The Circus Continues-Only in Another Tent

Back when Saturday Night Live started, there was a skit called “The Thing that Wouldn’t Leave.” It was a spoof of horror movies and featured John Belushi as the “monster,” an overbearing, inconsiderate house guest who didn’t know when it was time to go home. He terrorized his hosts, Jane Curtin and Bill Murray, by making them stay up past their bedtime, watching long movies on their television, and making long distance phone calls on their home phone. They would shriek each time Belushi missed their clue that it was time for him to go.

Sometimes it’s hard to know when to leave, especially when you like the company you’re keeping as it is here with my job as editor. However, I turned 65 last month (I can’t believe that!), and I’ve decided to step down as the magazine’s Executive Editor.

I started back in December 2005 and aside from four years doing other writing assignments, I’ve been here for two decades.

When you start out writing, it’s so difficult to get a paying job in the field, and thanks to Marion Piotrowski, our Publisher Emeritus, she took me on and let me do my “dream job.” I’ve interviewed so many interesting people from sports stars to celebrities to just regular people doing extraordinary things. I’ve been allowed to put whatever has been on my mind on the page, and I’ve heard from many of you how much you enjoyed what I wrote, which was gratifying.

When I started, Laura Arnold, who is now at the helm of the magazine, was a recent college grad, and I was still in my forties, with my twins being freshmen in college. I remember when our sister magazine, Pittsburgh Fifty-Five Plus, launched, and I thought that it was for old people. Now Laura is in her forties and a mom, and I’m a grandma and the perfect demographic for the senior magazine! Time does fly.

The hardest part of stepping down is not being a part of the “team,” which includes my co-workers Mary Simpson and Paula Green. They are not only coworkers but friends. That also includes Tim Kostilnik, our graphic designer.

You can’t see it on the pages of the magazine, but Marion and Laura are the nicest, kindest, upstanding people I’ve ever worked for.

                                The Team: Laura, Marion, Me, Paula & Mary at the Retirement Lunch.

Needless to say, it’s with mixed emotions that I step down, but Laura and I have struck a deal, I’ll write a monthly column on senior issues, which will allow me to still be in touch with them and to write, which I love, while giving up the editing responsibilities.

My biggest fear is of overstaying my welcome. I don’t want to be the “Thing that Wouldn’t Leave.” I’d like to be more like circus master P.T. Barnum, who quipped, “always leave them wanting more.

So, as we transition, I hope you keep wanting more from and reading Northern Connection and Pittsburgh Fifty-Five Plus, and I’ll see you over in the Senior Section.

 

This originally appeared in the May issue of Northern Connection magazine.   

 

To Be Continued . . .

 

One of the first pieces I ever wrote and sold was a story about how when I was a kid, I would stay overnight at my Grandma Gert’s house, who also had her mother, my Great Grandmother Cornelia Ledergerber, living with her. Whenever I shared a bed with either of them, we’d lay in the dark, and they would tell me stories. I can still recall how Grandma Gert told me about how her father mistakenly polished his white buck shoes before going to Kennywood with zinc ointment, and how all the leaves stuck to his shoes when he strolled the midway.

Grand Leder, as we called her, told me about how when she was four, she traveled to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, by covered wagon. (Sadly, no one- including my mother and aunts- ever asked her why she made such an arduous journey. It remains a mystery.) She also told me about how her son, my Great Uncle Buddy, crossed the Rhine River in Germany during the Allied Invasion during World War II, how he was missing in action for several days, turning her hair gray. She told me about how they nearly starved during The Depression. They both told me other stories, funny, sad, and remarkable ones about others in our family.

Recently, we had our three granddaughters, Sadie, 9; Hannah, 7; and Scarlett, 5; stay overnight. We made up the cozy sleeper sofa in the spare bedroom and tucked them in. However, one by one they each dragged a sleeping bag into our bedroom and asked if they could sleep in our room. 

 

Thirty-three years ago, we moved into our present house because we had outgrown our previous home as I was eight months pregnant with my third child. After I delivered, we kept my newborn son in a cradle in our room. And every night it seemed my five-year-old twins would drag their sleeping bags into our room asking to “camp out” in our bedroom. I used to quip to my husband, “that we moved to a bigger house to get more space, but we could have moved to an igloo as we were all sleeping in one room.”

In the words of Yogi Berra, having the girls sleeping on our floor was “déjà vu all over again.”

Of course, there was jostling for space on the floor and cries of “she’s kicking my head,” or “she’s breathing too loudly” or “I’m not sleepy.” To get them to settle down, I said I’m going to tell you some funny stories. I told them about the time when I was in third grade and my brother was in first, how a woodpecker made a giant deposit on his head as we walked to the school bus. How he cried as the droppings dripped off his ears and onto his shirt, and how I rushed him home where my mom shoved his head under the kitchen faucet and washed his hair, changed his shirt, and sent him off to school.

I told them how my youngest brother when he was in first grade took to drawing a mustache with my mother’s eyebrow pencil above his lip and how he got in trouble at school for calling the teacher a “turkey” for taking the record I Don’t Give a Damn About a Greenback Dollar off the record player before the song was over.

We laughed in the dark and it reminded me of decades ago when I spent the night with my grandmothers. As they settled down and got sleepy, Sadie yawned and said, “This was fun. I’m tired, but I think we should continue the stories.”

I agree.

My wish is that 40-50 years from now she and her sisters know the great joy of having grandchildren, lying in the dark and continuing the stories.

 

This originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of Northern Connection magazine. 

A Blast From the Past

 To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere, without moving anything but your heart. - Phyllis Grissim-Theroux
 

I never met my father-in-law. My husband, Ed, who is named after his father, met him, but he doesn’t remember him. Edmund Palko Sr. died at the age of 27 when my husband was only 11 even month’s old and his older sister was not even three.
 

We knew some things about his father. He was tall at 6’2” and a good athlete, playing football for Derry High School and appearing in the high school all-star game. He served in the Korean War and met my late mother-in-law at a skating rink after the war, and they married. Also, after the war he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which at that time they attributed to a “nervous stomach” from the war. He got seriously sick in April of 1956 and was hospitalized. Peritonitis set in and eventually killed him over the Easter holiday.
 

We have his letterman jacket, the Bible he carried into war, and the flag that draped his coffin. We know from my husband’s cousin, Rosemarie, who was born on his birthday, that he promised that when she turned 21, he would buy Rosemarie her first drink—something he never lived to fulfill.
 

We know about my father-in-law, but we don’t know him. That is until recently.
 

At the annual Palko family reunion this summer, another of my husband’s cousins was cleaning out some of his late mother’s effects and came across some things from my father-in-law that his mom, my husband’s Aunt Emma, had kept. She was one of my father-in-law’s seven older siblings.
 

Among the things was his first-grade report card, and we discovered that he was quite chatty and got unsatisfactory marks for comportment. But the real treasure was the one letter that was given to us dated February 5, 1951, written while he was in basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and considering becoming a paratrooper.
 

Hi Em,
 

I thought I’d say something about the paratroopers. In the first place whoever gave you the idea that it’s dangerous or anything like that? . . . About mom and pop worrying. I don’t see why. I can take care of myself very well and they know it. So, you can tell mom to stop worrying.
 

Your Brother, Edmund
 

We have a few photos of him, but this was before the proliferation of home movies and iPhone videos, so we don’t know how he moved, what his mannerisms were, or how his voice sounded. But this one letter gave us a welcomed glimpse into his personality revealed by his own words, and it was given to us 73 years after he wrote it.
 

And it made me think about how sad it is that no one writes letters anymore. A lot of the things we know from previous wars came to us through letters. Although we have numerous photos and videos today with iPhones, those photos and videos seem to evaporate quickly and exist outside of the material world. A letter is something concrete. It can be kept in a drawer or scrapbook and be taken out and read over and over. You can see the personality in the penmanship and hear the words on the page in your mind and heart, and if it wasn’t for this one missive, my father-in-law would have remained a flat character to us.
But now with this gift of this letter, we have a small glimmer of his personality, what he was thinking, his sarcasm, and how he expressed himself. And as the saying goes - priceless.

This originally appeared in the November issue of Northern Connection magazine.