beauty too. Within the parameters of being a hunchbacked little person with dwarfism and hip dysplasia,  He's  not a bad looking man.
As I work on each new doll in my Uniques series, I think fondly of Steinmetz. I'm working on a doll with interchangeable arms and one with microcephaly. I watched Freaks again recently and the 2 girls and Schlitzie motivated me.


What books or films have inspired you?

Poor Flocked Ken

Jumping into the way back machine, was how I felt when I ran into old photos of  my old Barbies and my single Ken.

Poor Ken had a rough life at my house. His first bad experience was having  my orally fixated  3 yr old brother David suck all the flock off his head.

My Mom used permanent marker to redo his hair.

Then....Christmas came! I got the sexy Black haired GI Joe... Sailor edition of course.(My Dad was in the Navy and to me he looked like my Dad.)

So Joe became my totally cool dude and Ken was relegated to the red Barbie box of boredom.

When later that Christmas we went to my Aunt's house I  got the new Barbie that came with a set of three wigs and another Joe, but with red brown hair. So there I was with 2 cool new dudes and only one new chick for both of them. In my naïveté, I thought this was a serious problem! I pulled Ken from his dungeon. The blue pencil skirt and the cream twinset looked quite nice on Ken whenhe was  wearing the brunette wig. Problem solved.

As kids do, I always wondered if Ken liked  dressing up over just wearing guy clothes. I hope he liked it... at least he got out of the red box regularly.

I probably never should have watched theToy Story movies. I have old toy angst now.  Poor Ken.

Ultraman Ultra Strange

As a kid, I used to watch Ultraman regularly. My husband did too. Recently we got the DVDs of the show. I never realized how many strange things went on in that show.

What was up with those tiny shorts that all the little boys wore?
Why did the Science Patrol sleep in their cheesy orange uniforms?
Why didn't the Beta Capsule that turned Hiata into Ultraman, come with a clip so he could attach it to his belt? He was forever losing that damn thing.

And where the heck did Ultraman put the beta capsule when he was trouncing the poor alien of the week? Did it become the Ultra butt plug? I mean look at his Ultra suit in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD4q7KFEp6k
Can you see a pocket?

The Aliens and Monsters - I always felt bad for these guys. Ultraman tore them to bits most of the time. I liked the Toho(movie studio that did the Godzilla etc films) solution to monsters... they got captured and put on a nice island. They even had their own medical staff to look after them.

I watched one episode this weekend where the Science Patrol had a memorial service for all the defeated monsters... it was nice, but a far cry from a private island. As an adult, Ultraman makes me sad now, but I still like all the old Toho movies. They seemed to have more respect for their monsters.

I knew it! I did I really did!

 This quiz confirmed it for me! I always knew that I was different...heck look at the stuff I create. The Were You Abducted By Aliens Quiz  is fun. The link is at the bottom of this post. Let us know if you are in this select group.

Actually, I took the test and it said there was a 32% chance that I had been abducted at sometime in my past. It also said that if the aliens were to come back that I'd be one of the first picked up.

I was sure I was an alien when I was little. I have cerebral palsy and have limited use of my right hand and leg. I knew I was different, but my parents never really explained in detail what was wrong with me. So in my little 5 yr old way, I was left wondering about myself.
I've always known that I was adopted and I always thought it was cool. If I got teased about it at school, I always said..."My parents picked me over everyone else. Your parents got stuck with you!"

One of the things my Dad and I did every Saturday was watch The Three Stooges and Warner Bros.

cartoons together. This is how I found the answer to "Why am I different? problem. The cartoon ROCKET BYE BABY came on and there was Mot the little Martian baby who accidentally got switched with a human baby when Earth and Mars rotated very close one night. I mean it was so obvious to me then! I was a displaced Martian baby!

I was so happy with my new found identity and waited and waited and waited to turn green and grow a pair of cute little antenna.

YEAH, I know that it was not to be, but being me on a bad day leaves me feeling pretty alien still, but not in a good way. When I'm creating though, I'm Mott and the world is good.

Were you abducted?

Season of the Ghost- Ghosts of infinite Sweetness

The gentlest ghosts I've ever run into have to be the animal spirits I've dealt with over the years.

The woods behind the house I lived in as a little girl was magical. In the summer it was densely green with moss, fat old leafy trees, may flowers and lush patches of purple violets. I used to go and pick bunches of violets almost every day.

On these little forays, I would often see these tiny little white wisps of something. When they'd zip past me barely touching my skin, I'd think of running up a tree and the roughness of bark; digging in the earth or curling up with a bunch of other tiny warm bodies and going to sleep. Sometimes I'd be a hunter stalking my food and eating it. Those violent images scared me at first, but I did know not everything could live by just eating berries and I came to understand the hunter spirits.
K
When I was around 7, I felt I was going to be so much braver than last summer start going further into the woods than the area just behind our house. Well, I picked my usual bunch of violets and started back in the direction I thought would take me back home. I was so wrong.

The trees and plants got more tangled and dense and the sun was barely visible through the canopy of trees. I panicked and started to cry. Suddenly I felt a light touch on my arm. I turned and saw one of my little wisps. It was one of my hunter sprits. I followed it over a fallen tree trunk, through a dense area of tall grass and May flowers. The trees started to thin and I could see the sun again. Looking carefully I could see a few wisps floating near an opening that lead to the edge of the wood. I had come out on the opposite side of the woods near my friend Vicky's house. I just had to go up the street in front of her house, cut through the high school's football practice field and I was just a short ways from a road that would take me to my street.

I ran all the way thanking my little wispy friends as I headed home.

The photos are ones MJ took of 2 of my rescue cats. Spats is the black cat and the other is Max Perkins.

Crochet Memories-Will I?

 When I was kid, I learned to crochet and knit from this great magazine ...McCall's Needlework and Crafts.  With stretchy metallic cord, wondrous beaded Juliet caps and sparkly bauble rings just seemed to jump of my crochet hook.  Yeah, I know, where does a 13 year old wear a Juliet cap?  But it's so pretty. The bauble rings, well you can wear those pretty much anywhere until the bitch squad at Tallmadge Jr. High add the weird rings to their list of why they hated the only disabled kid in school.

Don't think for a second I still feel bad about being the target gimp in school.... I don't. Karma was my friend and now I feel sorry for most of my tormentors.  My appearance and appeal could only improve as I grew up and worked on my intellect and my people skills.  When you peak at 16, you have a long sad journey as you spiral down. Especially if you blow up to 200 lbs and aren't any nicer or more mature than you were than you were 16.

But anyway, my dream dress of 1973 was this Guinevere maxi dress. I was in chorus in 7th through 9th grade and we performed 3 or 4 times a year. Now I had a place to wear my Juliet cap! My Mom helped me make the dress and I was set for the concert! Now to be brutally honest, I'm pretty much tone deaf, so even though I enjoyed chorus it was good there were 90 other singers.  And the idea of 90 little girls in maxi dresses singing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is bizarre.

But you know what.... I looked freaking wonderful in that dress and my Juliet cap and bauble ring had beads that matched the turquoise in the granny squares exactly and I sang my tone deaf heart out. I don't know how the people next to me felt, but I had a great time.

I was looking at vintage crochet patterns on Etsy today and guess what I found?  My Guinevere dress.
It's  a 3.00 PDF and I'm tempted.  MJ's boss is having a birthday party in Nov..... No. Not the whole dress.  I  was thinking of getting the pattern and doing it as a tunic in black with jewel colors to wear with a nice skirt or pants or may be a knee length dress. We'll see.  :)

Will you still love me tomorrow?

Yeah, still love this dress.

and now for a musical interlude....

One of the really fun monster movies from the 50's is The Blob. One of the things I love is this bouncy little theme song.   http://youtu.be/AK5jyVCdXwci
 Yes, the auto embed still doesn't work. :(

What other horror/ monster movies have cool theme songs or music?

Season of the Ghost - The Ouija Board and Flaming Gary

When I was around 11, one of the neighbor kids, Susan, showed up with a Ouija board instead of the Monopoly game she said she was getting. She explained how we all needed to put a finger on the planchette and ask questions.

Well, you could tell Sue was moving the planchette. So we weren't impressed. Everybody took a turn and the planchette never moved a millimeter.

Now, I had been seeing ghosts since my Grandma Bartlett died when I was 7, so this doodad board wasn't impressing me too much. It couldn't compare with getting a last hug from Grandma or the little white floating spirits I saw in the woods behind our house.

I took my turn and wouldn't you know that planchette zipped around like it was electrified. The man who wanted to talk to me was named Gary and he was really excited to talk to me and wanted me to do him a favor. I was supposed to go get some matches and bring them out to the yard where we were all sitting.

He explained that he and his brother were killed in a house fire in a house that once stood near we were playing .....

Suddenly the planchette jumped and slid violently off the board. We all freaked and got up off the blanket we'd been sitting on. Everybody dared me to try the board again. I figured a ghost couldn't really hurt me and I did get dared.... so I plopped back down.

The planchette started moving again and this time I was talking to Ian. According to him, Gary started the fire that killed just him. I got this uneasy feeling that someone was behind me and jumped up. After that I lost interest in the ouija board, but Gary still seemed to be following me around. I thought I saw him a few times in the woods behind our house. I had a couple of dreams where I saw a man running from a burning house and through the windows.....saw a man fall into the fire.

From that experience, I learned not all spirits were good and that needed to not listen to the bad ones. Also, being dead doesn't always give the ghost any more knowledge than when he or she was alive.

As an adult I've thought about when this fire could have taken place, what were Gary's motives in wanting me to get matches and if he affected any other kids? I probably still wonder about this ghost because during that year a couple of kids I knew died in house fires.

The house had tiny little paned windows and seemed to be in wooded area. The men seemed to be in old fashioned shirts and suspenders with knee high boots.
My guess is that the fire took place during the 19th century because the area seemed so undeveloped and the style of house and the tiny panes of glass reminded me of windows I'd seen in the historic homes at Hale Farm and Village. I've always thought about contacting the Tallmadge Historical Society to see if there were any records that might tell me about those 2 brothers.

Here's Andy Corn to make you laugh after my creepy story.:)















These illustrations are also done by my husband, MJBivouac

Son of a Bun

MJ saw that I had salvaged the maple misadventure post from my old blog and brought me home another bun last night. And whipped out a bar of dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt when I burst out laughing.

Remember this nasty little guy? Remember how I said he was the most terrible candy experience ever? Well, I have a new story for you.

My husband thinks the Killer Bun Story is hilarious. So I think he has been looking for Buns locally to surprise me. Why he thinks I'd like to relive such an experience is beyond me, but I think he thought it would be funny to look at them and laugh over old Killer.

One night he came home from work with a Charlie Brown's Farms bag and seemed so pleased with himself.

Yep.

One of our local farmers markets had started carrying BUNS. Well, vanilla and caramel ones anyway. I was almost disappointed that he couldn't find a Killer Bun. I am curious now to see if it was as bad as I remember.

The caramel one was old. It had been smashed, heated and then left to re-solidify. I don't know what possessed me, but I just had to try it. I should have thrown it out. The peanuts were stale and the caramel was brittle in some places and gummy in others. The chocolate had more in common with a candle than a piece of chocolate.

But as always... the Vanilla would do in a pinch.

I really should stop eating candy. Or maybe I should just send all future buns to my brother David and see if he'll eat them now.

Halloween Candy- Afternoon Debacle- The Bilious Bun

When you're a kid darn near anything sweet is a wonderful thing. But the worst candy eating experience of my life had to have been getting one of these little dudes to my left. Mom ran in to Bumpas Drug to get cigarettes or something and brought me one as a treat.

No no! Not the vanilla...that wasn't that bad really. The caramel was better of course, but the vanilla would do in a pinch. Apparently Mom didn't notice, that in her rush to get a handle on her nicotine craving, she picked up a MAPLE Bun!


I was hopeful as I opened it...I'd never had the maple before. I had the fleeting thought that pancake candy was a weird idea, but heck I'd try anything once. OMG! It was horrifically sweet and gritty like sand. And gummy... let's not forget gummy. I kept taking little bites. I guess I thought for some strange reason it had to get better. The motion of the car started to make me nauseous, my head started to hurt and I thought I was going to die. Mom would have never tried to poison me on purpose...would she?

Our green Galaxy 500 had a big deep back-seat. So I wrapped that sucker back up and wedged it in the crack between the backrest and the seat. I then tried to put the experience out of my mind.

That Christmas I got The VERMONT MAPLE COUPLE in my stocking.
I conned my little brother David into eating mine. It was easy. He used to eat Play-Doh.

A few yrs later my Dad was cleaning out the car in preparation for trading it in. He found the petrified remains of my Maple nightmare. I 'd forgotten old killer Bun and I just kinda chuckled to myself. That wild sugar poisoning from my past has put me off Maple for life.

Season of the Ghost- Phantom Manager

I wrote these true ghost stories 2 years ago on my old blog. I decided to repost them because I enjoyed writing them and I don't want them to be lost in old blog limbo. I'll repost one a week until Halloween. Oh, and if another ghost shows up... I'll add a new story.

My oddest ghost story is from when I worked as the store manager of the Simi Valley Salvation Army thrift store.

The store was made up of 2 sections. One was the main floor with a back room and loading dock. The main floor connected with a small room we used for the used books, records and vintage clothing. This room originally had 3 steps down from the main floor.

Just before I took over the floor of this little specialty room was raised to match the level of the main floor. It was interesting that the new floor had an odd bounce to it.

Anyway, one night after closing I was doing a walk through on the main floor. I was making a to do list for the next day and as I approached the middle of the main floor I could hear hangers being slid in the specialty room.
I thought...oops a record guy or a retro chick didn't hear me call closing. I called out,"Excuse me, but we're closed." As I watched,a woman in a floral dress with her dark hair pulled back in a bun started walking towards me through the doorway.

The only thing was...she was walking knee deep in the floor. As she got closer to me she faded away. Obviously she only knew the original floor with the 3 steps down in that back room.

Now, I've seen ghosts since I was little so I wasn't scared, but I was curious to find out who this lady was.

My asst. manager at the time was a long time Simi resident and was a regular shopper at the thrift store even before she got hired to work in the store. So I went to Betty the next day and asked her.

I found out the ghost was probably a previous manager named Juanita who worked there 10-12 yrs before I became manager. I described her right down to the flowered dresses she always wore.

After that first meeting, I never saw her again, but if I heard hangers moving around on the racks when I was alone in the store, I just called out a greeting to Juanita and the noise would stop.

The beautiful Halloween illustrations were created by my husband MJ Bivouac. Thanks, Mike.:)

Dolly of Doom

I thought you might be wondering why receiving my Kissy doll was such a life altering experience for me. and I happened to find this photo on Flickr.  Bet there's a knife in that hidden hand.