Missing Mr. M

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‘The end of the end of an era’

Let me start by saying how pleasantly surprised I was, upon googling my late dad’s engineering firm, HMG, to find that it not only still exists, but appears to be thriving — with four, count ’em four offices instead of just the one they started when I was a kid. The home office, however, appears to have relocated from Carlyle Lake Road to somewhere in Breese, which is kind of like the Dodgers absconding from Brooklyn to LA.

Youngest Younger Brother Doug playing cards on the Sir Launch-A-Lot with The Dude. Note HMG-monogrammed promotional beer cozies

“HMG” stands for Henry, Meisenheimer & Gende, the names of the three young gumption-filled engineers who founded this firm back in 1966. Of these, “M” was Last Man Standing. Until earlier this week.

Learning of Mr. Meisenheimer’s demise (I could never bring myself to call him “Hal” or even “Harold”) sent me careening down Memory Lane. Of course, to be fair, just catching a glimpse of, say, a handprint ashtray has the power to do so these days.

(Incidentally, I did start calling Mrs. Meisenheimer by her first name. It was the year I turned 65, and Mrs. M, er “Ruth” convinced me that it was about time.)

That’s Mrs. M (er, “Ruth”) sitting with my Mom and Sister at Mom’s 90th birthday party

See, not only did my dad (the “H” in HMG) work with Mr. M, I babysat for their kids. Which amps the grownups-deserve-your-respect level up another notch, or maybe even two. I babysat for a lot of people back then; I racked up a lot of experience doing this, and not just experience watching kids. See “Alice’s Adventures in Babysitting.

Babysitting at the Meisenheimers’ was my favorite gig. I can’t remember these kids fighting, much less peeing on each other. And they always gave me a goodnight hug. (Sometimes even a kiss.) Also, the Meisenheimers had this beautiful house that felt so warm and comfortable to sit around in after the kids had gone to bed. It was only years later that I realized this was because the Meisenheimers had lovingly restored it and furnished it with antiques — kind of rare for that split-level rumpus-room era. They even had shelves and shelves of books — books that they let me read. I’m pretty sure it was there that I discovered Sherlock Holmes.

Me with fellow graduation marshal Stanley. We were high-school juniors at the time. I was a babysitter; as far as I know, Stanley was not

But back to Mr. H. The photo at the top of this post was taken about the time the firm was founded, and shows him pretty much the way I remember him. I say “pretty much” because it is missing one very important detail: his pipe. I can honestly say that I never saw Mr. M without one clenched firmly between his teeth. He didn’t even remove it to speak. He would just kind of position it in the corner of his mouth and talk around it. Since my dad did the same thing, only with a cigarette, it made for some muffled exchanges. In fact, we Henry Kids called the way they talked to each other “Engineering Speak,” and used to imitate it ourselves. “Hey Harold,” our dad would go, “can you (mumble mumble) me the (mumble mumble) plans?” “Sure!” goes Harold, “Let me just finish the (mumble mumble) first.” This method of conversing was made even more hilarious once HMG built their new office and they communicated over an intercom.

Dad and The Child regaling the crowd at his HMG retirement party

Anyway. The photo of Mr. M in his obituary doesn’t have his pipe. But he looks remarkably like he does in the photo on the HMG website — and in my memory.

RIP, Mr. Meisenheimer. If the angels can’t understand your mumbling, my dad certainly can. Assuming he’s up there with you.

Amagansett, New York. July 2023

 

 

 

Those were Banner days indeed

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‘An ode to my first job that did not involve cleaning up. At least not cleaning up after other people’s children’

Again, apologies for being a slacker. I seem to be getting later and later with my Tuesday posts. And I don’t even have the turkey to blame this week.

‘Curses, foiled again!’ said Mr. Turkey upon spying this clever foil

Hey, at least we didn’t use a slingshot, an idea suggested by a relative at that Fab Family Reunion I recently attended.

But I wasn’t always a slacker. I was a hard worker, even at a very early age. For one thing, my parents were firm believers in Kids Doing Chores. (I remember we got docked a nickel each day we didn’t make our beds; since our weekly allowance was only 25 cents, there were weeks when my brothers owed my Mom). I won’t go into a whole long list of these chores, but suffice it to say that I got my fill of ironing. And my brothers don’t often volunteer to clean out basements or dog pens. Continue reading

“I’m watchin’ him!”

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‘The “Playdate”, back in Midcentury Modern Times.’

Last week I wrote about the Midcentury Modern custom of sending a high-school social studies class on a field trip to a maximum-security prison. I say “custom” because, frankly, I was astonished to find that many of you readers out there had done the very same thing. (And that’s not counting those of you who went to the very same high school as me.)

This week I’m curious to see how many of you grew up experiencing the Midcentury Modern version of the “playdate”.

“Playdates”, for those of you who don’t have, haven’t had, or don’t know anyone with children, are when parents or caregivers (what we used to call “babysitters”) set up specific times and places (“dates”) for kids to get together to “play”.

I just love that there is an actual Wikipedia entry for “playdate”. If you don’t feel like clicking, here’s what it goes on to say: Playdates have become common because the work schedules for busy parents, along with media warnings about leaving children unattended, prevent the kind of play that children of other generations participated in.

Hmmm. Just what “kind of play” was this? Continue reading

Alice’s Adventures in Babysitting

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‘Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t love this job’

Okay. Enough already with the Holidays. Everyone’s back at work. Even those of us who are, shall we say, ‘underemployed’, are working. See my riff ‘I love the smell of Soft Scrub in the morning’ for what I’m up to when I’m not writing brochures for Botox.

Like practically everyone where and when I grew up, I started working young. We were expected to do ‘chores’. Back in those days, these were sexually segregated. Boys did things like mow the lawn and wash the dog (harder than it sounds). Girls did things like peel potatoes and watch the little kids (much harder than it sounds).

Helping out at a very early age. I don't think I got an allowance then though

Helping out with the laundry. I don’t think I got an allowance then though

Of course boys and girls alike did things like wash and dry the dishes, there being no dishwashers (except children) till I was, oh, a teenager. Actually, I kind of enjoyed the old pre-labor-saving-device method. For one thing, it was companionable, since two of us teamed up, one to wash, and one to dry. (If the ‘dryer’ caught up with the ‘washer’, the dryer got to quit.) Continue reading

They didn’t do this for fun, you know

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‘Summer jobs I did not have. But I swear I did not make them up, either’

When I was a kid, a summer job was babysitting. Or working at the 5-and-10. Pumping gas. My best friend Norma had the coolest job of anyone I knew. She worked at the Dairy Queen. One of the perks was you could eat as much DQ as you wanted, which sounded pretty sweet until she told me she had a hard time even looking at a banana boat after the first couple of days.

But these jobs absolutely pale in comparison to the gigs scored by my personal family members in their respective college years. The Child spent one summer working with computers. ‘Yawn’, you say. Well, these computers were located here:

The Child's workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

The Child’s workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

That’s Wadhurst Park, a 900-acre estate in East Sussex. Which is in England, folks. It’s owned by the second-richest guy in Sweden. (Makes you wonder where the richest guy in Sweden lives.) Oh, and here he is, Hans. The Child said she was invited to tea with him and his wife once while she was there. The conversation was less than lively. Not sure if she met the dog.

Hans Rausing, The Child's Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Hans Rausing, The Child’s Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Incidentally, Hans’ dad made the family fortune by inventing the milk carton. Honest. Oh, besides owning that dog in his lap, Hans owned pigs. That’s one of them pictured at the top of this post making friends with The Child. (In addition to working with the estate computers, she performed various livestock-related duties. Including, sometimes, a bit of pig wrangling. And mucking.) Continue reading

That’s my Bob

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‘Your family is who you think your family is’

My Middle Younger Brother Roger is many things: filmmaker, banjo player, wind miller, and maker of the best chili on the planet. Who knew he was also a trailblazer? Yes, Roger was a member of a ‘blended family’ way before ‘blended’ was a term stuck on the front of ‘family’.

That’s Middle Younger Brother Roger standing behind the couch and behind Mom

See, back when Roger was just a tyke, my dad was transferred to Memphis for his job and our young family landed (somehow, I’m not sure how or why, I was only seven at the time) in a very large house near a university. To help pay the rent, my parents took in boarders — a couple of college guys, one named Bill Something-or-Other and another named Bob Sipowich. They lived upstairs, kept to themselves. Everything worked out fine. Except for the time we kids (there were three of us at this point) all came down with the measles over Christmas at my Gramma Peterson’s so we had to stay there till we got well and the boarders didn’t feed or water our parakeet Petey while we were away and he (gasp) died.

Anyway. That was traumatic. Just had to get it out.

That’s Roger, practicing Dad’s “Whoa-Back” move, at about the age of this story

Back to the story. Continue reading

Gone Baby Gone

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Mom Vase

‘The Nest. Is it half-empty? Or half-full?’

I think I can trace my rather non-involved mommy style back to a certain babysitting gig where I had to keep track of the kids’ poops on a chart. There were two of them (kids, that is), and a correspondingly healthy number of poops.

That, and a few other instances of dealing with what we now call ‘helicopter parenting’ put me off hovering. But I have to admit in all honesty that I was never destined to be one of those let’s-bake-a-zillion-cookies-and-then-whip-up-some-papier-mache-heads kind of moms.

The Dude (thank you!) was happy to handle Playground Duty. When the Child would say ‘Run, Mommy, run!’, I was apt to reply ‘Mommies don’t run; babysitters run’. And when well-meaning adults would exclaim Continue reading