I read a poem by Faith Shearin this week titled ‘My Grandparents’ Generation’ that sent me twirling as she lamented the many things they have taken with them.

Here’s a sampling, along with memories the objects brought up for me:

• Sewing machines — Both of my grandmas knew their way around a Singer. I have a photo of Grandma Ada Fowler — taken by Cousin Susie — at her machine up against the north window in her house in Arcadia. It shows her much younger than I remember her, dark-haired and half smiling, like she and her machine are one, oblivious to the gentle breeze through the window that’s floating sheer curtains around her.

Grandma Mary Knoll had her Singer up against a north side window in Frontenac. There she made all her dresses, altered and repaired all the clothes for our family, and sewed fabric to reupholster her furniture. She also taught me how hem my jeans in the slanting light one afternoon and gave me some advice that became a life lesson, “Be careful,” she said, “or you’ll end up having to rip everything out and start over.”

• Rotary telephones — Everyone had one when I was a young boy. When I say one, I mean one. Most times located in a central location … not too far from the kitchen. Lots of homes had a little phone platform or phone cutout built into a wall. Sometimes they hung on the wall. Others sat on a phone table. Always with a chair next to them.

If you grew up with a rotary phone you likely remember the process of picking up the receiver, listening for a dial tone, sticking your index finger in a series of numbered and lettered holes and giving the dial repeated spins. The sound and resistance of the dial was all part of the process, as was feeling the weight of the handset, and fighting with the coiled cord that inevitably got tangled into knots.

Hereabouts we dialed beginning with the first two letters of ADams which matched the 2 and the 3 in the rotary dial. Occasionally a phone number became the focus and title of a hit song, as in the Glenn Miller Orchestra’s ‘Pennsylvania 6-5000’ and Wilson Pickett’s ‘634-5789.’

“Hey, can I use your Ameche? I need to call my girl.” Some readers might know that, in the 1940s and 1950s, a popular slang term for a phone was an ‘Ameche’, which stemmed from Don Ameche’s starring role in “The Story of Alexander Graham Bell.”

• Ordinary coffee – At our house it started with opening a standard, pre-ground, vacuum-packed, one-pound tin of Folgers using the key attached to the bottom. WHOOSH! The smell was akin to nothing else in the kitchen.

We had a large, aluminum, stove top percolator pot that I quickly learned to get going in the morning after returning from my paper route. Fill it with water, place the basket and stem inside, fill the basket with scoops of coffee, put on the basket top and, finally, replace the lid. Then move the pot to the stove burner at high heat and listen for the distinctive burble that says it’s time to cut the heat back and keep an eye on the glass viewport on top to watch the coffee get darker and stronger as it percolated.

• Fat televisions — “Some days you could watch Howdy Doody … and some days you couldn’t.” That was how Republic of Frontenac resident, A.J. Menghini, described TV reception a few years back as we reminisced about our families getting our first ‘fat’ television sets from Saia Furniture and Appliance in 1952.

Even though I was only three, my memory is crystal clear of the day the team of appliance men came to unbox our beautiful maple-cabineted, black and white, upright TV (with doors that closed, no less) and install the antenna.

Holes had to be drilled, and wires threaded and attached to special holders along the house leading toward the derrick / tower where the turned up to the antenna; an enormous, motorized sculpture of aluminum that rotated in all directions at the turn of a knob on the brown box that sat atop the TV.

In families without motorized antennas, dad had to climb on the roof and have the least snowy readings relayed up to him by one of the kids in the yard who was getting them through the window from his mom or siblings.

Watching TV in those days was something of an adventure — a quest for the “least snowy” reception. Many times, the whole family took part, with each member calling out their opinion on which antenna bearing was best to pick up “I Love Lucy”, “The $64,000 Question”, “Perry Mason” and “Ed Sullivan”.

We each had our own special times to watch as well. Mom the soap operas, Dad football and basketball games, and we kids the Saturday morning cartoons.

In her poem, Shearin also mentions bathtubs with feet, front porches, swatting flies with a folded newspaper, and dogs without leashes and says, near the end, that she’d give anything to be ten again.

Yeah, wouldn’t we all.

If you have a remembrance and/or photo to share, contact me by email at jtknoll@swbell.net or phone at 620-704-1309.