To Know Erma is to Love Her

When I came home from work this afternoon, there was a pile in front of my door! A huge pile - Amazon boxes galore! I love coming home and finding a pile there. A pile of any packages is great, provided they have my name on them. But Amazon is of course the guru for books, movies and music.

Today's pile included three or four books by Erma Bombeck, the woman who in the 1970s put the honest humour of child raising out there. She sees raising kids the way that most women do but won't tell you. She has no preconceptions that the kids are angels, because we all know that those moments of angelic quality are fast and fleeting.

Right now I'm reading The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, which focusses more on the rush to the burbs in the mid- to late 1940s. I had not realised that there were no suburbs until the 1940s. Did you know that? Why would you? Suburbs and developements have been around all of my life. I live in the proof of this. This house we live in know has the original house, which was just the basic box. Here it is: a livingroom, a dining room, a kitchen, then the hallway that lead to the only full bath in the house and further to our master bedroom with it's ensuite bathroom, that has a mall standing shower that really, truly is not my speed. Anyway, the point is that in 1968 there were plenty of houses in the 'burbs and many built the year I was. Even better, the extension to the house was built in 1986, the year I graduated high school, which turned the house from a basic box to an "L" shaped house - and gave us heaps more room. 3200 liveable square feet is nice.

Reading about thei trials and tribulations in dealing with the suburbs, which have so clearly come a looooong way from what they were in those days. I don't worry about phone service, EMS or fire. I'm falling asleep right now, slowly falling over the chair, drooling down the front of my big green Snuggle. That is my cue to drool elsewjere;;;

Comments

Kittie Howard said…
In the era before 2YO's studied Chinese, played the violin and took ballet, Erma Bombeck was The Queen. My mother adored her. I learned much from reading her columns (my favorite was to put some furniture polish behind your ears before hub came home) and felt a pang when she passed. The burbs came about after WWII when the GI's returned home, had the GI Bill and didn't want to return to the farms. The firt burb was in Levittown, NY. David Halberstram wrote about all this in his book The Fifties. The problem with the burbs, that took awhile to correct, was that builders laid out only one or two roads in and out of the burbs. This and other infrastructure blunders set an unfortunate pattern. Anyway, sounds like you have a lovely home. Happy drooling!

Popular posts from this blog

Interesting Aftermath a From Season Five of "MasterChef"

A.W.A.D. - 14-Letter Words, 14-Letter Definitions

An Interesting Wife Swap...