Stories of My Childhood: Cars

The first car I remember my family owning was a pale green Chrysler station wagon with metallic panels on the sides, probably a 1972, similar to this one. 

Before the advent of the minivan, the station wagon was the go-to family car. Ours was big enough to pull our little canvas-top pop-up Coleman trailer behind it, plus it could fit all our stuff in the back and still have room for two parents and two children, and occasionally even a friend who didn't mind sitting in the middle of the back seat. The best part of a station wagon was that it had a tailgate, and if you were lucky, your parents (most likely your dad) would be willing to let you sit on it while he drove. When we went camping, my dad would sometimes let us sit on the tailgate, swinging our legs, while we drove from our campsite to the swimming beach. 

At the same time, or possibly shortly afterwards, we also had a dark blue Volkswagen Beetle, which must have been a 1968 or a 1969. 

The Beetle was quite a few years old when we got it, and we eventually replaced it with the first brand-new car my parents ever bought: A 1973 light blue Beetle!

I was about 4 years old when they bought it, and apparently I was quite concerned that it might not come with a "hump." Back in the early '70s, cars rarely had seatbelts and children used them even more rarely. So, being short, I always rode standing up on the "hump" running from the front to the back of the car, leaning between the two front seats. It was quite a quirky little car. VWs had terrible heaters, so there was never any heat in the back seat until you'd been driving 60 mph for half an hour or so. The defroster was so useless that my dad bought a little plastic fan with a suction cup on the base that stuck to the windshield and a long cord that plugged into the cigarette lighter in an attempt to keep the windshield clear. The car had "running boards" on each side between the front and black wheels that you could stand on, in our case generally only used to reach the top of the car while brushing off snow. The oddest thing about it was that the engine was in the back, rather than under the hood, so the "trunk" was in front. Once when the car was parked in our garage with the hood up, one of the little neighbor boys, who was probably about 6 years old at the time, glanced in and said matter-of-factly, "Huh. No engine," and then just kept walking. 

After a number of years, the floorboards began to wear through (as the previous Bug's had) to the point where the passenger's feet got wet when you drove through a puddle. Once it reached the stage where my dad was afraid his foot would actually go through the floor if he had to brake too hard, we got rid of that car. I was disappointed, because I was 15 by then and had hoped I could learn to drive on it. Not only was it old and beat up enough that my parents wouldn't be too upset if I dinged it up, but it had a manual transmission, and I knew I'd be grinding the gears quite a bit as I learned to drive stick, which I did not want to do on a brand-new car. But no such luck.

By this point, the big old green station wagon had given way to a bigger and less old brown station wagon. It was a Plymouth Gran Fury, purchased specifically for a cross-country camping trip we took when I was 11 and my sister was 15. 

The coolest part about THIS station wagon was that the tailgate could convert from a drop-down to a gate-style that swung open. I was mystified by the physics of how that was possible (I still am, actually). Well, that was really only the second-coolest part. The literally coolest part was that it was the first car we ever owned that had air conditioning! 

It was an absolutely massive car, which was great on vacation but a little tougher when I had to learn to drive it. But once I did learn to handle it, it was great because you could literally fit a dozen teenagers in there (and we occasionally did). 

I learned to drive on the station wagon rather than our second car, because my parents had replaced the old blue Beetle with a brand-new, light green Toyota Tercel. It was a stick shift, while the wagon was automatic, and I couldn't bring myself to grind the gears of my mom's beloved, brand new little car. It was tiny and very convenient for zipping around town running errands, but still reasonably comfortable for 4 passengers. 

By the time I finally got a car of my own, it was the summer before my senior year of college. I was living in an on-campus dorm, which meant cooking in my own kitchen rather than using the school meal plan, which meant I needed to be able to get myself to the store. I had saved up $2500 and planned on buying a clunker that could limp along for a couple of years until I had a "real" job and could afford something decent, which was what my older sister had done. But my dad put the kibosh on that, saying that he didn't want to get any more phone calls like he had from my sister saying that her car had died in the middle of nowhere and could he please come get her and also fix her car? So he gave me $1500 more to spend, remarking drily when I protested that he expected to save at least that much on repairs. I found a 1984 Honda Civic hatchback for exactly $4000 at a reputable shop the next town over, and I brought it home and named it Tess (the license plate included the letters TSL and I was studying Nikola Tesla at the time). 

I shared my on-campus apartment with 5 other girls, and my roommate and I were the only ones with cars. My roommate drove a 1962 Buick Skylark that I immediately dubbed the Pterodactyl, due to both its age and its size. It was even bigger than the Gran Fury I'd learned to drive on. Very quickly my suite-mates and I decided that my fuel-efficient little car was the one to take when running errands like grocery shopping or grabbing takeout, but the Pterodactyl was best for social outings with all 6 roomies and our pals. 

My Honda was, as my dad had hoped, a remarkably reliable car. After I graduated, I commuted to my job in Boston in it, and it continued to be a great little car. But eventually it began to show its age. Someone broke into it was and stole my whole cassette tape collection (most cars at this time had an AM/FM radio and a tape deck), my Bible (! I just hope they read it), plus the ashtray and all the change I kept in it. The CV joint went on my way home through Cambridge one day, landing me on the local radio traffic report. Since it was before the age of cell phones, I walked across the street to a little strip mall and found a store with both a pay phone and a reasonably current copy of the yellow pages, and was fortunate to find both a tow truck and a mechanic only a couple of blocks away. That repair kept me going for a few more months, until I got rear-ended by a hit-and-run-driver who mangled my rear bumper badly enough that my dad had to cut it off with a hacksaw so it didn't drag on the tire and then bolt the remainder to the frame so it didn't flop around while I drove. I think it was at that stage when I had my next embarrassing-but-not-really-my-fault commuting incident, when the person in front of me sat at a green light for several seconds so I beeped my horn at them and somehow my horn got stuck. I managed to pull over and had the presence of mind to disconnect the battery, which got the horn to stop, but I'm not sure what I would have done had not some gracious pedestrian explained to me that cars have fuses and if I had my car's manual in the glove box (I did), I could probably figure out how to remove the fuse for the horn, which I did. (The fuse for the horn was also the fuse for the brake lights, which made for a rather nerve-wracking drive home, but the car and I both made it in one piece.) That car managed to limp along until I was able to buy my first brand-new car, another Honda Civic hatchback.

This one was a beautiful blue 1993 model, much rounded and sleeker than the previous. I had thought about red, but then decided that I expected to own the car for at least 10 years, and I wasn't sure I could pull off a red car at age 30. (Ah, youth.) I named him Willie. It just seemed to suit him. Willie also had an AM/FM radio and a tape deck. 

Just like Tess had lived for 9 years, Willie also lived for 9 years. He was still in great shape when I decided I needed a 4-door car, so I bade him a fond farewell and upsized to yet another Honda Civic, this time a dark red ("Radiant Ruby Red Pearl," to be exact) 2002 four-door sedan named Marguerite.

Marguerite had all the amenities: air conditioning, not only a CD player but a CD CHANGER that could hold 5 CDs, AND power windows and door locks. Before that, car windows had to be opened with a little handle that you cranked. The Beetles also had little triangular wing windows at the back of each passenger side window that had a latch you could unlock and the angle them open for a little additional air circulation. I was still driving Marguerite when I got married and had my first child, and then we upsized again to a Honda Odyssey minivan when we were expecting child #2. 

A few other notes about cars: There was no such thing as GPS or satellite navigation until I was in my 30s. I always had a book of city street maps in my car, one for the state of MA and one for NH. Each page or pair of pages showed all the streets in a particular town, and at the back was an alphabetical index of all the streets in each town. So if you wanted to get to, say, Bachelor Street in Boxford, you'd look up Cross Street on the Boxford page and it would give you a number-letter combination like 3C, then you would go to the Boxford map and find the row labeled 3 and the column labeled C, and somewhere in the vicinity of where that row and that column crossed, you would find Bachelor Street. 

If you were ever going on a trip, you'd go to the AAA office and they would put together a wire-bound map book called a "TripTik," in which some poor AAA employee would have painstakingly used a highlighter to mark out the best route for you. 

Along with your TripTik, you'd get little booklets for the cities you'd be passing through with listings of hotels/motels, restaurants, gas/service stations, and attractions, along with descriptions and ratings. 

Driving was certainly a different experience back then!

Stories of My Childhood: Winter Fun

I lived in the perfect spot for winter fun when I was growing up. There was a small pond directly across the street from our house that was a great ice skating pond. We lived at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, so my sister and I could lace up our skates in the warmth of the kitchen, then put on our skate guards and carefully walk on the edge of the neighbor's lawns and down through the reedy bank to reach the ice. There were enough hockey-loving boys in the neighborhood that someone had usually shoveled the snow off a good-sized patch of ice by the time we were ready to skate. My mom could see us from the living room window, so we didn't even have to wait until one of my folks was available to chaperone us after we reached a certain age. My dad was a pretty good skater, so he spent hours skating backwards, first holding us up and dragging us across the ice and eventually just helping us with balance a little. Finally he showed us how to spin around so WE were skating backwards and HE was skating forwards. Neither my sister nor I was ever going to be a candidate for the Ice Capades, but we certainly learned to keep ourselves upright and even be reasonably graceful on the ice.

If we were in the mood to sled rather than skate, we had a small sledding hill right in our own backyard. At the back of our house, the yard was flat for a ways (enough space for a large clothesline and a small swing set), then there was a hill about 20 feet across and maybe 6 feet tall that led to an upper section of yard that had space for a full-sized volleyball court or croquet game, plus a generous-sized vegetable garden. It was just a little hill so you only got a short ride on the sled, but the up side was that it wasn't that hard or time-consuming to pull your sled back to the top for your next run. We had a series of different styles of sleds over the years, mainly something called a "Slide-a-Boggan" that was just a big thin plastic rectangle with a handle at the front that rolled up like a carpet to store it in the garage.

But my favorite sled was the big aluminum "flying saucer" with two canvas handholds, kind of like a very smooth trashcan lid. 

We sometimes waxed the bottom with the same chunk of paraffin that my dad used on the aluminum snow shovels to stop the soft snow from sticking. That sled was fun because not only did you slide down the hill very fast, you also spun around like a top while going down!

But the best and biggest sledding hill in town was right up the street. 

[Author's Note: This is the actual hill I sledded on as a child.]

Technically we could have walked there from our house, but we usually drove because that's where we went sledding when both my parents came along and we brought the toboggan. It was a beautiful, long, shiny wooden sled that was big enough for the whole family, and it even had a steering mechanism of sorts (although one of somewhat dubious effectiveness). 

We always stacked in weight order, with Dad at the back, then mom, then my sister, and finally me at the front, with my muffler carefully wrapped across my face so I didn't end up with a faceful of snow by the time we reached the bottom (also of somewhat dubious effectiveness). Due to the weight of all four of us, the toboggan tended to get bogged down unless the snow was either very well packed or quite icy, which meant the perfect conditions for SPEED! The hill was high enough that you built up quite a bit of speed by the bottom, and there wasn't a lot of straightaway to slow you down before you reached a few bushes and then slid directly into the street, or at least the parked cars lining it. I never heard of anyone going into the street and getting hurt, but I suspect that more than a few cars every winter gained a dent on the lower part of the passenger side door. When it wasn't icy enough for the toboggan, we would often bring two sleds and tandem down, usually me with Dad and my sister with Mom. (I suspect the main reason for the tandem was that I was little enough to struggle with climbing back to the top of the hill, and my dad preferred to manage one sled and one small child rather than two sleds and one small child.)

Of course, the best part of any of these outings was getting back home and having hot cocoa. If Mom hadn't been outside with us, she would see us coming and start making the cocoa while we peeled off all our winter gear. That usually consisted of a bulky parka, heavy snow pants with suspenders, mittens on a string running through the sleeves so we wouldn't lose them (or at least we'd lose both of them at once), a knitted snow hat (made by the loving hands of one of my grandmothers), and a long scarf. If we were sledding, our feet would be warmly layered in two pairs of socks, a Wonder Bread bag with the top folded over so the red, yellow, and blue polka-dots showed, and finally our snow boots.  

[Author's Note: These are not my actual feet.]

By the time we had extricated ourselves from all those layers, the cocoa had been poured into a big mug and topped with either marshmallows or a large dollop of Marshmallow Fluff, and was often accompanied by a freshly baked cookie. What part of childhood could possibly be better than that??

Stories of My Childhood: My First Jobs

My kids frequently ask me about the kinds of jobs I had when I was young. My first "unofficial" job started when I was 11 or 12, as a mother's helper for a neighbor who lived the next street over. She did piecework assembling electronic boards, so she was in the house if anything happened or if I had a question, but she had three very active children that needed some kind of supervision while she worked. It was wonderful training. Among other things, she taught me how to use cloth diapers, including the trick of running the pin through my hair to coat it with just enough oil to slide through the fabric easily. Later on, I became a full-fledged babysitter for her family on a regular basis, and extended my clientele to a number of local families. Once I even filled in for another friend who was unavailable to sit for one of her regular families, and before they left, the mom casually mentioned, "Oh, by the way, if you hear any noises coming from the garage, we have a pig in there." ??!??? (No, I did not go to check out the pig. I like little piglets, but I know enough about pigs to know that any pig making that loud of a crash, I didn't want to meet.)

My first real, paying-taxes job was as a page in my local library. My mom had been a library volunteer, and then she was hired as the children's librarian. I had also volunteered sometimes when she was working, so when I was 14 and old enough to get a work permit from school, they hired me for a few hours a week. My duties included checking books in and out; typing up and filing cards for the card catalog (back in the dark ages when we had a physical card catalog); "reading" shelves, which means skimming each shelf book-by-book to make sure everything is in the correct order; and my favorite, mending books in the "book hospital." Any time a book was returned with damage - anything from a torn page, broken binding, scribbling on the pages, even sand inside the protective book cover - we would put it on the shelf in the back office, and whenever one of the staff had free time, we would figure out the best way to mend it, whether with clear tape, special perforated book-binding tape, or a simple art eraser and elbow grease. I always found it very satisfying to return a book to pristine (or as close to pristine as I could make it) condition. 

My first full-time, albeit short-term, job was as a summer clerk for an old-fashioned department store in Haverhill MA called Mitchell & Co. (If you've ever seen the old British sitcom "Are You Being Served?", it was a lot like that.) Everyone in town knew Mitchell's: It was the only place to buy Girl Scout uniforms! It was also one of the few places that still had a cobbler: Charlie had a little shop in the basement, next to the curtain department and the gift-wrap table. Interesting tidbit: Mitchell's opened next door to what had been the Macy's Department Store which moved to NYC, bringing with it the famous Christmas parade which had begun at the Haverhill location. Mitchell's billed itself as "Haverhill's Largest Department Store," a nod to Macy's tagline as "World's Largest Store." (More info here.) 

Even back in the 1980s, Mitchell's was quite old-fashioned. Each department had its own clerk, and anything you bought from that department was purchased from that clerk. The clerk would fill out a paper receipt, calculating the math by hand and adding the tax from a chart taped to the counter, then take the customer's payment (cash, check, or name and phone number if the purchase was put "on account," to be billed later), put it in a pneumatic tube canister along with the receipt, and send it up to the cash office. 

 

The woman in the cash office would check the math, record the sale, then send the change and customer's copy of the receipt back down. 

A few of the lower-priced departments, including candy, cosmetics, and sewing notions, had their own cash register. The "modern" ones looked like this: 

You would push a different button for each numeral in the price - for example, for an item that cost $1.98, you would press the $1 button, the 90-cent button, and then the 8-cent button - then hit either the taxable or the non-taxable button, then enter any other items and hit the total button at the end. 

The REALLY vintage register in the candy department looked more like this:

You had to be pretty coordinated to use that one, because to ring up a $1.98 item, you needed to press down the $1 button, the 90-cent button, and the 8-cent button at the same time, then pull the lever on the right to enter the price. Tax had to be manually added at the end, as I recall (luckily, candy wasn't taxable so we didn't have to worry about that). If you've ever wondered why people say, "CHA-CHING" to indicate money, it comes from the sound this register makes when you hit the "SALE" button at the end of the process. (Check out this video and fast-forward to about 10 minutes in to hear the CHA-CHING.)

The store was old-fashioned enough that they sold stockings - they sold pantyhose as well, but they mainly sold actual stockings, as in thigh-highs that had to be held up with garters. Before I covered her lunch break, the usual department clerk always checked my nails to be sure I didn't have any rough spots that could catch or run the stockings, because they were kept in drawers, not plastic packages, and customers always wanted the clerk to put her hand inside the stocking so they could see the shade. 

Another old-fashioned department was the "foundations" department, which sold girdles and sturdy cotton bras as well as underpants and more modern elasticized bras. I'll never forget the moment when an older lady came in and told me she needed a new bra to replace the ones she had that were wearing out. When I asked her if she knew the brand or style, she furtively glanced around the department, then whipped her shirt up over her head and proclaimed loudly, "It's this kind!" Fortunately for my mortified 15-year-old self, it was a cotton lace Playtex Cross Your Heart style that was probably the only one we sold that I could identify at a very quick glance. I was very happy to be able to hustle away to the shelves and compose myself while looking for that style in her size (which she also proclaimed quite loudly). 

Another interesting summer job I had a few years later was working in the back office of a bank. I had just graduated from high school but was only 17. They had a policy of not hiring under-18s, but since my mom had gone to high school with the head of the department, and since I already had my high school diploma, they took me on. I worked in the central bank, but there were 5 or 6 nearby branches. At the end of every day, each branch would courier over a manila envelope with all the checks they'd processed that day, and one of my jobs was to carry them down to the microfilm machine and photograph them. It involved fanning the pile of checks and feeding them into the machine's slot, then collecting them from the tray where the machine spit them out. They would then be sent off to the company who printed and packaged the customer's monthly statements. Without electronic accounts, each customer received a physical printout of their month's transactions, along with all the cancelled checks from that month. Most of the statements were processed completely by machine, but every month there were some statements that had to be processed manually, usually because one or more checks could not be scanned by the machine. So each month when the statements were ready to go out, we would take the "rejected" statements and the "rejected" checks and match them up so that each statement had the correct number of checks with it.  

Being the main branch, we also kept all the physical copies of each customer's signature card on file. Any time a check over a certain dollar amount was presented at a branch office, the teller would fax us a copy of the check that we would compare to the signature card. Except that the fax machine didn't have a dedicated line, so they would call our office first and tell us they had a fax, then we would connect the fax machine to the phone line and wait for them to send it. The fax machines in the other offices were less than reliable, though, and when they failed, my boss would call their office and painstakingly describe the signature on the card, noting any distinctive letters: "The first S is very tall and narrow, and the t has almost no space in the loop, and it's much taller than the h after it. Also, the n at the end trails off. And he didn't lift his pen to make the period after his middle initial." One of the customers was an architect with a business account who printed his name instead of writing it in cursive and we used to joke that no-one except another architect or possibly an artist could forge his signature because it was so perfectly neat and uniform. 

The last job I had before getting a "real" full-time job was as a cashier and service desk attendant at a local department store called Building #19. It was a very eclectic store that bought all kinds of overstock, damaged goods from fire sales or insurance claims, expired or near-expired packaged goods, and remainders and irregulars. Their tag line was, "Good Stuff Cheap!" 

A lot of the merchandise was half a step above junk, but there were also some fabulous bargains on quality goods if you were patient. When the original windows in the John Hancock Tower in Boston started to fall out in the 1970s, Building #19 bought the ones they removed and sold them. 

Each branch of the store had its own unique fraction added to the number; we were "Building #19-1/6". The pay was barely minimum wage, but frequently on payday we would all get some kind of "prize" with our check. It could be anything from pizza or ice cream sundaes for the whole staff to a Building 19-branded back scratcher or yoyo. And any time all the cashiers on your shift balanced their drawers "TTP" ("to the penny"), or your store met their sales quota for the month, you'd all get pizza or ice cream at the next shift. We had nametags that said things like, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps," and "I'm only here for the free coffee," and included a cartoon drawing of the store's founder, Jerry Ellis, similar to the drawings shown on the monthly flyer. 

It was a decidedly weird place to work, but it was also fun and casual, and not a bad way to end my pre-professional working life. 

Stories of My Childhood: The Telephone

When I was a little girl, I loved hearing my mom's stories about her childhood. She grew up in the 1940s and 1950s on a "gentleman farm" in the semi-rural suburbs of northeastern Massachusetts, and she had lots of funny and fascinating stories about farm life: how the geese served as guards, attacking all invited (and invited) visitors; how she once knocked down a fence with the tractor and was scared to 'fess up to her dad; her fear of coming to school smelling like cows. She told the story of being hit by a car in high school and suffering a broken hip. She told the story of my dad proposing to her on a church trip where the two of them were leading the high school youth group up Mt. Monadnock. She told of her grandmother with dementia asking if they had come to visit her in a horse-drawn carriage.

My dad was less of a story-teller than my mom, but he had some fascinating stories, too: How when he was very small, his parents moved into a house that had an outhouse and no hot water; how they had a goat so he had never had cow's milk until he went to school, and he couldn't even drink it; how his mother had worked in a snuff factory; how he was a "day boy" at a boarding school in high school because his small town didn't have a high school.

No earth-shaking stories. No historical moments. No wondering how they managed to survive. Simply ordinary stories of everyday life that was different from the everyday life that I was living. And I loved hearing about their "ordinary." So I want to pass on some stories of my own childhood "ordinary."

This is my first story, shared especially for my children, but also shared for anyone who lived in the same era and has similar memories, and for anyone who was born after that era to whom some of these memories are completely foreign.

Telephones worked very differently when I was young. I don't remember it personally, but when I was very small, my family had a party line. A party line is a phone line that is shared by another person or family, or sometimes multiple people or families. Essentially, it means you have to take turns using the phone. Each user has a distinctive ring, perhaps a long ring then a short one, or two short rings and a pause. Telephones had mechanical ringers still, so no ringtones or different sounds, only a different pattern. Back then, when you wanted to make a call, you had to pick up the phone and wait for a dial tone, a kind of buzzing sound that let you know the phone was working and wasn't currently connected. You would dial the number you wanted, which in my earliest memory was only 5 digits for a local call. By the time I was using the phone regularly, we started needing to use 7 digits, and eventually we had to use area codes even within our own area code. I also remember that when I was in college, the state of Massachusetts finally added a second area code, and a few years after I graduated, a third. 

We only had one phone in my house for many years. It was a wall phone in the kitchen. Our original phone was flesh-colored and very heavy. Oh, and it had a rotary dial. (I hated it when my finger slipped on the last digit and I had to start all over again.)

At that time, no-one actually owned their phone. Instead, you leased it from AT&T. It was hard-wired into the wall and required a technician to come and install it. It had a long enough cord that my mom could talk on the phone while she was making something on the stove, but not long enough to reach the refrigerator or the basement door. At some point we upgraded to a newer princess phone with a modular jack, and my dad bought my mom a much longer cord, as well as a big clear plastic gadget that allowed the cord to swivel so it wouldn't get tangled. (It still got tangled, just not as badly.) 

Now she could go all the way into the living room, bathroom, or dining room. And most importantly, my sister and I could bring the phone down onto the basement stairs and close the door most of the way to have a little privacy for our teenage conversations. 

After I left for college, my parents finally got a second phone jack, in the music room/sewing room/office, mainly because they had a home computer and they needed a dedicated jack for the dial-up modem. They did have a phone in there, but the only time they used it was when I called from college, so they could each be on an extension. But mainly, it was for the computer. 

Another important phone accessory was the phone book. Larger towns and cities had two phone books: the white pages, which included residential listings, and the yellow pages, which was solely business numbers. I lived in such a small town that our white and yellow pages were combined in a single volume, and it was still slender enough that it didn't serve the common purpose of being used as a booster seat (we used the Sears catalog for that). But we also had, as most families did, a small metal flip-open phone directory. It was basically a 4"x6" lined notebook inside a hinged metal cover. The cover had the letters of the alphabet printed on the right-hand side from top to bottom, and next to it was a little metal slider. You set the slider to the first letter of the person's name whose number you wanted to look up, then pressed the release at the bottom and the book would open to the correct page. You wrote down all the numbers you called regularly, as well as those of any friends and family who weren't listed in your local phone book. Most people memorized all the numbers they called regularly. I wasn't a big phone person, but I still knew a dozen or so numbers by heart. To this day I can still remember my mom's best friend's phone number - she was my "person to contact in case of emergency" if I ever couldn't reach my parents. 

Local vs. long-distance was an important distinction. Local calls, if I remember correctly, were included in your monthly phone bill, You could call people in your local exchange for hours without paying any additional fees. But long-distance was expensive. Rates went down at night when people were making fewer calls, so when my mom wanted to call her sister in California or her brother in Connecticut, she always waited until the rates dropped. 

Collect calls were even more expensive. A collect call was charged to the recipient, rather than the caller. You had to make collect calls by dialing "O" to reach an operator, then give her (it was invariably a woman) the number you were calling and your name, and she'd connect the call. When someone answered, she would say, "I have a collect call from [your name]; will you accept the charges?" My first year of college, when I didn't have my own phone and had to make calls from the pay phone in the stairwell of the dorm, the deal was that my parents would refuse the call, then give me five minutes to get back to my room (which had a phone that could take incoming calls but not make outgoing), then they would call me back on that line. 

The operator was also a very useful person when you needed to know the time, or if you didn't have someone's phone number. Eventually there was a special number you could call for the time, where a recorded voice would say something like, "At the tone, the time will be 4:52 and 20 seconds." (It updated every ten seconds.) My dad always called it when we changed back and forth from Daylight Savings Time so that all the clocks in the house would be accurate. There was no internet to check or Alexa to ask! And the operator could find you a phone number anywhere in the United States, using only the city, state, and last name or business name. If you weren't sure what town it was, they'd often browse around for you. For example, if you asked for John Smith in Georgetown, MA, she might say, "I don't see a John Smith in Georgetown, but I have a Jack Smith in Georgetown or a John Smith in Boxford?" Sometimes you'd get a grumpy operator who would just say, "I don't have that listing," and hang up, but more often than not she'd make some suggestions: "Could it be Groveland instead of Georgetown? Maybe it's spelled Schmidt instead of Smith?"  Eventually that service was replaced with 4-1-1 where you might connect with an operator anywhere in the country, but for a long time it was local operators who knew the area. The mom of one of my friends was an operator, and I often wondered if I ever talked to her when I called for a phone number. 

I didn't get a cell phone until I'd been out of school for a number of years. My first phone was the infamous Nokia 3310, commonly referred to as the "brick".

It had a tiny monochrome screen, played a couple of basic games (Snake II was my favorite), and could only text by using each number button to scroll through its three letters. I had a clear vinyl case with a clip that I could hang on my belt. It made me feel very cutting-edge, even though I almost never used it. I still had a landline in my apartment, and I used that much more often than my cell phone, but it was nice to know that I could call for help if I ever had a car accident or got lost (because even a cell phone couldn't get you a map back then, never mind telling you where you were!).

And that was what telephones were like back in my day. 

Podcasts Worth Listening To

As we slowly approach a post-COVID world, I find myself with slightly less time to binge-watch every show that Amazon Prime and Netflix carry, and instead I have been turning to the wonderful world of podcasts. I am back in my office and working, but I am one of those people who focuses best on what my hands are doing when I have something else for my brain to think about. So I have been...binge-listening?? to a number of different podcasts. Here are ten podcasts that I recommend - but I'd love to find some others, so if you have a favorite that isn't mentioned here, please feel free to post it in the comments!

Word Matters

Their description: "Word Matters is a show for readers, writers, and anyone who ever loved their English class. Join Merriam-Webster editors as they challenge supposed grammar rules, reveal the surprising origins behind words, tackle common questions, and generally geek out about the beautiful nightmare that is language."

My description: It's a bunch of smart and witty people who love words sharing the interesting things they've learned about every aspect of the English language and the joys and struggles of creating and maintaining a dictionary of it.

Why I love it: I discovered it because my husband added Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Day" to our morning Alexa news brief, and when I heard it, I sat up and blurted, "Hey, I know that voice! I know that guy!" M-W WotD is compiled and narrated by an old high school friend of mine, Peter Sokolowski. Peter is also one of the editors who participates in Word Matters. He, like the other editors, has a fascinatingly varied background which brings an interesting perspective to the discussion. It doesn't hurt that he has a wonderfully soothing voice and a penchant for tossing off French terms in a magnifique accent, either.

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "What is a Learner's Dictionary?" (April 28, 2021) and "Words That Are Their Own Opposites" (January 6, 2021).

Unspooled

Their description: "Actor & comedian Paul Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson want your advice as they make the ultimate list of the greatest movies of all time. In Season 1, they watched every one of the AFI’s Top 100 films…and decided they could kick off half. Now, they’re filling in the gaps by investigating wildly diverse areas of film through miniseries on topics like horror movies, documentaries and romantic comedies, with help from listeners’ picks. Along the way, they’ll dissect iconic scenes, spotlight their favorite characters, and talk to some of the actors and directors who worked on these classics. And when Unspooled has built their own list of the best movies on earth, they’ll blast them into space to be immortalized for eternity. Seriously.

My description: Movie analysis from two different perspectives, with a lot of insider knowledge, trivia, and hilarity, plus frequent guests with even more insider knowledge. An interesting look at what makes classic movies classics, and why some "classic" movies haven't aged as well as others. 

Why I love it: I first came across Paul Scheer's other podcast, "How Did This Get Made?," in which he and his co-hosts analyze - in a hilarious way - absolutely terrible (but often still very fun to watch) movies. Unspooled is the flip side of that. Amy's years of experience as a film critic looking from the outside in and Paul's years of experience as an actor and director looking from the inside out are a great balance of both perspective and knowledge. This podcast has not only introduced me to a number of unfamiliar movies that are well worth watching, it has also given me a new appreciation for the art of filmmaking and what goes into making a film that creates compelling characters and storylines.

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "The Best Years of Our Lives" (November 13, 2019) and "A Trip to the Moon" (May 5, 2021).

Says You!

Their description: "A public radio game show of bluff and bluster, words and whimsy."

My description: A bunch of really smart, well-read and well-educated, extremely funny people getting together to play general knowledge games. Includes games like picking out the correct definition of an obscure word, solving puns, identifying what an individual was famous for, defining shades of difference between two similar words, etc.

Why I love it: It's like spending an afternoon with your smartest, funniest friends playing Trivial Pursuit and all those word games your family used to play in the car on long trips. It gives me a sense of pride when I get the right answer before the team does, and I'm continually learning interesting factoids and bits of trivia and history. 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "From Home #5" (February 12, 2021) and "Back-9 #21" (April 16, 2021).

Morbid

Their description: "Morbid is a true crime, creepy history and all things spooky podcast hosted by an autopsy technician and a hairstylist. Join us for a heavy dose of research with a dash of comedy thrown in for flavor."

My description: The hosts may be a little goofy, but their fascination with and passion for the true crime stories is apparent. Topics range from recent crimes (solved and unsolved) to historical crimes to the occasional episode consisting solely of weird (but usually surprisingly well-told) personal stories submitted by readers. 

Why I love it: The hosts are hilarious, albeit a bit irreverent for the topic at times. But they tell the story well and their own interest in the story as it unfolds makes it compelling. Plus, they frequently ask the questions I'm asking in my own head ("Why did he bring a BOWIE KNIFE to a baseball game?!?" "Why did he go look for footprints instead of trying to give his dying wife CPR?!?"). Their style may not be to everyone's taste, but their giggles and overblown reactions somehow make their subject a little less (sorry, have to go there) morbid.

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "The Abduction and Murder of Daniel Morcombe" (April 17, 2021) and "The Weepy Voiced Killer" (January 10, 2021).

Disorganized Crime: Smuggler's Daughter

Their description: "Host Rainbow Valentine discovers her artist mom and 'businessman' dad were deeply involved in the illegal drug trade and unknowingly spent her childhood among a massive pot distribution operation. As she talks with her father in intimate interviews, Rainbow Valentine uncovers a history of her childhood that causes her to reassess everything — and gives us a unique personal window into the infamous."

My description: A long-retired hippie pot distributor and his equally hippie artist wife recount their days in the business to their daughter, who grew up having no idea that was what her parents did for a living. A fascinating account of living a relatively normal life amid a relatively dangerous operation. 

Why I love it: It's really interesting to hear the daughter's response to hearing these stories for the first time as you're also hearing them for the first time. The dad is particularly hilarious and disarmingly charming, usually sounding like he can't believe how much they got away with either. It helps that he sounds EXACTLY like a guy I know who is also hilarious and disarmingly charming. I don't usually think of drug dealers as being either personable or devoted family men, so it's particularly interesting to me to hear the first-hand story of someone who is both. The podcast is as much a story of a loving but offbeat family as it is the story of the life of a drug dealer.

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "Psychedelic Pioneers" (December 11, 2019) and "Savings and Loam" (January 8, 2020).

LeVar Burton Reads

Their description: "In every episode, host LeVar Burton invites you to take a break from your daily life, and dive into a great story. LeVar’s narration blends with gorgeous soundscapes to bring stories by Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury and more to life."

My description: ^ What they said. 

Why I love it: The collection of stories is truly eclectic; it's all fiction, and it's all short, it's all (mainly) in English, and LeVar likes it all. That's literally all the stories have in common. So I never know if I'll love a story or if it will leave me cold. And honestly, I've listened to episodes in both categories. But LeVar Burton has one of those voices that I'll happily listen to reading the phone book, so I'm willing to give any of the episodes a shot. Because, as LeVar always said at the end of every episode of Reading Rainbow and also says at the end of these podcasts, "You don't have to take my word for it." I may or may not like the book, but I always like hearing his take on it at the end. 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (August 21, 2017 - be sure to have tissues handy) and "Pockets" by Amal El-Mohtar (August 10, 2020). 

Smithsonian Sidedoor

Their description: "More than 154 million treasures fill the Smithsonian’s vaults, but where public view ends, Sidedoor begins. With the help of biologists, artists, historians, archaeologists, zookeepers and astrophysicists, host Tony Cohn sneaks listeners through Smithsonian’s side door to search for stories that can’t be found anywhere else.

My description: Stories cover a wide range of intriguing topics including everything from little-known but interesting stories of both famous and unknown people, fashion history, random scientific concepts and discoveries, true mysteries, space travel, video games, and any other topic you can come up with.  

Why I love it: Much like the Smithsonian Institution itself, the podcast is full of curious tidbits you didn't even know you needed to know about. 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "Apollo 12's Really Close Call" (July 20, 2020) and "Discovering the World's Oldest Winery" (June 27, 2018).

Conspiracy Theories

Their description: "The truth is rarely the best story. And when it’s not the only story, the truth deserves another look. We tell the complicated stories behind the world’s most controversial events and possible cover-ups. Conspiracy? Maybe. Coincidence? Maybe. Complicated? Absolutely. "

My description: Two reporters research various conspiracy theories: How much is based on truth, and how much is just rumor and speculation? They present the known facts and then rank the believability of each theory on a scale of 1 to 10. 

Why I love it: In their own words, the hosts aren't conspiracy theorists, but they are open-minded. They approach each case without the premise of attempting to prove or to debunk, but simply to determine the truth. I'm sometimes surprised at how much factual backing there is for some theories, and sometimes by how little there is. But in every case, I enjoy tracing how a few facts can lead to either outrageous or relatively believable explanations. Plus, some of their subjects are unfamiliar, and the theories themselves are as intriguing as the possible explanations. 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "Mysterious Humming" (Parts 1 and 2) and "Mozart's Death" (Parts 1 and 2).

Lore

Their description: "Lore is a podcast about true life scary stories. Lore exposes the darker side of history, exploring the creatures, people, and places of our wildest nightmares. Each episode examines a new dark historical tale in a modern campfire experience."

My description: A blend of folk tales and urban legends, this podcast is one part Twilight Zone, one part Once Upon a Time, and one part tween sleepover bedtime stories.

Why I love it: I am constantly in search of storytelling podcasts, be it true crime stories or literature reading, and this fills the bill while being distinctly different from others. The stories are often fantastical and sometimes vaguely creepy, but never to the point of being off-putting or nightmare-inducing. They're simply tales that make you go, "Hmmm..." 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "Loyal Companion" (February 15, 2021) and "Adding It Up" (October 11, 2020).

How I Built This

Their description: "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built."

My description: Discover the ways various entrepreneurs found success; some with rough starts and multiple failures, and some with slow but steady climbs.

Why I love it: Don't you ever wonder if people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett are truly smarter and more talented and savvy than most people, or if they just happened to be in the right place at the right time with a good idea and a lot of determination and persistence? Isn't it amazing to think what a different place the world would be if just a few tiny factors in someone's life were different - they didn't happen to have a godfather in the industry, or they weren't bold enough to accost a CEO in an elevator, or their financing didn't quite come through in time? These stories are as different as the people and products they center on. 

A few good episodes to whet your appetite: "How I Built Resilience: Lisa Baird of National Women's Soccer League" (March 18, 2021) and "Norma Kamali" (February 1, 2021).

Happy listening!

My Latest Favorite Recipes

As many of us have over the past year, I've been doing significantly more cooking (and baking) during the pandemic. And not only cooking, but experimenting with new recipes and trying recipes that are a bit more time-consuming. Here are a few of my family's favorites that we've discovered (or rediscovered) over the past year. 

Chicken Pad Thai

Some time before the world shut down, my daughter had gone on an Asian food kick, and I'd picked up (among other things) a box of soba noodles. But I'd never gotten around to using them. So when I was poking around in the cupboard one day, I decided to use them, and I stumbled across this wonderful recipe. I made a few alterations and substitutions (I don't keep fish sauce on hand and my kids are not bean sprout or cilantro fans), but you can use the link above to go to the original recipe. 

5 oz soba noodles
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lb chicken breasts, pounded thin
1 red pepper, sliced thin
2 lbs carrots, cut into matchsticks
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 eggs
1 tablespoon peanut butter
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons lime juice
1-1/2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup chopped peanuts

Cut chicken in 1 inch square pieces. In a large sauté pan, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add in cubed chicken to the pan and cook over medium high heat for 12-15 minutes until completely browned and cooked through. While chicken is cooking, bring a pot of water to a boil and cook rice noodles according to the directions on the package. Whisk together the peanut butter, honey, lime juice, vinegar, and soy sauce, and set aside. 

Once chicken has cooked, remove from the pan and set aside. Add the peppers, carrots, garlic and onion to the same (unwashed) pan and sauté uncovered for 10 minutes. Push vegetables to the side of the pan and scramble eggs in the center of the pan until cooked. Stir vegetables and eggs together. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add the sauce mixture to the same (unwashed) pan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 1 minute, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened. Return vegetables, chicken, and noodles to the pan with the sauce and toss to combine. Garnish with chopped peanuts. 

Chicken Fajitas

My family prefers chicken fajitas, but it's easy enough to adjust the recipe to use steak or any other protein you prefer. Again, I've adjusted the recipe for our preferences, but the original is linked above.

1-1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced in half horizontally (do not pound)
Salt
Olive oil
1 large onion, sliced root-to-tip in 1/4 inch slices
2 sweet bell peppers, sliced into 1/4-inch strips
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
8-12 flour tortillas
Optional toppings: shredded cheese, sliced avocado or guacamole, salsa or salsa verde, sour cream 

Combine lime juice, 3 tablespoons olive oil, garlic, cumin, chili powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a glass or plastic container and mix well. Add chicken and toss to coat. Marinate at room temperature for up to 30 minutes or in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours. 

Drain the excess marinade and salt each piece of chicken. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a heavy frying pan over medium-high heat. Lay the chicken breasts in the pan (you will need to do this in several batches) and allow to cook undisturbed for about 3 minutes, until well seared. Flip and cook for an additional 3 minutes. Use the tip of a knife to check the centers for doneness. Set aside, cover with foil, and allow to rest.  

Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan and increase heat to high. Saute onions and peppers, using a spatula to scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Allow to cook undisturbed for 2 minutes, being sure to get a good sear with a bit of charring. Stir and cook for an additional 2 minutes.

Slice the chicken into thin strips across the grain. Spoon chicken, peppers, and onions into warm tortillas and serve with your choice of toppings. 

Lobster Mac 'n' Cheese

Our local supermarket frequently has fabulous sales on chicken lobsters, so we pick up a couple any chance we get. Most of the time we use them to beef up ("lobster up"?) ready-made lobster bisque, but sometimes we get inspired to make lobster mac. Using a fancy pasta shape, like cavatappi or orecchiette, makes the meal feel even more decadent. I don't even know where I originally got this recipe, but it's a good, basic starting point for you to adapt to your own preferences.

8 oz pasta, any shape
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 cup milk
1 cup light cream (I usually use half and half)
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Lobster meat from 2 chicken lobsters (roughly 1 cup)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons melted butter

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

Melt 4 tablespoons butter in large saucepan. Whisk flour, salt, and pepper (to taste) into butter until well-blended. Gradually pour in milk and cream, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cheese little by little, then simmer for 5 minutes more, stirring, until melted and smooth. Remove from heat. Add lobster and pasta to pan and toss to coat. Transfer to a buttered baking dish. 

Toss together the breadcrumbs and melted butter, then sprinkle over pasta. Bake at 400 degrees F until top is golden brown. 

Potatoes Gratin

Anything involving potatoes and cheese is a guaranteed win in my house, but this recipe is especially delicious. You can slice the potatoes on a mandolin, but I prefer them a little thicker, so I cut them by hand. You can either dip the individual slices of potato into the sauce as you lay them in the dish, or pour the sauce over each layer. It's delicious either way. Also, adding a little bacon on top of each layer is a great addition. 

3 tablespoons butter

1 small onion, finely diced

1 clove garlic, minced/grated

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

3 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups milk

1 1/2 cups gruyere cheese, shredded

1 pinch nutmeg (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

4 pounds potatoes, thinly sliced

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until tender, about 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for another minute or so. Sprinkle in the flour, mix well and cook until it starts to turn lightly golden brown (about a minute).  Add the milk and cook 1-2 minutes, until thickened. Reduce the heat, add 1/2 cup cheese, mix, and let melt into the sauce before adding the nutmeg and seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

Spread some of the sauce over the bottom of a large baking dish and layer the potatoes, covering each layer with sauce. Pour any remaining sauce over the top, then sprinkle on the remaining cheese.

Bake at 350F until potatoes are tender, about 45-60 minutes.

 Chicken Pot Pie

This recipe is a combination of a bunch of other recipes. I adapt it based on what I have on hand at the time in terms of fresh vegetables and herbs and whether I have frozen puff pastry or refrigerated crescent roll dough on hand (I've even been known to slum it with fresh or frozen pie crust). You can easily use a mix of fresh, frozen, and/or canned vegetables. 

3 chicken breast halves, skinless and boneless
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper
2-3 small potatoes
1 cup chicken broth
¾ light cream, half and half, or milk
1 medium onion, chopped (or ~1/4 cup frozen onion)
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables (corn, peas, carrots - I use thinly sliced fresh carrots and a mix of frozen peas and corn)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
salt and pepper to taste
dash poultry seasoning
1 package single-sheet crescent roll dough (or frozen puff pastry, thawed)

Place the chicken breasts in a pot of enough water to just cover the chicken and add salt and pepper and garlic powder. Bring to a boil, turn off heat and cover. Let cool in the pot. 

Peel potatoes and cut into bite size pieces. Boil till almost fork tender. Drain and set aside. 

In a large heavy skillet over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter and saute onions for 5-8 minutes, until tender. Add the vegetables and cook another 5 minutes. Add flour and cook about 30 seconds. Add chicken broth and cream/milk and bring to a boil. After it has become thick, add potatoes. 

Remove chicken from pot and cut into bite-size pieces. Add to vegetable mixture and season with salt and pepper and poultry seasoning to taste. Pour mixture into a 9 inch deep dish pie plate (or other deep baking dish) and cover with dough. Make a few slits in the dough and seal the edges to the plate to avoid spillage. 

Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or until pastry is cooked and golden brown. 

Twice Baked Potatoes

When my husband requested twice baked potatoes, my Google search immediately sent me to the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, who has never steered me wrong. Her original recipe (linked above) is double the one below. The recipe below is my adaptation of her recipe.

4 large baking potatoes, scrubbed
Vegetable oil
1 stick butter
1/2 cup bacon bits (I fried up 6 or 7 slices of bacon and cut them up)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 shredded cheese (cheddar, pizza cheese, or Mexican blend all work well), plus additional for topping
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
dash onion powder
dash black pepper
pinch sugar

Rub the potatoes with vegetable oil and place on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour, until tender. While potatoes are baking, cut the butter into slices in a large mixing bowl and stir in bacon bits and sour cream. When potatoes are ready, remove from oven and reduce temperature to 350 degrees.

Slice each potato lengthwise with a sharp knife. Using a large spoon, scoop out the center of each potato and add to bowl with butter, sour cream, and bacon, leaving just enough to allow the potato skin to hold its shape, and place the skins back on the baking sheet. Smash the potato/sour cream mixture with a potato masher or the back of a large spoon until well blended. Add cheese, milk, and seasonings and stir until completely combined.  

Spoon the potato mixture into the potato shells, rounding gently. Sprinkle additional cheese on top and bake at 350 for an additional 15-20 minutes. If desired, potatoes can also go under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp the cheese. 

Soft Breadsticks

My family loves bread in any form, but these "Olive Garden" style breadsticks are one of our new favorites. They're a little time-consuming to make, but not especially difficult. The recipe calls for garlic salt and/or Italian seasoning sprinkled on top along with some melted butter, but we love them with just butter and coarse sea salt. 

1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg
3-1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt

For topping:
3 tablespoons butter, melted
coarse sea salt, or garlic salt or Italian seasoning

Using a stand or hand mixer with dough hooks at low speed, combine all ingredients except topping. Continue mixing for about 5 minutes, adding a little more flour if needed. Dough will still be fairly sticky and will not pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead a few times until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 1 to 1-1/2 hours, until nearly doubled. 

Turn out dough on a lightly floured board and roll out into a roughly 12"x16" rectangle. (Note: It's easier to stretch the cut sticks a little if they're less than 12" but if they're longer than that they may be hard to fit on the cookie sheet!) Using a pizza cutter, cut into 16 strips. Smooth the sides of each strip to form a stick shape and place on a greased cookie sheet, leaving a little space between strips. Cover with a towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 30 additional minutes.

Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes, until golden brown. (If baking on both the upper and lower oven rack, swap the racks halfway through to ensure even browning.) Remove from oven, brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with desired seasonings. 

Backyard Birds, Part Deux

Last fall I posted a blog about the most common birds that I had been seeing at my feeder. But after a full year of living at this house, I've discovered a few more visitors that I thought it would be fun to add to the list. My first list included the titmouse, chickadee, goldfinch, cardinal, white-breasted nuthatch, hairy and downy woodpeckers, flicker, pileated woodpecker, mourning dove, blue jay, ruby-throated hummingbird, Carolina wren, Baltimore oriole, bluebird, mockingbird, catbird, phoebe, and red-tailed hawk. This one will cover the robin, junco, red-breasted nuthatch, cowbird, chipping sparrow, red-bellied woodpecker, song sparrow, Cooper's hawk, turkey vulture, and house finch. 

American Robin

Robins are harbingers of spring in my New England yard, although we sometimes have a few that hang around for most of the winter. This year for most of the winter I had flocks stopping to feast on the berries of my holly bushes on their way south. Robins have a distinctive bright red chest. They prefer worms and berries, so are often seen hopping along the ground. They often fly close to the ground as well. Their most distinctive calls are a loud repeated scold and a happy "cheer up! cheerily!" sounding call. They often build nests near houses, including in bushes and even in wreaths on doors.  Robins are quite territorial and will occasionally "fight" with the rearview mirrors on cars, thinking it's another bird. 

Dark-Eyed Junco

Although I tend to think of juncos as winter birds, they are around all year. Although similar in size to titmice and finches, they're easy to identify based on their white bellies which don't extend up to their chests and contrast nicely with their dark gray bodies. They also have yellow beaks. Juncos will come to a hanging feeder but more often forage on the ground. They don't make a lot of noise, but will occasionally let out a long chirring call or a repeated "chip chip" that reminds me of pinging a high tension wire. 

Red-breasted Nuthatch

I had never seen these fascinating little birds until living where I do now! They share a streamlined body shape with their larger cousins, the white-breasted nuthatches, and they also occasionally hang upside down on trees or feeders like them. They have a rusty-red belly and chest and a well-defined black-and-white eye stripe, and are about the size of a chickadee. They are somewhat aggressive with each other and with other birds and will often squawk and flap their wings to drive others away from the feeder. They have funny little squeaky, nasal voices that are easy to recognize once you've heard them. 

Brown-Headed Cowbird

Male cowbirds are very easy to identify, as their bodies are glossy black and their heads are brown. Females are more non-descript and are easy to confuse with the many mottled gray types of finches and sparrows, although both genders are noticeably larger. I try not to encourage the cowbirds, as not only are they fairly aggressive and drive other species away, but they lay their eggs in other birds' nests and leave them to care for their eggs! They have a wide variety of calls and frequently chitter at each other or even sing to themselves while they're at the feeder. 

Chipping Sparrow

There are a lot of finches and sparrows that I struggle to differentiate between, but the chipping sparrow is relatively easy to identify, based on its small size, rusty red cap, and black eye stripe. The pattern and color on its wings is similar to a house sparrow, but it is much smaller and the rusty patch on the male house sparrow's head does not cover the top of the head. In addition to a long, sharp trill, it makes a repeated "chip chip chip" from which it gets its name.

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

This woodpecker looks a lot like a flicker at first glance, but although they are the same size, the red on its head goes all the way over the top, and the black-and-white mottling is only on its wings and back, leaving its belly pure white, unlike the flicker's gray polka-dotted belly. They have a short, rasping squawk which is hard to describe but easy to recognize. I heard them in the trees many times before I finally saw one at the feeder. 

Song Sparrow

Another small finch/sparrow-type bird that can be hard to distinguish, the dark streaks on the song sparrow's belly help to identify it, as well as its brown eye stripes. Not surprisingly, the best way to identify it is through its long, melodic, trill-laden song, which you are most likely to hear early in the morning. Like many other sparrows, it also has a loud "chip! chip!" alarm call.

Cooper's Hawk

Along with red-tailed hawks, we frequently see Cooper's hawks loitering in the trees near the feeder, hoping to catch a plump mourning dove unawares. The easiest way to tell the two types of hawk apart is to look at the tail in flight. The red-tailed hawk's tail is not only distinctly reddish (usually although not always), it is also short and fan-shaped, while the Cooper's hawk has a much longer, narrower tail. 

Turkey Vulture

Another raptor we see regularly is the turkey vulture. Since the bright red head is often difficult to see while the birds are flying high overhead, the easiest way to distinguish them from the hawks we frequently see is their flight pattern. The vultures have a noticeable "bobble" when they soar, and they tend to hold their wings in more of a "V" position when seen head-on, as opposed to the flatter profile of most hawks. They are also larger than red-tailed hawks, but size can be hard to distinguish in flight. Although hawks will frequently roost in trees near the bird feeders watching for potential prey, the vultures have no interest in the songbirds that frequent backyard feeders. 

House Finch

Let's start with a disclaimer: I cannot tell the difference between a male house finch and a purple finch. Even when I look at photographs comparing and contrasting the two, I can't see the differences described. So I'm grouping them together as house finches, merely because it sounds like house finches are more common. Another example of big differences in coloring between the sexes, the males have a bright to dark red faces and breasts, while the females are mottled brown all over. (Note: I learned while researching for this blog that finches are more likely to have sexual dimorphism than sparrows, so when trying to determine between the two, that's a good starting place!) The female finches closely resemble song sparrows, but lack the sparrow's head stripes, and the streaks on their bellies go all the way to their feet, as opposed to the sparrow's which fades out at the chest.

Now get out there and enjoy watching those birds!