Mrs. Rafferty

“Create Your Own Story @ Your Library” is the perfect theme for National Library Week, at least in my opinion!  One of my strong interests as an educator is teaching writing, and what better way could there possibly be to engage students in writing than to ask them to write about what they know best – themselves -- to create their own stories.

A little piece of my story that seems just right to share for National Library Week, one that influenced my life forever, has to do with the library in my hometown, Spring Valley, Minnesota. Like the old St. Peter library on Minnesota Avenue, my childhood library was a Carnegie library, made of red brick and trimmed with dignified columns. I spent many, many long and contented hours there, and I came to know the librarian well, a woman who loved the look and feel of books as much as she loved the words inside them.

White-haired, tiny, and seemingly ancient, Mrs. Rafferty was the Spring Valley Public Library librarian. She wore navy blue crepe dresses with little dots, a tasteful cameo brooch, and sturdy black shoes that reminded me of my grandmother’s. The air around her was scented by the delicate lilac cologne she used, and even now when I smell lilacs in May, I think of her.

Mrs. Rafferty checked out books to her patrons from behind a tall, old-fashioned oak desk. I remember standing next to that desk, watching her competent veined hands hold my library card, bending it ever so slightly between her first and second fingers. Her thumb steadied the card while she penciled the expected return date in the DATE DUE column. After sliding my card into the stiff yellow paper pocket inside the book cover, she’d close the book and hand it to me with a smile and a comment, such as “I know you’ll enjoy this one, Jill,” or, “Isn’t it fun reading ‘Sue Barton’ books?” Her gentle encouragement felt like an invitation to read what I was interested in, and  to my heart’s content. Which I did, and still do!

Jill Potts

Member, St. Peter Friends of the Library

2011

Minor revisions 10/13

What I left out of my confession

What I Left Out of My Confession

This is a story of crime, guilt, and repentance. It doesn’t involve the police and it doesn’t involve punishment, and it’s not really a story. More of a tale.

It was a warm July day in 1963. I was traveling to “Band Days” in Mason City, Iowa, with my friends Cindy, Merry, Diane, and a busload of Spring Valley High School marching band members. This was a big deal for us -- we were crossing a state line for our first out of town parade as newly minted ninth graders. Arriving in Mason City, we got off the bus, lined up for the parade, marched and played enthusiastically, and then we were done with our band responsibilities.  My friends and I gulped down our sack lunches, excited to be turned loose for a few hours to give the local merchants our meager business. Each of us had brought along two or three dollars, it being 1964 and not having (or needing) much money. As it turned out I didn’t spend my cash.

The biggest attraction for teenagers visiting Mason City was the dime store, a huge Ben Franklin, which was laid out with rows and rows of low wooden merchandise counters. Standing in the center of the store, a clerk or a customer could see from one side to the other and from the front to the back, unlike today’s Targets and Wal-Marts with tall shelves set up in a maze to keep shoppers filling their carts.

The countertops were recessed several inches, and lined with dividers to sort items by type. The hair goods counter contained hairbrushes, combs, hairnets in paper wrappers, bobby pins, hair clips, Dippity-Do, and other essentials, each grouped in a separate section by the dividers.

We meandered through the store, eventually making our way to the jewelry counter to admire earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Friendship rings, plain or simply-edged half-inch metal bands, were popular with girls our age in the early 1960’s.  This Ben Franklin store had several large, shallow trays lined in velvet holding friendship rings sorted by size, each with a price tag attached with a short loop of string. Pretending we were getting engaged or married, we tried on rings we liked, all the while laughing nervously and acting like we were having more fun than we were actually having. Our jitters came from a pact we’d made earlier, that we’d steal something from the dime store. We’d heard from older band members that this was common practice for freshman band members, although in retrospect, we might have been set up.

In those days, there were no security cameras---the low countertops allowed the clerks to keep an eye on customers. Fortunately for this particular pack of thieves, the Ben Franklin was buzzing with high school band members from all over southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa, keeping every employee occupied so we could commit our crime. One by one, each of us sneaked a ring into a pocket, and one by one, we walked casually toward the exit, joining each other on the sidewalk in front of the store. No security cameras, and no magnetic strips on the price tags to set off electronic beepers. We were home free.

That’s when the guilt began. Miles of guilt from Mason City, Iowa, across the border to Spring Valley, Minnesota, and months of guilt after that. I loved my $2.00 silver-colored friendship ring. I had enough money to pay for it, but I stole it instead. So what did I do about it? One wintery Sunday morning, after I’d gotten months of guilty pleasure wearing it, I put it in the church collection plate. I went to confession several times after my act of thievery, too, but I never mentioned it to Father Derezinski for fear that a priest who condemned women to hell for wearing fingernail polish to church might be overly harsh on a 15-year-old who participated in a jewelry heist. Putting the ring in the collection plate was my repentance.

September 12, 2015

Draft of my life list, age 14

My Life List at age 14?

In preparation for reading the book The Life List with my book group, I decided to flash back to 9^th grade, in the fall of 1963. (It's now 2 years later: we didn’t choose the book after all, but never mind!). These are notes I wrote, left undeveloped, as I'm hoping we'll get to that book some day!

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/50-years-ago-the-world-in-1963/100460/

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JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963

a Friday

My first basketball game as a JV cheerleader

Tall, geeky, not poised and outgoing in the same way Judy and Cindy were. Kay seemed even more reserved than I was—wiry, stiff, how did she and I get to be cheerleaders?

What would have been on my Life List at that age? I would have been madly in love with an older boy, a sophomore or junior. Boys in our class were immature and short. And greasy.

I aspired to be like Sharon Walker, knew I couldn’t reach the status of her best friend Mary Atwood. What I thought Mary Atwood was, that is. Sharon was the better choice.

I still had a decent relationship with my mom, was still trying to adjust to my dad’s constant presence at school, Reps! (instead of Pepsi) machine in lounge,  was friends with my brother Mark but he was starting to be the family hero and it ticked me off. My sister Mary Jo was 8, we shared a bedroom. She was good friends with Mary Ellen O’Keefe and the two of them were fine to have around. Mike was a baby—only 2—and I was crazy about him. I had to babysit a lot, which sometimes frustrated me, but mostly I loved it. Cindy thought my mom counted on me to babysit more often than she should, and she was probably right, but I loved my little brother.

I don’t know that I ever consciously considered a plan for a career, marriage, and a family. I just expected it would happen, but not that I’d have to do anything intentional to promote it. I didn’t think about college yet, just about high school and homework and friends and boys and sports.

We didn’t have girls sports teams in Minnesota yet, but I belonged to GAA, as did most of my friends. Peggy Anderson was the hotshot sports queen, esp. in basketball. Judy Turbenson was a fireball, too. Cindy played well, meticulous and deliberate. I was tall and a poor shot. Half court basketball was the thing back then for girls, and despite that, we played hard and always ended up red-faced and panting. We played ball against big GAA squads like Wykoff and Preston (I think Preston). It was a big deal to get to go to an “away” game, and our entire season against other towns was no more than 3 or 4 games, including both home and away. Usually it was intermural stuff. Sometimes boys came to watch, and that was uncomfortable, but exciting!

My hair was darker brown than it is now, but lightened in the combination of summer sun and chlorinated pool water. It was short, choppy looking, and I had ugly glasses that were pointy. I felt incredibly geeky all the time. My braces were finally gone in 8^th grade, so at least I had nice teeth.  Top teeth, anyway. Dr. Wentworth, my Rochester orthodontist, closed suddenly—probably retired, I don’t remember.  I had a top retainer, but no bottom one, and so some of my bottom teeth moved out of alignment. I’m only writing about that because it was irritating to my parents (and to me) because they could barely afford getting braces for me in the first place.  I accidentally threw away my top retainer one night when I was working at the A & W a couple of years later. In order to eat, I had to take it out, wrap it up in a paper napkin, and keep it safe in my carhop apron. Only, when I cleaned out my apron later in the evening, I threw out what I thought was a wadded up napkin….

This might have been the time that I still had my red sweatshirt with the cut off sleeves. I loved that sweatshirt and wore it all the time, with a white button-collar oxford shirt under it, or a long-sleeved white turtleneck. Eventually it developed holes in it from all the wear, until one day when I went into the big drawer in my closet to get it out to wear and it wasn’t there. Mom told me she’d thrown it away because it was such a wreck. I am sure I glared at her for weeks. What would I possible wear now??

Classes in 9^th grade are hazy. English—not sure, Math (Dad was my teacher for Algebra that year, then, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Calc in succeeding years. At least I had a good math education), Social Studies, PE (always Margot Anderson. When I finally learned what a lesbian is, I was sure she was one. We all thought that, but apparently not. Eventually she got married and had a family.  No guarantee, but it started to look more like we were wrong when that happened. I’ll have to write down later what I remember about Margot helping girls who were deep in adolescent angst, and definitely lesbians, although as I said, I knew nothing about what that meant at the time.

PE is so memorable, not because of anything physical that we did that I loved or hated, but for other things. For one, the PE uniforms that were white pullover woven cotton tops, short-sleeved, a pocket on one side of the chest, too short, and not comfortable to move around in. Shorts were dark blue, woven cotton, too short, and not comfortable to move around in.  We each had a PE number assigned to us, based on alphabetical order, so we could number off for various games and activities. And, of course, to let Margot know we’d taken a shower. I think we had 12 minutes from hitting the locker room to heading out the door for the next class. Maybe it was more, but it seemed short. We had to strip out of our gym clothes, take a shower without spoiling our hair-sprayed hairstyles, wrap up in a towel, give Margot our number (which she checked off a list attached to the clipboard that seemed to be attached to her), get dried off, dressed, and on our way. We could always tell who had her period, because that was a reason not to take a shower (or to instead use the private shower stall instead of the concentration camp mass shower we normally used). Of course, it required announcing “23 M” which meant, “I have my period and now you all know it,” and Margot would circle the number in red. Lordy. I remember Shirley Hinze having her period several weeks out of every month. Ha ha!

Besides basketball, which was fun to play in PE—oh by the way, it was GIRL’S PE. No co-ed back then—I remember track and field the best. Soccer was good, although I wasn’t very good at it. Again, Peggy and Judy were the superstars.  Track was fun, too, although we didn’t get much training with hurdles so we knocked them down a lot.  I truly believe Miss Anderson wanted girls to have a good experience with PE and she made us work hard. I didn’t appreciate it so much then, but later I realized we were lucky to have someone who didn’t let girls get off the hook and sit around acting too wimpy to participate. 

That's what I've got for now. If we read the life list book, I'll see what else I can dredge up from my 9th grade year! 
  

Six Kinds of Pleasure

Six Kinds of Pleasure

Owen giggle, side kick in the air, intensity of play, visualizing to create, protector of little ones, sports and more sports

Westy sweet lisp of words, dynamo, snuggle on his own terms, flat out enthusiasm, instigator, hockey in the summer winter spring fall

Miles changing so quickly from little boy to boy, spatial understanding with puzzles & Legos, conversation with adults, tolerance of Westy/intolerance of Westy, swimming is his thing

Hannah bilingual, piano, Bouncing Bulldogs, dramatic spin, sensitivity, reader like Grandma Bene—“a book in each hand”

Vivi bilingual, persistence, imitation of her big sister, her own person, snuggler, observant

Ethan ultimate crafter, ultimate planner, ultimate rule maker, loves drama, sports-theater

Fall 2014 draft

Inspired by "Three Kinds of Pleasures" (poem by Robert Bly)

I started this when the cousins were here for Christmas in 2014, and didn’t get back to it, unfortunately. Ages then were: Hannah (7.5), Miles (7), Ethan (5.5), Owen (5.5), Vivian (4), and Westy (4). There haven't been any serious shifts in personality since that time!

517 Hillcrest Drive

This is an entry I posted on my "real" blog in February of 2011, after one last trip with my brothers to empty out the house. I thought about it today--November 15-- because it would've been my dad's 92nd birthday if he were still here. The house we lived in on Hillcrest Drive in Spring Valley is the home I remember best.

 

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Mike, Margot, and I were in Spring Valley yesterday to pick up the last of what we wanted to keep from Mom and Dad's house. The house is empty of furniture, the walls are bare, all that remains are a few cleaning supplies and a couple of waste baskets with the last few items to throw away. A few hours of work by Spring Valley's version of the Merry Maids, and it will be ready to go on the real estate market on February 15, as scheduled. I only lived there during my junior and senior high school years and the summers on either end, but my parents lived there for much longer. It was my mom's home for nearly 40 years, and my dad's for 50. And of course, it was the place my three siblings and I called home.

Mom was a homemaker and Dad taught and coached in Spring Valley when they decided to build a new house. A teacher's salary didn't offer a luxurious lifestyle like it does now (ha ha!), so Dad's summer work in the 1950's and 60's was being a carpenter, a skill he learned alongside his brother (my Uncle Art) and their father (Grandpa Fred Reps). Dad and some of his teacher friends did much of the work on the house, from basement to roof, and Mom and Dad did most of the finishing work inside. Mike pointed out yesterday that Mom often said how proud she was that she and Dad had designed the layout of the house, which is probably why we had that great laundry chute to mess around with! I think Mike got stuck  in it once...

Our family of five moved to our brand new split-level in the summer of 1960. The house seemed huge to us, and it probably was by 1960 small-town Minnesota standards. We had two bathrooms and a family room, which was a big deal back then. Mary Jo and I shared the largest of the three bedrooms. Our room was painted pale yellow and adorned with floral bedspreads. The closet had two big storage drawers, and a laundry chute that we loved, except when Mark threw his dirty clothes into our closet without opening the chute.

Mark's single-person, small bedroom suddenly needed to become a room for two when we found out about Mike's impending birth in April of 1961. Mom and Dad kept baby Mike in a crib in their room for a while, and then Mike and Mark became roomies.  Their bedroom had a closet that was extra deep on one side for storage leading up to the attic. Whenever I went into their room at night or when Mom and Dad were gone, I made sure the closet door was closed so attic creatures wouldn't descend into the rest of the house. And I was 13. What a wimp!

I remember the first night we slept in the house. Friends of my parents had spent the hot and humid late summer day driving back and forth between old and new, loading and unloading furniture and boxes, emptying 608 North Huron Avenue, and filling 517 Hillcrest Drive. That first night was hot (no air conditioning) and, while our beds were assembled and in their respective bedrooms, everything else was in boxes stacked around us, waiting to be put away tomorrow. The house smelled new and wonderful. I drifted off to sleep feeling happy that we'd moved, but a bit out of place in the unfamiliar surroundings. There was work to be done yet to make the house completely livable--carpeting and furniture for the living room and sealing some of the hardwood floors were at the top of the list. But it was a big adventure to be in our brand new home and we kids didn't mind the minor chaos as much as Mom did.

For 50 years, everyone from Grandma Kirsch, Grandpa and Grandma Reps, Big Uncle Mike, other aunts and uncles, and the few cousins we had came and went. Larry/Dad and I got married and we brought our babies, who became adults in the blink of an eye, and soon they brought their significant others. Eventually, they got married and brought their own babies. We came and went for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, weddings, funerals, and most often just to visit.  It's been too quiet in that house since September. Soon a new family will move in, and people will come and go once again, and call this house their home.

Two cheery little pieces of writing I came across today

Mean, median mode

“It is possible that we are past the middle now.”

--Robyn Sarah, “Riveted”

I am past the middle. I’ve passed the middle. I cannot live to 120, so actually I’ve been past the middle for quite some time now. I don’t know when I stopped thinking about half-life, but it must have been somewhere before the middle.

8/18/09

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Post Holes

Open meadow, no lines of demarcation to

Confine the buttercups

Nor to define the constant workspace of butterflies, ants, and honeybees

Sun, rain, a gentle breeze

Nourish the tall grasses until

Snow and cold cover them in gentle silence

Years of open meadow

Diligence of butterflies, ants, and

honeybees but eventually

Post holes appear

One by one, spaced at uneven intervals

Meadow morphing into corral

Fence posts installed like wooden crosses

One by one into the post holes

Until only mine is left to fill.

    5/06 first draft; revised 7/07

Two moments in time, not so different

After Larry's by-pass surgery...

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I should wait with this one. It is hard to read, but I don't know if it will get easier in another year, or two years, or more. We're so lucky surgery went well, and Larry's prognosis is excellent. Still, each time we go for another Mayo Clinic visit, these memories come back.

5:00 p.m. on September 5, 2014

The early September sunlight shines through the window,

lovely, soft, and cool

I’m here, across the room from you, looking out at the light

you are almost a silhouette

against the window, your features barely there.

Minutes ago you heard the news, that it’s cancer. Not that

we didn’t expect it, knowing for weeks but not sure which of the

possibilities would win the biopsy battle.

It’s the old foe, you were told. A renal cell tumor,

a traveler through time

here to remind us of our mortality.

We’re given hope and optimism and appointments. Not ready

yet for that which is inevitable for each of us. “Years and years”, he said.

We believe him. For now.

                                                                                                9/5/14