Wednesday, January 6, 2010

PINK WAS HER COLOR . . .

BACK IN 1955 IT SEEMS

Sometimes when a blog topic is urgently sought late at night, I resort to a reading of a few pages of my late mother's many diaries. Tonight is one of those nights.

I may find a few of her BEST entries to fill out a half page of blogging to cover me here for tonight.

PINK is the choice of words in Mother's 1955 log tonight. I did not remember that she dressed me in a PINK shirt for my 32nd birthday. Ditto for the seventh birthday of my son now out in California.

And here's an entry about her floral gardening. "I went over in Aunt Hattie's backyard tonight and dug up half of her PINK rose bush." Now I presume that Mother had Aunt Hattie's permission for that project.

For many a year, Mother had the BEST flower garden on Pleadwell Street.

Then a few days later Mother wrote she went over to Aunt Hattie's place again and dug up the rest of the PINK rose bush. Still later she planted the roses in her garden near the big grapevine.

About a month later the diary indicates Mother pondered about painting her fence and that word PINK came up again but in her notes about painting the fence she didn't mention PINK.

The night she finished the fence, however, she went downtown and bought Aunt Mary a PINK dress.

And then while on vacation at Nana's house Marcy (yes, Marcy) spent a lot of times playing with her new paper doll set. Uh, it was not blue , orange or green - PINK.

My dad , the superintendent of mails at the local post office, worked a second job at nights for several years as a cashier at the Raynham Dog Track.

He was friendly with a lot of the other fellows working there but I didn't know - or at least remember - that they had a summer cottage up in Maine, probably a getaway poker place.

In September of 1955 the fellows went up the at the beginning of the month for a few days to clean up. and repaint the cottage. I wonder if they painted it PINK?

Just as an aside to bring history up to date, that track, long rated the BEST dog track in the country, has just held its last racing season.

The Massachusetts legislature, after years of controversy betwen the industry and animal protectionists, has outlawed dog tracks in the Bay State.

And this was the BEST I could do for a blog tonight. If you follow Yarntangler's blogs, you will see that tonight she outdid me.

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