In Which We Learn The True Story About Softball With The Kennedys

Recently, I told a story about my mother playing softball with the Kennedy family in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. The other day she called me to set me straight.

As my mother remembers, there were two groups of young people on that part of the Cape, in the early 50's. My mother hung with the crowd that lived a dangerous, hot-house life. Frequented piano bars. The Kennedy's crew called them the "Pansies." In return, my mother's group called the Kennedy crew the "Barefoot Boys." Because, I suppose, they ran wild and free.

One year, the softball games between the Pansies and the Barefoot Boys went on all season. Came the final game. Apparently, in an act of ruthlessness, focus, and sprezzatura, the Kennedys brought in some Boston Red Sox as ringers. The story does not include a record of who won. We can guess.

Whether to call this "cheating," or a brilliant act of nonchalant insolence, I leave to you. Along with the implications of terms from another time.

Images
Pansies by turtlemom4bacon, Softball by kamau akabueze, both from the Creative Commons at Flickr

Ten Signs You May Have A High WASP Guest Room

Sign #1. You furnish your guest room in a patriotic color scheme. Especially when you live by the sea. Red, white, and blue are so nautical. Invest in matching bedding and some throw pillows as an inexpensive way to make everything look like it's there on purpose.


Sign #2. You purchase your guest room furniture from some place reputable, but you avoid family antiques and other treasures. Your guests would feel terrible if they broke something you care about. You would never want guests to feel badly. That's the whole point of hospitality.

Sign #3. You stock up on bathroom sundries. For some reason, everyone forgets razors and they are embarrassing to ask for. The disposable ones are perfect.


Sign #4. Your guest room has enough space for a guest kitchen. Yeah, I know. It's small. Only room for early morning breakfasts, when your guests don't want to bumble around in your kitchen looking for tea, or eggs, or orange juice. Or late night snacks. Personal eating.


Sign #5. You absolutely have to hang a framed etching of seashells. All scientific-like. The frame matches your bedspreads. A dark red for timeless style.

Sign #6. You have a sleeping loft and ladder. This is optional, but makes for very happy grandchildren. Their parents, i.e. your children, may have falling out anxiety at first. They'll get over it. Sleeping lofts add flexibility come Christmas, when, not unsurprisingly, all your children AND your stepchildren AND their families will want to come down for a few nights.

Sign #7. Your guest room has a guest deck. Used for the playing of board games. Sometimes your daughter will have to take your grandchildren out of the main house and quiet them down. You want to enable her. If her children don't quiet down after the playing of board games, she will need to send her husband to jump into the swimming pool with said children, while she sits and contemplates a glass of wine. Alone. Aren't extended families wonderful?

Sign #8. Your guest room has outside stairs. Covered in vines. You hide that pesky ping pong table and grill underneath. You have a ping pong table to begin with. Also a croquet set. FAmly tournaments are a tradition, but someone usually cries. Fortunately that someone is mostly under 8 years old.

Sign #9. The view from the guest room deck requires an iPhone app called "Autostitch" to capture what they call a "Panorama." Because it is, in fact, a panorama. Click on the photo for a fuller effect.

Sign #10. You understand how privileged you are to have this much space in a beautiful spot, so you share. Your children are always welcome. Your grandchildren and their multitude of friends are always welcome. Even as teenagers. That's saying something. You house visiting musicians and singers for the local symphony. Sometimes for months at a time. You are a generous soul, and your daughter thanks you in a somewhat complex manner. Because she still hasn't learned that a simple thank you will suffice.



Images of my mother's house by me, my Panasonic Lumix, and my iPhone

9 Pillows That Add A High WASP Touch To Your Sofa, Or Chaise Longue

It has come to my attention that High WASPs believe throw pillows to be a critical component of house decor. That with a naked sofa, or chaise longue, you just haven't finished decorating. Luckily, should you be inspired to try High WASP decor in your house (for reasons known only to yourself), nifty pillows these days are easily come by.

That did not use to be the case. Interior designers were required, with mysterious swatches. Terracotta chenille squares, flecked with blue, strewn across the floor. Although the ultimate luxury is to have a skilled human being directing your pillow implementation, one can now, if necessary, do without.

I remember, my first sofa ever came from Macy's in New York City. For some indecipherable reason it was brown. No pillows. It's possible that this bothered my mother. She never said. The next sofa I had made by some fab New York design studio or other, with the guidance of a designer. It was a mushroom colored velveteen. Definitely had pillows. Cream and gold ikat-style silk with a fuchshia accent. Quite subtle, actually. Really, they were.

When that sofa's upholstery finally gave up the ghost, we had it recovered. Never got around to the pillows. A sad situation. When I finally sent that sofa off to live with my daughter, I was no longer interested in or able to afford custom furniture. I made my way to Pottery Barn. Where I discovered that they did the pillows for me. I will love Pottery Barn forever.

However, if you have the energy and desire to do your own pillowation, here are some pillow thoughts.

Restful, serene, camel cashmere. For the bedroom, on your chaise longue. (Note. This particular piece of furniture is not pronounced chaez lounge. It's more like chaez long. The term means, simply, "long chair," in French. Who knew?) One would not monogram one's living room. But the bedroom, yes, in peaceful shades.

You might decorate your living room, in mid-century style, the pillows an ironic commentary on something. Or not.

The Artsy among us might opt for Bengali handiwork.

Or make pillows ourselves. Not forgetting, of course, the purple zipper as a discreet color rumpus.

Others might prefer a Grande Dame Palm (Beach or Springs, no matter) reference to the vacation house.

...or a Sturdy, tongue-in-cheek, poke at themselves.

You might find these in your mom's living room. Oh, wait, that is my mom's living room. Because she, of course, is never without the right accoutrements. I doubt she's ever bought anything at Pottery Barn. But times change. As they must. And should.

*Jill also has a thing for pillows over here.
**This is my favorite pillow of all time.
***Fresno
****Spellcheck courtesy Lauren

Images
Queen of Cashmere via Saks
People Pillows from Bloesem via Love You Big
Purple Zipper Pillow via Love You Big
Folk Art Pillow via Toast
Links Pillow via Jonathan Adler
Fresno Pillow via Jonathan Adler

Decorating Your Beach House, Or Your Lake House, With Pillows

Recently I won a pillow. From Pink Oyster Designs, via Maya at Daily Vitamin Sea. Thank you Maya, thank you Pink Oyster. Isn't winning wonderful?

I entered because I found the initialed pillow she offered to be quite classic, and summer house-ish. I like initials. Probably all that early training in monograms. High WASPs do like their monograms. (I like summer too, which is icumen-in round here.) These are also pillows-in-good-conscience, as they are made from recycled sails. High WASPs like a good conscience, these days.

After I found out I had won, but before any choosing of letters, my stepfather got sick. He's a long time sailor, around islands in the Swedish Archipelago, and now in the Santa Barbara harbor. It seemed like a good thing to have the pillow made for him, and then order another one for my mother. So that's what I did. They arrived in the middle of the chaos of my stepfather's recovery.

Not the one I won, but similar

I asked my mother for her product review. Mom's good at assessing stuff. She says the pillows have a nice texture, like really good linen paper, and are sewn in attractive zig-zag stitching. These are 12 inch pillows with 10 inch letters, so big, and bold. In Santa Barbara, you would put these out on your porch, or around the pool. They are more sophisticated than preppy, says Mom. I didn't ask her how she defines preppy, these days. So let's take that as preppy in the 1940's. The pillows are not quaint, but graphic. The ultimate compliment? They are very "good looking." If my sister is reading, she's laughing. Tell me you don't laugh at certain family phrases.

Mom also says they would been really good for her parent's house in Tolland, Massachussets, at the Tunxis Fish and Game Club, or up in Maine, on one of those hanging canvas swings that everyone had.

Not the actual house, but similar, from that era

Or maybe for the family house on Cape Cod. It was large, 3-storey, covered in gray shingles, with a long gravel driveway out front. Since we lived in Northern California, we didn't spend much time there. Still, I remember it very well. The smell of sun on dune grass, and the way it whips your legs. Splinters in our fingers from the gray wood, and the way the spiky lawn pricked our feet. The laundry shed, and the crack of sheets drying on a line. Chintz and wicker chairs on the back porch, grownups drinking, croquet, and the ocean just over there. Almost like a cartoon, except it was real.

There must have been pillows.

One summer we spent enough time on the Cape that my mother signed us up for the Wianno Yacht Club's summer program. I was 12, old enough to take sailing lessons, young enough to have no idea of the connotations of a yacht club. It felt just like any other place where kids are taught activities, and lunch can be bought at a snack bar. The teachers put us, two at a time, into little boats and sent us sailing out in the harbor, alone. For the last night, we sailed, all of us, out to a sandbar and they fed us pancakes, made from batter kept in the water to stay cold. Little fish swarmed around the container, nibbling. We seemed so far from shore. But I digress.

Not the exact view from Mom's house, but nearby. Similar. Sometimes approximate is all we get.

The Santa Barbara beach down the hill from my mother's house now smells like petroleum, just under the scent of tropical flowers and salt ocean. We take beach tar off our feet when we return, sitting on a bench outside the front door, surrounded by sand on tile, baskets of shovels, and the skin of little wet children. The sun is shining. We, the women, know the children are probably hungry and plan food, urgently, over their heads. Pillows or no pillows. Everything I say is true. I am not sure if it matters.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Images:
Pink Oyster Designs
Arroyo Burro from y3t39's photostream on Flickr
Tolland Tunxis Club Image Museum

New England High WASP Meets Swedish Empire, Meets Santa Barbara Semi-Tropics

This is my mother's house. The living room, one morning last week. Christmas wreath still hanging above the fireplace. Signs of High WASP eclecticism everywhere.

My mother said to me, in the midst of the semi-chaos, "You should do something for yourself." A mani-pedi wasn't in the cards. But it was completely possible to take pictures here and there. I asked both my mother and stepfather for permission to put up these photos, and they were kind enough to agree.

Their house is a classic merger, of old, new, Sweden, New England, Santa Barbara. And a couple of families.

For example, desks. From New England.

From Sweden. With new technology. And old.

Clocks. From Tiffany.

And somewhere in Sweden. Now next to a thermostat. As a house isn't a museum, after all. And winter's cold, even in Santa Barbara. Especially if you just got out of surgery.

Avocado trees. Palms. And tropical flowers that grow like weeds. Maybe they are weeds here.


Flowers sent to the hospital. And carried home. Murano glass candies, to be played with by grandchildren. Very useful in teaching the ultimate High WASP principle, i.e., delayed gratification.


And, like families everywhere, a wall of pictures.


Brothers, sisters, stepbrothers, stepsisters, mother, cousins, stepfather. Family.


Images: me. First one with a Panasonic Lumix. The rest with my iPhone and the ShakeIt fauxlaroid application. Because if you can't do a real photo shoot, fake it in low-fi. If it's good enough for Hollister Hovey, it's more than good enough for me.

My Stepfather Is Doing Well, And We Send Thanks

Many of you who will read this know that my stepfather had emergency heart surgery about a week and a half ago. I came down to Santa Barbara to help my mother when he was released from the hospital.

He does a little better every day. It was an extremely serious situation, and is by no means now routine, but the trajectory, if I can use that word, is good. To illustrate, he is sitting in his usual chair, paying bills, as I write.

My mother's sister arrives today to take over. I will go home tomorrow, and am planning a return to -Privilege posting very soon. I wanted to be sure to let you all know, however, that my family and I think it is lovely, wonderful, that you have left so many well wishes. Thank you very much.

An Unexpected Trip To My Mother's House, Or, Saturday Morning at 11:03am

I will be leaving for Santa Barbara in an hour or so. My mother's husband had surprise successful heart surgery last week. Successful is good, surprise is never what you want. He comes home today, so I'm going to drive down and help my mother get used to the new routine.

My intent is to participate in the blogosphere in any case, as the situation permits. I have no doubt that you dear people will understand. None at all. You've been very supportive of so many things and I thank you in advance.

Have a wonderful weekend.

The Long Drive Back From My Mom's House, #2

We drove back from Santa Barbara yesterday. Got home after 11pm, past my bedtime certainly. Nephew's team played in the consolation round of the tournament, winning their final game in a penalty kick phase after one period of overtime. I was aghast that they had 9 and 10 year old boys facing the anxiety of the penalty kick, an anxiety so severe and existential that a book has been written and a movie has been made about it. However, like many things fraught with the potential for existential anxiety it turned out to be just fine. Nephew was first up on his side and made his kick. I may have cheered and pumped my fist in the air, which might have caused my son to look at me with that special, "My mother is a doofus" smile. But it was worth it.

We stopped for dinner in Pismo Beach. I had seen for years a place above the freeway called F. McClintock's. Decided yesterday to investigate. Turns out it was a Dining Saloon. The 30-foot cowboy statue out front should have provided a strong clue. The menu consisted mostly of medium-sized and larger-sized pieces of beef. Those patrons who were not wearing cowboy hats were on the heavy side. Makes you understand that the American diet was made for cowhands, who must use up 10,000 calories/day wrangling cattle and riding around on bumpy horses. My daughter said, "Mom, why are there cowboys at a beach town in California?" She didn't know that central California is all about cows and just happens to touch the ocean at Pismo Beach. She will learn.

The waitstaff was incredibly cheerful and the beef was delicious and a good time was had by all. I was a little put off by the head of a hairy pig that was affixed to the wall above me, but I got past it.

When we got back on the road the sun was setting. The skies got darker and darker until it was night. Somewhere in the middle of the drive, somewhere with no towns, not even any cows, we hit a radio station playing Motown. My son is a Motown expert. Even he heard songs he didn't know, but mostly it was the usual suspects. The Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love." Junior Walker and the Allstars, "Shotgun." Mary Wells, "My Guy." I can't think of too many things better than Motown on a California freeway late in a dark night.

Little boys and girls playing sports happily, cowboys feeding the rest of us meat, and Motown on a freeway. I say bring on the amber waves of grain. It's kind of corny but I can't help it. Some times I just love America .

The Long Drive Back from My Mom's House

Driving back from Santa Barbara I mostly noticed the music. In that vast middle area of California there aren’t a lot of radio stations. Those stations you can find seem to be either Christian or Spanish. Of course, some may be both, but since Jesus is a fairly common Hispanic name and I don’t speak Spanish I couldn’t tell. I could however tell when one of the Spanish stations was advertising a restaurant. Being from California I know the Spanish names of common Mexican/Salvadoran/Guatemalan/CalMex food items. So when the DJ started saying Carne Asada, Ensalata, Chile Rellenos, plus words that even I recognized as numbers at first for a brief moment I felt like it was a station for Spanish-illiterate people so they could hear some words they knew – then I realized I was being ridiculous and he was just reading the menu. But it’s not always easy to be rational in the third hour of a five hour drive by yourself along largely flat roads, accompanied only by passing oil rigs and cattle.

I should point out, I am an atheist.

Long Drive to My Mom's House

A few weekends ago I drove down to Santa Barbara. I should explain that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sometimes known as Silicon Valley, at least my part of it is. I drove down to Santa Barbara to visit my mother and her husband. By myself. It takes about 5 hours given the speed at which I tend to drive, i.e. fast enough to get there while fingers are crossed avoiding black and white cars that stop you and hand you pieces of paper that mean you have to take tests on the Internet and pay money to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I took 101. As those of us in California know, that’s the freeway that goes from the top to the bottom of our rather large state. As those of us in California also know, in Northern California we call it 101. In Southern California, they call it THE 101. I have now given you the ultimate weapon should you ever want to appear cool to a Californian – i.e. simply that you know that the top half of the state uses different terminology than the bottom half of the state for our many big fast roads.

As those of us in California also know, the area south of San Jose and north of Santa Barbara doesn’t bear much resemblance to the California one might see on TV. Few starlets. Few Internet millionaires. Far more cows than you might expect. This is the area I am talking about.

You will notice there is a town called Greenfield. This is not an accident. The drive from Silicon Valley to Santa Barbara, then, is a palimpsest (big word of the day meaning layers of painted history) of California from the present, to the past, and back. As follows:

+ Earth-toned tract homes (High WASPs don't like the term home meaning house but it is just too prevalent in this world to avoid it)
+ Large outlet malls selling clothes named after male golf players (where is the Michelle Wie line of clothing I wonder?)
+ Home-made garlic product stores with handpainted signs advising that cherries too can be found there
+ A concrete culvert, full of recent rain, recovering from an urban dream and harboring new low pale green marsh grass and two white egrets
+ Broccoli
+ More broccoli
+ Yet more broccoli, this time fronted by a 16 foot high cut out painted sign of a farmer, and words that say, “Now Growing – Broccoli”
+ Latin-inspired colored tract homes (this is how you know you are approaching Southern California, granite colored stucco is replaced by coral)
+ Large outlet malls

And so on – until you run into the ocean and then all bets are off.