"Electricity"

Back in the early days of electricity, my grandma's small town had a community refrigerator.  Each family contributed to its purchase, and each had a designated area in a chilled room which was the size of a small store.  This fascinates me.  Can you imagine leaving your supper someplace where anyone could touch it, take it, sneeze on it?  I imagine everyone was considerate and cooperative.  Those people knew how to work together and helped each other in a million different ways.  Some people fantasize about living in a castle, I think about the community refrigerator.

I obviously don't want to sacrifice my personal fridge to walk to a store for my food every day.  I just want to experience a gentler time when people are nicer.  Maybe I'm dreaming as much as the people who want to be Cleopatra in a past life.  Maybe people have been and always will be a combination of saints and psychopaths, but I bet they at least acted nice if they needed help to raise a barn?

I was instructed to create a 70s kitchen for this illustration in "Mensa Bulletin" magazine (which printed in the same article with the boy I posted a couple of weeks ago).  This isn't the kitchen I grew up with.  Our kitchen was from the 50s or before.  I aspired to a 70s kitchen.  I wanted a Harvest Gold side by side refrigerator with ice cube and water dispensers in the door, but the multi-generational wisdom of my family is all appliances should be white.  White is always in style, goes with everything, cleans easily, and matches replacement appliances.  This is ultimately sensible and kind of boring.  I admired my friends' colorful kitchens.  I wanted to be in style too.

Suddenly, Harvest Gold was out.  Eyes were rolled when anyone saw it.  So passé!  How long are you going to keep that?!  Something significant clunked in my mind.  If the refrigerator is still good, why replace it?  Because some nameless person decreed you had to spend money?  And it wasn't just the appliances, you had to buy new clothes too, and probably a car.  Throw out everything you own and get new stuff that looks exactly like everyone else's new stuff!  Conform!

Except for a wild college moment when I painted my rusty refrigerator with school bus yellow Rust-Oleum, all my appliances have been white.  Maybe boring practicality is in my DNA.  I still get ice from a tray and water from the tap.  I don't want a Harvest Gold anything.  Certainly not an orange countertop.

Grandma said ignore popular styles.  Buy classics of quality.  They last forever and you'll always look right.  Excellent advice.  A little boring like the white appliances, but very sensible on a budget.  She said the key was to accessorize and dazzle with a sparkling personality.  She was a very smart woman.

Maybe part of her wisdom came from growing up with a communal refrigerator where it was bad taste to show off?  Neighbors had to get along.  If someone else was having a hard time, give them a hand.  Grandma kept her values when she moved to the big city of Akron, Ohio and was happy hobos marked her sidewalk during The Great Depression indicating she'd give them something good to eat.

Grandpa thankfully had a solid job, but maybe Grandma could afford to hand out sandwiches because she didn't follow fashions?

"Fashion"

I sat at a rest stop in West Virginia thinking about the word for the week.  A man with a bushy beard, camouflage hat, and a plaid shirt walked by.  I thought, "Yeah, that's American fashion!"  I'd like to act superior and everything, but I had on a t-shirt with pajama bottoms, both of which probably had paint on them.  Hey, I drive in comfort.

And what a drive it was!  I went from Cleveland to Gainesville, Florida.  I'm pretty sure that's roughly equivalent to Scandinavia to South Africa.  It was 23F on the day I left with gusts of gale force winds.  Brrr.

I drove up and down and around mountains, even through mountains before arriving at Sis1's house in South Carolina.  I left my coat in the car to look at flowers in their yard.  Bro-in-law took us for a drive to look at houses, farms, and a historical site commemorating the Revolutionary War.  We went to dinner where I told our waitress that I'd like "anything but okra!"  You guessed it, she brought me okra.  I tasted it, rejected it, gave it to Sis who actually likes the stuff.

The next day's drive was supposed to be shorter than day 1.  There was a huge accident in Georgia where I parked my car on the freeway and got out to talk with my fellow travelers.  I decided to consider it a cultural exchange since there wasn't much else I could do about it.  A friend back home called and said she got snow.  I laughed.  Even being stuck on a Georgia freeway was better than more snow.

Prickly Pears

Oranges

There are lots of little lizards but they're as camera shy as my friends

I got to Florida eventually, hugged my friends, and was extremely glad to stop driving.  We spent some lovely days together.  One of those days was spent watching the Michael Cohen hearing.  I know, it doesn't sound like a vacation kind of thing to do, but it's what we all wanted to do.  Shared interests make for great friends.  I took breaks to photograph lizards and smelled flowers while enjoying the sunny, balmy weather.

Some of these old houses are used as B&Bs now

Someone actually lives in this jungle since they put their recyclables on the curb

Just to show Americans are friendlier than those in DC would have you believe.
This is the sign in front of the jungle house.

Gainesville is nice because you can walk to everything.  The streets are mostly shady with big trees dripping with Spanish Moss.  Many of the houses are very pretty.  There's lots of parks, flowers, art galleries, restaurants, shops.  It's a university town so there's young people with a feeling of energy around.  Another of my snowbird friends drove from Venice, FL to visit with us too.

Spanish Moss hanging from trees

You'll notice I haven't included any people photos since they act so camera shy.  I meant to take pics at Sis', but I forgot.  I was too wrapped up in the conversations I guess and it felt like time was short in SC.  I reminded myself to look for photo ops in FL, but I got distracted by squirrels and things.  To be perfectly honest, I think I was just glorying in the balmy weather.  I didn't even care when it rained.

Then I had to drive home.  The predicted "light rain" was a monsoon in SC.  I ended up parked on the freeway again because a whole string of cars slammed into each other.  I hoped that was it, but no, I was repeatedly parked in North Carolina too.  I eventually stopped for the night in Mt. Airy, the "big town" Andy Griffith used to go to near Mayberry.  I had the best fried chicken for dinner, and okra wasn't on the menu.

Southern monument -- who thought we needed to laud road construction guys?!
But I hit some rough roads and guess I do appreciate them.

Last day, I crept through the twisty, windy mountains with my hands tightly gripped on the steering wheel because the world was a solid gray of fog.  I really hated mountains and driving by then, but eventually I made it back to Ohio where the sky was blue, the snow had melted, and 34F didn't feel so bad.  Kinda miss Florida though.