Saturday, September 25, 2021

Windows

 As in sights out of windows. Memorable sights.

One of my first clearest memories was my father lifting me to a window in the second floor flat where we lived in Midleton Co. Cork. I'd say it was 1946 - I did a dive into the web but no further information on this.

Outside the window down below was this:


I want you to remember this, said my Dad, this is the last night where the gas lighter will come around and light the street lamps! Tomorrow it will be all automatic. I asked him what automatic meant and he explained that there was a switch in a building, just like our wall switches and when it was pushed, all the lights would come on together and not just one at a time. I was amazed.

Coming up to Christmas in 1955 when I was twelve, my father woke me up one night and told me to look out his bedroom window, where the sky was a deep terrifying red shading to orange. A frightening sight. He said it looked like Cork City was burning up (we lived in the spanking new suburbs of it).  Somebody banged on our door, late, and told him it was the Cork Opera house, where I had performed as a "Tiny Tot" tap dancing, when I was about 6.


A few days later we went down to see the ruins.


It was heartbreaking. It was built mainly of wood so it went up like a tinder box. I loved that place and enjoyed the pantos and plays that had delighted me.

Sputnik was a big thing in late 1957. There was a fussy great-aunt taking care of us in our home. I was 14 and my mother was in hospital.

She panicked one evening after sunset as the sky was 'cracking'. And again, I looked out my parents' bedroom window and saw a light travelling across the sky. It subsequently turned out to be the Russian satellite, Sputnik 2, with its cargo of the dog Laika.


I was terribly upset thinking of the fate of this wee innocent dog, though much was made of the fact that it was a stray mongrel found on the streets of Moscow. As if it didn't deserve to live. it still upsets me to this day.

Can you remember anything memorable from the windows of your life?


31 comments:

  1. Love your windows into other times, other days. And am pleased that someone else mourned the dog.
    My partner used to pick up one of our cats each afternoon and take him around to look out windows - to get a different perspective. I don't know which of them enjoyed it more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh that's a lovely story EC and it says so much about your partner's character. I would sit with one of my cats in the window and watch what he watched.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  2. Most of my early memories are connected to photographs but I do have one of being in a snowy field tobogganing with my younger brother and after everyone else had gone home we were stuck because of a little burn that we were scared to cross. Luckily my dad appeared and rescued us. No idea why he wasn't there before! We would have been about 7 and 5.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love that story Chris, Magical Dad appearing in the nick of time!

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  3. My partner remembers the lamp lighters in the north of England.

    The kitchen, dining and living area of our farmhouse faced a series of mountains and a ski run was built at an angle down the face of the tallest. It was quite a scar. Then one night lights were switched on. It was a wonderous moment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I imagine there are not too many of us left who remember the gas lights Andrew, I am so glad my dad imprinted it on me to remember the moment.

      I love the magic of those ski lights. Making the mountain a fairyland.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  4. My mother always said she liked living in houses where there was at least one window opening onto each direction so she could see what was going on all around.
    I don't have your kind of window memories but yours reminds me of a bittersweet song about looking out a window at an old lover who doesn't know she's there: Joni Mitchell's Two Grey Rooms:
    https://youtu.be/DjDi_plwi5A
    -Kate

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love the four views of your mother, Kate. I had never heard that song before, wonderful and sad and evocative of the love affairs that still hurt the heart.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  5. I always worry about animals going into space. What do they think? Are they worried about why their masters are locking them into these funny boxes and sending them so far away? Do they wonder if they will get home for dinner? How do they get dinner way up in space?
    The only thing I remember about windows is the year my mum told us to put our cleaned shoes on the windowsill for Saint Nick, in the morning we found the shoes had bags of lollies in them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It must be so sad and an awful death if memory serves me right. Poor innocent creatures.

      That is an unusual Yuletide story, how lovely!

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  6. What I always enjoy looking out of windows is thunderstorms and lightning bolts shooting across the sky. I also enjoy dramatic sunsets and sunrises. Can't say I ever saw Sputnik or lamp lighters!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My mother had me stand with her watching a storm and telling me there was nothing to fear as the ocean danced beneath it. I did lose my fear then, I was about 10. You would have been younger than I at those times Nick I would imagine.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  7. I have clear memories of a person coming every every evening at dusk and lighting up lamps looking just like the one shown by you. The lamp post was also used to tether cattle at need. They disappeared just like your father said and they are just memories now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A different time, Ramana, the lamps weren't very bright and I do remember the awful smell of the gasworks in our little town before we moved to the bright lights of the city.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  8. The Hale-Bopp comet in 1997. We lived away from city lights, so I could see it every night.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I don't recall much about 1957. But I'm sure it was good times. I had Miss Hanover for my third grade teacher, and I do remember that I was one of her favorites.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I*t makes such a difference to a child when they know that they are valued by a teacher, Tom.

      I had very few as I was a bored "troublemaker". But my light did shine for one particularly.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  10. My dad and I sat on the porch one night in a violent lightening storm, using the timer on his camera to take pictures of lightening.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How wonderful you have that memory Joanne! I can see it!

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  11. Your Dad had an eye for history, so often the "old" slips away without fanfare as we celebrate the new but it always feels better if we are able to spend a moment honouring it as it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Yes, well said Kylie. Honouring it as it goes, indeed!

    XO
    WWW

    ReplyDelete
  13. Your 'Lamplighter' memory immediately brought to my mind the song by Slim Whitman 'The Old Lamplighter' . . ."He made the night a little brighter,
    Wherever he would go
    The old lamplighter
    From long, long ago."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZoJ0FM0Dzw

    Can't get it out of my head now!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My dad would sing this song, omg I now have an earworm too!! TVM :)

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  14. I remember fire crackers on New Years Eve when I was little. Lots of smoke and noise. I jumped into my brother's bed for safety. LOL.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would be terrifying for a small child, Gigi!

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  15. Although I was born in Louisiana and had generations of family there, we had moved to the Texas Gulf Coast by the time I was three. Dad, having dropped out of college where he was studying engineering, had been offered a laboratory job at a refinery in Port Arthur. We lived in the small town of Groves, where he also became a volunteer fire fighter. He worked his way upward in responsibilities to being a dispatcher. That meant we had the radio in our home, alerting him of fire or other emergencies to which crews needed to be summoned. One June night in 1957, it was an emergency of the "other" type. Hurricane Audrey had suddenly intensified and changed course, heading right for us. While Dad made calls and then ran door to door to alert neighbors, Mom packed. We had no extra money, so we would be heading five hours away to my grandparents' homes in northwestern Louisiana. On the ride that night, Audrey had already begun moving ashore. I remember watching through the windshield as the car's headlights picked out whole limbs of trees blowing across the road and Dad struggled to hold the car on the road. I was seven, my brother was six, and my sister, one. Our youngest sibling had not yet been born. I am not sure why Dad did not stay except that my mother did not drive and our only way out of danger was for Dad to drive us.

    ReplyDelete
  16. What an incredible story Linda, and how terrifying for your family. Did you house survive Audrey?

    XO
    WWW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it survived that hurricane as well as the tornado that destroyed half the school my brother and I attended that same year. Through each hurricane, we drove home from my grandparents' home in trepidation, unsure if our house would still be there. My husband tells a story of his aunt begging her husband to allow her to replace a mattress in a house that had flooded during a hurricane. Snakes and other creatures sometimes were found in the muddy debris, and she was afraid of what might have crawled into that mattress. They didn't have the money, he said, and they probably didn't. The mattress would need to be aired out. When he took his shrimp boat out that day, she "aired out" the mattress by slashing it to pieces.

      Delete
    2. You had me laughing at the image of slashing away at that mattress. I couldn't have slept on it either!

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  17. Oh yes, even now something will remind me of Laika and it saddens me after all these years. So much of what you've described resonates with me as well even though I grew up in the Midwest of the US. So much of the technology was everywhere.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome. Anonymous comments will be deleted unread.

Email me at wisewebwomanatgmaildotcom if you're having trouble.