I ran into one of our long-time neighbors in the parking lot this afternoon. She has lived across from us, off and on, for about ten years. "I heard you were moving," I said.
"We're out," she told me. "I'm just here to meet our renter." She must have noticed my slightly crestfallen expression because she hurriedly added, "He seems really nice!"
I nodded.
"And?" she continued, "he has a dog!"
"Well, I guess he'll fit right in, then!" I laughed.
Lucy and I were walking on a well-traveled street in the neighborhood when we veered off the sidewalk so that she could have a sniff. I glanced down to avoid stepping in any messes and saw a matchbook at my feet. It was neatly closed and, despite recent rains, completely dry. But what drew me to pick it up for closer examination was the vintage typeface and the old telephone number.
The telephone number is evidence that this matchbook is at least 17 years older than that, though, because in 1947, everyone in the lower 48 states and Canada got a ten-digit number with an area code as part of the Bell Telephone Company's "North America Numbering Plan."
To find out a little more, I searched for that old telephone number on Newspapers.com. In addition to a few ads for the car company, I found a couple classified notices listing bear cubs and wolf puppies for sale (!). It turns out that there were no regulations at the time about keeping wildlife as pets, so it seems to have been a side hustle to supplement the auto sales and repair.
My research did turn up a few of these same matchbooks for sale on eBay. Priced at $8.95 a piece, they were labeled "NOS," which evidently means "new old stock," an oxymoron for sure. The seller offered assurance that they were authentic and in new condition, so I figured there must have been a stash of them somewhere that was recently discovered. Even so? The vendor is in Oklahoma.
So, how this particular matchbook made it to a sidewalk in Virginia is still a mystery, but what a history it holds! And it makes a good story, too.
We live in a clapboard house, and one of our seasonal rituals is to place electric candles in each of the muntined windows when Daylight Savings Time ends in November. Seeing their cheerful glow in the early darkness always lightens my heart and is a harbinger of the warmth of home and the holiday spirits ahead.
The advent of DST again in the spring is our signal to put those lights away until fall, and that's what I did today: carefully removing their batteries and placing them in a bin to go into the attic. As I completed this small chore, I remembered the promises the candles and their light seem to make each autumn, and it made me a little sad to see them go. I also wondered what the next eight months might bring and who I will be early next November when its time to get them down again.
The windows were open as I worked, though. Yesterday's chill was replaced by soft spring air, warm and a bit muggy. I could hear birds twittering and tweeting as they hopped about their own tasks, readying for the longer days ahead, but fully present in the moment. I snapped the bin shut, slid it into its place in the attic, and headed out into this spring day.
Lately, the weather around here has been unusual for our area.
Each morning has been cool and damp, and those conditions have lasted until mid-afternoon at which time the sun has gradually pushed through to provide a lovely late day. It has reminded me of the marine layers I experienced the few times I stayed on the coast in California, but I dismissed the notion since we live so far inland on the East Coast.
But, I was sitting by the fire I built late this morning because it was so cold and damp when I read that a marine layer forms when warm air moves over cooler water. And I remembered the chilly, gray weather we had circled the Tidal Basin in a few hours earlier as I continued reading that the result of that clash can be mist or fog, and temperatures within the layer are significantly lower than usual. It sure sounded marine layer-y to me.
Even so, I was surprised to confirm that our recent weather has indeed been the result of a large marine layer of clouds blown by stronger-than-usual onshore winds and expanding over the mid-Atlantic seaboard. The phenomenon was actually mentioned in passing by the Capital Weather Gang, like it's no big deal.
But I guess that's just how the weather is these days: we've all learned to expect the unexpected.
This morning, I took the car in for routine service and a state inspection. As usual with a seven-year-old vehicle, there was more to be done than I had expected, and I ended up sitting in the waiting room for 3 hours while the car got a rear brake job and a new battery, too.
As I sat, I was privy to an extensive conversation between two septuagenarians wiling away the time while they, too, waited for their cars. Only a decade or so separated us in age, but unlike me and all the other patrons in the lounge, they were focused on another human being rather than a screen. The topics they covered were broad; besides car and car repair, they ranged from children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews to bingo, Thai food, local history, real estate sales, snow removal, divorce, careers, retirement, and health, the latter including old injuries, current arthritis, insurance, rehab, drug use, and treatments.
"They took a dead man's hip bone and made putty out of it, then they packed it around my spine, like a bulletproof vest to hold my neck up," one of them reported. "Then I was in rehab for a month. I worked hard to get out of there!"
The other nodded. "I went through a lot of physical therapy, too," she said. "And I'm just so glad to still be walking around."
Amen to that.
When I was a kid I had a host of words that to me were just reading words, words I had never heard in conversation and so had no idea about the correct pronunciation. Like many fluent readers, though, I just kind of skimmed over them: I could tell what they meant in context; I just didn't know exactly how they sounded. One that I recall was "indict." Of course, I had no clue that the c was silent. Colonel and epitome were also on the list, as were several names like Seamus, Joachim, and Hermione.
Now that I often listen to audiobooks, though, the situation is reversed, and I sometimes hear words or names that I am unsure of how to spell. For example, I just finished an Agatha Christie-style mystery by Ruth Ware called One by One. It takes place in a ski chalet in the French Alps, and the characters frequently mention backcountry skiing off-trail, but they call it something that sounds like "off piece." In addition to that, they are all English and use many British idioms, and I could not figure out what they were saying about skiing. It turns out the expression was "off piste," because piste is the French (and German and Italian) word for a groomed ski run.
There is one big difference between then and now, though. These days, you can just do an internet search for words and even hear pronunciations. Now that's a good use of technology!
Traffic was brutal when I set off to meet a friend at the National Arboretum this morning, and my map app predicted that the 8-mile journey would take 55 minutes. Thankfully, after a long stretch of bumper-to-bumper, things cleared a bit, and I made it to the visitors center in 45 minutes instead, pulling up right around 9:30.
The day was clear and mild, but since not much was in bloom, the two of us and our dogs seemed to have all 446 acres to ourselves as we rambled first to the 22 Corinthian columns that were part of the U.S. Capitol from 1828-1958, then through the state trees and on over to the Asian collections. We spotted several juncos, nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers along the way, and then, down by the Anacostia River, we saw a bald eagle riding the early thermals way up in the sky.
On our way back up the hill we found what I consider to be the coolest plant of the day, a flying dragon tree. This cold-hardy member of the citrus family looked for all the world like the shrubs surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle.
Next, we made our way through the conifer collection and on down to an open field with an enormous tree stump sprawling like a little stage. Lucy took the opportunity to grab the spotlight and hopped up on her own for a photo op.
After a couple of peaceful hours wandering through the gardens and forests I had almost forgotten about the traffic of the morning, but it was there waiting for me as drove through the gates and turned toward home.
