When I was a kid, I grew up in Glenmont just north of Wheaton, Maryland, which at that time was considered a distant suburb of Washington, D.C.  Our house was built in 1951.  You should see the area now.  You’d have to drive out another ten miles to see rural scenes.  But in the 1950s, there was a horse farm on Georgia Avenue, where the subway station is now.

We lived on a sloping street with a row of brick, one-story Cape Cod houses on either side.  The late 1950s and early 1960s were my earliest memories.  Wives and mothers stayed at home all day while their husbands went to work.  Some of the wives didn’t even drive, and even if they did, it was rare in my neighborhood for a family to have two cars.  And because it was so far from the city there wasn’t dependable public transportation, the men had to drive to work.  The Washington Metro didn’t open until 1976, and the Glenmont station didn’t open until the mid-1990s.

That’s why, in the 1960s, Mr. Simmons made a living driving the grocery bus.  It was a little mom-and-pop stop on wheels, a full-sized school bus painted red and silver, which “Simmons Market” across each side.  The seats inside were gone, replaces by store shelves.  There was even a working refrigerator for milk and eggs.  Way in the back, fresh produce was stacked up: lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, etc.  As a kid, I have the clearest memory of the candy counter.  The Bazooka bubble was in the front row, with candy bars and other kinds of sweets behind it.  Every weekday, Mr. Simmons came through our neighborhood and stopped at the bottom of the hill.  He blew the horn three times, and the housewives would come out of the houses to shop.  The kids would come from wherever they were: backyards, the tetherball court, even the trees to crowd the candy counter.

My favorite treat was the chocolate Turkish Taffy.    I can still imagine the taste.  Before opening it, I would slam the candy on the sidewalk to break it into pieces.  It was too thick and sticky to bite pieces off of it.  Oh how I loved hat stuff.  If I were to eat it now, all I can think is that it would probably pull out my fillings.

I don’t remember what Mr. Simmons looked like.  I only had eyes for the candy.  I also don’t know when Mr. Simmons’ grocery bus stopped cruising the neighborhood.  I don’t remember it at all during my high school years, which started in 1969.  I only wish I had a photograph of the bus to prove to people that we really had a grocery bus in our neighborhood.  All I have are my memories, and my ability to write.

Form Before Multi-function,
originally uploaded by tackyjulie.

This lamp works, but I’m afraid to use it. The wires looked old, and I don’t know how to fix them. The venetian blind shade tells me this was probably made in the 1950s. The base is a phone (which isn’t supposed to work) but where the dial is, there’s a clock ( which is supposed to work but doesn’t). The hand set has a cigarette lighter in the mouth piece (just push that black button sticking out from the other end). I don’t smoke. You can’t use more than a 25-watt bulb for fear of burning the shade, and that’s not a lot of illumination. So for all these reasons, the lamp-clock-cigarette lighter is useless. But I can’t toss it out. Just look at it…it’s multi-tasking its heart out. It’s a monument to form DESPITE lack of function. It’s the anti-Bauhaus.

I’ve been plagued with insecurity lately.  I feel like I don’t know who I am any more.  When I say that I realize that I get quite a bit of my identity from what other people think of me.  If I where a truly self-aware and self-realized person, this wouldn’t matter to me.  Oh, yes, and pigs might fly out of my butt.

I could complain about all the things that have happened to me in the past few years to make me feel that way, or I could just find out who I really am.  What to do, what do?

It’s not like I haven’t been doing anything while I’ve felt this way.  Last Saturday night, Bob and I went to a surprise 60th birthday party for a musician friend.  He had ordered a banjo ukulele from another mutual friend, and was told it wouldn’t be ready until next summer.  Secretly, his wife and the uke builder conspired to have it ready by his birthday, and a number of their friends chipped in to defray the cost of it.  They also arranged for some special inlay to be done on the neck.  It was Jiminy Cricket.  In the Disney movies, he was voiced by Cliff Edwards, possibly one of the greatest ukulele virtuosi ever.  The musician was surprised at the party because what he thought was going to be a small jam session turned out to be a party honoring him that was attended by fifty plus people.  And he was truly taken aback (in a good way) when he received his ukulele.  It was  a wonderful party and I was so happy to be a part of it.

This is a piece of who I am: I have friends who do cool things like that.

Capitol Visitor Center,
originally uploaded by tackyjulie.

I took a walk around the East lawn of the Capitol yesterday, one day after the Capitol Visitor Center opened. I used to walk through the East lawn on my way to work, until six years ago. That was when work began on the CVC. There are quite a few changes, the most important being that the underground CVC provides a climate-controlled place for visitors to wait for their tour of the Capitol. In the summer, I used to walk by lines of tourists in the hot sun, and I felt sorry for them.

There’s a lot less lawn than there used to be. Trees were removed, and the signs seemed to indicate at the time that they would be returned. But the reality is that there is a lot more stone plaza and walkways than green space than there used to be.

If you didn’t know that the historic Olmstead landscaping plan has been lost forever on the East side, you might think it’s a pretty nice area. But I remember when the Kennedy Center used to put on noon-time concerts there, and I gather that we will not seen them there again. It’s not as pastoral and friendly as it used to be, but some of that has to do with the post-9/11 realities we deal with in Washington.

Yesterday, I took a couple dozen photographs around the Capitol and the Library of Congress, and posted them on Flickr.

Pink Elephant Watering Can,
originally uploaded by tackyjulie.

Today, I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. This was in my fortune cookie: “You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.”

I think this plastic watering can is beautiful. It was made by the same company that made the plastic pink flamingo. I bought one for myself, but this one is a sweeter, paler pink. This is because this little watering can is always outside and has faded. I love walking by this condo on Capitol Hill, just to see where it’s moved to.  I hope to always see it in a different place in the front yard, and hope no one steals it.