Tag Archives: friends

Camp, childhood, fear, Halloween, Humor, memories, Mental Illness, Scary, subconscious

Halloween is Coming!

August 21, 2019 Sue St. Blaine 2 Comments

Is it Halloween yet? Trick question, it’s always Halloween.

When the chill comes into the air and the days get shorter, Chris and are giddy waiting for everyone else to start putting out spooky things and black clothes and Addams Family memes. Then we put on our best boots and long coats, go to the Halloween stores and skip across the parking lot singing “It’s the most wonderful time…of the yeeeaaarrrrr…..”

A few years ago we were picking out some serving dishes shaped like skulls and a nice print for the living room. A young lady working there asked us if we needed help. “Can I help you find anyt….oooooh, you shop here for all year, don’t you?” We giggled prettily and skipped away. Yes, we do shop there for all year. Our goal is to be Gomez and Mortica and I think we’re well on our way.

fear 5 — Every home should have a plague mask.

We love the fog belt in San Francisco, where there are many ravens hopping around being ravens, crows forming murders, fog horns singing a mournful song to the sea. Sorry, got lost in thought.

It’s normal to enjoy being scared, or Stephen King would be a copy-editor. As adults we know these things can’t really hurt us. But it gets us right in the fear receptors, something deep inside, whatever it is that scares each person. A big one for me is dread, what isn’t seen. I don’t like jump scares, I like the gut squeezing build-up, or the just barely perceptible mumbling or the thing that morphs into a menace that shouldn’t be.

fear 4 — If you know what this is, you’ve seen one of my favorite scary movies ever. (The Haunting, 1963 if you haven’t.)

As an adult, I know that none of this is real but as a kid, oh it’s serious business. This happened when I was about 7 or 8, and it was one of the best moments of fear-imprinting ever, so I share it with you. (Fear-imprinting may not be a thing, I just thought it sounded cool.)

We had gone to visit an aunt who lived outside Chicago in a huge old three-story house, with dozens of closets to play hide-and-go-seek, and a giant basement. As a girl in a one-story ranch house with no basement in suburban California, this was utterly alien to me. But as bizarre as the basement was, it was the furnace, a coal furnace, that blew off the top of my vivid imagination head. I had never even conceived of such a thing, and except for a steam locomotive, I’d never seen coal used as fuel.

One day, I went to the basement alone, it must have been a game of “Truth or Dare.” I pulled the chain of each bare light bulb as I went down the stairs, step by squeaky wooden step, and down onto the cement floor of this otherworldly space, and walked slowly forward, my eyes on my feet. I could hear my heartbeat and very little else. A few more steps and then…I looked up.

And there it was, this giant beast. It was staring right at me! It had many red, rectangular eyes, angry eyes, but its mouth! Huge, gaping, glowing yellow and white. I stood, unable to move as it fixed its red eyes on me, as it frowned its open-mouth frown. What do I do? All I knew is that it was going to devour me messily with a great deal of noise that no one would hear because I was way down in the basement which was larger than my entire house. After a lifetime fit into a minute or two, it hissed at me! A long, cat-like hiss. I was going to die.

fear 3 — It didn’t look like this, but this one looks like Bender from Futurama and that’s funny.

I have no memory of running through the paths of boxes, Christmas ornaments and forgotten toys to the stairs and up, but the next I knew I was in the brightly lit kitchen. I told my older sister and brother what had happened and they responded exactly the way an older sister and brother would, they laughed themselves dizzy.

I had kept my eyes on my feet because a long-accepted rule of kid-lore states, “if I can’t see the scary thing, it can’t hurt me.” The rule includes the subset “if my limbs are under the covers it can’t get me.”

Is this really kid stuff though? Is it any different than horoscopes or T.V. psychics? It’s a very small step from “there’s a ghost in my closet” to “there’s a ghost in my closet, call the Ghost Hunters.” It’s the same need, I think, to be afraid of something we know deep inside can’t hurt us, but we believe just enough to be afraid.

fear 9 — Ermastus is offended by the stereotype, quite frankly.

Anyway, when you watch a scary movie, especially a slasher type, there’s always that moment when someone does something that makes you think “No! Don’t go there, do go toward the sound, you dumbass!” Then you’re annoyed because nobody would ever be that stupid, I mean, who would ever be that stupid?

Um, about that.

Chris and I were visiting friends in Petaluma. It was a cold night and there was steam coming out of a manhole cover, that’s normal. But we got closer and heard what sounded like both metal scraping and a sort of growl. Did we – A: Cross the street with some urgency B: Note it, and walk around it or C: Walk right up to it, stand on either side, lean over and say “ooooh, what’s that noise?”

C. We did C. We would have been dead before the opening credits. Now when we watch scary movies and someone says, “Nobody would ever be that stupid.” we just sort of glance away and munch our popcorn. Yeah, nobody would be that stupid.

Sometimes as a skeptic I get called on to help someone logic out of a situation they can’t explain. Sometimes that answer is very, very funny.

Imagine this setting. A big group of us are camping beside a river. It’s dark, some people are getting as crazy as near 50-year-old people do. (Wooo hoo! We’re gonna stay up until 11 tonight!) We weren’t really roughing it though, there was a building with toilets and showers.

So I’m sitting there near the fire, and two of my dear friends run down the path from the bathrooms, linked arm in arm, scared and laughing, wanting me to go with them to check out a ghost in the bathroom. Ok, fine. I set down my sparkling water, and off we went.

As we walk into the bathroom, my girls are giggling but also scared (I really should have messed with them.) “So it looks like your ghost has great taste, it carries a Louis Vuitton bag.” That was the first clue. Ghosts don’t have jobs, how can they afford to buy stuff? Think about it! Anyway, I moved further in and I heard the “ghost,” who was a woman, by herself in the shower, and was in fact moaning.

No ghost, just a woman with little shame and a lot of stamina.

So we laughed that release of tension laugh, and we talk about that to this day. So yeah, it’s not just kids who do this, most of us do to some degree or another.

One doesn’t have to be Gomez and Morticia year-round like we are to love Halloween. It’s just fun, it’s fun to be something or someone you’re not, just for a night you give yourself permission to be silly or play pretend. It’s not just for kids, dammit! You can go play too! Go look for the creepy monster in the basement, do the mind-numbingly stupid thing and lean over the manhole that clearly contains a chain dragging monster waiting to break free, or investigate the ghost with a designer bag and needs that just can’t wait.

It’s August 21 as I write this, just a little over two months until the big day. I do love Christmas, but it’s a different animal. I try to be a little Dickensesque and keep Halloween in my heart all year. Play, laugh at absurdities, be nice to kids, and never, ever go toward the creepy sound in the attic barefoot, dressed in a flimsy nightgown and carrying a candle.

Camp, depression, Family, Humor, Mental Illness, music

Summer Camps, Musicals, and German-ish Words

May 28, 2019 Sue St. Blaine Leave a comment

Being raised as a Baptist, I know three things well:

1 – Potlucks will always have too many potato salads
2 – Catholics are amused by grape juice communion
3 – Summer camps

My dad’s employer had a camp reserved for them, and we went every year when I was a kid.

Now, when I say camp, I’d like you to imagine please the 1970s/early 1980s suburban camps, with hot meals in the dining hall, large patio with shuffleboard and ping pong. Our tents were wood frame “hogans,” basically a cabin with a canvas roof. Think Brady Bunch with fewer footballs to the nose.

You probably can’t tell, but these are ancient family snapshots.

There was also a creek to swim in of course. Now, this is the Tuolumne River. If you aren’t familiar, this river is from snowmelt. It is clear, beautiful, and exactly as warm as you would imagine liquid snow to be. But it’s what we were used to and we loved it.

One time my sister and I were heading back to the “tent” for a reason lost in time. When we got there we flipped the door flap and there, hanging all upside down, was a teeny tiny bat having a nice snooze. In hindsight, he was perfectly adorable. But 9 or 10 year old me was not enchanted.

I screamed so loudly that the poor little fella sort of shook. The next morning at breakfast, as we all stood in the line for food (no bacon, will the suffering never end!) a few people in line were comparing notes about the piercing scream that came out of the woods the day before. Laughter and jokes commenced as I crouched down further into a metaphorical hole. Bev, as I recall, was zero help.

camp 8 — Lookit her…brushin’ back her hair all innocent-like.

Anyway, traumatized bats aside, it was fun to run around without supervision, to have a “summer boyfriend,” a local boy who once rescued me as my inner tube got caught in “rapids” that put me in very grave danger of bumping slightly into a rock and being annoyed. But I recall everyone on the river bank screaming and my hero running into the very dangerous rapids, grabbing my hand and pulling me slowly out of harm’s way. He was a dreamboat, I tell you.

And then we left and I never saw him again. Such is the life of a song from Grease.

These were good times.

When I was a little older, I went to a Music and Drama camp.

MAD camp was fun; I was around like-minded people, and I got to show off my voice. Next to writing, singing was my greatest joy. The councilors would choose a piece for us, we would practice and do a performance at the end when the parents got there, which was exactly as corny and wholesome as it sounds.

One year they chose “Godspell.” I loved this musical, and I was chosen to sing a solo of “Learn Your Lessons Well.”

I know this song perfectly, I had sung it before. I figured I could work on other things and just ran the song through my head once or twice. Easy!

Here’s the thing though, this is a rapid, wordy song, there is little time to think. When I got up to sing it at the show I realized that thinking something is not the same as singing something.

I don’t have a clear memory of it except to say that my heart started to pound, my eyes bugged out an inch from my head, and the sweat poured off my body and made a pool on the floor as deep as our freezing cold river. Those last two may be exaggerations but only just.

I got through it. The director told me I repeated a couple of lines, but overall it went fine. My parents and friends said they had no idea that it had happened.

Many years later while I was studying opera (not as impressive as it sounds as I still don’t know how to read music,) I told my instructor about that, and he told me a secret.

When he was applying for his scholarship, he had chosen a song in German that he knew well.

He got up on stage, staring at the faces of the people who would decide if he could afford the Academy or not, and started to sing. Halfway through, his brain simply froze. He listened to the piano between verses hoping to jar his memory but…nothing. So he started to sing again on his cue and simply sang words that sounded vaguely German-ish but meant absolutely nothing. On the next verse he got his brain back from whatever frozen tundra of fear it had been hiding and finished the song perfectly.

He got the scholarship.

He had the opportunity to ask one of the professors how, exactly, had that happened? The seasoned performer told him, “Of course we knew what had happened. Of course we knew you were singing nonsense. But you did not stop. You filled that gap with words that fit the meter and sounded German, the average listener would never have known. Being perfect is advisable in performance, but being able to get past a mistake is truly impressive.”

“Being perfect is advisable in performance, but being able to get past a mistake is truly impressive.”

See? And I’ll bet you wondered how I was going to tie this into my intentions for this blog.

Both of us, in varying levels of importance, froze and could have failed. I did not practice, and he became overwhelmed with stress.

But we kept going and we got through and we did well; we did our best.

Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. If you fall, that’s ok, get back up and keep going.

Don’t worry what anyone else thinks, because there’s a good chance they didn’t even see you skip a beat.

dream, Family, Humor, Mental Illness, Photos, Railroad

Memories of Spooky Romantic Rail from a proto-goth

May 6, 2019 Sue St. Blaine 2 Comments

EDIT May 8, 2021

The Golden Spike Anniversary was in 2019. The rest of this is timeless. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Guess what I’m doing? If you’re in my general circle you know because I won’t shut up about it.

Chris and I are going on a road trip, listening to podcasts in the daytime and then spooky old time radio shows after dark, and eating cheese-poofs with chopsticks because it’s tidier. We’re fancy.

https://www.relicradio.com/otr/show/horror/

We’re going to Utah for the 150^th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad — (aka Golden Spike) May 10, 1869.

https://www.visitutah.com/places-to-go/parks-outdoors/golden-spike/

One of the line of the largest steam locomotives ever, Big Boy No. 4014 is there, and I get to see it.

https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/4014/

There are probably about five people reading this who know what that is and also, are excited about it. Maybe six. But those half dozen folks are really impressed.

Rail BIG BOY 6 — Yes rail fans, I know, this is 4019, not 4014. Don’t freak out.

On Friday morning there is the ceremony of the Golden Spike, and I will possibly cry because that is a thing that I do at any given moment.

I come by this passion honestly. In the ‘50s my dad became a member of a railway museum that opened in 1946.

http://www.wrm.org/

I cannot properly put into words how much I love this place. It is a shiny blissful memory in a childhood that was not always so happy.

My sister and I had absolute free rein to a degree that my mother probably would not have approved of.

We would ride the cars, swing the heavy poles when we got to the end of the line to go back the other way. This would have been in the late ’70s to mid-’80s so I would have started when I was in the 11-year-old range. Not sure we’d get away with that now.

Rail POLE 9 — Those poles are heavy and wobbly and I loved it!

We’d poke around the car barn and its many pointy bits and pieces, run down the mainline tracks to find dead sheep. After closing time dad would let us run one of the cars.

I also got to work in the bookstore, an old building warmed entirely by a Franklin stove. In the cold days of winter, it was perfection. There was an old-timey cash register I got to use. Eleven-year-old me felt very important.

“The House” where the guys stayed was full of dusty, weathered antiques, mismatch dishes, a probably-safe-why-not fireplace. I would spend hours in there too, enjoying the privilege of being my dad’s daughter. It was private, set far back from the public areas, but we came and went as we pleased. There were also many stray cats and kittens who would sleep in the planter boxes in the sunroom. We’d pick them up one by one, snuggle their kitten faces, plop them back down when their mothers came back. There was a small room crammed with bunk beds; this is where mom drew the line. We always stayed in a hotel in Fairfield. In hindsight, I would have done exactly the same.

Since I grew up with all this, it was normal, and I took it completely for granted.

I would like to go back in time right now and just sit there. Actually, I just did.

In the summer the valley was surface of the sun hot so we would alter our activities accordingly, so we did not actually die.

But the winter, the winter was magic.

There’s a thing called “tule fog” that is thick and cold and billowing. It hugs the ground in a flowing blanket that made me feel calm and contemplative, as it blew wisps of ground cover that made everything unreal. There were few tourists there if any, and only a skeleton crew, so I could be absolutely alone most of the day. I would sit by the duck pond and imagine that I was the last person on earth, that the ducks were my only source of food and I’d have to scrounge to get by in this new, human-less world. I would walk through the fog around the trees and grass, around the tracks, back into the empty house and imagine utter solitude. It was bliss.

Tucked inside this blanket of fog was the nonfunctional steam locomotive #334. I bonded with her very early, and she will be in my heart for the rest of my life.

That’s her in the featured photo, as I knew her back then. But this is the view I generally had, leaning out the window of the cab staring down the track as I flew along to points unknown.

Rail LONG SHOT 4 — “The House” and the book store are dead ahead.

There was a decaying wooden seat inside, held together only by habit. Sometimes when I sat down I could hear it creak out a warning, there will be splinters soon, but I didn’t care. My heart and my mind were worlds away. For hours and hours, I would go away.

The levers and knobs inside still moved a bit so I could control it, and the cover of the firebox would open with the grind and squeak of very old metal so I could stoke the fire.

Every now and then Casey Jones was the engineer. I was already fairly morbid.

Rail CASEY JONES 8 — An American legend. If you don’t know who he was, check it out. It’s a heroic and tragic story, complete with a folk song.

Anyway, sometimes I would be on a track, sometimes I would be in the clouds. Generally the wind blew so strong that with my head out the window it was all I could hear. I was absolutely free as I was nowhere else. My dad was doing his thing, any siblings were doing older sibling stuff, so no one was watching me, no one was bothering me, no one was telling me to get out of that fantastically dangerous, tetanus-ridden jungle gym.

It was magic.

So off I go to this incredible event, this huge event, and I will be there. I will write again about it I’m sure, and I’ll post some photos. Probably not ones where I’m crying but, besides that.

I hope that even if you are not a rail fan, you can enjoy the story and pictures. Maybe you’ll find yourself getting lost in the daydreams and fantasies, the utterly romantic and spooky glory that is rail.

Rail 1 — Dream fodder. I don’t think I would ever leave.

Family, Humor, Mental Illness

Dear Friends, Indian Weddings, and Many Safety Pins

April 15, 2019 Sue St. Blaine 5 Comments

A dear friend I haven’t seen in years is visiting this week, so I am all about her and the niece and nephew I’ve never met and must dote over like a proper auntie.

We’ve been friends a long time, so there are many memories to be had, but I thought I’d share a few of my favorites from her wedding in Mumbai.

She married an Indian man I approve of (important, he’s got to be good enough for my girl!) Chris and I traveled to India for the wedding. We had never been there or attended a Hindu wedding, so we had no idea what we were doing. Wanting to be good guests, we learned as much as we could, but there were a few things we missed.

We dressed in traditional clothes, he in a lime green kurta and me in a beautiful cranberry sari. We bought the sari the day we arrived so we didn’t have time to learn how to wrap it. They sent us away with detailed instructions, a pin here, a tuck there, how hard could it be?

Friend visit 1 — To the ladies who wrap these every day, respect!

The next morning, one day after arriving and no time for coffee, we took the instructions and began to wrap. No problem.

The shop had sent us on our way with a few large safety pins, should be plenty! One frantic call to the front desk later, and a hotel staffer appeared at our door with many additional safety pins, because there was no way this garment was going to stay on my body without dozens of pins.

So Chris wraps, I hold, he pins, it falls, he swears, he wraps, I hold…this goes on for some time, and I am anxious we will be late. One does not show up to weddings late.

Finally, it is staying put. The pallu (the fabric draped over the shoulder) reached only about a foot down, but we figure, well we tried. It’s fine. We’re going to be late.

Off to the front desk to ask for a cab.

The lovely lady looks at me, smiles sweetly, and says “Oh, you look so pretty! Would you like me to help you wrap it?” I looked up “diplomatic” in the dictionary, and there she was.

Off to a back room to be entirely re-wrapped.

She and another lady set about removing it, disconnecting the pins, and rewrapping. This took a while, and I’m stressing; we are going to be so late for the wedding. But they finished, the extra fabric cascaded down my back. I thanked them profusely and scurried away.

Off to the waiting taxi.

Western people, you know that you do not show up late to a wedding. Never, ever. If you do, you walk into the silent, reverent room, all heads swivel to stare at this breach of WASP rules, and the walk of shame begins until you slink down into a pew. That is what I’m used to.

We tell the cab driver that we are in a terrible hurry, we will be late for a wedding we’ve come halfway around the globe to attend. He understands and promptly stops for gas.

Once we were finally on our way, dizzy from no food and more importantly no coffee, we arrive at the hotel. We enter with fear and caffeine headaches and…there’s my friend, the bride, sitting in a chair watching with everyone else. Part of the ceremony is taking place without her.

She looks up and smiles. “Oh hi! There’s coffee and food in the back if you’d like.”

Do you know those cartoons where someone is running away quickly, and all that’s left is a cloud in their shape? Yeah.

Later the groom joins us, and we tell him that we were so afraid we’d be late. He smiles and says, a little confused, “there is no late.”

My friend’s sister and brother were not able to make it, so my husband and I stood in for them. I cannot tell you how wonderful that was, being directly involved, performing a Hindu ritual on such an important day. It was an experience I will never forget.

After the wedding, there was a few hours break until the reception. Chris and I were deeply jet-lagged and on a stress come-down, so we went back to the hotel for a nap and then a change of clothes. We were excited to dress properly, so we had bought two different outfits, my evening wear was a salwar kameez, and Chris had a beautiful purple kurta. Feeling good, feeling proper, off we go to the hotel.

We walked in and saw all the Indian men dressed entirely in Western clothes. To a person, suits and ties, not one traditional outfit to be found.

The swiveled heads I expected earlier happened now, only amused rather than eye-stabby. Chris later joked with a few guests that no one at the wedding actually knew us, but we had shown up and won’t go away. The groom’s brother laughed so hard nearly lost the ability to stay upright. If you live to make people laugh like we do, this was almost the highest praise possible, just under peeing oneself and passing out.

That was in 2011. My friend settled down in New York, but it seems like she is still in Mumbai; I’ve only seen her once since that time and have never met her children.

Now they will be here, and I will do the auntie thing, and there will be presents and bonding because kids tend to love me.

My great hope is that they are not afraid of all the spooky stuff in here. I’ll make little goths out of them in no time.

See you Monday!

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