Hairstyles of the Queen 1 3-6-2020

We will show the various hair styles of the Queen.
Here she is eating an omelette in Door County, Wisconsin.


 And enjoying some Prickly Pear in Rocky  in 2014.






 Here she was when she was still a Princess.

Don's Blog A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 2-15-2020

We had a heat wave yesterday so we went hiking. This was our first time to the Phantom Forest in Des Peres.

There was a circle trail through the forest. 

After our hike we went to the John Allan Love County Park. On the way out we saw a "herd" of Elks.

Don's Blog Beware 2-2-2020

Beware. The world is a dangerous place. Be careful who you trust.

This worries even the Gnomemeister.

Don's Blog Forgetfulness 1-29-2020

 Having just 'finessed' another appointment yesterday I thought this was appropriate. My brother sent this to me many years ago when Billy Collins was Poet Laureate.                   

 Forgetfulness

By Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue

or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins, "Forgetfulness" from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1999 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: Questions About Angels (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)                                             

Don's Blog Home Medical Dictionary 1-28-2020

             Home Medical Dictionary

This is not so much a dictionary

as it is an atlas for the old,

in which they pore over

the pink and gray maps of the body,

hoping to find that wayside junction

where a pain-rutted road

intersects with the highway

of answers, and where the slow river

of fear that achingly meanders

from organ to organ

is finally channeled and dammed.

Ted Kooser

'Delights and Shadows'

2004

Don's Blog '20 Dover" 8 Final Blog 1-18-2020

Enough is enough. Its time to move on - both me and you. Here are a few final thoughts.

The screened in porch was a haven especially at night. We had wooden roll-up blinds for

           

the afternoon sun and when it rained. In the summer we had a single bed on the porch and routinely 'slept out'.

As a peak experience there is nothing better than sleeping on this porch in the driving rain.

A counterpoint was the afternoon I was pushing hard on a glass pane near the handle of the door to the porch. 

The glass broke and I drove the base of my left third finger deep into the sharp edge. It was a red mess and also a trip to the ER at the San. If I look hard I can still see the small scar.

            

 My final few stories concern the back door area and back yard. Most of the deliveries to the house came to the back door - usually from the Dover Street side but sometimes from the Arlington Street side. In addition to the mail we had regular milk delivery. The milk came in returnable bottles and the regular milk had a 2-3" layer of cream on the top. I didn't like its consistency but my brothers would drink it right from the bottle. Another popular delivery came from Mr Ward who came with cans of fresh home baked cookies. He was a quiet and unassuming baker whose cookies did not stay in the returnable cans very long. 

Beyond the ice box in the kitchen was a steep winding stairs leading to a tiny room with a small sink. I don't think anyone 'lived' in the room which was on the way to a storage area and then up some stairs to the attic itself  which stretched the length of the house. We each had our own storage unit but there were many shelves filled with presents (some unused) from my parents wedding in1928. We still have a few presents in our Kirkwood basement storage from our wedding in 1961 in our basement storage. It must be in our DNA.

We did spend some time on the back stairway. We were usually eating such family favorites as a potato chip

sandwich with catsup on white bread or a homemade milkshake with vanilla ice cream and some pure maple syrup. Another oddity on the stairs: one of us would have to kneed the white packet of margarine  so that it would turn yellow and more resemble real butter. This type of 'protection' devised by the Dairy Industry was destined to fail from the start and soon we could get already yellow margarine.

The back yard was small and fenced. In the north-east corner where 3 garages came together it was easy to climb the yard fence as boys are want to do and then get up on the shed at the back of the Levering's garage. From there it was simple to get on the roofs of the two garages to the north. What was not so easy was the jump from the middle garage to the garage on the right. Only a few daredevils (of which I was Not one) could do that. I think that these neighborhood gambols were much more valuable in forming who we are than computer games currently popular with young kids now. Just saying'.

Finally a story about the results of winning a drawing. My mother always entered the American Legion drawing to win prizes. She won at regular intervals and her prizes included a mink stole, a 22 gauge rifle, and even a Sedan Deville Cadillac. She always laughed about the time she picked up the phone and a man said, "Well, you won the damn Cadillac". Anyway one day at the carnival, which was always held off of south La Grange Road, we won two live chickens. That's a little different than bringing home goldfish which we had done. We brought the home the prize chickens in a box. Much to our surprise my dad said that we would have fresh chicken for dinner that night. He had been brought up with chickens in Marietta Georgia. We all gathered in our small back yard and with no warning my dad wrung the necks off of the chickens which started to run around the ' like a chicken with his head cut off". It was a total surprise and a shock. There was blood everywhere. We had to catch the chickens, put them in a pot with boiling water and pull all their feathers off. This was a real mess. There were feathers everywhere. Finally our huge live chickens had turned into scrawny little dead birds. My mom cooked them up and they tasted pretty good but it did transform our view of the current FDR saying that for everyone there would be "a chicken in every pot."

I want to thank Stacy for including us in the next chapter of "29 Dover". I am sure the new owners will write another chapter in this home's fabled history.

           Hooorah for 29 Dover!

Don's Blog '29 Dover' 7 More memories 1-17-2020

Hi Stacy, 

Its hard to believe that when Harold

Zook added on the Master Bedroom and the garage in the early 1930's ( the plans may be on microfilm some where at the Village Hall) that he did not enlarge the master bathroom. But yes this is the dinky Master Bathroom in all its unpretentious glory. I never thought of it as such.

My folks slept in the middle room with its Pine Room extension. We three boys slept in the large 

bedroom above the garage with its cantilevered balcony. My dad and the boys used this bathroom.

My first recollections are that as a very young boy I would take a bath and regularly my mother would wash my hair with shampoo. At the end of this I would close my eyes tight and she would rinse my hair with lemon juice.

Then we would fully rinse my head under the faucet.

Every bathroom medicine cabinet that I have had since leaving '29 Dover' has been dwarfed by my dad's which  is shown. I  remember when it was added. It was filled with his shaving mug and  brush and razors and a lifetime medicines. I was not close with my dad but remember often sitting on a hamper watching him shave. Later he switched to and electric razor and the romance disappeared.

As boys grow older it is sometimes necessary to get out of the house and not always with your parents knowing. One of our exits was through this bathroom window. With the window open it was easy to slip out and slide down the gutter down spout to the ground.  It was a little more difficult to get back in. I am not at liberty to discuss what happened on these outings.

If you ever had to back a car out of the left side of the garage you probably wondered why the driveway had that strange curve on the left. When the house was first designed Harold Zook planted a single birch tree  between the house and the sidewalk. As you know these are not common trees in La Grange but this one thrived. When the garage was added  with its stone  walls it was decided to save the birch tree. The tree died

when I was in high school.

.

29 Dover 6 1-16-2020 The Aura

Hi Stacy,

I loved the images of your pet squirrels and bunnies. The home was indeed unique. It had an aura that

can't be matched. Our home in Anchorage came close but nothing surpasses the feel of '29 Dover'. There was a sense of safety and security in the midst of the chaos of the neighborhood - houses so close you could smell them, cars coming by day and night, commuters always walking by, children of all ages making noises kids make (shouting,crying screaming, laughing, shooting off caps), bicycles, motor scooters, hand lawn mowers, leaves burning - but all anchored by your own count-on-able family in the home.

One domain that helped create this ambiance was the closeness of the railroad. Having grown up forever by the tracks the sound of the train going by was like hypnotic music to me. Many times I was asked by a visiting friend, "How can you stand that noise coming by all the time?" And I would routinely answer, "What noise?". The only time it ever bothered me was at a time in my life when I was sleeping in the Pine Room (off the central bedroom). In the early 1940's we had one radio, a large tabletop Philco, which my folks would listen to in the living room and when I was supposed to be asleep. When the train would go by I couldn't hear the radio in the most exciting part of what they were listening to. It never lasted too long. I really miss it. I can hear distant trains go by now where we live but its not the same.

On the landing shelf above the living room we had a clock that played the Westminster Chimes sequence all day and all night. But the most compelling tone audible at '29 Dover' was the sound of the gong from the clock in the LTHS Bell Tower at Cossitt and Brainard. I can still remember the 'feel' of the sound coming in at one in the morning - "Booooom".

During the war the neighborhood was especially close. My dad was too young to fight in WW I and too old to fight in WWII. He was the neighborhood Air Raid Warden. He had a special hat and a long flash light and would go out on designated blackout nights to make sure that all lights were out. One time the Chicago area had a test Air Raid. It was during the day and bombs were sent down from airplanes. The bombs were rolled newspaper about 3" wide and 3" long with several strands of red crepe paper attached like a kite tail. We were supposed to stay inside but one came down in our yard and I ran out and got it. It would have been a direct hit near our house. I kept it for years but it somehow disappeared along with my classic collection of trading cards.

The memories of our home at '29 Dover' get better with age. More to come.

29 Dover St. 5 The Neighborhood 1-15-2020

My parents were proud of their Zook designed Irish Hut. It sits on a triangular lot that was once a park. When we were growing up there  was a  large concrete fountain (a remnant of the park) in the corner of our next door neighbors , the Grogan's, house (to the east). Dover Street was distinct from Dover Place, a one block long street on the south side of the Auge's House across the street. Dover Place had no houses on it. Dover Street started at the gas station two blocks to the southeast, curved around our house and then went north across Ogden Avenue and ending 3-4 blocks north  at the Salt Creek Woods where the street turned east and with another name.

The Grogan's lived to the east of us. Barney Grogan owned the Florsheim Shoe store on La Grange Road south of the tracks on the east side. Barney had a machine that allowed you to see your feet in the new shoes for fit. I loved seeing my toes wiggle. After awhile we learned that such machines could be dangerous because of the radiation but it was a cool machine. Barney was a friendly neighbor but the pressures of life in his later years were too great  and he did himself in. We kids,of course, wondered what the room where it happened looked like.

The Hoags lived to the north of us with their elderly parents, the Bancrofts. They had several children and my brother was close to their son Chuckie. The Hoags moved and were replaced by the Fries, a large family from Tennessee, with many teen age daughters. They were very 'country'  with southern accents which added a lot of drama to the neighborhood.

The Leverings lived next to the Hoags. Dorothy Levering was my age and when she was five had polio requiring an iron lung. It was a time of concern. Polio was felt to be contagious and this fear was one of the reasons we were sent out of town for July and August for several years. Dorothy had been our playmate and I can still remember visiting her when she was in the iron lung. She passed away after about a year and a half (right at the start of the war). This was scary for us kids.

We all had the usual childhood infections such as measles and mumps and chicken pox. The village required contagious disease specific red signs to be put on the front door for several weeks when we had these diseases. Once while riding my bike near a friends house on Park I was bitten by a dog. Because the bite broke the skin  I had to take the two week series(14 days) of the dread anti-rabies shots in my hip. They were not really as painful as advertised

Our home was very well positioned. We could walk one block to the IGA grocery store and Schneider's Drug store a little further. Down from the drug store on Hilgrove was Nick's  Barber Shop.(One day I went to Nicks and asked for a Heiny haircut. My hair had been somewhat longer so Nick who was very smart  told me to go get my mother before he would do that, which I did). Further east on Hilgrove was the Park Movie Theater where almost every kid in town went on Saturday afternoons. It was during the war and each week we would see a news update and then either a war or a western movie. My favorite war movie was "The Commandos Strike at Dawn", a 1942 film with Paul Muni and Lillian Gish. My favorite western was any Hoppalong Cassidy film starring William Boyd. The kid noise in the theater was deafening. 

My dad worked at the Thorsen Real Estate office which was right across the street from the railroad tracks,an easy walk from home. 

29 Dover 4 1-14-2020

The MLS listing shows some great floor schematics.

A comment on "Cubbie Storage": From1930 into the 1940's this was the dread "Coal Room". Through an opening in the upper right corner of the room the coal was delivered regularly to the room from the outside via a chute.Over half of the room would be filled with coal. My father would shovel the coal into the furnace. The room was scary but the furnace was not. The unheated room was somewhat frightening because it was mostly dark (one dim  light) and was coal black and dusty and always dank. My father deserves a medal for keeping us warm. I still marvel at how the heat was transferred from the furnace to the radiators that warmed the house. We did have storm windows at times for really cold winters.

Above and to the left of the coal chute opening on the side of the house was a small rectangular window for the delivery of ice for the ice box. I loved seeing the ice man coming from his truck with a big block of ice on his shoulder. He had a heavy leather drape on his shoulder for the ice. He lifted it with heavy tongs and the ice was always covered with saw dust. He would open the latched door on the house and then open the ice compartment on the back of the ice box. Placing the ice gently (on my mothers command) he would sometimes go get another block. At some point in the 1940's we got a refrigerator and the romance of the ice man was gone but not forgotten.

We did not have a mail box or a mail slot up front. The mail was delivered to a slot opening through the back door.

My mother did the family laundry every Monday. The clothes from the upstairs came down to the basement from a clothes chute which was across from my sisters bedroom. The laundry room was elevated above the  basement floor.  We had a  small electric washing machine and a hand crank wringer. The wringer got most of the water out of the washed clothes. In good weather she hung the clothes on a line in the back yard and in the winter they were hung in the basement. She used a cotton clothes line with wooden clothes pins. We got a clothes dryer sometime after 1938. How was my mother able to do this mostly by herself for all those years?

The basement had a central area and to the left was a little used work bench with a vise and some tools. Beyond that on the left in the center was the squat furnace which was painted white and behind that the coal room. Across from the clothes chute a small toilet was added. The most basement fun that I had was when we got a ping pong table. We literally played for hours and got pretty good. I later played on the winning Intramural Table Tennis team in college. We were undefeated for two years.

During the war years the whole neighborhood would gather in the basement to "put up" various forms of tomato products that had come from our Victory Garden, a vacant lot by the Turk's house on Dover St across from the Hoags our northern neighbors. The tomatoes were put in jars in various forms: tomato segments, catsup, and chili sauce. They were ground up using a mortar and pestle like device called a Foley Food Mill. The results were equally shared but the patriotic neighborhood fun was the main take away.