Sesame Street Live

Sesame Street, on PBS, had been entertaining children for more than a decade before mine were born. Even the roadshows pre-date my kids, who are now in their mid-thirties.

In January 1986, we took our children to Sesame Street LIVE!  The venue was the Coliseum at Wichita. What I remember is that it was expensive. We couldn't help but notice that most of the adults were grandparents treating the kiddos to the show. 

Our seats were lousy.  They were on the left-hand side of the arena at floor level.  

When it was time for the show, all the performers ran through the audience on their way to the stage. Now our seats were fantastic.  Grover patted my two-year-old daughter on the hand.  WOW!
Daddy didn't have his camera ready.  👎

The theme of the show was Save Our Street.  
Here is a link to the commercial:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqPve_oUmM

The colors faded after 30 years in the scrapbook.

Mr. Meanie was threatening to tear down Sesame Street to make way for a parking lot. An animated sign lit up at the audience response to a vote on the question.









The kids loved Oscar Grouch, and their grandma made a penny bank at ceramics class.
























 


The clothes hamper was the perfect place to pretend to be in the Grouch Can.

Love of all things Sesame Street extended to eating utensils. Now their children think they are fun to eat with when they come to this grandma's house.

CAT BATHROOM

In the early 1980's the County repaved the blacktop road that bordered one of our fields. The road engineer asked if we would allow them to stage some of their equipment near the intersection. This included a cone of sand which was used to spread on the road after it was resurfaced and sealed with oil. When the work was finished, we were left with several cubic yards of crushed rock consisting of particles 1/2" or smaller. The road department didn't want the expense of removing it, so we were stuck with the inconvenience of farming around it.

Occasionally, we thought of a use for the sand and chipped away at the pile.

We had two kids, and they got old enough to play outdoors without constant supervision. I thought it would be fun if they had a sandbox to play in. Their dad thought it would be a lot of work to get the sand from the field to our house.

He must have had a boring day because he gathered up empty seed bags and a shovel and transported some of the pile to the house. Did you know you can put 100 pounds of sand in a sack designed to hold 50 pounds of corn seed? 

Ed proceeded to pour sand into a pile in my flower garden. I cringed but didn't say anything. We found some 2x6 boards to make it an actual sand BOX. I gathered up plastic cups and anything else I could think of for our son and daughter to play with and led them outside to see the surprise. As they were walking down the steps, one of the cats was busily staking a claim. The confused children wondered what was so exciting about a cat scraping the sand over the hole he had dug. 

YUCK! 

Even though mom removed that portion of sand along with the cat poop, the two kids never played in it. Not once.

The cats loved it though, and my poor flowers were never the same.

"Ja-ack, get out of the cookies."

My grandmother's best friend was Pauline Degarmo. My dad and his siblings knew her as Auntie Pauline. She didn't have children of her own and doted on them when she came to visit. A published poet, she wrote under the name Pauline Degarmo Wilkerson.

In The Window of Prayer, the publisher prefaces the book with these words:  'Pauline Wilkerson's poetry is filled with gentle surprises. Her eye and ear are extremely sensitive to places, to atmosphere, words and tones of speaking, but this exactitude does not narrow her vision; she evokes the intimacy of a shared past; she writes not only of religious experience but of the small events of her days, described with reverence. Her feeling for children is revealed in the many poignant poems she writes about them.'

Another of her works is titled There Is No Rhyme for Silver.

She was a prolific poetess with a gift for taking an ordinary word and weaving a poem around it. A popular guest at ladies' afternoon teas, she sent everyone in attendance home with an original, hand-written poem themed on the word they had suggested. She must have dreamed in AABB couplets.

This evocative poem, simply called Shopping, was inspired by her friendship with my grandmother and her intimate knowledge of my dad when he was a youngster.

While shopping at the dimestore

Just the other day--

I'd gathered up my parcels

And started on my way,

When I saw a boy looking at cookie jars:

And this is what he did--

He carefully inspected them

Lifting up each lid.

When asked if he found one

He wanted to buy

This I heard him say,

"I want a nice gift-

For my mom--you know--

It's for Mother's Day."

The clerk said, "A cookie jar's real nice,

"I'm sure she'll be surprised."

Then he looked at her so skeptically

With doubt in his big green eyes.

"I don't think any of these will do;

For they all have lids that rattle.

When I sneak a cooky now and then--

I don't want the jar to tattle!"