Author Archives: Sue Remisiewicz

Gasping for Air

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2015-07 PicI miss the days when every gas station had a machine where you could pump up your tires for free. Not only free but where 99 times out of 100 the station had an air pump that actually worked. It’s an odd thing to wax nostalgic about I know, but a recent series of issues with my tires put me in that frame of mind.

It started with an oil change at one of those quick drive-thru places. The attendant asked if I’d open my driver door so he could see how many pounds of air should be in my tires. “Thirty pounds” I distinctly heard him say as he read the label. A few minutes later the familiar hiss of the air compressor sounded from the back of my car. My attention shifted to the game of solitaire I played on my phone while the attendant serviced my car. Once all the fluids were checked and changed and the bill paid, I made my way straight home.

Imagine my surprise the next day when I took my car out to go to a hair appointment and the dashboard indicator warned me that one or more of my tires were low on air. Pressing a few buttons to get a quick check of the readings revealed each tire contained only about twenty pounds. I got lucky. The first gas station I came to had a working air pump, no one in line, and didn’t cost anything to use. Since I didn’t have to pull out the portable compressor I keep in my trunk, I managed to fill all of my tires and get to my appointment just a few minutes late.

Two weeks later, on my way in to work, I got another message on my dashboard saying my left front tire was low. I had an appointment after work so I left a few minutes early intending to use my portable compressor to fill up the tire before I took off. I got the compressor from the trunk and sat in the driver seat pulling the cord out to connect it to the power outlet. Somehow, in the process I lost the inside of the plug making my compressor useless.

After a brief search for… for… well for something I had absolutely no clue about, I decided to try the gas station just a few blocks from my building. Did they have a pump? Oh yes. Did it work? No. In fact, it had so much yellow tape tied around it I wondered what heinous crime took place within the confines of a two foot wide by four feet high canister.

I decided to go ahead to the appointment and if I had time, I’d try the gas station near my destination. Traffic proved light so I did have time. I pulled my car up to the air pump. This one had no yellow tape wrapped around it, which looked promising. Then I saw it cost 75 cents to use. I had no quarters and no time to deal with trying to get change from the attendant, so I went on to my appointment.

When finished I started looking again for the errant innards of the compressor plug. I found a silver cap and a round plastic thing that looked like it should hold the silver cap in place. However, that still left a big hollow in the plug. After a little more searching, I found a fuse. Ah! Now I figured out how it went together. I quickly assembled things and, with some hesitation that I might short circuit my whole car, I plugged it into the power outlet. No sparks. No short circuit presented itself. Taking the compressor to the tire, I quickly filled it up to the required amount.

Now paranoid about my tires, I routinely checked the pressure indicators via the dashboard buttons. It kept showing the left front tire as low. I took out the pressure gauge that I keep in my glove compartment and checked the tire manually. The gauge indicated the tire held the required thirty pounds of pressure. Concluding that the dashboard gauge had an issue, I continued driving unconcerned until a few days later when I got a more severe message showing my tire as critically low. Working a hunch, I checked all my tires manually and found my right rear tire to be the culprit and not the left front as my dashboard had been telling me. I filled the offending tire up and eventually had it serviced for a slow leak.

As you may guess from the fact that I keep a portable compressor in my car, this is not the first go around I’ve had with tire issues and faulty air pumps at gas stations. It likely won’t be the last time either. So, I’ll stay wary of what my electronic indicators tell me, check my tires after oil changes, keep my pressure gauge in the glove box, and like an asthmatic keeps an inhaler nearby, I’ll store the compressor in my trunk for the next time my tires are ‘short of breath.’

Summer Snow

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2015-06 PicIt’s summer snow time!  Not freak storms where six-sided frozen ice crystals fall on the ground as if it were December.  I mean the fluffy seed pods that look like cotton floating in the air.  Watching the aerobatics of these fuzzy flyers always brings a smile to my face.  Even now as a storm brews outside, the summer snow adds lightness to the weather’s ugly background.

I’ve always wondered what creates this seasonal display and decided to do some investigation.  At first I thought it to be milkweed.  However, it turns out milkweed seeds let loose in the fall.  After a little more digging, I found the most likely source is cottonwood (poplar) trees.

Where do they grow?  Although I see their seeds flying, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a tree with pods like in the pictures I looked at.  That may be because these are some of the tallest (67 – 130 ft.) growing trees around with branches too high to see the pods.  Even if the pods are largely out of sight, the seeds do a great job of making the presence of the trees known.

There’s a danger to doing research into things you look at in wonder and enjoyment.  It’s finding out realities that make you lose your engagement with what seems transcendent or even divine.  In this case, I found my pleasure under attack from stories about how the loss of milkweed in the environment is one factor in the decline of monarch butterfly populations.  Another assault came from reports that people cut down cottonwoods in a mistaken belief that it will reduce pollens that cause allergies.

My defense is to remember how much fun it is to drive through seed squalls without fear of losing visibility or traction.  Another is thinking about making angels in patches of cotton on the lawn.

May Days

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2015-05 PicEvan Thomas smiled at the clerk who helped him with the bouquet.  “I’m glad you have tulips.”

She smiled back.  “Oh, yes.  They’re available pretty much all year, but May is one of the best months.  What colors are you looking for?”

“Mom’s favorites – pink and white.  Six of each.  Right, Dad?”  Evan looked up into his father’s eyes, a good three feet above Evan’s head.  His father nodded first at Evan and then at the clerk.

“You can fill out the card while I wrap these up.”

“Up you go, Bud,” said the father as he reached down and hoisted Evan up to sit on the counter.  “You pick out the card.”

Evan scanned the rack looking at each little card for just the right one.  He saw one with cartoon characters that he watched while his mom made him breakfast.  Evan pointed to it.  “This one.”

His dad hesitated then said okay and set Evan back on the floor.  Taking the card from the rack, he carefully wrote Love, from Evan and Charlie.  He handed the card to the clerk who placed it with the bouquet then handed the bundle to Evan.  Charlie reached into his back pocket for his wallet while Evan checked out the bouquet.  “This is nice.”

“I’m glad you like it.”  Evan watched as she and her dad traded things back and forth.  When he saw his dad put the wallet back in his pocket he knew they were done.

“Let’s go, Bud.”  They made their way out to the SUV where Charlie secured Evan into the booster seat.  After making sure the flowers were safe on the seat next to him, Evan started looking out the window as his dad drove through town.  He saw the sign for his mom’s favorite restaurant and wondered if they would be eating there tonight.

Eventually, the vehicle slowed and made a turn into a place with lots of trees and lawns everywhere you looked.  There were several twists and turns to take before they came to a stop and Charlie turned off the engine.  Soon, Evan stood outside the SUV holding the bouquet while his father grabbed something else from the backseat.  After shutting the door and hearing the ‘beep’ of the lock, they made their way across the lawn toward a set of familiar trees with a statue nearby.  They came to a stop about ten feet away from where the granite angel stood watch over all entrusted to her care.

The flowers from a couple weeks ago had fallen upon the headstone at their feet.  Evan knelt down to pick up the wilted plants and put them in the plastic bag he took from his pocket.  He put the fresh flowers above the stone.  Charlie bent over and placed a small American flag to the left of the marker.  They both stood up.  Evan silently took his father’s hand and read the headstone to himself.

Michelle Thomas

PFC US Army

Wife and Mother

In remembrance of those who gave their life in the service of our country, and for the families who held them dearest.

Down Vinyl Album Memory Lane

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2015-04 PicI’m getting ready to do some major remodeling and redecorating of a couple of rooms in my house.  In order to prepare a staging area I’m working on cleaning out my ‘leave it’ room as in “I’ll leave it in there and do something with it later.”  Some of those items have been sitting in the same spot from when I moved in ten and a half years ago.  That includes my vinyl record album collection.

It’s not a huge collection.  Everything would fit into a milk crate which is where I think I stored it till I switched to a more fashionable silver mesh container.  There are 74 albums altogether with 23 actually belonging to my sister Kathy and another five that belong to my parents.  Yes, I said my parents.  That leaves 46 I purchased for myself.

Going through them has been a walk down memory lane.  Some of the albums still have stickers from where they were purchased.  I have albums with labels from Harmony House, Music Village, and Musicland – record stores that no longer exist.  I even have one labeled from ‘Hudson’s Record Dept.’  My fond memories for these vanished places are wrapped up with being a teenager at the time and getting excited about having enough cash to make a purchase.

With limited funds, I had a method for how I bought my albums.  It would have to contain at least three songs that had been played on the radio.  That made the value of purchasing an album better than buying each song as singles.  Rare was the artist that I liked so much that I would buy their albums with only one known hit song.  John Mellencamp made that list.  So did the Eurythmics and Styx.  Often I would wait for an artist or group to produce a greatest hits album.  That way I’d get the best songs and not have to deal with a bunch of substandard ‘B sides’.

Almost all of the ones from Kathy are movie and Broadway show soundtracks.  She has a penchant for show tunes and I enjoyed the songs and music as well.  With her being twelve years older than me, she had significantly more funds to purchase albums and I could browse and listen to her collection at will.  When I moved out, some of her albums came with me – probably with plans to record and then return them to her later.  That didn’t happen because around that time, CD technology arrived and started to take off.  Even an album proudly boasting ‘This record can be played on a stereo phonograph’ could not win against those glittering silver discs that reflected colors like bubbles.

Virtually indestructible, CD’s soon overtook the market from the more temperamental vinyl even though most aficionados thought the sound quality to be inferior.  For an opinion close to home, I asked my audiophile sister Camille what she thought.  She liked the CD’s but noticed that the same song on CD dropped the sound of delicate bells she could hear on the vinyl version.  My ears are not that attuned to such nuances, so I started buying CD’s and even bought CD copies of albums I already owned.

What to do with the vinyl albums now?

Certainly the ones that belong to Kathy or my parents will go back to them.  I don’t think I want to get rid of all of the ones I bought for myself.  Even if I purchased a CD copy, I think there are reasons to keep a vinyl version.  So I went through the list and picked ten that I think are most worthy of saving.  The first six were easy to pick.  The last four took some thought and consideration.  Which did I choose?  Here they are:

  1. Great Western Themes (United Artists Records): Whoever picked the songs for this two record collection really nailed it. From Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magnificent Seven” to Ennio Morricone’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” these themes celebrate the spirit of the movie and TV western golden age. I like this album so much that I went on Ebay to buy it when the family copy went missing. I’ve never been able to find an equivalent on CD so it’s an absolute essential to keep.
  2. The Beatles/1962-1966 (Capitol): If you’re going to have a vinyl album collection, it might be the law that it contains at least one from the Beatles.
  3. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac (Warner Bros. Records): This was the bestselling record of my teenage time. A local radio station had a contest where if you were the ‘nth caller’ you could pick any album as your prize. I started to hear the boredom in the voices of the DJ’s as winner after winner picked this album. If I had ever made it through, I would have picked this album.
  4. Live Bullet by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band (Capitol): You couldn’t live in or near Detroit as a teenager without having this album. It is a classic rock double album and still one of my all-time favorites.
  5. Pieces of Eight by Styx (A&M Records): If everyone left me alone in the house, I cranked up the volume on the song “Renegade” and repeated it over and over again till they were due home.
  6. Charade the Original Movie Soundtrack (RCA Victor): This one belongs to Kathy, but I might have to accidentally not return it to her. The movie is one of my favorite romantic films and the score by Henry Mancini is one of his best.
  7. The Best of Glenn Miller (RCA): I bought this when I stayed in Poughkeepsie, NY, for a college internship at IBM and actually had some spare cash to spend. If you like swing/big band music, I think you should have some on vinyl in deference to the historic 78 rpm record era.
  8. Queen Greatest Hits (Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch Records): Like the Beatles, Queen is one of those quintessential vinyl bands that everyone should own. This album doesn’t have the classic cover art like their News of the World album, but you can’t go wrong with a greatest hits collection.
  9. Moonlight Feels Right by Starbuck (Private Stock Records): I scratch my head over why I bought this one. All I can say is smooth pop is nice every once in a while. I remember listening often to the whole album, though now the only song I know is the album’s namesake and Starbuck’s one hit. Who can get rid of an album where the xylophone is used for a rock solo, or where the band members are dressed in platform shoes and bell-bottom pants?
  10. Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears (Mercury): This is the last vinyl album I purchased and I include it simply for that fact. Keeping it is bittersweet, but isn’t that what makes a vintage record collection worth having?

A Clown Conspiracy

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2015-03 PicAuthor’s Note: Every once in a while I like to publish a writing prompt on Twitter (@sueremi).  I like the challenge of coming up with a short statement that fits the size of a Tweet, yet, still offers something that inspires a story.  For this month’s blog, I used one of those prompts to experiment with flash fiction.  The prompt I chose is the first sentence of the story that follows.  If after reading that sentence you decide to write your own story, I’d love to know what you wrote.  Also, please share your insight – did I succeed in producing a story that meets the standards of flash fiction?  Why or why not?  In the words of Bill Gates, “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”  I welcome all your comments!

Edgar stood sweating and certain that only a clown could like the outfit his mother picked out for him.  Today being class picture day, his embarrassment would soon be eternal.  Once the picture goes up on the wall, the sting of the teases and taunts from his two older brothers would haunt Edgar every time he looked at the photo.  His stomach flipped a little just thinking about it.

The line snaked down the hallway to the multi-purpose room where the photographer set up shop.  Kindergartners stood at the front of the line, followed by first graders, second graders and then Edgar and his fellow third graders.  The older kids hadn’t been called to the hallway yet.  The principal instructed everyone to keep quiet while waiting.  That, of course, had everyone itching to talk to each other.

At first, Edgar tried not to look at anyone, as if by not seeing he could not be seen.  Soon boredom overcame him and he started looking around.  Both girls and boys combed their hair and put the tools away only to pull them out moments later to go through the process again.  A few of the older girls had lip-gloss that they carefully applied while checking themselves in little pocket mirrors.  Boys were smoothing out their shirts or picking at things that had fallen on the fabric during breakfast.

A heavy sigh brought his attention to the person standing behind him.  Amy Myers looked down at her solid pink dress.  She scrunched her mouth and nose in a way that left no doubt she didn’t like the outfit.  Looking up she whispered, “Isn’t it just awful, Edgar?”

Edgar shrugged, “It looks okay to me.”  The line moved down a few feet.  Amy and Edgar followed automatically.

“I wanted to wear my sweater with the butterflies and ladybugs, but Mom said it was too busy for a class picture and put me in this plain old thing.  What does ‘too busy’ mean anyway?  She wouldn’t even let me wear my striped tights or put a butterfly clip in my hair.”  Amy crossed her arms and let out a harrumph.

“At least you’re not wearing a bowtie,” Edgar flicked the edge of the bow with his finger, “with polka dots to boot!”

Amy started to giggle.  “Oh, great,” thought Edgar.  “The girl who likes wearing striped tights and butterflies on her clothes is laughing at me, too.”

“Is it a clip on?” Amy asked.

“So what if it is?” he snapped back.  Shhhh… came from the principal down the hall.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Amy said, “I’m sorry I laughed.”

“My brothers were laughing at me all morning, why not you, too?”  Edgar shrugged again.

Though they were already whispering, Amy cocked her head down and toward Edgar and spoke in a softer, conspiratorial tone.  “Have you thought about taking it off?”  Her eyebrows rose as she finished.

Edgar thought about it now, so deeply that the skin on his forehead crimped in deep folds.  “It sounds easy.  Who’s to stop me?  It will be a few months before Mom sees the pictures.  Maybe she won’t even remember how she dressed me.”  Then he got another idea.  Down his head went and he whispered to Amy, “Do you think it would look good on your dress?”

Amy squealed with delight, mouth closed and into her hand to muffle the noise.  “Yes, I think it will.”  Edgar undid the clip and slipped the tie to Amy who quickly snapped it into place right in the middle of her boat neck collar.  “How does it look?”

Edgar sighed with relief to have the tie off.  “A lot better on you than it did on me.”  Amy beamed a smile so wide he almost felt embarrassed – almost.  He smiled back.  “Don’t forget to give it back to me when we get back to class.”  Amy nodded as they moved to the door to be next in line for pictures.

When the photographs came a few months later, Edgar’s mother scolded him royally for taking off the bowtie.  Though angry, she still put the picture up on the wall.  Instead of feeling the sting of taunts or even his mother’s wrath, Edgar remembered Amy back in the hallway and smiled every time he looked at the photo.