Linda DuCharme

I saw a beagle puppy running down the road the other day and I recalled the pain I bore for years after my family moved from Connecticut to Vermont and we couldn’t take my dog along.

 I can remember year after year trying to fake that eye chart so that I wouldn’t have to sit in the front of the room with all the losers.

My son was visiting recently and stood perplexed in the kitchen marveling, “You make your own ice cubes! He said it in the tone that should be reserved for, “You spin your own wool!”

Dreading my first lesson, I squeezed into the school car with three other girls, all thrilled to be behind the wheel and knowing that their driver’s license would soon be a reality. I was terrified.

We taught our children to call my parents Opa and Oma, the German name for Grampa and Gramma, not because we were German, but because it was easy to say.

And we had no water. And the rain was coming down in torrents.

I still have his dish in the cupboard. Sometimes I think I hear the clink of his tags as slurped from his water bowl.

There was a little wailing, but that was to be expected. There was a little bar, and that was also to be expected.

To start things off, the waitress was so drunk, she took our drink order three times and then got fired.

There’s the sound of the plow that cuts into the deepest sleep with its message: It’s snowing. There’s the sound of the cat loudly doing her job of putting another dent in the mouse population.

Remember when we had small Christmas trees at school and decorated them with colored chains made out of construction paper, maybe a little popcorn and cranberries?

I have fond teen-age memories of the Idle Hour Theater in Hardwick where the movie was far less interesting than who showed up to sit in the balcony where you had to be over 12, and therefore pay adult prices.

As youngsters we recreated the historical event the best we could and tried to duplicate some of the atmosphere of that cold New England winter nearly 400 years ago.

Little did I know at the time that one day a helicopter would save the life of my critically wounded brother by scooping him up from a battlefield in Vietnam.

When I moved to Vermont I got to meet the cast of characters in these parts: Howard, Bernie, Pat, Jim and Madeleine.

We had an experience with a Czech guard as we crossed the border by train sitting in one of those compartments right out of every spy novel I had ever read.

I opened the dog’s mouth and immediately found one lens stuck on his lower lip.

As the camera moved around it picked up the screen in front of Rob Lowe. And he was clearly playing Free Cell.

Imagine my chagrin recently when I discovered that the extremely comfortable walking shoe I had been wearing on my daily stroll was in fact designed to be worn performing martial arts.

Of course, it was commonly accepted that you picked up (very quietly) any time at all if you were looking for some entertainment.

Robert is my brother’s step grandson and he’s spending Memorial Day in Iraq and it’s no picnic. He’s on his second tour of duty and says conditions are much better than the first time he was there.

I go for a walk most days with a friend who lives on a hilly road in Newfane. She drives over to my house and parks and we then roam the roads of Brookline which offer only the occasional hill just to make sure you are paying attention.

When I was in high school, a member of my class was the son of the famous bandleader Tony Pastor who, as I recall, played free at our proms. The son was always sharp looking and if he was noticed it was because of his good taste in clothes.

We always were a competitive bunch and Parcheesi and Chinese checkers just didn’t satisfy the blood lust that grew from a good game of Scrabble.

The place was called CBGBs and was located in one of the seamier sides of the big city.

To this day something nags at me when I scrape perfectly good food into the garbage. If no one’s looking I might add some chicken broth to that uneaten squash and voila! Soup for lunch!

The Sox drew me into their particular mystique several years ago when our daughter married a rabid fan, a guy named Murphy. 

This country has always been proud of its melting-pot background. But lately it seems that we are trying to dilute the very ingredients that originally made it work so well.

I was embarrassingly old when I confronted my mother with the ugly rumors I had heard at school. She gave me the old Christmas-is-in-your-heart routine and Peace on Earth stuff that I did not want to hear. I couldn’t believe it. So much so, that I tried to poke holes in her story.

I can’t wait until he tries to talk her out of taking drugs or alcohol. What will he offer for her pleasure? Will he be able to negotiate with her so that they both end up sharing some substance?

I’m thankful for pre-made pie crusts, frozen peas, non-fat whipped cream, stuffing mix and turkeys that pop up a little white thing when they are perfectly done.

I had visions of women in high-necked black dresses, marching en masse to the polls, their heads held high, their resolve unshakeable. This would be their chance to finally be heard.

Last week in a frenzy of chopping stuff for homemade salsa, the bowl of our food processor broke. “What will we do,” we wailed. There was a mountain of peppers, onions and garlic left to pulverize and we had no food processor.

I remember the early stuff: Mount Mansfield is 4,393 feet high. I learned that in fifth grade and it’s still in there.

When John Kennedy was assassinated, our television came down with some horrible condition which left us with sound, but no picture during the biggest news story of our lives. This was akin to water torture to two news junkies like our selves.

The kids in my family, having just moved to northern Vermont from Hartford, Conn., thought that gardening was just great fun and we threw ourselves into it. That was for about three days; then we went on to other wonders of living in the country and the garden went to seed.

There’s a guy who’s been a contestant on the game show “Jeopardy” the past few weeks who really knows what he’s doing. He’s won over a half million dollars because not only is he smart as a whip with a mind like a game of Trivial Pursuit, he knows how to work the button.

I still marvel at how my mother prepared meals for the gang of nine without ever serving pasta, let alone pizza or tacos.

Another task I performed was to project a microfilm which was focused on a bunch of gauges and write down the reading for every gauge in every single frame. Those results were also hand lettered onto the long sheets of paper.

A few years ago I realized the walks had become increasingly uncomfortable to my knees and took time off to get a matched set of new ones. I was back on the road within a couple of months.

I agonized through four high-school graduations and thankfully my children all came through unscathed. This was during a time when the legal drinking age was 18, tough times to be parents of teen-agers. It was hard to make a point about drinking and driving to a bunch of kids who believed themselves immortal.

My son lives in Brooklyn and has a garden as big as a coffee table. The soil is hard as a rock and full of broken pieces of bricks and old flower pots. In it grows a lavender plant he has to cut back with a machete because it’s so huge and gets bigger every year.

The advantage of listening to the radio while accomplishing the tasks of the day was that one didn’t ever have to stop what one was doing.

There was a brief classical ballet class that met in front of a huge mirror that consistently reminded me why I should never wear a leotard and pink tights.

Now, each January I assess the damage from the year before and vow to get out of whatever horribly heavy poundage I’m carrying at the time. I can remember bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t get below 118. The next year it was 122, and so on.

My second trip by air was to Germany and lasted 16 hours. Luckily, in the interim, Dramamine had been invented and I was able to drug myself into a near coma.

We had chosen to give them those items they loved but could not easily afford: coffee, cigarettes, peanut butter and canned pineapple.

Emergency crews from several towns performed the nightmare tasks of rescuing as many as possible while dealing with the dead and injured.

In the thick woods up behind our house a building is going up. There’s a lot of hammering and sawing sounds, but I don’t mind them; it’s a rather pleasant summer sound. We can’t even see it from where we live.

Did you know you could look up sample thoughts for almost any event for inspiration? Like “I’m so sorry so-and-so flunked out of college. It was quite a surprise, as he appeared to be relatively intelligent. But think of all the money you’ll save. Best wishes…..”

I actually graduated from Milford High School in Milford, Conn. One classmate there went on to be a U.S. Congressman, Bill Zeliff. In my husband’s class, the year before mine, was a member who was the father of an astronaut, Daniel Burbank. Two other members of my class remain my best friends to this day.

Back in those days we played games. There were board games like checkers, Chinese Checkers and Parcheesi. There was dear old Monopoly that offered hours of fun and helped us learn about real estate..

The seed catalogues are piling up. They tempt me with grapefruit-sized, luscious red tomatoes. They taunt me with jungles of waist-high basil. They offer forests of beans of all sizes and colors. The flower seeds promise an abundance of huge, fragrant, brilliant blossoms, all large and larger.

They are a hardy lot. From our 14th floor vantage point we were endlessly fascinated by the activity on the beach below and the Canadians who were walking, biking, roller blading, or jogging at all hours and in all weather conditions.

There’s a screeching sound in my car that shows up whenever I go into reverse, only on days when temperatures go below 15 degrees. I listen faithfully to Car Talk, hoping someone calls in, demonstrates a similar sound, and the brothers will either say it’s nothing or can be easily remedied.

It was not a closed event: Friends, new babies, fiancés would call and announce they were coming and what could they bring. One guy whom I had never met, but was a friend of a brother, brought a St. Bernard.

I remember when the Beatles came along and my younger brothers played that music all the time while my father bellowed, “Turn that crap off.” But the Beatles were good and still are; I’ve loved them for nearly 50 years.

But there’s a glimmer of joy in it all. No other time of year has its own food menu. We sit around and talk about hot soup like it is rare caviar or imported champagne or freshly acquired truffles. We’re talking about Comfort Food.

The door slides open ON THE BEACH. There is music playing, people laughing, and Margaritas being sipped through a straw. Everything is turquoise. The warm waves are gently rolling on the shore and making that shhhhh sound. Tan beautiful people are playing volleyball. There is the scent of Coppertone in the air.

I remember hearing that golden retrievers were specially trained to offer grief therapy to people who had suffered emotionally from the effects of 9-11. The program showed the dogs charging into a room and covering with kisses each person they saw.

One year my father got the idea that the family should create our own nativity scene. He brought home some clay that could be baked and painted and gave out assignments for the project. The younger ones got to make little sheep and lambs which ended up looking like non-descript lumps of mashed potato.

Whenever I speak with a friend or acquaintance these days, either at the grocery store, after church, or most often, on the phone, our chatting is loaded with discussions about our health, our exercise, our diets, our pills, our aches and pains.

Now that Obama has won and the campaigning is over, I trust that I won’t be hearing from Move On Dot Org any more.

My husband’s grandmother was 48 years old when women in this country were given the right to vote. I asked her what it was like to be finally accorded equal treatment in this most sacred privilege. “Who did you vote for that first time?” I gushed. “You must have been so thrilled!”

The real native Vermonters I know, have no qualms about warming up their houses without having to explain it to relative strangers. For some reason they choose not to freeze when the temperature plummets to 35 degrees in early fall.

Where I lived there were no chums, only four rowdy boys belonging to the family down the road. They had no interest in cooking and sewing and barely tolerated me playing Indians or Germans with them in the woods around our house.

I’ve got to admit that I’m always interested in what people in the limelight wear. There’s an idiot fascination to watching the Oscar red carpet just for the outlandish and down-right ugly get-ups into which are crammed half-naked movie stars of all sizes and ages.

The women in the old photos are wearing hats or have their hair pinned up. They all have full-length skirts. In the warm weather straw hats were the fashion. And in all kinds of weather men in these photos are wearing white shirts and ties.

I’ve hung my share of clothes outside. Raising my children in the pre-Pampers era, I might estimate that I’ve pinned a total of 63,480 diapers to the ropes in backyards of every house we’ve ever lived in. The electric dryer didn’t come into my life until almost a year after the birth of my fourth child.

I thought that very strange, but didn’t say anything. Then, the next day I observed the other granddaughter playing Free Cell. “How would you girls like to go to the outlet centers?” I said. “Maybe tomorrow,” was the reply. I knew we had a serious problem.

Working for newspapers for 27 years, I learned about being on time, having to meet deadlines every day. If ever we ran late, I would get a pain in the back of my neck.

I love the sounds of summer. Well, most of them. I love the peepers that quiet down as I approach their pond. It’s almost like they are holding their breath until I pass by.

People called his name, and banged on pots, but he didn’t show up.

Our phone number was 76, ring 2-1, which meant that calls directed to us on our less-costly party line rang two long and one short if it was for us. Private lines got one sedate ring. We knew who our fellow party line members were and we “listened in” on them all.

His first production was “George Washington Slept Here,” a comedy featuring just about anybody who showed up for auditions. The set was a little unstable and handles came off doors, but it worked.

My printer just ran out of ink! Oh, no, what will I do? How can I get along without a printer? I’ll have to drive into town and buy some more ink. That will be a round trip of almost 30 miles and gas is costing ever closer to $4 a gallon.

I have kept in touch with a few friends who married people in my husband’s class so there will be a few familiar faces. Of course, the faces are chubbier these days, and topped with white hair, if any.

Some messages target pushover grandparents. There are varied versions of “That’s it, I’m telling Gramma.” And it’s pretty easy to figure out who buys the size three months shirts.

When one of our appliances makes an odd sound while performing its duty, my senses go into ALERT mode. If the washer bumps, the refrigerator thumps or the dishwasher makes a loud slurping sound, my ears tell me something is very wrong and chances are it’s going to cost a lot money.

Sharon asked if we ever had eaten tacos and we said, “What’re tacos?”

Over the years whenever Uncle Will came to visit our house, my fellow victims and I would run screaming to our rooms, where we stayed until he left. To this day, when I get a sore throat_ apparently the torture didn’t work _ I mutter, “Curse you, Uncle Will.”

In later years, my New Year’s lists contained the three same goals: to quit smoking, exercise daily and lose weight. I did quit smoking some 30 years ago, after many failed attempts.

They were always more beautiful than I had remembered. There were big fat bulbs in an impossible tangle of wires and cords and the first order of business was to test the lights.

Soo Ewe Jin served an internship at the Reformer back in 1986 and it was my pleasure to get to know him when he worked the night shift for a period of time. He and I even covered a small fire at St. Michael’s Catholic Church late one evening and I still have the photo of us interviewing the fire chief at the scene.

One day a woman came into the office and asked to speak to me. Her name was Doris. She was always writing angry letters to the editor and I most often tried to avoid her. But when she said she wanted to discuss my columns, I preened in anticipation of expected praise.

Long ago I had a job where I worked out math problems on a slide rule and carefully hand-lettered the results onto a big chart.

 I was always well prepared for my Junior Keyboard quiz and the music we heard built a lasting foundation that serves me still.

My daughter-in-law, on a summer visit, was checking out a few items when she heard a familiar voice. “It sounded just like Whoopi Goldberg,” she told me later. And you know what? It was Whoopi Goldberg.

It always makes me cry. We always have a “no rules day” on Christmas. That means you can eat leftover roast beef for breakfast and stay in your jammies all day.

RSVPs to a Bon Voyage party on the Queen Mary II need to be hand-written on engraved stationary.

Before August is half way gone, the catalogues start clogging up the mail box with suggestions for Christmas gifts.

We can admire new living-room furniture the day it arrives. We can check out a prom dress. We can see new kittens, new cars, new hair do’s.