The Francis Howell School District grew rapidly in the 1970s and needed many new buildings. Jeff and Kathy attended Fairmount Elementary School the first year it opened. The school filled so rapidly that, when Jeff was in sixth grade, he attended another new school–Henderson Junior High. I remember that the library had a minimal number of books, including a single set of encyclopedias for reference. As an increasing number of students attended that school, a new junior high school was constructed on the property, and the building Jeff attended was renamed Francis Howell North High School.
Jeff attended school in that same building from sixth through twelfth grade. The building was oddly constructed and had a confusing system of room numbers. Parents were given school maps to find the classrooms for parent-teacher conferences. During the time Jeff and our other children attended that school, additions to the building kept coming and the layout became even more challenging to navigate. Jeff and a good friend of his gave a speech together on graduation day. Like all graduation speeches, it was forgettable, except for one remark that I still remember. In essence, the boys mentioned that every year, they were in the same building, but every year, the front door was in a different place.
That school was not built to last. Fairmount Elementary School is still doing well, as is the second Henderson Junior High, but Francis Howell North built an entirely new high school on the property and demolished the original building this past year.
Note: Cost overruns on the new building were extraordinary–$86 million became $164 million. Due this cost overrun, 71 other projects expected to be funded by $240 million provided for district building improvements by the voter-approved Proposition S in 2020 are currently on hold. The state auditor is investigating the building costs and the fact that a former district employee hired a low-rated management firm owned by his brother to oversee the project.Our tax dollars at work, right?
The new high school is finished, and the original building is now a pile of rubble. In contrast, the high school my Grandma S. attended (graduated in 1911) is still standing and so is the high school my father attended (graduated 1937).
We bought a new side-by-side refrigerator in 1997. A number of years ago, the icemaker stopped making ice in a controlled manner, but we don’t use much ice, so it was easy to turn the icemaker on when we needed a bucket of ice, then turn it off until we used up that supply, then turn it back on. No big deal, and everything else worked fine. Everyone–friends, salesmen, and any type of serviceman who came to our house to fix anything over the years–told us to keep our old appliances as long as we could, because the new ones are expensive, and they don’t last very long. The servicemen often told us tales of things they fixed in the first two or three years of a new appliance’s life, and of appliances that needed to be replaced after only five years.
Time went on, and the icemaker began to cause problems. It dispensed undersized ice cubes, dropped non-stop ice cubes into a glass, and randomly allowed ice cubes to slip out of the chute and fall to the hardwood floor, where they melted if we didn’t hear them drop and pick them up immediately. It was becoming a major nuisance. Sure, we could have manually made ice cubes in trays, but the refrigerator was 28 years old, so we decided to put it to rest.
We liked our side-by-side refrigerator, and we like the water/ice dispenser on the outside of the unit, making it unnecessary to open either the freezer to scoop ice out of a tray, or the refrigerator to fill a glass with chilled water. Well, that style is fading away and is available in only a few models. Nearly all of the new models have French doors on top and a freezer drawer at the bottom with a large box for the icemaker to drop cubes into–thus using up freezer space and requiring the user to open the freezer to scoop ice in a glass. We settled on a Bosch refrigerator because (1) it’s a very good brand, and (2) they had two models with an icemaker/water dispenser on the outside of the door.
Here’s what we’ve enjoyed for 28 years.
The installation guys surveyed our house for the best route in and out with a refrigerator and measured all the doorways and both refrigerators before deciding what Ted and I already knew–the exterior door in the kitchen is the best one to use for this. Unfortunately, the new refrigerator was wider than the doors would allow, so the guys had to remove the interior door and the storm door to bring in the new refrigerator.
They took the doors off the old refrigerator, and there was no dolly in sight, so I thought they were going to slide it across the room to the doorway. I didn’t want the hardwood floor scratched, so I asked if they planned to put something under the old unit. “Oh, no,” the senior guy said, “we’ll just carry it to the truck.” “Yikes!” I thought. “They must be really strong!”
Well, each man had a harness that circled his waist with an over-the-shoulder strap that circled from one hip up and over the opposite shoulder, then back to the hip. In the photo below, you can see the long strap they slipped under the refrigerator and a little bit of the harness shoulder strap on the man’s left side. Each man hooked one end of the long strap to the harness at his waist. When they picked up the refrigerator, I could see how the belt was holding the weight and distributing it over their entire bodies, rather than taxing only their arms and shoulders. All they had to do was balance the refrigerator to keep it from tipping over.
They carefully maneuvered the refrigerator through the doorway and parked it on the patio, leaving the belt to pick it up again later to carry the refrigerator to the truck. I think Ted and I could have carried a refrigerator with a belt and harness like that. It was a great system!
Here’s our new refrigerator. Neither of us was thrilled about the French doors and the freezer drawer, but as time goes on, we’re getting used to both and we like it. Best of all, we can get a drink of cold water and/or dispense ice without opening any doors and letting the cold air out.
We’ve heeded the advice to keep our old appliances until they wear out. When we updated our kitchen in 2023, we kept our old refrigerator and stove, planning to replace them when they wore out. Well, the refrigerator is gone now, but the stove still lives. We bought it in or around 1993, making it over 30 years old. It still works perfectly and has never been repaired. When it dies, we’ll get a new one and then all of our kitchen appliances will be stainless steel instead of white. This will probably happen just in time for stainless steel appliances to go out of style. I’ve already seen brightly colored appliances in stores and I’m half-expecting poppy red, harvest gold, and avocado green appliances from the 1970s to return, because retro is “in.”
P.S. Our first washer and dryer lasted 22 years. Our current one is 30 years old and still working, with only minor repairs over the years (two thermostats for the dryer and a solenoid for the washer). They don’t make ’em like they used to!
Before the weather got too cold, I thought I should scratch some little jobs off my list.
The stain on our mailbox post and on the front porch support posts has faded badly. Ted and I finally drove to the home decorating store to buy stain, and then I went to work. If you look at the bottom of the mailbox post in the photo below, you can see how faded the color was before I freshened it with new stain.
The same was true of the porch posts, but they look better now. I was wearing a boot for an ankle injury, so Ted helped me by climbing the ladder to stain the high parts and I stuck to what I could reach.
Okay, the little outdoor jobs were finished, but I still had one little indoor job to do. We have a jet tub in the upstairs bathroom. Because of the extra depth of the tub and the placement of the jets, shower curtains are too long–unless you want the jets to massage the shower curtain rather than your body. That’s not a problem for me–I just cut the curtain shorter and hem it.
We had the bathroom re-painted as part of the 2023 interior update of our house, so we bought a new shower curtain for the bathroom to celebrate. The piece I cut from the bottom of the curtain was long enough to make a matching valance for the bathroom window. That piece of fabric has been waiting for me to do something with it for over a year, and I finally did.
Obviously, the cure for procrastination is to just do it. Now I can’t help wondering, “What took me so long?”
We have had absolutely beautiful fall weather since early September. We continued to have warm temperatures in the upper 70s and upper 80s and we even set a few daytime and overnight high temperature records. During that time, the trees displayed their beautiful fall colors.
Unfortunately, the beautiful weather included no measurable rain for the entire month of October. We made up for that with 4+ inches of rain last week, then 7 inches of rain last night, and severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings both times. I think that gets our area out of its drought status! The storms were followed by a cold front, so I don’t think we’re going to experience any more days in the upper 80s this year. It was wonderful while it lasted, but now it’s time for hot chocolate and snuggly sweaters and blankets.
*The title quote is attributed to William Cullen Bryant
With Christmas not that far in the future, I started thinking about our holiday decorations. Ironically, now that our children are grown and Ted and I are retired, it seems I no longer have time for craft projects. That’s a shame, because I enjoy doing a variety of crafts. It surprises me how many holiday decorations I’ve made over the years.
Before we had children, I worked for the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Tabulations for the first computerized decennial census were in progress, and computer punch cards were everywhere. My office mates and I (and lots of other people with access to used punch cards) made Christmas wreaths from them.
Years later, my friends and I became interested in pinecone Christmas wreaths. FYI, cemeteries are great places to find free pinecones. They plant a lot of evergreen trees in cemeteries! I made two wreaths for our home and eight more as Christmas gifts.
When our kids were little, I knew they would enjoy an Advent calendar, so I made a calendar and the required 24 ornaments. When she had children of her own, Kari and I made Advent calendars together so she could hang one in her house as well.
I gave one of the calendars to Thom. Some of the ornaments showed wear, so Katie made replacement ornaments for their children to hang. The tradition continues!
My mother taught me to knit and crochet. I enjoy knitting, but crochet? Not so much. Still, when I see a pattern I really want to make, I’ll crochet. One year, I crocheted Christmas angels.
I admired the tatted Christmas ornaments that Ted’s mother made, so she taught me to tat. I’ve made countless tatted ornaments for myself and to give to others as gifts.
One year, I saw a ceramic Nativity set I liked, and I decided that I should make one. I’d never worked with ceramics before, and most people seem to start by making a mug or an ashtray. I didn’t want either one, so I reasoned that making a 15-piece Nativity set wasn’t any different than making a mug or an ashtray–I just had to do the same things to more pieces. I made a Nativity set for Ted and myself and two more to give to our parents as Christmas gifts that year.
Another year, I made felt appliqúed stockings for our (at the time) three children. After Kari was born, I thought she should have a matching stocking, but there was no way to match the older felt stockings, so I made counted cross-stitch stockings for all four kids. Surprising and gratifying to me, they still hang them. I can’t speak for Thom’s stockings because I don’t have a recent picture of his Christmas decorations.
Jeff lent his counted cross-stitch stocking to his grandson, Ollie. Does that make it a “heritage” stocking from Ollie’s great-grandma (me)?
Kathy hangs both stockings–the felt appliqúed one and the counted cross-stitched one.
Kari hangs hers near a table-sized Christmas tree.
I made this tree skirt a long time ago–probably when I made the felt-appliqúed stockings for the kids.
Just thinking about these projects makes me want to make something new, but now that the children are grown and I’m retired, I don’t seem to have the time. How can that be??!! I think I should set a 2025 goal to make some new craft projects.
