My safe spots.

I don't know if anyone else has "safe spots" in their homes but every time I find something I don't want the kids to find, I put it in a "safe spot". Unfortunately, I can never remember where these safe spots are. There's all kinds of important things I'd like to find that are hidden in my house. The latest is a pint of Pumpkin Pie Icecream. A focused, logical person will have realized that the only safe spot for Icecream is the freezer but in my rush of taking care of 5 kids this week, I put my icecream in a "safe spot". Now, I can't find a pint of melted Icecream in my house... We've been searching for 2 days.

The Christmas Hat Story.

This time of the year always reminds me of the Christmas hat.  It was the first thing I wanted and worked for and bought.  I can still see what it looks like in my memory. It was sort of a French beret, velvet Christmas plaid, with a big black bow and I thought if I had it, I would look just like Madeline from the book.  I’m tempted to look up a similar to hat to show you the effect, but I’m terrified to find it and see it for the early 90’s relic it was and not for the promise of fancy-ness that I saw in it.

I grew up in a small city surrounded by farms in Northern Ohio.  I left there to move to Cincinnati when I was in 5^th grade, but all my childhood memories up to then revolve around this small piece of the world where I rode my pink radio bike (the radio never worked) for hours and hours on end from Broadway Street to Main Street with my friends.  

4th grade Nerdy Me.

 

 

I  see my 10 year old self during visits back on every street corner.  The ghost of a 10 year old girl with messy brown hair on a dirty pink bike that ALWAYS had the chain broken with a radio that would never work.  On one end of Broadway, a proud statue of Annie Oakley was constructed with park benches all around.

 

Center of Town - Annie Oakley Statue

The tiny little shops and stores that make up Broadway were adventure and freedom to me.  Now they represent the fading life of the American small town business owner.  The one I visited most was the candy store (ahem, the Pharmacy) because my friends and I could typically scrape up some pennies, nickels, and dimes from our couch cushions or underneath old vending machines to buy our favorites. Mine, were tootsie rolls, in case you wondered.   The candy store was right next to the 2 feature movie theatre.   When I close my eyes to remember, I can still see the guy who worked there for as long as I could remember taking ticket money while wearing a bow tie. 

(Broadway Street in my hometown. The movie theatre is on the left and the old Uhlmans building is directly across the street)

Down the street on the opposite side was a trailer that served the most delicious hamburgers.  The Hamburger Shoppe.  When I was 10, I visited once and I only had enough for fries and not enough for a tip. I wrote the waitress a nice note, thanking her and apologizing for not leaving enough of a tip and promising to leave more next time. When I was 19, I went back to that shop during a visit for lunch and that very same waitress recognized me.  She left during her shift to run home and bring me back the scrapbook that she kept the note in.  That’s what a small town is like.  This would never happen where my kids are growing up. 
 

Where my kids are growing up.

 

 

People probably knew I was a poor kid and didn’t belong in their shops or businesses but they never ran me out or asked me to leave. I convinced myself in my preteen years that this was because I was so good at acting like I belonged there.  I had a crazy imagination as a kid.  Every moment was a scene and I was the lead.  To use the word dramatic would be a disservice to the adults who had to deal with me on a daily basis.  

My clothes came from 4 places in that town.  They were handed down from people at church, bought at goodwill, bought at K-Mart at Easter or Christmas, or bought at a consignment shop called ‘Family Bazaar’ that had one very fancy yellow wedding dress that I begged my Mom to buy me at age 10 because I WAS CONVINCED I would never want a different wedding dress than that canary yellow dress and of course the matching bonnet.  Despite my begging and pleading and promise to never give her grandchildren if I didn’t have that dress, she never bought it for me but it didn’t stop me from stopping in there every single day for months to look at the dress.  And twirl around in front of the 3 way mirror and imagine wearing it.

One store that we never shopped in was called Uhlmans.  It was a department store with a glass jewelry case, mannequins, large fitting rooms, and everything I had seen in the movies.  It was the only place in town that I knew of that had an elevator except for the hospital.  I tried doing some research on Uhlmans but in true old time fashion, there’s just not a lot of information out there.  In 1997, they were acquired by Stage Stores. I know the Uhlman’s chain goes back as far as 1965.  The point was that this was a fancy store and not a place I should have ever found myself.

 

But I had been to all those stores on that long row of businesses (As long as it wasn’t a bar.)  I had been in the California Dream Bed Store and tried out the water beds while the salesman shook his head in annoyance.  My East Elementary friends and I had shared a bowl of fried rice and a bowl of Wanton soup at the China Garden where the servers giggled over a group of ten year olds paying in quarters and pennies and always gave us our own fortune cookies which we definitely didn’t deserve. 

 

 I had gone to AAA and looked through brochures and planned out trips that I have yet to take.  I had bought homemade icrecream all the way from the specialty store at the end of Broadway in the very last door, painted purple.   I had gone into the Merle Norman make up store and used the eye shadow and lip stick testers when the cashier turned around to answer the phone to try to look more like Madonna.  I am thankful because these people did not kick a curious 10 year old girl out of their shops. Instead, they let me look around, get warm, and pretend to be whatever I wanted to be in that moment.  And at Uhlmans. I wanted to be fancy enough to deserve to shop there. I wanted to be like Madeline. 

Madeline = Me in my french dreams

 

It started with a hat.  Dark red Christmas Plaid with a big black bow.   I was on my way out from an elevator ride excursion with my friend Chad. (A little about chad: class clown, and one of 3 of us who found our first Playboy magazine in box above a garage that held a basketball hoop in an alley where we paid played ‘No Blood No Foul.’ type hoops.)  We had gone up and down about 3 times that day in the elevator while trying to remain casual (and fancy).  We laughed the whole way up and down and now as I’m back deep in that memory and remembering that we could hear the slamming of the register drawers and the bell on the door chime when a new customer entered from inside the elevator, I’m almost positive that they could hear us giggling up and down in elevator like idiots. 

On the way out the door that day, I saw it.  I stopped in my tracks. It was perfect. Perfectly fancy and I had to wear it. I had to own it.  That hat was more mine at that moment than it was anyone else’s ever.  I looked at the tag thinking if it was $4 or less I could probably gather that within the week, but I was smack dab into my first lesson of consumerism at that moment when the price tag said $24.99.  I was crushed.  I had no way to make it mine.  Even at Christmas, my mother wouldn’t spend that much on a hat, I was sure.  I walked over the mirror anyway, crestfallen just to get the image in my head one time of what I would look like if I ever had the opportunity to be fancy. I put it on and I knew when I saw the reflection in the mirror that it had to be mine, even as Chad was assuring me that the hat was stupid and no way would the boys ever play basketball again with me if I wore it in front of them.

For me?  There was no other choice.  I would not have another yellow dress situation on my hands where I knew I would die an old cat lady because my mother had crushed my tweety bird colored dreams of love.  If I was ever going to make it in life, I was going to have to own that hat.

The first thing I did was try to get a job.  I went to the South end of town to The Book Store which was run by a lady who I’m 99% sure was blind.  She assured me that she couldn’t give a job to an 11 year old but wished me luck and gave me my first dollar. 

Where my love affair of old books began...

 

 

After an unsuccessful attempt around the house to find any kind of change, I knew I was out of luck. I was too young to baby sit.  I was too proud to beg. In the meantime, I would go back every few days and try the hat on.  I was terrified that it would gone on the day I finally reached my $25 goal.  I would always stick it back, deep under a pile of winter hats and say a small prayer that no one else wanted to look like Madeline as much as I did.  At home, I talked about the hat nonstop.  Everything my mother asked of me had a price,

 ‘Please do the dishes.’

 ‘Can I have a dollar?’ 

‘Angela – Get up for school. You can’t be late AGAIN – We live right across the street!  We live closer than any other kid in your class and you've been late more than anyone else. ’ 

‘I’ll get up right now for .50’

Some how, I convinved myself, this all had to add up.  The biggest help was a lady at church who let me do odd errands for her.  Or Mr. Teaford who wouldn’t pay me hard earned cash to clean up his store, but instead would give me candy which I then sold to my friends during school hours.  (By the way, this would be the start of lucrative career where I realized that things there were inaccessible to school children during school hours were worth a lot more money during that time than after school.)

Teafords Dairy Store - Nice Old Man. Always with a Broom in his hand.

 

 

  It was almost Christmas and realistically, I had only been working maybe 2 weeks to get enough money for that hat, but it felt like my entire life.  I only had 10 bucks.  In my head, I didn’t quite understand Clearance so I assumed after Christmas, the hat would disappear forever, because it was clearly a Christmas hat.  (This did not deter the fact that I planned on wearing it during Christmas, Easter, The forth of July, The first day of school and every day after for as long as I lived.) 

The day before Christmas Eve, my mom had enough of my sulking over the hat and handed me a Christmas card and upon opening it – I had discovered, with complete joy, had 15 dollars in it.  She was giving me the rest of the money for the hat.   I had $25 dollars now.  I was richer than I’d ever been.  I was about be fancier than I’d ever been. I hugged my mom and kissed her cheek and ran out of the house probably faster than she realized these things had even happened.  I can still remember with pride walking down Broadway to Uhlmans and hearing the door chime as I entered.   I rode the elevator up for the first time with purpose.  My heart was about the beat out of my chest. I had $25 dollars in my pocket and a head that was ready to be crowned with the greatest Christmas hat in the world.  Surely, this new hat would lead to me being discovered by a talent scout and shipped directly to Hollywood to star in Nickelodeon’s ‘All That’ or perhaps, I would be the first kid in New York to be a featured player in the cast of Saturday Night Live – A show my mother would NEVER let me watch however if I muted it on my small 13 inch black and white in my room, who could know?  I was deciding between starting my sketch comedy career on All That or moving directly to SNL as I came around the corner of the big brick building.  VICTORY WAS MINE!

 

 

I rushed over to the hat racks and panicked up until I saw it at the bottom of the pile. I picked it up and reshaped it. And because I was fancy now, I only jumped up and down in my head with my eyes closed and followed it with a Thank You to God who surely allowed this moment to happen for an 11 year old girl most considered weird or spazzy at best.  I went to the cash register.  The lady watched me closely as she rang it up. From one pocket, I pulled out a sandwich baggy of coins and stray dollar bills and then my mother’s generous envelope from the other pocket.  I laid it out on the counter and knew I had exactly 25.00.  The total was 26.50.

Unfortunately, 11 year Angela did not understand the concept of sales tax.

The hat came to more than $25.00. It was something around $26.50. As the cashier began counting my change with an exasperated sigh, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough for the hat.  I started to negotiate in my head with myself.  “But it’s mine.  I earned it.” (Sure, my mom paid for 60% of it, but in my head, my begging and pleading was work and I had earned all of it!)  They couldn’t take this joy away from me! I was pretty much like this...

 

 

 

 

 I prepared myself to run.  I knew that there was a back stair case.  I could just grab the hat and run. I would leave the money and come back another day when I earned the tax to finish paying.  I WAS NOT leaving without this hat.  I WAS NOT leaving this story non-fancy.  This was my time. I had spent 11 years struggling to find a place in the world and my place was under that Christmas HAT!  I felt myself chest heaving. I felt heavy and hot tears in my eyes.  I was going to fight for this hat.  As my breathing quickened and my nervous habit of chewing on my own hair kicked in, I head her sigh again and said ‘Well. Look at that, exactly 26.50. You have a Merry Christmas’ and she handed me the bag. 

What had just happened?  She was giving me the hat!  I paused for a second to give her a second to rip it out of my hands but only a second.  I pulled it close to my chest. 

I owned the hat? I owned the fancy hat! 

I didn’t take it out of the bag until I was back on the sidewalk outside. I ripped the tag off and felt accomplishment in a way I never have before.  I wore it day and night until the spring.  I moved away in the spring and everything changed then. I knew the hat wouldn’t fit in with a new life.  I left it with my Mom and I remember that hat every Christmas.  The feeling of wanting something that bad that only comes a few times in your life. The feeling of the help you get from others in making it happen.

How I felt in my new hat

 

I knew the lady had been kind and let me have the hat enough though I was $1.50 short.  It was not the first act of kindness shown to me on Broadway Street and it wouldn’t be my last.  So much of a person was built in those little shops day after day. I’m thankful for each and every one of them.