Another New Feature

This month we are launching another new Regular Feature to MS MuSings. This month our own annnieM begins telling us her own special memories, so sit back, relax, and enjoy annnieM's special story!

From annnieM:

First off, let me say thanks to Car for letting me write for the magazine. I love it! And thanks to Loren, who told me to start putting down my memories. He inspired me. And this song inspires me to focus on the good in the world. My first little story to follow is a piece of my life...a memory. I was lucky to have taken care of an elderly lady who used a walker. Now I have the walker. And |'m getting older...so I have some wonderful memories to jot down...please think about the words to the song...it's so happy!!! Then read on to find out WHERE THOSE PICTURES CAME FROM.

Louis Armstrong ...What a Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces of people going by

I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"

They're really saying "I love you"

I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow

They'll learn much more than I'll ever know

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Oh yeah

Where Those Pictures Came From

By annnieM (Deanna Mattox)

I have no idea what twist of fate brought me to Mrs. Marengo's door all those years ago. I know that I was 12 or13 and she needed someone to help her out during the day. Now that I look back on that summer, she didn't really need me for much, except perhaps companionship. There was the odd fetching job down in the old root cellar... a dark musty place dug out under her kitchen. The place smelled funny, like years of dead spiders and fear left behind by 13-year-old girls who had to brave them.

Anyway, that summer I went to Mrs. Marengo's house everyday. It seems to me I had to get up very early to go to work there... and I suppose that 8:30 a.m. is kind of early for a kid. I remember walking up the hill behind our house, past the chokecherry trees, through the tall grass and up to the road above... where her house sat at the dead end of the road. I remember carefully closing the gate behind me (first time for everything) and knocking at her door. She was always waiting for me, completely dressed. Completely dressed in those days meant a lot more than it does today. No jeans and a t-shirt like me! She had on her housedress, freshly starched and ironed and spotless. God only knows what all she had underneath it! I know for a fact that she had cotton stockings the color of flesh that she had rolled up over her knee and then twisted into a little knot which she tucked under to hold them. Every so often during the days to come one of those knots would loosen and the casing of artificial flesh would slide down her leg to reveal white and purple old lady legs. You would have thought her underwear were showing! What ever she was doing she stopped and immediately stretched the offending stocking back up and twisted it around again into the knot that should have held it. I'm sure if she could have gotten around better she would have retreated into a private room to do this process, such was her modesty. But, Mrs. Marengo used a walker. I think she’d had a stroke... but she did get along quite well... picking that old tin thing up and moving it ahead and then following it. I know she wore me out some days just following her around.

On the good days... her good days and good weather days... we'd go outside and have picnics or harvest the black walnuts. This is when I learned that black walnuts have an ugly spongy outer covering... and the walnut is inside that! We'd take an old hammer and whack the nuts and sit there in the warm sun picking the tender morsels out and eating them. We had the strangest picnics, too. I mean the food was strange. Inside or out, I remember lunchtime was an educating experience for me! I came from a poor family with seven kids, so lunch was soup and sandwiches, at best. Dad could make a big can of tuna fish stretch to make sandwiches for all of us kids! You could say we ate bread. We didn't know any better; we were happy. But up at Mrs. Marengo's I tasted new and different things! One day we made crab casserole with a can of crab meat...CRAB… never heard of it!! I would give anything to have that recipe today! It was divine! I helped make it... the crab and toasted bread and hard-boiled eggs... and I don't remember anything else... and I know there was more to it. Sigh. I also tasted my first artichoke at Mrs. Marengo's... didn't care for them but they sure were fascinating creatures!

Mrs. Marengo was an artist, of sorts, like people in her day were. It seemed everyone in that generation either wrote books, played piano, or painted. Mrs. Marengo created huge pictures out of pastels, she called them. She told me it was a kind of chalk... and that she drew many pictures from postcards or books... just copying what she saw but making it larger. (and more magnificent, to my eyes) Every room in the house was hung with pictures she had made. In the parlor the walls were adorned with pastels of her son as a baby. Never have I seen more gorgeous pictures of a baby! Pastel chalk was as delicate as any baby's bottom...the correct medium I thought, to capture such delicate perfection. He was there in all the baby poses imaginable... sweet and sleeping... awake with a mischievous grin on his face... crawling, sitting, and about to walk. If I ever had kids, I thought to myself, I would want them captured in pastels for pictures for my parlor! Did I say she was rich? Every one of these pictures she had created were framed in the most magnificent Victorian frames... every one perfectly suited to the subject within! This was my first museum! A personal museum full of history that I personally got to know!

I remember rainy days where we would clean her closets... huge dark treasure troves of wonderful stuff that needed sorted and weeded through. She intended to make several boxes fit into one... and I was eager to help! Every item had a story! I'm sure that my love for old things grew from Mrs. Marengo's closet! There were boxes of gloves and hankies... and she knew where she had worn each pair of gloves and to which dance she had carried a particular hanky! It was such fun for both of us... her to remember and me to hear of the stories of the beautiful rich girl who went to all those parties! As she sorted through her memories, she picked out the happiest ones, and the rest had to go. I was sitting there on the edge of the bed with open arms! My hands must have been quivering with excitement as I accepted treasures from her. She offered me a pair of soft, ivory leather gloves. I took them. She offered me a beaded Victorian evening purse... I took it. I was grinning ear to ear as she offered me a little mink fur stole made up of four little animals strung together. It was the most amazing thing I had seen to date! The skinny little animals were all softer than anything I had ever touched, and one little mouth was clasped on the next one's tail... an absolutely intriguing design to a 13-year-old! I still have that fur piece somewhere... I wonder where! Anyway, I took the most amazing and interesting collection of treasures from her that summer... both memories and momento's.

Towards the end of the summer her son came to collect her and take her back to Maryland where he and his family lived... and my days of caring for her were almost over. Her closets were clean and she was ready to go back to see her grandkids. The garage was not clean yet, and her son, Ken, attacked it with a vengeance! One day as I was leaving I was instructed to take a glass of lemonade to him on my way. I noticed he was piling stuff to one side. It turns out the garage was full of pictures... Mrs. Marengo was quite a prolific artist and did not have room to hang everything in her house! But these weren't hung in the garage, these were just sitting on the dirt floor. In fact, Ken was making a pile to take to the dump! Unbelievable! I'm sure I stood there with tears in my eyes, disbelieving, rooted to the spot. Once I found out their fate, my heart sunk into itself. Here was this middle-aged rich man going through what he did not value... and my heart was breaking that he would even think to throw them away. He must have glanced up from his chores... perhaps when I handed him the lemonade... and seen the shock in my eyes. He explained from a middle-aged rich man perspective that he could not afford to ship these back to Maryland... there were so many... and these were not even the ones favored enough to hang in the house. He offered them to me!!! Actually, I think he said I could take one or two if I could carry them. (he must have figured me for a weakling...but I was tough, I had brothers!) My first choice was a picture of a lion standing in front of his cave and gazing down at a meadow full of antelope or gazelles! This piece of art was three foot by five foot... and framed in a 3 inch wide heavy gilded Victorian way. He also said I had to get my folk's approval. Somehow or another I managed to carry that huge painting through the grass, past the chokecherries, and down the hill to my house. Mostly my mom didn't let me bring things home... I remember a kitten that I had to take back one time... but that's another story. Somehow I got permission this time. I went right back for my second choice. A tall picture of a majestic stag... probably five foot tall, but narrower. It also was heavily framed and even though I was tired, I hefted it, smiling broadly, and thanked Mr. Marengo 100 times over. This was one of the highlights of my young life! Seldom do 13-year-olds have such treasures! (My parents were appreciative of them, too, as they hung proudly in their home for many years till I got a home of my own to hang them.)

As I look back, I realize that all the closet cleanings were preparations for the end. I'm glad I didn't know that then. Mrs. Marengo did not come back the next summer. I heard she went into a nursing home eventually. Her son came back and finished the job Mrs. Marengo and I had started. I never went back to the house... I must have gotten a real job and must have been busy. Anyway, I don't know what twist of fate led me to be the lucky one who got to take care of Mrs. Marengo, and hear all her stories, and be the beneficiary of the paintings... but that's where those pictures came from.

Reach annnieM by email to comment: annniem@starband.net

See our annnieM in the Gallery!

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