DECEMBER 12, 2025 HOLIDAY REFLECTIONS Am I an antique? Sometimes, when I watch “Little House on the Prairie” or “The Waltons,” I feel my generation is robbed of all the types of ‘old-fashioned’ items from the eras depicted in those shows, and the creative inventiveness that surrounded these times. The year is 1978. The Gonella’s Italian Family Deli calendar on my Nana’s kitchen closet wall that faces you when you go into her home’s side door, assures me of this. I am seven years old, glancing appreciatively at its familiar block squares, its fall and winter decor, and its listing of Federal holidays and President’s birthdays. (The President’s depictions in cartoon form are kind of cute – even if they appear QUITE stilted and stuffy as people.) At least this calendar and some of my Nana’s household belongings seem kind-of more oldworld feel – because my Home with Granny and Grandpa and Mom is just so boringly ‘modern.’ Back at our Home — Granny just now pulled this month’s Detroit Edison (electric power) and MI Bell (landline telephone) bills from our mailbox. I am FULL of WONDER and EAGER for ALL that LIFE CELEBRATES — including the Thanksgiving and CHRISTmas Holidays. These are fast approaching. I am on Thanksgiving break from school; tomorrow Granny and I will prep our Family’s risotto recipe, as our Family has made for this Holiday for years! We will use our ‘by-hand’ meat and veg grinder to prep its ingredients; that’s some of the FUNNEST part! (In a few years Granny will sometimes ask me, “Should we use the electric grinder?” that we had also — and I ALWAYS ASSURE GRANNY, “No! Granny It just wouldn’t be THE SAME.”) It has that ‘old-world’ FEEL to it, however … this also is actually Nana’s (though in two to three years she’ll tell us to just keep it at our Home), and each year we bring it over to prep our Risotto. I walk over to our rotary-dial landline phone in our kitchen; no-one is using it now, so I can call my grade school friend Melinda from school. She and her family are going out of town to be with other family for the holidays, so it’s NICE to get to chat with her a bit because we won’t get to ‘hang out’ until school starts again. It’s so NICE using our home phone instead of those public phone booths that even the “Carol Burnett Show” that Granny always watches poked fun at. My friend Melinda’s family is also a lot of FUN! With five children including her, a solid Catholic faith, and two REALLY FUN parents, I enjoy not only the games and antics and explorations we kids come up with when I go there — but also ESPECIALLY the family meal times, when her parents lead all their kids and any guests in REALLY FUN 'around the table’ games, like historical trivia or AMANDA GALE Groundcover vendor No. 573 guessing an object or activity or each person just responding to a creative ‘getto-know you’ question. These parents really love their kids, and are ALWAYS SO! WELCOMING for each guest at their table. They bring out EVERYTHING INTERESTING IN EVERY ONE. They always have warm smiles and OPEN HEARTS ready to receive all that is INTERESTING from their guests. This holiday season they’re focusing on one of Melinda's grandparents though, because one of them had gotten ill. So it will likely be after the Holidays for my visits there to resume; I might get to visit Melinda and her parents and brother sometime during the longer, CHRISTmas vacation though. Melinda and I often play FUN board games or act out plays or stories that we invent. Melinda's little brother sometimes HELPS us. Sometimes her Mom plays along with our pretendings. Melinda’s mom is friends with my Granny and they volunteer for our school activities and are regulars for ‘PTA’ meetings. (Granny brings me to these sometimes; and I was always sure to ask a question to draw out a little laughter from its otherwise somber tone.) Oh well. In our living room I walk on our earthtone shag rug, past the unique, stone comprised gold-colored water fountain with a draped female figure and lamp at the top of it. Granny purchased this as a special token of her earnings via Ford Motor Company Kitchen for herself and our home. I observe the gaudy gold and black wallpaper that looks like its shapes are monsters, and am amazed that that’s really in style! It’s not as bad as that big, ugly medium-blue hanging lamp that Mom has in her room though; with its large carved-out, dark-shaped holes that appear just plain creepy — ESPECIALLY at night. That also is REALLY in style, though. (If only it was a FUN ‘creepy,’ like that pretend ghost-rifle that I got for Halloween that you look through a viewfinder and shoot the pretend villain — ghosts who make Casper ashamed. Nor like the small, black, square-box, green hand coin bank that also found me at Halloween). I walk over to our TV console, and open the top part that has the radio-stereo in it. As I turn the knob to hear the radio, I must put my Leprechaun Pet Rock or a book on it, to prevent the sound going out or static. Like so many U.S. American households, whenever our family tunes in to Channel 2 (the most awaited part is when Walter Cronkite once again assures us, “And that’s the way it is …”) each night, we must often turn that big, clunky button dial that sits atop the TV console, to get that large outdoor antenna that looks like an 1800s lightning rod or an overdone farmhouse weather-vane — to turn to just the right spot, to get a clear picture of Walter on our TV. The songs that reach through the radio include such artists as Barbra Streisand, Peter Paul and Mary, Helen Reddy (“Keep On Singing!”) and the ill-fated Karen Carpenter (John Denver also brings us Home on Country Roads). “Mariah,” I perceive, is a song (not a singer) about a great storm tragedy. The Singer sewing machine we have in our basement, however, is what Granny sometimes uses when some of our clothes need a ‘touch-up.’ Mom uses it to actually make some of our clothes — including, each year, my Halloween costume. Epstein is a character on the show “Welcome Back Kotter” — but that’s another matter. Then there’s Mom’s typewriter in our basement, most often atop our sewing machine when it’s closed like a desk. Although this is also so boringly modern, I feel a little more grown-up and ready for “BIG things” because this year I learned from my Mom the “home row” for typing. Mom has some nice, in-style clothing and effects. My favorite “pop-thing” she has is a mood ring that turns colors, somehow, according to how the wearer is FEELING. Mom also does some ‘nail-into-boards’ art and velvet backdrop painting art. She has turquoise jewelry, a macrame purse and belt, and bell-bottom jeans. Mom’s hair-style is ‘puffy’ in the center, with side-hair curlets surrounding the bottom of her ears. Granny always wears her hair completely puffy bee-hive style, and Grandpa has sideburns and a baseball cap. People don’t look like this on “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie.” Sometimes as a family we watch the old silent black and white film reels that have to be attached to a film projector and the machine with the reel feeding through. It aimed at a blank screen or a sheet. Through these, I get to meet my Nono in his middle-aged years. He had severe memory loss during his presence in my mom’s preteen years and my youth to 4th grade when he passed from this life. Through the films I got to see him dancing around for an Italian neighborhood gathering, and they were all dancing either the “Tarantella” or “The Hokie Pokey” or maybe some combination. Nono looked right into the camera and his crisp, clear eyes that I know were blue — just twinkled as he smiled. These were the same type of film reels that we’d watch — children’s movies and children’s stories made into movies — at school, often around the holidays, each grade school class would observe several. However, we now even have the even more really modern film reels that are in-color for our new family moving pictures. Our still family photos are all in color also, these also contrast with the old black and white family photo albums from Granny’s childhood, and from when she and Grandpa had courted and then gotten married. In this year that I will turn eight years old, my mom and I would never even imagine that years later we’ll lose all our family photos to an ‘eviction.’ The thought would have been HEARTWRENCHING as it was when it occurred. If we had known — would we have continued taking photos? The cameras we use are Kodak and Polaroid. Film is brought to a store for developing, while single photos from Polaroid are pulled out and developed in 1-2 minutes. This is just so modern. Other aspects that are modern include drive-in theatres, dishwashers, most clocks, and watches displaying Arabic (not Roman) numerals and lighting that is two development steps out from Edison's incandescent bulb. A&W food brought out on a tray to your vehicle is a reminder of at least the 1950s; however, there’s now more and more drive-through fast food. The Bob Jo's Frozen Custard stand in Southgate, Mich. reminds Grandpa of the local frozen custard craze of the 1940s; I just like its really different “Blue Moon” ice cream. However, a Baskin Robbins that amazingly has 31 flavors (not just the standard strawberry, chocolate, or vanilla) has recently opened up, and it will become a favorite for me and some of my summer softball team members. Grandpa’s WWII navy hat, that he allows me to playfully engulf all of my face in, is maybe a little less modern. Grandpa talks with me about our dogs, my schooling and his job at the steel mill. Once for my birthday and once for Christmas he made me special-designed cakes! His listening to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby records are a bit nostalgic. Granny brings me with her on shopping errands when I’m on school vacations. When I was younger a few years ago, Granny would bring me along see ANTIQUE page 11 GROUNDCOVER NEWS 7
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