Did You Find Your Book Yet? End of the Year in the Library

I was starting a nervous breakdown
over my 17,000 barcoded items at work
that needed to be checked back in
by the end of the following week
until I asked my first grade class
if any found their books. Tavas,
"I found it in my attic but forgot
to put it in my backpack."
Jack, "You know how you toss a book
as high as you can Mrs. Nixon?
It finally fell off the roof
but I forgot to put it in my backpack."
Sophia, "It was in my brother's room
under the chair cushions."
I guess lots of teen boys
like those Jewel Fairy books too.

My Office Stinks or Why Raising Pheasants Inside is a Bad Idea

I clicked the Play Video icon on my friend's
Facebook page and stared at the beautiful pheasant
walking in his back year. When we moved to Kenmore
in 1990, I'd see pheasants in the meadows along the river.
That was before my sister's dog ran loose and chased them away.
I found pheasant chicks on Craigslist and built a small pen
of cardboard with a tarp bottom and chicken wire top.
I called Brenny to see if she'd go to the feed store with me.
We picked up all the gear they told us we needed
and on May 16th we picked up my eleven ten day old chicks.
They were tiny and fuzzy and very cute.
What I didn't know was that they would stink.
Eye-burning stink.
I don't care though. Now they have quadrupled in size in
a week and lost their downy coats.
I left the chicken-wire top off their pen when I dashed
for water and five had flown the coop.
They were on the windowsill pecking at the glass trying to get out.
I got them back in the pen and gave them
corn on the cob and juicy watermelon.
When they get a treat they like they
trill. Just like the Tribles on Star Trek.
The rest of the time they just peep, peep, peep.

Library Fun at Blackwell Elementary With "Sophie's Squash"

I tinkled my little chime that sits on the counter.
"Good afternoon class."
I smiled out at the three rows of first graders
beaming up at me as I perched on my fancy, padded, swivel stool.
"Good afternoon Mrs. Nixon." Said twenty-five toothless sweeties.
"First I will read you, "Sophie's Squash" and
then you can read me "That is Not a Good Idea."
I focused the document camera so Sophie and her squash were
six by eight feet high. The lush colors of the greens
and market sprang to life. Sophie loved her squash.
Everyone loves someone or something at least once in their life.
She has a surprise after putting the rotting squash in the soil
and waiting for the snows of winter to recede.
Bernice has sprouted new growth AND she produces two babies,
Baxter and Bonnie, who look just like their mom.
"Let's draw Bernice, shall we?"
"Okay, look at the screen. Oops. Ugh.
Bernice looks like a bowling pin.
I'll try Bonnie. Uh oh, she looks like a Candyland piece.
Baxter will be perfect.
Oh no! He looks like a peanut.
Well, do your best kids."
"Look, look Mrs. Nixon!" They all hold up their workbooks.
"Hey, no fair! Your squash look better than mine."

The Installation of the Bothell Bike Trail Bridge

I was flooded with relief as I finished delivering
the mail from Bothell to Kenmore and back
along highway 522. The entire distance from
Bothell QFC shopping center down to Kenmore Safeway
and back was fairly hair-raising, trying to get in
and out of traffic without being nailed by a semi.
The scariest spot to deliver was to the
Balls of Bothell, on Dead Man's Curve.
It's really known as Wayne Curve.
Unless you are pulling out into traffic
in a tiny mail jeep and wondering if
you'll live to see pie at Petosa's
at Bothell Landing or not.
I'd finished delivering Valhalla and crept
back on the highway going east towards Midas Mufflers
when I saw the bridge. While it meant a fifteen minute
delay for pie, I mean mail delivery,
it was exciting to watch the gigantic semi do a
Y turn to back across the four lanes of the highway.
On the back of the longest flatbed I'd ever seen were
two several hundred foot long slabs of concrete bridge.
My mouth dropped open as the driver backed the slabs
backwards across the highway and down the narrow drop
and steep hill into place across the Sammamish river.
That was in 1980 and now I ride my bike up from
Kenmore to Bothell and across that bridge every day.

My Son the Sign Flipper 6/11/2012

I cruised over the hills of Canyon Park
with the scent of McDonald's
filling my mini-van.
Double cheeseburgers, french fries, hot cocoa.
All the treats that a teenager loves.
It was March and bitter cold
and the snow had started coming down
in giant, icy flakes.
As I came over the rise and climbed
the next hill, I was excited to see my
first-born child at his job.
My son, the sign-flipper.
At sixteen, this was his first job outside
of yard work and house work.
So him having a real job was a big deal in our family.
I reflected on the years of fun family life
as I drove along.
Holidays, family camping trips and vacations.
Picnics in the swamp, making pies together.
At eleven, he began that natural pulling away
that a son starts with his mother.
At fourteen, I couldn't stand being in the same room
with him most of the time and
at fifteen he was worse.
At sixteen, I could feeling him come back to me
occasionally like we were pulling some familial
rubber band. Short glimpses into the future.
But I knew I would never be the rock star again.
The days of being stuck together like glue
were long gone.
As I pulled up to where Troy was twirling his sign
I could see his expression of consternation with me.
I just wanted to give him hot food and drinks
while he stood in a half inch of snow.
I wanted to be his rock star one last time.
I lowered the window and he came over to accept
my maternal offerings of food and love.
"Hurry up mom! There have been hot chicks
driving by waving at me!"
No thanks, no gratitude, no manners.
Hot chicks?!
I drove off hurt but full of pride as I looked
in my rear view mirror
at my son
the sign flipper.

How the Blind Lady Showed Me an Owl

The chirping sound of the bird was loud, sharp and insistent.
I slowed down and could see a red-winged blackbird in the maple tree.
I got off my bike and sat down on the grass next to the bike trail
and closed my eyes and listened to it.
I had just finished an article in my favorite magazine,
Birds and Blooms, about a blind lady back east that
teaches bird listening classes for blind children.
Her main tip was to listen in your yard, then parks
and concentrate on telling different bird calls apart.
I sat in the warm sun and that song of the red-wing blackbird
sounded harsh, like he was angry.
I opened my eyes and stared at him and followed his song
to the next tree.
There sitting quietly, in the early morning sun, was a two foot tall
striped brown and black owl. His head rotated slowly around
and his gold eyes looked at me.
I thought his eyes looked like that of a cat.
I had never seen a wild owl up close before
and I sat there until he went to sleep.
Then I rode home.

The Story of Mabel (Huff, Stowe, Barmuta) Philbrook Minnesota 1920)

The Life of Mabel Stowe Barmuta 9/27/2011

I was born in Philbrook Minnesota on September 27th 1920 at home.
Philbrook was a one horse town.
The town had two grocery stores and we’d sell all our eggs, milk and cream there
and we’d buy the flour, sugar and salt back from them.
The town had two gas stations and two churches,
one for Catholics and one for Protestants.
We all went to the same school first through eighth grade.
My mom’s name was Alice Huff and she her family had moved from Pennsylvannia to Minnesota and my dad was born in Staples Minnesota.
My dad, Elmer Stowe, had a ranch up in Montana and wanted my mom to go live there but she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave her family.
I had two older sisters, Martha and Myrtle.
My dad picked us out all M names then chose Wallace
for my little brother because he said it was an
upside down M.
We lived two miles out of town on a wheat and cattle farm.
We were pretty well off and had a Ford Model T when I was little.
We didn’t have any electricity and used wood-stoves for heat.
We had one in the kitchen and one in the living room and
my dad had to take his axe and cut down trees all winter
for heat because he was too busy running the farm in the
summertime.
We had a small two bedroom house with a basement with a cellar.
My dad would bury carrots and beets in sand and they’d keep all year that way.
He just threw the potatoes in a heap.
All the dry food like sugar and flour went in the cupboard
but the cold stuff had to be kept in the lean-to in a bucket
of cold water. You’d have to go out and pump in fresh cold water
a couple times of day to keep it fresh.
In the winter it was so cold you just left it in the lean-to.
We didn’t have indoor plumbing
and had to run out to the biffy to use the restroom.
When it got too cold we had to use a chamber pot.
We didn’t have indoor running water but the
pump was next to house in a lean-to.
That was my job and it would freeze in the winter.
If you forgot to trip the pump to get the water out,
you had to prime it every to get it restarted again.
I’d bring the water in every day after school at four and
fill the cream cans .
I had to fill the tea kettle, the reservoir attached to the stove
to keep hot water, and the water pail for drinking water.
To wash clothes once a week on Monday
we’d boil water on the stove, then fill up the
washing machine. The tub had a crank and
I was the motor. I’d raise and lower the crank
which would make the agitator bar turn back and forth.
After I washed the clothes, mother would boil them for twenty minutes
and then I’d wash them again and then I’d run them through the wringer.
We didn’t have electricity but we used kerosene lamps
with mantels and they gave off a lot of light.
The school was two miles from our farm and we’d walk both ways.
When it snowed a lot my dad would hook up the horses
to the big sleigh that he used to haul trees in the winter.
It was about twelve feet long and five wide.
We had three big draft horses that pulled the sleighs
and plows.
The schoolhouse was white and good-sized and our teacher
had fifty to sixty kids from first to eighth grade.
For fun we worked.
Just kidding. We played tic tac toe and there was a ball and a bat for
the whole school. In winter we’d make snow angels.
We each have a lunch pail and you’d better not lose it.
The lid was attached to the pail
and you’d put in an apple and sandwich and a jar of milk.
Mother would always cook roasts and bake bread and we’d make
sandwiches from that.
There was water cooler was in the school-room with a spigot.
The bigger boys hauled in the wood for the woodstove
that the school board men had cut and delivered to the shed.
At home for fun we kids played card games like Bunko or BINGO
or tic tac toe.
My grandmother lived about two miles away and I’d ride my brother’s bicycle
over on the big road to her house and back but I’d never tell anyone.
I was a good bicycle rider and I’d even stand up on the cross
bar and steer that bicycle with my feet!
At Christmas time we’d go to my grandmother Huff’s house and my aunts and mother would make dinner for all of us.
The last day of school was always a big deal and the school would put
on a big picnic. They’d make sandwiches and potato salad. The homemade ice cream and lemonade were treat foods you’d never have all year. You couldn’t just open a can of lemonade and lemons didn’t grow in Minnesota!
We’d have footraces and I always won my class. I was fast.
The high school was five miles away from our house and I stayed in town
with the high school teacher and his wife.
My mother died when I was sixteen and my dad sold the whole farm he was so heartbroken and got a small house in town. My older sisters had gotten married
and moved away so I went to work.
I went out to my sister’s in Detroit and I went to work at a restaurant.
It was very high falootin and I didn’t like it.

In 1940 I wrote my aunt in Portland Oregon and asked if I could stay with her and she told me to come on out. I got to Portland and stayed there three days and then I took bus to Seattle to my great aunt Bernice’s house near Greenlake.
She told me to go down to Boeing so I did. They hired me and sent me to Boeing school to learn how to make airplanes. The war started soon after that and I got started running a turret lathe making all kinds of airplanes. I ran that machine for ten years making parts for warplanes. They were putting those planes out by the hundreds for the Air Force and sending them to Europe and Japan.
That’s were I met Arky. He couldn’t go to war because he was the only guy that knew how to repair all the machines.
He asked me to go to a movie after work one day and I did.
That started the whole thing rolling.
We went to Thirteen Coins or Russell’s and Lion’s Music Hall where we did the jitterbug. I was pretty good at jitterbugging.
We got married in 1945 and moved to North Seattle near Roosevelt Way.
In 1947 we moved out to here to Kenmore and Arky and his brother Vlad Barmuta started building this house.
The highway from Seattle to Kenmore was still brick back then.
Kenmore was a one-horse town back then and the main restaurants were The Porterhouse right across the highway and we’d go to the Kenmore Community Club down the street.
Arky kept working for Boeing and then he started his own furniture making company below our house called Barmuta Furniture Company.
Kenmore had an annual celebration called Frontier Days.
We had a parade and over by the drive-in theater they had carnival games and rides.
We joined Seattle yacht club and our group would cruise all around the San Juan Islands and one year we went clear up to Juneau Alaska.
Mike was born in 1950 and he went Arrowhead elementary, Kenmore junior high and Inglemoor High School and the UW. He got a job and moved to Everett.
Donna Mae was born in 1957 passed away from cancer when she was five.
After I worked at Boeing I got hired at Eldec Electronics as an inspector.
I retired at some point and here I am today,
having my ninety-first birthday today.
Hard to believe.

I recorded this story while laying on Mabel’s couch, like I was prone to do, gabbing and resting and enjoying “girl time.” She was a terrific next-door neighbor.
Later that day, I took her to renew her driver’s license because she wanted to.
She no longer drove but wanted to have it. Because she could.
There are a few inaccuracies in this story because Mabel's memory was in decline.
I typed verbatim.