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Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. Radio “Turn down the radio!” Lisa yelled. “I’m trying to do homework.”
“Sure, sure,” Beverly came to the doorway of her sister’s room. “That’ll be the day.” Beverly continued standing there hoping to annoy her younger sister. Feeling very grown for her eleven years, she liked being bossy to nine year old Lisa. “Go away. Please go away.” Lisa was showing annoyance. “Bad enough I had to spend a lot of time with you during the war air raid drills and blackouts, and we still have to listen to President Truman giving his speeches and that’s so boring, but this is 1948 and the war has been over and I had enough time with you annoying me.” “I know something you don’t know.” Beverly recited the words as if she were singing them. And then she moved away from the threshold. “You always know something I don’t know.” Lisa muttered. Aloud she called, “Okay, so what is it this time?” ‘Pictures.” Beverly walked into the room and sat on Lisa’s bed. The chenille spread caused white lint to form on her navy blue pleated shirt. “Like a radio show, only pictures.” Lisa shrugged. “Moving pictures, like a movie, but here right in the house. Our house. Other peoples’ houses.” Beverly was excited. “It’s called television.” “Uh, huh.” Lisa thought this was another wild story to make her believe something that wasn’t true and when Lisa repeated it was humiliated. But she knew there was such a thing as a television, but only one person in the whole school had it and that person lived right up the street. And she bragged how expensive it was so no one else was going to have that for years and years. “No. It’s true. And it’s huge. It’s a whole seven inches big.” Beverly continued. “It’s a DuMont. Just that name sounds romantic.” “Easier to pronounce than Stromberg-Carlson, our radio thing in the living room. I know the name from dusting around all those letters when it’s my turn to dust the living room.” “Got to have a ton of tubes inside to make that thing work. I’ve learned a little about our radio tubes. Don’t know what’ll be shoved around in the living room for this as we have to be able to sit and see it and not just hear it.” Beverly played the big-sister larger now. “I’d rather go to the movies than sit around the living room staring at something smaller than my school’s ruler.” Lisa pretended to not care, but inside was getting excited. “Well you won’t say that once it’s here. Imagine. And I heard Mom worrying out loud about expensive. Really expensive. Bet all the relatives will not just come for her Sunday meals but now to watch television. The girl up the street already has one, but it’s only a tiny-tiny 3-inches. Ours will be huge!” Beverly began to giggle. She got up from the bed, looked at her skirt covered with the bedspread’s chenille’s linty threads and then laughed out loud. “Get lost. I have school work to do.” Lisa pretended to work in her open composition book. After Beverly left, Lisa closed the door and sat on her bed and began talking to her radio. “I like you. You bring me music and stories and are like company. I won’t desert you for something like a television where I’ll sit with tons of relatives, and I’ll be the one on the floor, and just look and listen to something I don’t even care about.” She touched the Bakelite case that housed her private radio. “Radio. I already saw the girl up the street’s thing. All there was was a blob, and her mom said it was a Test Pattern and that was the only stuff I could see all day. There’d be a program on later but only a few hours a day. Gee. I can turn you on anytime and do that in private. I wonder if anyone will really like television. Ever.” ©2012 Silver Pens Writing Association
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Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. words don’t define “Last”. Sitting on a wooden bench in a slightly boxy cubicle with a swinging door, I handed my oxfords to the repair man to put on new leather heels while I waited. There were two more such cubicles, but both were empty.
“Mr. Feldman,” I spoke to the owner of this tiny shop near the depot of the Long Island Railroad stop closest to my parents’ house, “what’s a last?” A sign spoke of him being able to custom such. “It’s a wood shape of a foot. Then the leather is fit to that piece of wood to make a shoe.” He pulled off the worn-down heels of my shoes as he spoke. “Don’t understand.” I wiggled my toes, and no one could see me even if some person enters the shop as the modesty cubicle covered any view. “It’s like a footprint in wood, but stores like Miles, on Northern Boulevard, have manufacturers who use standard ones so shoes can be mass-produced yet fit.” “But the Stride Rite store has an x-ray machine and I can see how my toes look in those shoes. Are they made from a last?” I was getting grown up enough to soon go to Miles for pretty footwear and not just the Mary Janes patent leather. “All footwear is made on a last with lots of measurements for the design and function of the shoe. I make my own for customers who want only their exact last and then make shoes for these people. Custom.” Mr. Feldman hammered the nails into place affixing a new heel on my oxfords, buffed up my shoes, and walked to my cubicle and handed them to me. I didn’t quite understand all the anatomy-information, but had a new word I’d just learned. “My mom’ll pay you when she comes by to go to the butcher.” I liked words. I’d only thought that word ‘last’ meant the-end, like being a worst runner in a race, or Port Washington depot being the end stop on the train we took from Manhattan but got off way-way before that stop. I also knew it meant going on for a long time when I put “ing” after the word...lasting. The cumbersome cedar things my dad pushed into his shoes to keep their shape looked like Mr. Feldman’s last but were called shoe-trees. Dad said it kept creases from forming on his shoes so they always fit okay and look new. Wonder how a cobbler knows a tree from a last? ‘Last’ switched from being a wooden anatomical mold to name when I was in high school and Delaney Cards were filled out so each teacher would know where each specific person was seated in the classroom for attendance. “Last name first” was directed as I penned my name for each subject. My fluid ink did not have the required black or blue but my signature South Seas Blue, and I pretended to have a reason to sit up front in each class and not by the “G” in my name which might have put me closer to the rear. I liked learning, and wanted to be up front! Most of the time, my made-up reason worked. Sports had ‘last-licks’ when one team was up at bat first but the other team should get the same number of tries and was given last-licks as an equalizer. I’d associated licks with a tongue and a ball of ice cream atop a sugar cone, but sports had odd terms and this was just one of them. ‘Nothing lasts forever’ was a phrase I didn’t like. To me,’forever’ WAS a real thing, and my pink rubber bouncing ball was constantly springing into action no matter how often I used it, and winter’s grass turned green each spring, and everyone I loved always came and visited and ate at our house on Sundays (and even some relatives who annoyed me), and school went on and on and on, so what’s the ‘nothing’? Aging is a privilege; however it’s made my childhood word take on a different context. At the Department of Motor Vehicles, I renewed my driver’s license knowing, because of my chronological age, it was my last. Physical limitations had my last round of golf played, and last tennis match; I touched and then donated the equipment for someone else to enjoy. A lawyer drafted changes in my Last Will which very well might be the final wording on this legal document. I still love words. I’d prefer the childhood heavy-paper dictionary years when knowing was ahead with learning and doing, but I’ve quietly begun seeing each ‘last’ as a looking back on what I once did and not what I’m giving up. I once ran, and sewed, and skated, and learned, and played sports, and took family car trips, and squished my feet in beach sand, climbed Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts, lifted heavy packages, squat on the ground with children and blew from bubble wands. Rather than ‘no more’, I remember the satisfactions and pleasures I HAD and am attempting to focus on ‘last’, as the cobbler taught me, was a footprint made from wood. I’ve left a footprint with each step of my life, and I can smile about that impression. |
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