Betsy McCall paper dolls

Mom subscribed to McCall's Magazine for many years, and I looked forward to the arrival of each new issue in hopes of finding a new Betsy McCall paper doll and story. Mom sewed nearly all our dresses and playclothes, using McCall's, Butterick, and Simplicity patterns. On a few occasions she made a dress just like Betsy's paper dress. It was great when Mom decided quickly on a Betsy McCall dress pattern. We spent so many, many, many hours of childhood seated at the pattern book tables in fabric departments agonizing over selections.




Mom made a brown dress for me just like Betsy's with the button-on yoke from McCall's September 1962 issue. Mom made it again in a royal blue border print with a white button-on yoke. 1962 was a wonderful year. I adored my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sandra "Cotton" Meier with her prematurely white hair. She encouraged me to write poems and stories (about three sentences long on lined newsprint paper) and to illustrate them with crayon drawings. My hair was cut shorter than Betsy's, and it was the last year I really liked my appearance for a long time.

Thanks so much to the Betsy McCall Paper Dolls web page for a lovely trip down memory lane.

Roses en route

Don't know why I decided to drive north up US highway 75 instead of I-35. Backward justification made me search out road construction advice to avoid the Ardmore section of I-35. My first hint at the real reason came when I picked up a tourist ad for the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa at a gas station.

Contemplating the Gilcrease set me to pondering a detour to Claremore to visit Will Rogers' home. Fritzi would have had this drive planned and researched. I was just flying by the seat of my capri pants with color-coordinated sandals.

Crossing the river I spotted an exit NOW sign for the Philbrook Art Museum, and took it. Mom had enjoyed a visit to the Philbrook collection in the opulent estate of oil baron Waite Phillips. Still, she would not have advised crossing two lanes so quickly, even under sparse traffic conditions.



Nature and nurture wholloped me with Fritzi's perfectionistic over-packing and over-planning tendencies, right down to the barf bags and accordian-folded plastic rain bonnets that fit into your purse. My mom's best moments were when she got so caught up in her enthusiasm for art museums, architecture, gardens, and golf tournaments it balanced out her anxieties. Those were some really outstanding vacation experiences for everyone along for the ride.

These roses were almost "glowing in the dark" on an overcast noontime in the formal Philbrook garden:





After this good month of rain and a quick pruning, Fritzi's long-suffering rosebushes had nice flowers. Mom rarely had time or inclination for gardening. The rosebushes baked on the south side of the house by the old television antenna, barely daring to hope someone would rip away the bindweed and spurge. Still, Mom loved floating pretty, fragrant roses in bud bowls on the card tables for bridge club.



Oh! I once heard a poem that goes:
"A rose is a rose is a rose"
Well I don't agree,
Take it from me,
There's one rose sweeter than any that grows!
That's my Rosie
Life is one sweet beautiful song to me.

It's good to take life's spur-of-the-moment side-trips. It doesn't hurt to recast your parents as Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh, either!

Silver and stainless

The Dallas Museum of Art's exhibit, Modernism in American Silver, running June 18 – September 24, 2006, leaves me far colder than a long handled spoon in a tall glass of iced sweet tea. A few bowls in natural, asymmetrical forms please me, along with a simple glass bowl on a silver base creating geometric shadows and rainbows. The highpoint of the exhibit it the "Celestial centerpiece" with its beautiful, thin tapers and sapphire dandelion fluff. This centerpiece was designed for an exhibit at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

The dandelion fluff on the Dallas skyline is the Reunion Tower. I enjoyed looking at all the lighted buildings of downtown Dallas during last evening's Late Night at the Dallas Museum of Art. The DMA's website rarely works, so I won't add it here. Late Night is a monthly event sponsored by Starbucks with activities and music for all ages on a theme connected to one of the current exhibitions. Last evening's theme was the World's Fair.

The idea of a World's Fair was confusing stuff to a second grader in the years of the Mercury manned suborbital missions. What was that space needle? Did it give shots? The monorail was more kid friendly. It was the transportation of the Future! All I knew, I probably learned from My Weekly Reader!

My tastes in silver, stainless, and other tableware was already being formed in 1962. The "modernism" silver pieces at the DMA do not have the simple, clean, elegant shapes of the stainless serving dishes and trays my mother preferred. Her stainless is timeless, and much respected today. The silver of Gorham and Reed and Barton on display look quite ridiculous, like someone trying to hard to be cubist or Jetson space age.

This Elvis movie was being projected on the Ross Street plaza wall outside the museum. Silly stuff with Elvis taking a little girl to the fair and playing ukelele. The sort of stuff your mother, or at least my mother, warned me never to do. (I probably didn't need a warning about ukeleles, just strangers at fairs.)

So many World's Fair predictions for the future never materialized. I'm going to have to track down a recording of the Firesign Theatre's "I Think We're All Bozos On this Bus" to hear the robotic President at the Future Fair. Just remember, "the Future's not here yet!"