Tag: the seventies

life, stories

That Seventies Rug

Sue

This is a story about a latch hook rug that my dad made back in the early seventies. When an injury kept him home from work and unable to putter around the house fixing things, like he always did on his days off. I can’t remember if it was the time he broke his leg or “slipped a disc”, as they used to say back then. They, being my parents. I was just a kid, too busy running in and out of the house with friends to pay attention to what my parents were doing. Although I remember him being in pain and cranky and bored enough sitting in his recliner day after day to complain about needing something to do.

One day a very large rug hooking kit arrived by mail and all of a sudden my dad was sitting with the stiff, patterned canvas folded in his lap, pushing a latch hook through square holes, row after row with bits of coordinating wool that came wrapped like a big sushi roll. Sometimes he watched TV while doing it. Most times he listened to music and would ask me when I came inside to put on another record for him so he wouldn’t have to struggle up and disturb the creative process. It didn’t seem weird to me that he was making a rug while listening to Johnny Cash or Kristofferson or Dolly. It seemed weirder that he wasn’t moving much at all and seemed almost content about it. The further he got into the colourful pattern, the more interesting I found it. Sometimes I sat on the floor and passed him the next strand to add. The meticulous process reminded me of paint-by-numbers crossed with crochet. A work friend of his stopped by for a visit and the man teased Dad about being a “happy hooker”. They chuckled over that, and so did I, even though I had no clue what was funny about it. I was just happy he was happier.

Eventually, he was well enough to return to work. The bulky, oval rug remained rolled up by his recliner chair and if he had a spare moment he’d add some rows. It could’ve taken him months to finish or years. All I know is that he persisted and once it was done it became a permanent fixture on the living room floor of every home my parents had, even if the room was already carpeted. And there were many, many homes. I’ve recently calculated that we moved ten times by the time I left home on my own. Fortunately, only one house was far enough away to force me to switch elementary schools and make new friends. The rest of the time we moved within the same area until I graduated high school. My retired parents continued to move nearer to me and further away for years to come. I suppose they were in search of somewhere better than they were. It used to frustrate me, their inability to stay comfortably in one place for long. As an adult, I came to accept the fact they were who they were. As imperfect as we all are. Humans trying to figure things out and not always getting it right.

My dad’s last move was closer to me and without my mom, who passed away five years before he did. He didn’t have many possessions by then. Constant downsizing to smaller places had significantly lightened the load to only essentials and some prized possessions, like that seventies rug he made so he wouldn’t go stir-crazy. I was surprised to discover he left the rug to me in his will. Shortly after he died, me and my family moved from the suburbs to the country, and I put the rug directly into storage. Honestly, it wasn’t my taste at the time. Too seventies in colour. Too old-fashioned in style. Too painful a reminder of parents I missed very much.

I’ve been decluttering closets since the start of this new year. It’s been a gloomy and rainy winter and there’s been days when I’ve had to force myself to get chores done. I’m one of those people who regularly stuffs things away–out of sight, out of mind. Until I get fed up with the chaos and start pulling things out to ditch or donate. I always think about my parents when I get into a spring-cleaning state of mind, and how they didn’t hold onto things that weren’t useful and kept only the family heirlooms they weren’t ready to part with yet. I have some of those knickknacks now–a gravy boat I still use when I make roasts for family dinners, and two silly antique clocks that don’t work, but remind me of my childhood in a cozy, nostalgic way. And that rug, sitting rolled up in storage. I learned two weeks ago that it’s only gotten dustier and mustier with age, and has unravelled in spots on the underside, where Dad carefully glued thick backing tape down, and probably did several more times over the years.

My husband offered to take it to the dry cleaning-slash-alterations business he frequents to get his work gear repaired. The miracle worker who owns the business told him she couldn’t guarantee that a thorough cleaning wouldn’t damage it further, so he called me to see what I wanted to do. I decided it was better to try to save it instead of leaving it rolled up and forgotten as I’ve done for over twenty years. The woman agreed, telling my husband the rug is a timeless work of art that should be appreciated and used. I thought the same thing when I unrolled it the other day. It’s charmingly retro. Special. Made by hardworking hands that refused to stay idle during a painful and depressing time.

I’m happy to report it cleaned up better than I hoped for and the backing is successfully repaired. For now, it sits on the floor in my office. Reminding me to keep writing and creating, even on days that feel gloomy. Especially then. I played some Kristofferson as I tried out different spots for the rug. Smiled at his lyrics about putting on your cleanest dirty shirt to meet the day, then picked up a basket of knitting to add a few more rows.

music

The A Side

Sue

“What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason.” 
― Mary Oliver, Blue Horses: Poems

This year marks a milestone birthday for me. I suppose every year is a marker of some kind, first marking our starting point and then where we are now. This new marker has me feeling particularly nostalgic and I’m not sure that would be the case had the events of the past few years gone differently and made me less introspective. In any case, I have a story about nostalgia and it begins with music, yet again.

One Saturday in November my husband and I decided to visit a vintage holiday marketplace. We were there mostly for the retro atmosphere, to get into the festive spirit, and perhaps find some one-of-a-kind gifts. Most of the vendors were selling new and used Christmas decor, and we enjoyed ourselves for an hour or so, laughing over the many antique decorations we recalled seeing in our childhood homes and other people’s harvest gold or avocado green living rooms in the seventies. There was a lot of “do you remember this?” And “my grandma had one just like that!” Items we might have considered tacky as children were now whimsically magical and worthy of a second look. So on we went, browsing here and there, and sometimes gasping in unison at the elevated prices of those same tacky knickknacks. Eventually we grew tired and were heading for the exit door when a small booth caught my eye. It immediately drew me in like a magnet because it was filled with cardboard boxes of used records. That was it, nothing else, and not one sparkly holiday decoration in sight. Just a few portable tables lined with open boxes of vinyl. I flipped through one stack and the first album I happened to pull out for a closer look was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

I held it in both hands and read all the song titles, probably with a sappy grin on my face. I have fond memories of that album. I heard it for the first time in an all-girls, junior high school gym class by way of a young and therefore cool female teacher, who played “Don’t Stop” on a portable record player at the start of every class, while we performed warm up exercises to it before heading outside for the long distance run we all dreaded. Even now, hearing that uplifting song makes me think about sideways stretches, jumping jacks, and high kicks in terry cloth gym shorts. Some administrator with a mean streak decided in the second semester to make us fourteen year old girls share gym time with grade twelve boys. They quickly took to stretching with us to Fleetwood Mac and only because our young teacher was attractive. Awkwardness ensued, mostly for the already awkward girls like me, who had no idea where to look and suddenly forgot the sequence of every move. One day the guys had a substitute teacher show up for their class. I heard all about Mr. Hot Teacher ahead of leaving the change room. The second I did, I spotted him and then excitedly called out his first name as I ran across the gym to envelope him in a fierce hug. He was my big brother’s best friend, ten years older than me, who’d first started hanging around our house when I was still in diapers. I didn’t stop to think how it must look to everyone gaping at us. Then I made it worse by loudly announcing in the echoing gym how much I missed him coming over to the house. Let’s just say there were whispers, raised eyebrows, and sidelong glances directed at me during that particular warm up. My brother’s friend and I laughed about it when we saw each other again several years later. Vivid memories like these prove that music is the soundtrack of life. At that time, a magical kind of marker made of shiny vinyl.

Strangely, I considered buying the record while standing in the marketplace booth. It was only five dollars for a bit of nostalgia that made me smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I looked at an LP, much less bought one. Yet there I was still gripping it with both hands, reluctant to let it go. The vendor was a woman about my age and for a moment we warmly reminisced about our favourite rock bands. She told me that she’d hung onto her teenage albums for many years. Then one sad day, she was involved in a highway motor vehicle accident in the Fraser Canyon while in the middle of moving house. Her box of records flew out of the back of her truck on impact and tumbled a long way down to the river at the bottom of a steep, rocky hillside. Lost forever. She said she was physically fine after the accident, but was sure her heart had broken a little that day, just like her records. Over the years since then, she’d rebuilt an even larger vinyl collection, but had far too many now and felt it was time to let some go. My husband was patiently waiting for me, so I tucked Rumours back inside the box, telling her I didn’t have a turntable. She told me that was easily fixable. Is it? I wondered. Then I thanked her for her time and carried on, thinking it might be kind of fun to have a turntable again. Silly, though. Why would I bother when I already had the ability to listen to Fleetwood Mac anytime I felt like it? What was the point of going back in time? Why add unnecessary clutter to a home already filled with too much stuff? So that was that. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

A few weeks later, I was scrolling through online Black Friday deals when I came across a suitcase-style, portable turntable that was similar to the one I used to tote around with me when I was a kid. Only this new modern one was nicer and a much better colour than the plain, two-toned brown one that my parents gave to me one long ago Christmas morning. It was also on sale and a reasonable price by today’s standards for something frivolous. So I purchased it on a whim, then proceeded to forget about it over the days to come while busy gift buying for family and friends. It wasn’t until early December that I received a shipping notification for the purchase. I was surprised how quickly I’d forgotten about it, and then found myself daydreaming about setting up the turntable over the holidays to listen to the small collection of combined records that my husband and I had stored away…somewhere. I told him I remembered seeing them not that long ago, and he laughed at me because he said it had been years since we last saw them. Besides, he was pretty sure we’d sold them at a garage sale or donated them, he couldn’t remember which. I felt like an idiot and my embarrassment must have shown on my face because he made a valiant effort to go searching for what he knew had to be long gone. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He was hoping that he was wrong about it. That maybe the years had blurred both our memories and somewhere a box was buried like a forgotten time capsule. No such luck. They were gone and I felt unreasonably sad about it. I was being silly again, no doubt about it. Clearly those records had meant little to me or they’d still be hanging around, just like the dusty, treasured books I’ve hung onto for years because I still can’t part with any of them.

So now I had a turntable on its way and nothing to play on it. I kept thinking about the Fleetwood Mac one I’d recently let slip through my fingers. My husband reminded me I could buy records in secondhand shops and even new albums, if I really wanted them. Problem was, I wanted my old ones back. I wanted to remember what I’d once decided to keep, even after there wasn’t a use for them anymore. The special ones. The soundtrack of my youth. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t visualize the albums that were missing. Soon I realized this wasn’t about the lost records. It was about time moving too quickly to fully comprehend its swift passage. If I could forget about not holding onto those records, what else might I forget in the years to come? I thought about the woman who’d rebuilt her teenage album collection after everything had gone tumbling down a hillside. I didn’t want to rebuild my old collection. I didn’t even really want a new collection. What I was searching for was the girl who used to somehow balance a thick stack of albums under one arm, while also firmly clutching the handle of a suitcase turntable. Somewhere in time, she’s skipping her way to her best friend’s house to share the A side of a new record because every vinyl collector knows the A side has the best and most memorable songs.

As for the new turntable? It got lost in the mail over the Christmas delivery rush. Then it got rerouted and I forgot about it all over again. Miraculously, it showed up on my doorstep on New Year’s Day, of all days. A gift from past me to present me. And a reminder that everything important reveals itself again at exactly the right time.

Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac (Official Music Video) Hope the song makes you smile!