Helen Remembers:An Afternoon in the Attic By Helen H. Hill W e awoke one Saturday morning to heavy rain, which meant that we wouldn’t be riding our bikes or playing outside that day. We turned our attention to our old Emerson television set with the round screen and we watched the programming for kids that we all loved so much. My favorite was Fury. It ran right after Sky King and started with the beautiful black stallion running inside his corral, fiercely approaching the camera as the announcer started, “FURY – the story of a horse and a boy who loves him.” This Western series was about an orphan boy named Joey, played by Bobby Diamond. His stepdad at the Broken Wheel Ranch was none other than Peter Graves. The horse was what we might call high spirited and he wouldn’t let anybody ride him except Joey. I don’t remember much of the plot line, but it was a crowd pleaser in our house every week! An interesting bit of trivia is that Fury’s real name was Highland Dale. He was the star of Black Beauty and he also played the black stallion in Giant with James Dean. Well, we all had our favorite TV shows. My brother used to cry over Lassie. He’s still crazy about animals. Just after Fury, we’d usually have lunch. Mother would set the kitchen table with our everyday Franciscan Ware Apple pattern dishes. She kept it interesting for us, usually serving sandwiches with a side of potato salad or sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. But often on a rainy day, she’d have a pot of soup on the stove. My favorite was her vegetable soup. She’d always put some kind of tiny macaroni or beans in it and some of the tomatoes she’d canned at the end of the summer. I still make this soup very much the same way today, though with just me and the dog, it lasts a lot longer than a single meal for eight. goods. Some belonged to my great aunts who passed away; other things were from mother when she was a girl. There were odds and ends up there that were left behind by previous owners of the house and there were things that were given to us that we couldn’t use but were just too good to pass up. I remember stacks of old books, particularly romance novels from the Edwardian era. All of the pictures featured Gibson girls in frothy gowns and upswept hair. We had cartons full of old china, glassware and kitchen implements. There were boxes of curtains and curtain rods, sporting equipment, Christmas stuff, trunks full of old clothing, a waffle iron and albums of sepia photos of people from long ago. There were even two mannequins with cast iron button shoes that looked a little creepy to me. These were in the dark part of the attic without windows, a place where we didn’t venture too often. Sometimes we’d really help mother to wash the windows, vacuum the rugs and tidy up. But often we’d just explore. I remember finding an old wooden crate one time that contained stuff mother owned when she lived back at home with her mother and father. There were report cards and greeting cards from her girlhood. She also had a satin glass dresser set packed away, a hat pin holder, lots of sheet music and a blue glass pitcher with a white image of Shirley Temple that she got at a movie theater when she was little. If I remember correctly, mother was born the same year as Shirley Temple. Her films used to be on television all the time, so we knew who she was and we had all experienced the kids’ drink named after her. I still make Shirley Temples today for the next generation of children coming along. I use a couple of teaspoons of grenadine over ice, ginger ale to the top of the glass, a cherry and a paper umbrella if one is handy. Usually, the toddler drinks it down in one gulp and asks for more - even before I’ve distributed refreshments to everybody in line. A trip to the third floor attic I remember right after the lunch dishes were put away that mother invited us to come up with her to clean the attic. We lived in a big old house built around 1870 and the attic included two finished rooms, several longer sections with exposed rafters, and a large space at the end of the house with a single window at floor level. The two rooms must have housed servants at one time and we had them done up with a sofa, odds and ends of furniture and lots of books. There were curtains at the windows and an old rug on the floor. Sometimes I’d come up and curl up with a book for hours all by myself. I loved to listen to the rain drumming on the tin roof above me and splashing on the window panes just a few feet away. Our attic was the repository for generations of household Things don’t change much I spent the other day in my own attic and thought about my experiences looking around attics 50 years ago. There isn’t much difference between then and now, unless you take into consideration that the styles have changed and the content of this attic is more suited to my personality and interests. I sat listening to the rain drops falling on the roof above me and sorted through stacks of books, records (yes, records), old photos, paintings and frames that I bought thinking they’d get used some day. I found my old yearbooks and some newspapers with headlines that announce the landing on the moon, the assassination of a president and other milestones. I found boxes of old letters written in the days before e-mail. There were costumes from the sixties and seventies that I can’t imagine I ever wore. And there were several caned chairs with the seats busted through that will serve as guinea pigs when the time comes to learn the craft of caning. But the one thing that was most like my childhood attic visits was the feeling of wonder and discovery I got while I was up there. The peeling wallpaper, cobwebs and dusty atmosphere fade away as I pour through objects I haven’t seen in decades. And I think that maybe, just maybe, I’ll explain to a niece or nephew someday just who Shirley Temple was when they find the old blue glass pitcher with her picture on it. Helen’s Easy Vegetable Soup “Our family soup recipe is as easy as can be – there’s simply no way to mess this up,” said Helen when we asked her for it. “There’s almost no preparation...just chop up the seasonal vegetables of your choice, pour everything into the same pot, and cook all day…add pasta or barley or whatever at the end. Serve with crusty rolls and you’ve got a hearty winner for a Northeast winter’s day.” You never know what you’ll find when you’re cleaning out your attic. WANTED: BASEBALL COLLECTIBLES! Robert Edward Auctions, LLC consistently helps sellers realize more money for their quality baseball material. 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