"Happy Noo Year to Yoose from Edwin Newman, NBC Noose"

(the ending of Newman's doggerel poem that reviewed each year's events when he worked on The Today Show...)

The news that Edwin Newman died August 13 was reported today.  A small part of my childhood died when I heard.

When I was very young, my grandparents were a huge part of my life.  It was the early 70's, my mother and I lived in Greensboro, my grandparents in Purcelleville, Virginia.  Though my mother says it was only for a week or two at a time during the summer, in my memory I was with my grandparents every summer, all summer long, and there is no distinction between years.

My family life was, at best, highly disfunctional from the start and my grandparents were the ties that held my world together.  Nearly every good memory from my childhood is tied to my grandparents and sometimes I wonder if my lack of a particularly significant recall of life with my mother then was/is a defense mechanism and, therefore, the reason the summers of my memory have no beginning or end.  Regardless, they are memories I hold the most dear. 

I would wake each morning to the smell of coffee percolating, the sound of my Gramma in the kitchen getting things ready for my Baba to eat breakfast before leaving for work, and Baba just down the short hall using the electric razor and preparing to start his work day.  I would lay there and listen until I was ready to get up or until my Gramma called me, whichever came first.

Stumping down to the kitchen, I'd pull out the tall, red and white 50's metal stool with folding step that sat under the edge of the sun-room side of the bar that divided the kitchen area, pull it as close to my Baba's stool as I could, and climb up.  Gramma had the percolated coffee ready to pour, the small saccharine bottle set out next to my Baba's coffee cup with a couple of the small tablets layed out, the AM/FM radio tuned to AM news, small juice glasses of ice cold O.J. sitting at our places, and whatever she'd prepared for breakfast ready to serve.  I almost always wanted cereal; Rice or Corn Chex or Rice Crispies since my mother would only allow me Puffed Rice or Cheerios...  which to a 5+ year old may as well have been cow dung.  The added bonus was that Gramma, unlike my mother, would allow me to not only put sugar on my cereal, but copious, heaping spoonfuls of sugar...  and oooh how I loved that white and silver wheat patterned sugar bowl and the pretty scalloped spoon that gave me such a roguish feeling to use!

Breakfast done, Baba would get his briefcase, do his Mr. Rogers change into his suit-coat, leave for the school board offices in Leesburg, 20 minutes away, and Gramma and I would begin preparation for whatever she planned for us to do that day.  I'd help clear breakfast dishes then head upstairs to wash my face, comb my hair, brush my teeth and change from my nightgown into the shorts and summer top 'uniform' I lived in with when I was with them, then hustle back down the carpet runnered wood steps and off to start the day. 

First thing each day, we would go to the garden and pick whatever green beans, cabbage, bibb lettuce, onions, radishes, etc., were ready for harvesting, over to the strawberry patch and/or the peach tree to do the same, then head off to the Purcelleville post office, P. O. Box 405, to gather mail from the little brass and glass box Gramma would let me twist and turn the little combination lock to open. 

After that, the day might hold a trip to the cool, dark stacks of what was even then the ancient Purcelleville Library (which stands nearly unchanged today), a stop at the recycle tractor trailer parked to receive newspaper bundles my Gramma would tie up with string, or to the Safeway a few blocks down Route 7 to stock up on whatever list items there were, as well as cardboard cartons of green bottled Coca-cola and Sprite, that would sit stored just inside the basement door on the top step to keep cool. 

We might go walk the greens of the Loudon County Country Club with someone from Gramma's ladies golfing group or she might take out the tennis raquets and try, with the patience of Job, to teach me not to lob the tennis balls over the fence but, instead, to volley them over the net...  and if I got REALLY lucky, it might be a day to swim in the country club's small pool and wrap up in Gramma's 50's beach towel replete with buxom, swim cap bedecked diving-beauties.  I still have that beach towel.  One of my most prized possessions.  I wanted to look just like those Barbie-esque beauties. 

Home most days for a lunch of cheese and just picked bibb lettuce with mayo on white bread, an ocassional piece of Juicy Fruit from the ever present pack in the tiny drawer by the fridge; though sometimes, my favorite times, we would drive over to Leesburg and meet Baba at the bowling alley for lunch that, for me, had to include piping hot crinkle fries those places make so well.  Back home to wash laundry and/or clean house and I would be turned loose to explore the neighborhood or ride the bike my Baba had borrowed from his secretary.  The same bike which I promptly, not knowing how to ride a bike yet, got onto the morning after he brought it home from work and careened down the side yard to a bone rattling crash into the side of the VW bus sitting in the neighbor's driveway.  I could ride that damned bike after that, I'll tell you!

Late afternoon would be dinner prep and ironing any of the sheets and clothes that had been, as always, hung on the line to dry.  Gramma would let me 'help', saving Baba's undershirts for me to iron as most women from her generation did for their husbands; his shorts were ironed too.  =)

Then one of my favorite times of day would start...  Gramma would begin making dinner and I would begin my contrbution to the dinner hour, taking out the folding black metal 50's (are we seeing a theme here?) T.V. trays and setting the three of them up along the opposite wall at the end of the kitchen bar.  I'd pull out three dinner plates, three forks, knives, spoons and napkins, and I'd set them all just-so on each tray.  Then Gramma would let me help her make our dinner...  maybe measuring and mixing together coleslaw ingredients, maybe snapping garden fresh green beans for the pot, washing silk from just picked corn or slicing fresh, ripe peaches or strawberries for the cobbler or shortcake dessert...  and she would make the meat.  We might have pot roast or whatever long-cooking main dish she'd prepared or, another of my favorites, on would go the stove eye and over she'd pull the well-seasoned iron skillet to heat...  pork chops and hamburgers were the best...  juicy and browned with just the right salt to them from the seasoning in the skillet.

Baba would arrive home at some point during dinner prep and once Gramma and I were done, I'd be sent off to 'get ready for dinner' - which was code for Gramma and Baba were having their small pre-dinner high ball of scotch and a few minutes alone in the den to talk and relax.  Once in a blue moon they would have a second small scotch and get quite jolly in very short order.  Gramma laughed a lot more than usual when she had a second scotch.  She had a lovely laugh.

Dinner would follow with Gramma and I plating the food and the three of us carrying our trays into the den to watch the NBC Nightly News with Edwin Newman or Walter Kronkite (which bored me to tears then and moves me to tears to hear in old news reels now).  Dessert of strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler, or my personal favorite, root beer floats in the green bumpy glasses with the bronze colored melamine tea spoons.  After, I could always count on Gramma to patiently play round after round of Go Fish or Old Maid with me until she'd finally, gently, shoo me up to shower and scrub with the pink resin, long-handled scrub brush, followed by liberal application of her bath powder.  I'd brush my teeth and reluctantly head downstairs to kiss and hug Baba good night, then begin the slow final trudge of the day up those carpet runnered wooden stairs to the roll-away made with outdoor-smelling, sun-dried sheets and set up for me in Baba's study.  Finally, a solemn recitation of prayers with Gramma sitting on the bed by me, making me feel as warm and safe and loved as I've ever felt.

I met Edwin Newman once.  In about '89 when I was working front desk at the Hotel Roanoke.  He and the fellow who played Ike Godsey on The Waltons, along with a handful of other celebrities, were in town for a charity golf tournament.  He looked the same as he had 19 years earlier delivering the news from my grandparents' television...  sounded the same, too...

That meeting took me back to a very happy time in my life.  His death today takes me back again.  Rest in Peace Mr. Newman, and thank you for the memory.

Signing off.