Back when it was the hangout for everybody between eight and 80, the owners made everything on site.  They had real ice cream, served in abundance in glass dishes, topped with real whipped cream and a huge cherry on top.  There was a basket of pretzel sticks at every table, and a jukebox from which many kids were first exposed to popular music or even the hits of their parents’ generation.

They delivered their own milk to local households, and you could actually have food put on your doorstep without worry back then.

Today ice cream contains strangely named concoctions and comes in cardboard containers from massive processing plants.  The good old parlor is going away like drive-in movies and even one-screen movie theatres.

Sure I still eat ice cream and have a particular fancy for Blue Bunny, now that Baskin-Robbins is not to be found anywhere nearby (they have the best chocolate chip).  Nothing will replace that old joint that is nothing more now than a nostalgia photo in a town calendar.

The other day a piece of mail came to our office, addressed to somebody with an oriental-sounding name.  The recipient in question isn’t oriental, nor is married to one, but the writer was obviously not aware of Anglican surnames.  Some mistakes that result in shoring up the language barrier are forgivable, but others are costly and cannot be ignored.

The impression in the media is that non-native speakers tend to be more wary of authorities than the very criminals the police and investigators are trying to root out for the public’s safety.  Maybe the criminals speak their language, while the cops do not.

What is most disturbing is the occasional television interview in which a speaker with residency in this country for some time utilises a translator to talk to the reporter.  Let’s say a car was coming their way and was doomed to run them down:  would the subject of the interview respond to the words, “Look out!” in time to save their own lives?  In the time it would take for the translator to put the warning into the proper words, they’d be goners.

It seems logical that nobody can speak every language there is in the world, but most people can obtain enough ability in a second language with proper attention and study.  Children are particularly open to learning additional languages, and they are often employed to translate in the home for the older adults who lack aptitude.  For those who refuse to adapt, it is a sad and isolating trend that ultimately causes that language barrier to become an unbreakable block to true freedom.  It isn’t discriminatory to establish and require one language, but it is dangerous for people to have voices that nobody can understand.

Language is power.

Not being much of a country music fan, it took a moment for it to sink in that what I was watching wasn’t my usual cup of tea (excuse the pun), but I didn’t realize how popular Solo cups were until today.  Sure those ubitquitous cups are inexpensive, disposable and fun, and even I have tried my hand at cup stacking (and I don’t recommend trying it with cups with comfort grip sides, because it slows you down), but who would think that one could write a whole song about them?  Who knew that they apparently decompose in 14 years?  Who would go to all the trouble to find out?  Toby Keith did.  Thank you.

What part freaked me out?  A partygoer urinating into a cup and passing it on to somebody else when beer was also making the rounds.  Ew.  There is something strange about the fact that beer and urine look so much alike.  Somebody up there has a sense of humor. I hope the Solo company does, too.

So now I’ll spend the rest of my day singing about red Solo cups, which I’ll lift up and party.  Ask me again in a week if I still remember that Toby Keith did it, and you’ll know if you have a winner.

Once the change was approved, the question became how to add the extra time on to everybody’s already packed schedule without affecting the other two thirds of their lives.  It’s amazing to look over the new schedules and see how adding 30 minutes a day to the work week can change people’s lifestyle dynamics.  For one thing, bad weather can affect travel time, so parents of school-age children had to consider whether it would be prudent to move around their mornings or evenings.

Ultimately some folks asked for an earlier start, while others chose the “caboose.”  Somebody (I was one such somebody) had to read a sheet which contained the original proposed schedules and the changes made to meet the needs of the staff involved.  It took awhile to translate it, calculate it and enter it.  In the end, however, nobody seems to have complained about the new protocol, only that the new hours now meant less overtime.

Some of us, unfortunately, had lunches reduced from 45 to 30 minutes.  With only 30 minutes, it’s a challenge to eat lunch, especially when the cafeteria needs time to prepare your food.  Add the actual consumption of the food, bathroom time and fielding cellphone calls which had to go unanswered on company time, and those 30 minutes disappear faster than a panicked cat.

Some stomachs were growling the first week, but not loudly.

The great thing about work is, when you work, you get paid.  The more time you work, the more you get paid.  The money goes into that cafeteria lunch, and if you don’t eat it all, you can take it home a half hour later than usual.

While despots and icons of the golden age of movies passed on, countries suffered economic crisis, war, and natural disaster.  It happens every year.  In 2012 we will likely see more of the same.  We survived blizzards, floods, extreme heat and nuclear power plant meltdowns.  We can survive more of the same, as long as we remember that history goes on, from one crisis to another, and we are just witnesses that pass on what we see before we, too, stand up to the tape measure of why our lives mattered.

Just for fun, I stuck the seed in some water, and within days it had grown enough that I was able to put it into some soil.  Unfortunately it died.

Weeks and a few lemons later, another sprouted seed appeared.  I worried that I might not have planted the first one properly (it’s possible I buried it upside down, as I was unable to tell which part was the actual root of the thing), so I left this seed in water awhile longer, and soon I saw evidence of its sense of direction and proudly potted it, placing it on the generous windowsill facing the warm sun outside the office window.

The seed grew quickly, and over the past few years I’ve had to re-pot it four times.  It is now a grand plant about four feet high.  It now needs a table, rather than a windowsill, but it is the pride of the office, and volunteers care for it when I’m away.

The trouble is, what is the future of such a tree?

I have read that lemon trees can be grown in containers if kept in the proper environment and cared for with good soil, drainage and misting (it needs the same type of climate as the one from which it came). 

Everybody is waiting for the day when it grows a lemon.  We joke that we might get half a glass of lemonade and can pass it around if everybody sips a drop apiece.  Like anything in life, it’s a joy to have and watch, and it will certainly add to the office decor for a long time.

It had better.  Not another sprout has appeared in my lemons since then.

As the years go by, Christmas doesn’t seem to be the same.  Everything becomes new and improved, which usually means cheaper.  With the economy looking bad for awhile longer, maybe the best thing to do is remember what used to be, because maybe it could be that way again.

I seem to remember that Cherry Hill Mall used to have a walk-through exhibit featuring an Eskimo boy.  I can’t remember his name or anything else about it, but it was fun when I was a kid, to walk along and watch the scenery unfold.  I think the kid went to Hawaii in one of the exhibits.

I remember the year when the gas company Sinclair brought a dinosaur exhibit to Cherry Hill Mall’s parking lot.  They had a vending machine which produced models of dinosaurs out of molten plastic.  That was cool back in the good old days.

I recall the annual television program from Hess’ Department Store in Allentown, PA.  They featured animatronic displays.  Today, kids probably wouldn’t appreciate animatronics:  video or holographic avatars catch their eyes these days.  Then again, the movie Hugo seems to be packing in audiences at the box office, and that movie features an animatronic figure.  Maybe all is not lost.

I remember that the holiday season didn’t start until Santa entered the toy department on Thanksgiving Day.  Now, we start seeing processed holiday foods being sold in September, and the first holiday ornaments arrive in July.

Back in the good old days, we had real ice cream parlors like the local hangout Green Valley.  I first discovered jukeboxes there.  The whipped topping was real, and the portions were massive.  Every table had a free basket of pretzel sticks.  The atmosphere was warm and the ice cream cold (and made from scratch).

Also, back in the good old days, it was possible to say Merry Christmas to anybody without having to stop and think to oneself if anybody would take offense.  Greeting people meant good will to all men, whether they celebrated Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa or nothing at all.

If we wanted it, we could get it back again.

When you look at what religion each of our presidents has affiliated, we haven’t had much of a mixture.  George Washington was an Episcopalian, and Barack Obama is considered Christian but of no particular church affiliation after the congregation he had visited for a long time had some issues.  So we’ve come full circle in terms of racial profile by having a Black president, and in terms of religion we’ve had some “no comment” presidents who did not practice anything, and even a renowned Catholic president (JFK).  Are we ready for the possibility of having a Mormon in the White House?

Mitt Romney belongs to a faith that stresses family and community service, and even the concept of ”one for all” taxes (Mormons traditionally pay a tithe to the church).  There are some things that might need clarification for the uninitiated, such as the big question of why some practitioners in some sects have multiple wives, or why they have the Book of Mormon (the real text, not the musical).  The fact that he is still running indicates that he is still a possible candidate.

It’s good to keep the mind open, and we will continue to see how the whole candidate dissection plays out in the weeks to come.

If you’re familiar with the show, as well as other shows written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, most of the dialogue is sung using his special leitmotifs (in this case musically rendered with Andrew Hart’s lyrics)  which permeate the production.  By the end of the performance, some of the lines from the romantic song  ”All I Ask of You” have become interspersed with those from the incomparable ”Music of the Night.”  They’re easy to sing along with (and get confused about), because they do mesh so well.

Some of the action taking place between musical numbers include sung exchanges among the principles.  If life could be sung, this is how it would sound.  It’s enjoyable, and worth remembering.  To a point.  Now my head is filled with a mindworm soundtrack as hypnotic as the Phantom’s seductive methods.

The other day, somebody at work offered to go on a coffee run; a co-worker put in her request for hazelnut coffee.  Suddenly my brain was turning the request into a rewrite of one of the main exchange music I had heard in the show:

Hazelnut!
She doesn’t want plain.
She wants hazelnut!
She’s being picky.
He’ll never go for coffee again.

Sure it’s fun to parody songs.  It’s been done for ages.  It’s strange, though, when “Music of the Night” suddenly becomes “Traffic on the Bridge:”

Flatbeds, semis
clogging up the freeway.
Fast cars speeding
Giving me no leeway.
Angry and forlorn
I’m afraid to honk my horn
People in a hurry won’t give in a smidge.
I’m stuck in here, the traffic on the bridge.

Maybe it’s because I was involved in November’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and my write brain got caught up in the musical and, as a result, I have temporary insanity.  Doesn’t matter.  At least I’m enjoying what I’m singing.

Gossip is a strange human habit, and rarely beneficial.  It usually happens when people are in a situation in which they feel the need to talk about topics that disturb them.  Even if somebody brings a piece of good news about somebody else to the conversation, the tide soon turns to observations of character foibles and other negative things about folks who are not even present to provide a defense or justification.

I have been the subject of gossip, I’m sure.  Who hasn’t?  Our vulnerability to gossip starts when we get put into diapers and sometimes doesn’t end, even past the grave.  Usually the gossip begins when somebody makes an observation, and the others nod in agreement, even when they don’t agree.  The idea of gossip is to unite everybody present against those not present, by airing dirty laundry and speculation that seems to be designed to equalize some sort of societal playing field.  Our best athletes, actors and other public figures are the highest form of gossip fodder; the rest of humanity simply doesn’t get into the magazines or television.

Human errors, and our struggles to adapt and grow in a world which alters the rules of life as fast as we can keep up (and faster), outnumber the successes, as William Shakespeare similarly noted in Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar.  We tend to bury good people, having taken advantage of their moments of goodness and only remembered the times they didn’t meet our expectations.

One person with whom I was discussing some human missteps by an absent third party, pointed out that sometimes it is better to talk with the topical person about such observations than discuss them behind their backs.  On a day like this past Thanksgiving, how could some people’s lives change if somebody would point out to Uncle Ted to his face that his tee-totaling family is disturbed by his annual alcoholic binge after the turkey dinner (especially when he staggers around and wrecks at least one table setting every year)?  Or if some unthinking person asks the others nearby if it is okay to take the incoming call causing their cell phone to blast its ringtone, and everybody responds, “let it go to voice,” wouldn’t we be on the path to greater kindness and truth and the chance for true change?  We often complain when we gossip, but the way to resolve complaints is to take it to the source of the problem, not confine it to the circle of nodding heads.