BACK IN THE BUCKET

A 200 dollar night in Pawtucket

2012-01-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

We had heard so much about the wonders of the Gamm Theater in downtown Pawtucket. Finally, we booked two tickets to go to see their revival of an earlier production of Shakespeare's HAMLET. We went with two old friends and planned a dinner date before the show. The restaurant chosen is on Hope Street almost on the Pawtucket line. We went and ordered from a pricey menu. Each of us had a drink to start and two of us had desert to finish. The grand total for us was over one hundred dollars. PLUS TIP!! My husband could not believe that was the cost, and he kept examining the bill--but there was no mistake.

We hustled out into the cold night and drove the few miles to the Gamm next to Tolman High School and the old armory building. After parking, we went in and sat down. We paid 80 dollars for our two seats. My husband turned to me and said--I cannot believe that we are spending 200 dollars for a night out in Pawtucket--we might as well bus down to Manhattan.

Then the show began, and when the final lines were spoken in that great scene of destruction that ends the tragedy--we decided that we had more than gotten our money's wroth.

The Polonius was a revelation. I am glad that I saw that performance. Both my husband and I are specialists in dramatic literature--my husband has published five books on Shakespeare. So this was not our first HAMLET. But I can say with no hint of exaggeration that this was the best Polomius I have seen. The actor who played the old politico is himself an old man, and his ways of showing the aging and capturing the complexities of the old man were a source of delight and wonder.
Thank you Gamm Theater.

Overnight in Pawtucket

2011-10-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

As the work of getting the house in Pawtucket draws to a close, I have wanted to spend more time there and see how things are working and also   what I notice still needs doing.
So this past Friday, 14 October, my husband and I drove to Pawtucket with our overnight bags. I was scheduled to meet the painter and look at his work again. He has been working there since June and   has transformed the house inside and out. I guess that I was not surprised when I arrived to find him and his fiancee--who works with him--completing one last task. He was just finishing installing a new lock and dead bolt on the front door. As always, his work was perfect. He is a talented professional painter and he also will do things like install new lights and overhead fans. So I feel blessed that he has been able to devote much time and energy to this project.
At his urging, I went to purchase a new back door look like the one already in place which had started to show wear and tear and reluctance to turn.
I went to a treasure trove nearby--Tussier's on Central Avenue. A hardware store like Tussier's is an original of Pawrtucket : in a barn-like structure   and filled with all that is needed to maintain the older homes that surround this area. Within minutes I emerged with a new lock and bore it triumphantly back to the house. Dennis the painter installed the new lock in a few minutes.
My overnight in Pawtucket was off to a great start. I stayed and did a load of wash in the washing machine in the basement--all of which has been totally repainted and illuminated fully for the first time with four new fuorescent light fixtures. Now I no longer feel as if I can barely see down there and all spookiness has vanished with the new lighting. I washed and dried the sheets for the new mattress that I had bought for the four poster bed in the bedroom.
Then I bade a fond farewell to Dennis and Joanne--but not before talking out in detail the specifics for the actual move; Dennis and another helper that he employs will move our furniture and personal effects from our summer house in South Kingstown to our winter quarters in Pawtucket.
After we left we went to visit my Aunt Anna at the wonderful Linn Health Center in East Providence.
How I found and settled on that great health and assisted living facility is a story for another posting.
After visiting Anna for a couple of hours, Yash (my husband) and I rewarded ourselves with a stop off for fish and chips at the inimitable Gregg's restaurant in East Providence. In line with my low carb routine I substituted   a salad for the French fries and winter squash for the coleslaw--with the wonderful, fresh fish. All's well.
We returned in pouring rain to the house in Pawtucket and   tried to watch the TV. My Aunt had an interesting quirk--she only watched Channel 10 and since she could get that with an antenna, she did not have a cable hook up. we found the TV in a closet but could not locate the antenna. So we looked for books to read instead. We went to our beds early because the next day was going to be eventful--a trip to Phantom Farm in Cumberland in the morning and then afternoon at the Regal Cinema in Swansea to watch a direct live from teh Met performance of Anna Bolena--an opera of Donizetti's that I have never seen.
More on that later.

Pawtucket garden

2011-10-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I am most looking forward to in my return to Pawtucket is that I will have the chance to make a new garden there. I have made gardens in the last three houses that I have lived in and they have taken both my energy and cash. And it is wrenching to leave the trees and plants, gates and arbors and trellises that I have assembled and tended carefully. I delight in watching the bulbs emerge that I plant each Autumn. I did not know that I would be moving to Pawtucket and yet in some way it has been looming there like a big boulder over my head that I did not look up to see.
Now I see a new garden as one of the big positives of returning there. The yard is not large, but it is ample for my purposes. Right now the tiny house is looking a bit overwhelmed by evergreens that were planted over 40 years ago as foundation plantings and now seem to dwarf the house. They have been trimmed but not fully contained and their trunks are thick like trees. So I want to take many of them out and replace them with smaller and more colorful shrubs and flowers.
My head is filled with thoughts of hydrangeas and day lilies. Color schemes are in my mind and I am poring more than usually over the catalogue form Wayside Gardens--for ideas.

I hope to have the large shrubs removed in the next ten days and begin to plant some small bushes and maybe two small flowering trees in the front yard. Then I will begin to place some bulbs--they are the hope for next Spring. I am also thinking about where and how to place bird feeders so that I can enjoy them from the kitchen window.

Slouching Towards PAwtucket

2011-09-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

Slouching towards Pawtucket
As a native daughter planning to return to her home city of Pawtucket, I approach it with mixed feelings. When I roamed these streets as a child, I often dreamed of being somewhere else. I idealized the American West after reading many Zane Grey novels. And since I adored Roy Rogers, I hoped some day to meet a real cowboy. Possibly if I had not left Pawtucket, I would still harbor these longings. I might even feel unsatisfied and unhappy. But I did leave and I spent 26 years away working at a job in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati made me miss Rhode Island, the ocean, and finally even Pawtucket.
However, now as I contemplate moving back to the city and to the very house that my mother and aunt and sister lived in since 1968, I feel anticipation rather than dread. I was not trapped there--I left-- and now I want to come back. What are the things that I miss and hope for in this return? The answers to those questions may come clear to me and you, dear reader, after I make my appearance. Actually I have been back in Rhode Island since 2009. But I have been living in South County in what I thought of as my summer house and my eventual retirement cottage.
I tried staying there for two winters and I began to feel some isolation.. It is beautiful and it is quiet, but the drawback is that to get anywhere you must drive. And as the winter advances driving becomes more tricky and tiring. So I am preparing to go back to Pawtucket. I have spent some energy and money these past three months in getting the house ready for the move. I hired a painter and floor re-finisher. Now I am hoping to be done with the improvements and have the house ready to move into by late October.

The Pawtucket Cure

2011-09-16T15:44:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of moving back to Pawtucket. I was born in Pawtucket, but I have not lived there since I left in 1966. I lived in Providence from 1969 to 1984, and then I moved to Ohio where I lived until 2009. I have returned to Rhode Island after a long time away. But I have always intended to return. It is my native place, and I miss it when I am away.
I bought a summer house in South County in 1999. and I have spent my summers here since then . In 2009 my life was interrupted by the sudden fall and severe heart attack of my maternal aunt Anna.
She was living still in the house in Pawtucket that she and my mother and my sister had shared together since 1968. Death decimated that happy arrangement when my mother died in 1997 and my sister soon followed her in 1998. That left my aunt alone, living in a tiny bungalow in Darlingon all by herself at the age of 79. In fact, those years after 1998 were the first ones tin which Anna had lived alone. She had always lived with my mother--her older sister. Although she was fearful of the change, she was determined to make it on her own and was fiercely independent. As her closest relative and my mother's only living child, I felt responsible for her, called almost daily, and visited from Ohio as often as my job and finances would allow.

2009 brought enormous changes-- when Anna was discovered on the floor of the house where she had fallen and suffered undetected for two days. When she was taken to Pawtucket Memorial Hospital, she was diagnosed with a severe heart attack that had destroyed most of her heart muscle. She only had 15% of her muscle intact and pumping. I heard these details over the phone from a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit. Within hours I had left Ohio and was on my way to Pawtucket. That was April Fool's Day 2009. Little did I know that I would never return to my job and that--ready or not --I had retired from my position that I had held for 25 years.