SPRING

MEMORY LANE

SPRING

BY R. AUBREY LA FOY

“Spring is sprung, the grass is green, it’s time to get the blankets clean.” So went the popular ditty when I was a youth.  Lots of things happened in the spring like a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts that the girls have been thinking of all winter.  Teaching young people was always a thrill especially in the spring of the year.  Love would blossom right before your eyes and it gave one acknowledgement that the human race had not really changed.  Trying to teach about the American Revolution was a lost cause when the love bug bit.  Students could care less about George Washington or the Battle of Bunker Hill but if you could find a historical incident of George Washington dancing with Martha maybe, just maybe you could get their attention about history.

Does anyone still do spring-cleaning? Many of you can remember mother really going all out with cleaning up the house after a long cold winter. Spring-cleaning was a tradition and religiously followed by grandmother and mother.  Most of the homes were heated by wood or coal stoves and with the house being shut up all winter that old coal dust and smoke would penetrate and get into everything.  In many houses all of the curtains came down, washed by had and stretched to dry on a wooden frame known as a curtain dryer. Drapes were dry-cleaned in white gasoline and hung up to dry.  This operation was done outside as a safety precaution. We always had a can of that gas on the back porch that mother used to dry-clean other apparel.

The other day we were at an antique shop and one of the items for sale was a rug beater. People of our generation know what one looks like but kids today wouldn’t have the slightest hint of what that goofy looking apparatus was intended for.  Many of you can recall pulling up the living room rug, taking it outside to hang on the clothesline and beating the dirt and dust out of it.  The beating of rugs was great practice for baseball batting but it was hard work.  No matter how hard or how long you beat the rug it never was enough for mother.

Mother always wore an apron and had her hair tied up with a dishtowel that hung down her back. When she got that garb on we knew that springhouse cleaning was for real. It was an all day or two affair and meals were pretty skimpy.  I recall that one spring we had several painters come into the house and after my parents had washed down the wall they painted the dining and living rooms. It took them several days to do the job and I recall the smell of fresh paint and turpentine really smelled up the house.  That paint job was great because it hadn’t been redone in all the years we lived there which were something like 40 years. The paint in those days was nothing like our water base paint of today in drying time, odor and ease of cleaning brushes.

 Robins arriving signaled the advent of spring and even if they have to dodge snow we knew it would not be long before the temperatures would be warmer.  With their arrival and seeing one we would recall and do the traditional good luck ritual. Wipe your right thumb across the palm of your left hand and doubling up your right hand strike the left palm. Do this routine three times and it was suppose to bring you good luck. In the early spring mayflowers came out on the pastures west of our community and we would go and pick a bouquet for mother.  She was always so thrilled to get them and put them in a vase to set on the kitchen table. One of the best things about spring was that you could shed your overshoes, winter coat, mittens, cap with earflaps and feel 20 pounds lighter.

We really knew that spring had arrived when recess time came and we could play marbles.  Sometimes it was a bit of a chore to find a dry spot but the south side of our school building afforded a great location. We would draw a three foot round circle in the dirt and then go back a number of yards and scratch a “lag line.” Lag up to the circle and then get our your favorite shooter. Some fellows had a great way of pushing the shooter with their thumb and other used a knuckle flip.  I could never master that knuckle flip but managed to knock a number of marbles out of the pot so kept pretty even. But marbles and spring went together. Another place we played marbles was in the center of the street.  The streets were graveled and the center seemed to dry out early. Nobody bothered us or told us to get off the street nor did we worry much about traffic, there wasn’t any.  If a vehicle did come it gave us the courtesy of driving as far to one side as afforded so as not to stop our great marble game.  Many of you can remember the embarrassment of accidentally spilling all of your marbles in the schoolroom.  That little commotion really interrupted the class schedule as well as getting the teacher mad at you.

Another sure sign of spring was the return of flies. Our farm friends had cows, pigs and chickens that helped the fly population but we city folk were not exempt.  Many of our neighbors raised chickens and ducks and within one block of our home. There were also several cows quartered nearby.  Flies are equal-opportunity pests and early on we heard “Don’t open the screen door!” Flies could form a solid mat on the screen door, as they wanted to get into the house, so one had to be constantly on guard to keep out the unwelcome guests. One of our defense weapons was ribbon of sticky paper that uncoiled from little green tubes, which were hung from the ceiling. A thumbtack was even provided. The long sticky strips hung from the ceilings of butcher shops, ice cream parlors, drugstores and grocery stores as well as in our houses. Flies that were seeking you out would bump into the strips and get caught. Another seeker of flies was a large sheet of sticky paper placed where flies would land. The fly would land on the paper and stay. It also caught cats and little children.  If you anchored your fingers on those sheets it was a mess to extract them and usually the paper could find your other hand and chin before you escaped. I recall a gag that Red Skeleton did trying to get untangled from those sheets of sticky flypaper.  It was hilarious. Other weapons in an attempt to rid the farms, animals and homes from flies were fly spray and fly “guns.”

Animals really suffered in the warm months with those flies.  Horses seemed to attract flies and the owners put on fly covers on their backs and even a sort of round screen attachment on the horse’s mouth and nose to keep the flies off.  Cows were forever swishing their tails and I have from good authority (Connie) that while milking a cow the tail is not a soft touch when twirled in your direction across the face. She told me it stings getting smacked with a cow’s tail plus the tail is not the cleanest part of the cow.

 Spring is a rebirth of life and a time for planting. Gardens are planted and seeds sprout and grow in spring.  A sure sign of spring was seeing the farmers in their fields preparing the ground and planting the seeds.  Watching mother and father robin build a nest is awe-inspiring.  Each flight by one of the robins with bits of straw and paper will eventually form into a nest.  Many times we have observed one of them sitting on the eggs and knowing full well that spring has arrived. The buds come out on the trees, weeds grow and the grass needs mowing are all signs of spring.  It is a great time to be alive and it renews our spirits to the wonders of nature.