It is Friday and time for the LBC theme. This week Gaelikaa chose “The Wildest Thing I Did in my Youth” . I am posting a story that I did years ago for Gate Night for two reasons. First I still have a bad head cold and second, there is no reason to write something new because this event was not only my wildest, but was also my one and only brush with the law. It resulted in what my daughter Kristi, (a Police Officer) laughingly calls ” Mom’s Black and White Anxiety” . Please remember to visit other bloggers from the Loose Bloggers Consortium. They are listed under Writers Consortium on the right side of my web blog.

When I was growing up in Minnesota, the night before Halloween was called Gate Night and was the night of mischief. I think it was called Gate Night because young people took the gates off of people’s fences and hid them in various places. I know of no one who actually did this, but in my neighborhood, it was a night where kids soaped store windows and tipped over garbage cans.

I could hardly wait to be old enough to participate in this mischief. It wasn’t parent sanctioned of course, but I have the feeling that they looked the other way on that night. At last, I reached the age of eight and along with five of my neighborhood friends set out after dinner to have a little fun. It was already dark and we soaped the window of Stanek Grocery and Kranz’s drugstore and then headed for the alley behind the nearby apartments. They were about a block or two away. The rule was that you never tipped a garbage can on your own block. After all it might be yours or a neighbors and you would be stuck cleaning up.

We approached noisily and full of adventure. Unfortunately, the police lay in wait in the alley with the lights off on their patrol car. Everyone picked up a can and I chose a large silver colored beauty filled to the top with ripe garbage, bottles, and papers.. Just as I picked it up, the lights on the patrol car flashed. There I stood guilty as hell, right in their spotlight. Petrified is hardly the word for what I felt. My legs turned to rubber, my stomach turned upside down and my arms became permanently glued to the sides of that garbage can.

I couldn’t put it down. Not for love nor life. Everyone else dropped their garbage cans and ran between buildings. Not me, hugging that silver albatross, I made a beeline straight down the center of the alley with the police car quietly following me at something less than a mile an hour. I know they were laughing, because I glanced over my shoulder and I could see these two huge faces in the patrol car window grinning. I still kept running.

The street loomed ahead and as I made a hysterical dash across it for the next alley, I still held the garbage can firmly in my arms. The police car mercifully turned right onto 36th street heading toward Harriet Avenue and disappeared into the night. Some more important call probably came in on their radio or they knew they had already scared the bejezus out of me making me powerless. I finally placed my dreadful treasure on the ground, sat down next to it, totally out of breath, and vowed never to lead a life of crime at least, until the next Gate Night.

The cold bug has caught up with me. I spend a few days last week with Kristi and the twins. I had a great time visiting Danica’s Nursery School and Eric’s Head Start Program. It amazes me how Theresa and Kristi juggle schedules, driving kids to and fro, and accomplish all that goes with raising three year olds.

I can’t believe I have a cold. Well, that is not quite true. Twins and Kristi were in various stages of fighting their own colds so I am not certain which one gave me this wretched one, but it is here and I am travelling no further than bed to couch and back.

The dogs are my constant companions. Sammi loves to cuddle close to me on the couch. Lucky and LuAnn are content to play in the backyard and have not begged to go for their afternoon walk or if they do, it is only half-heartedly.

Bob keeps me supplied with hot tea and a good rub-down with menthol Vicks which as old-fashioned as it is. . . works.

Once again it is Friday and time for a topic chosen by the LBC, a group of writers who take turns choosing a subject to write on and to post weekly. This time the subject is” Fifteen Minutes of Fame”. I have listed all the writers for this group on my sidebar under Consortium Writers and I invite you to go to their blogs and enjoy their different writing styles and their creative approach to the subject.

I think that all of us have had fifteen minutes of fame, but I am willing to bet that not too many have had their fifteen minutes of fame with a 280 pound gorilla.

In the 1980’s my husband John and I were active in the Cat Fancy. We had converted our double garage into a cattery and were breeding and showing Manx cats. It was hard work and it was challenging, but oh so much fun when we left a cat show with a blue ribbon or two.

As it happened at that time, a famous study of the Gorilla’s ability to communicate was taking place in Northern California. Dr. Penny Patterson began her study of Koko, a young gorilla at Stanford. The Gorilla Foundation was formed and her study moved further away into the hills near the Bay area. Dr. Patterson along with Ron Cohn photographed and documented Koko’s abilities in many books and publications including National Geographic.

This celebrated Gorilla adopted a little kitten which she named All Ball because All Ball was a Manx and had no tail. which to a savvy gorilla resembled a ball. All Ball was the love of her maternal life and she was intrigued with the little kitten and very protective and caring toward it. All of this is included in a popular children’s book, Koko’s Kitten.

Those of you who are familiar with the story know that tragically All Ball lost her life when she wandered into the road and was hit by a truck. Koko grieved the loss of her friend and the newspapers found the human interest story a major attraction for their papers.

So when my husband John saw the article about Koko’s sorrow over the loss of a kitten and the foundation’s search for a new pet, he called the Gorilla Foundation, announced that he and his wife owned the Bear Den Cattery and we were expecting kittens within the next ten days. He offered one of the kittens from that litter to Dr. Patterson for Koko.

As it turns out, our mother cat had a false pregnancy and we had to let the Foundation know that there would not be a kitten soon. Most kittens are born in the Spring or the Fall and this was mid-winter. By this time, I was as determined as John to find a Manx kitten for Koko. So we called around to friends in the Cat Fancy and luckily found a little orange kitten that the breeder was willing to sell to us to take to Koko.

Meanwhile, I was teaching at Inyokern Elementary about 13 mile from my home town of Ridgecrest, California and my students were fascinated with my stories of Koko. We made a huge bulletin board on one wall and titled it “Koko, We Love You”. We studied Gorillas and we studied their natural habitats and we wrote letters to Koko, and drew pictures of cats to entertain her.

It was a month before the kitten would be old enough to leave its mother, and during that month phone calls flew back and forth between Penny and us. She received the letters and the pictures that my students had drawn of kittens and Koko had chosen a tail-less one that she liked. We thought this was a good sign.

Then it was time to take the kitten to its new family. We picked it up from the breeder and headed for the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside about 2o miles from San Francisco and the kitten’s new home. Penny and Ron were waiting anxiously for us at the house and after greetings and breeder advice about care of the six week old kitten, all of us headed toward the area that housed both Koko and another gorilla named Michael.

I was thrilled with seeing Koko. As Penny suggested, I sat down near a barred floor length area. Koko came over and sat on the other side of the bars. She looked at me and signed “Visitor Stinks”! Being insulted is never easy. Being insulted by a famous gorilla is mind-shattering. Penny explained that she used the same sign for flower and she thought that Koko was intrigued by my humane society pin which resembled a four petalled flower. Koko put a hand through the bars and looked closer at the pin. Then she signed “Open” and Penny said, “Open your mouth, she wants to see your fillings.” Well, I wasn’t about to say no, so I opened wide while Koko looked inside at the many silver fillings in my mouth. Then there was a strangely quiet moment when Koko and I simply looked at each other and I saw intelligence and dignity that will always be remembered with awe.

The moment was quickly broken when Penny put the box down on the ground and signed that she had brought Koko a kitten. It was obvious that Koko was interested. She motioned for Penny to turn the kitten around so she could see the back side. She seemed happy to observe the lack of a tail.

It was at this time, that John and I said goodbye and headed back home . It was important that there be as little distraction as possible when the kitten was actually given to Koko and we wanted it to go as smoothly as possible.

Of course, for the next few weeks, Koko and the kitten which she named Lips or Lipstick were photographed, and video taped, and all of it documented for publication. Our own paper called and interviewed us and yes, we had our fifteen minutes of fame.

Looking back, I am glad that we made a grieving gorilla a little happier. Lipstick was not as close to Koko as All Ball had been, but Michael surprisingly was completely besotted by the kitten. He called it, Banana. We were told that Michael’s reward for good behavior was having the kitten in an area where Michael could watch it play. I believe Lipstick or Banana was finally won over by Michael and Koko, some years later was given another kitten, named Smokey.

My 15 minutes of fame burned brightly and flickered out, but every once in awhile, I find myself reading the story of Koko’s Kitten to a group of young children and then telling them about how we brought Koko her little orange kitten. I can hardly wait until my grand babies are old enough for me to read the story to them. I think they will like the idea that their Nana brought a kitten to Koko and stayed to show her tooth-fillings to an interested gorilla.

I am on my way to visit Kristi, Theresa, and the twins. So not knowing what to take my grandbabies this time, I decided to make them books from the latest album pages made for their Memory Books. I chose activities that I thought they would enjoy and made title and ending pagesfor each adventure. Next I printed them on 5×7 paper and lamininated the pages back to back. I finished by by punching a small hole in the upper right corner of each page and stringing them all on to a small ring clip.

I made Danica the Trip to the Aquarium and Eric, Magic Mountain. I thought I would share those two little books on my first night there. Since I would be there for book reading time a second night too, I made two more books. One is Christmas at Papa and Nana’s and the second one is Twins Third Birthday. If you click on a title, it will take you to the album.

All of my Memory Books are digitally made. I find this so much easier than all the old scissors, glues, and paper that go with scrapbooking. All of these pages were made using Memory Maker which is a relatively new program and one that is very easy to use. I highly recommend it.

So now I am off to pack my bag, gas up the car, and get ready for my two hour drive tomorrow morning.

Last week I wrote about how my mother got her friend Kitty to do all the ironing. Well the proverbially acorn has not fallen far from the tree.

Now she is retired and seriously considering blogging. So I hope this little journey into blog writing will encourage her to begin a web-log of her own.

Please remember to read the Friday posting of the LBC authors. They are listed under Writers Consortium at the right side of my blog. Enjoy!

The Gold Shovel

As I was fumbling around on the side of the house, looking for an empty pot or two to start some planting, I came across a forgotten shovel with its scoop spray-painted gold. I recalled that I brought this “gilded” shovel north to Petaluma from Ridgecrest. I have never been able to bring myself to actually use it because it has served as a memento of a place and a time and a person or two that led me to one of the great adventures of my life.

On a cool, clear and blustery spring afternoon in 1991, my friend, Sally and I decided to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the first new school in Ridgecrest in many years. At the time, I was the most junior member of the administrative team, a recently hired elementary school principal. Dignitaries from both the city and the school district were assembled on a flat patch of scrub-covered desert in the northwest corner of what would become the new school grounds. The school to be built was a joint project with the city using redevelopment and school district funds. The district staff bought several shovels for the occasion and spray-painted them gold to add a note of festivity to the event. It was a small gathering with a few speeches to formalize the occasion along with the requisite ground-breaking using the spiffed-up shovels.

The ceremony was short and as the dignitaries started to drift away, the district staff found themselves with an abundance of gold shovels and quickly offered them to the officials involved in the ceremony - most of whom declined. I stepped up and said that I would take one.

My friend Sally and I stood and chatted a bit about what it might be like to open a school. I have to interject that Sally has little recollection of this event, but it was a pivotal moment for me. I knew at that moment that despite being an unlikely candidate, I wanted to be a part of this new school. I wanted to be the one who would lead this new school community and help to make it a great place to teach and learn. I could
feel the excitement welling up in me of the possibilities for this school and that the future for this school was as wide as the vista stretching out in all directions in front of me. And just as I stepped up and asked for the shovel, I would step up and apply for the job.

And that is when the adventure began. I was selected to be the first principal at Gateway School. In short order, we hired teachers and staff, we ordered furniture and equipment, we ordered books and supplies and we
put it all in place for the first day of school - including assembling 700 desks and tables in one morning with the help of the school community. And while the bricks and boards and books and pencils were put in place, we began to come together as a team of teachers committed to work together in new ways.

The first day of school was one of the most amazing days I have had as a professional. It was thrilling to realize that there was a whole new school community learning together in what had been a large patch of empty land at the edge of the town. And that was just the beginning.

I had five wonderful years collaborating, leading and sometimes corralling (Maria in particular!) a great team of teachers and staff. I don’t want to leave the impression that we achieved some kind of miraculous state of perfection in education. We didn’t. But I do think we found a way to work together as learners to get things done that made school better for kids. And we had fun!

And what made this possible? Was it a person, a place, a thing or an idea? For me, having the encouragement and help of friends and colleagues like Sally was invaluable. Having the gift of being at the right place and time was critical. But what was magical were the ideas and dreams that shaped our work. And so at the Gateway Cornerstone Ceremony I quoted Kermit the Frog, “Life is like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending! We’ve done just what we set out to do!” And we did!

I am now at another juncture in my life: full-time retirement. As someone who let work and family structure their life, I feel like I am casting about and somewhat immobilized not knowing what to do next! However, my Gateway adventure gives me some clues on moving forward. I know that when I have an idea or dream and I step up and make it happen, my life (and hopefully those around me) is the better for it.

Oh, and Things? Well, for me, my gold shovel is a symbol of all of that.