Ruskin Nebraska Gal Meets a Gal from the Bronx and Find Common Ground

Joyce doing her thing at Group in September, 2009

I was honored to be asked by her family to speak at the memorial of our good friend Joyce Mastro last weekend.  She passed away December 20 after a struggle with the flu and pneumonia and lung cancer.  She was truly my good friend and made a definite impact on the Beaches Cancer Support Group people she helped over a 10 year span.  This is my eulogy for her:

You’ve all heard people say, “I’ve never met anyone like “so & so”…  Well, no kiddin!  I have visited a lot of places in my lifetime and I have lived in 6 states, about 16 cities and a foreign country and this old very independent girl from Nebraska has never met anyone like that old very independent girl from the Bronx!

Charlie was diagnosed with the “C” word and had his procedures shortly thereafter.  He started going to the Beaches Cancer Support Group to see how others dealt with it.  It didn’t take many meetings for him to become one of the regulars.  When we’d moved here, I’d made up my mind that I’d had enough of Chamber of Commerce meetings, church choir (both singing and directing), fund-raising meetings, board meeting this and committee meeting that, Community Theater….and, well, you get the picture.  I was sick of meetings so I wasn’t having any part of anything that met every Wednesday night.

I did go to the Christmas party, social events and that Relay thing with him, but NO weekly meetings!!  Yeah, well, so much for that thought.

Having dinner after Wednesday night meetings became a tradition

A few years back, I dragged some stuff over to Joyce’s house for the annual garage sale to raise money for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life.  I ended up staying most of the day sorting junk and pricing stuff.  How’d that happen?  The next thing I knew, Charlie was picking me up to go to dinner at Mario’s after Wednesday meetings with the GROUP.

I’m not exactly sure how she did it, but after a couple of years of helping out with those garage sales and dropping in at the Relay, Joyce somehow anointed me with the full-blown honor of Relay Team Captainship…   No! NO! NO!  —  Ha! Ha! Ha!  Then, that first year went so well….  Chuck Saacke raised so much money by bugging his friends and acquaintances, we had such a great garage sale and Joyce got all our money matched by the Bank of America that we got first place in the First Coast Beaches Relay.  THEN, she proclaimed that the Captainship was a 2 year contract!  —- That’s just sort of how things went with Joyce. 

A couple of summers ago, Charlie volunteered to build a little deck in Joyce’s back yard.  That area between the house and the deck wouldn’t grow grass very well, so why not put a deck back there….and then, after the two of them conspired for a while, why not just deck the whole thing?  After a few trips to Home Depot, the 2 of them had plans drawn up, the materials ordered and we were on our way to Joyce’s house every day to build this little deck.  Let me tell you, a 16′ x 30’ deck involves a LOT of screwing!  My job was to scoot from floor joist to floor joist with my trusty screw gun to screw the boards in place.  Joyce about had a cow having to sit on the sidelines watching….but, she never missed a minute coaching us ever onward! 

It was during this project that I really got to know Joyce.  I found that I wasn’t the only woman in Jax  Beach who could swing a hammer or fix a toilet.  We also liked the same Rock & Roll, a lot of the same movies, we’d both been wild little girls in our youth, we had the same GP and the same politics and about the only place where she really had the edge on me was in STUBBORN!  Raised in such extraordinarily different places, we truly were a lot alike.

During the “deck days” we got acquainted with Michael’s delicious cooking and got to dive into his wonderful low country boils a few times.  We got to know Patrick who graciously helped me with all that deck screwing!  I really enjoyed hearing him talk about his days in Germany.

Have you ever been to Relay for Life?  The first times we went out to Jarboe Park, I was amazed that those crazy Saackes and Joyce and her grandson, “Little Michael” spent the night there!!  Jeez oh Pete!  With my crazy broken down body, I have a hard time sleeping in some hotel beds with crappy sheets.  And, how did Joyce ever talk Vera into coming down from Georgia not only to make quilts for us to sell, but to sleep outside as well??  Oh yeah, that Joyce sorta told ya what to do and when to it.  And, I guess once you’ve grown up with someone, been through, marriages together, been in business together and lived together and helped raised each other’s kids, some things are just understood.

But, for the Love of God, how do you get a little kid interested in volunteering with a bunch of sick

Charlie & ""Little Michael" at 2009 Relay

 and old people?  Anyone who knew Joyce knew or had heard about “Little Michael” and Parker.  And, I am quite certain that anyone who knows Michael knows about his grandma.  He was the apple of her New York eye.  Was it her idea for him to dress up like a girl and compete in the Miss Relay contest?  You know he had to want to do it for her!   

The 2010 First Coast Beaches Relay for Life was dedicated to Joyce.  Our little group baked and sold over 30 dozen birthday cupcakes to raise money for the America cancer Society.  It truly is an amazing experience to walk around the path at night reading all the Laminaria bags that have been decorated with people’s names who have died from cancer and those who are survivors.  Joyce was a TEN YEAR SURVIVOR!  WOW

Laura Saacke, like Joyce, shares a wealth of information with our Group

Cancer changes everyone’s life!  It isn’t just the person who has it;  it effects and changes the lives of the care givers, family and friends.  Statistics show that people who have joined a support group have a better chance of survival than those who don’t.  Joyce was passionate about her role as the “Leader of the Pack”  Vroom Vrooom!  You have to know that there were a lot of Wednesdays that she had to have wanted to be somewhere else doing something else.  It is after all, the group NO ONE WANTS to join..    Joyce shared a wealth of information with a lot of members; especially about taking no guff from doctors, hospitals, billing departments, social security and health insurance people.  Every support group should be so lucky as to have a Joyce Mastro or a Laura Saacke to share so much information on how to take care of ourselves. 

Lots of people have come and gone in our Beaches Cancer Support Group.  Some have come in those early days of diagnosis, gotten the support they needed and have been fortunate to be able to move on with their lives.  Sadly, our group has been to some memorial services for those who lost their battle with this ugly illness. 

Almost everyone in our group agrees that once you’ve had cancer, you no longer have time to be angry for long, you appreciate every day you have, you love your family and friends more and you thank God for life’s little gifts…. Like having known Joyce Mastro.

Ray Charles Movie Reviews: “Date Night” & “Back-up Plan”

Everyone who knows us knows we enjoy going to the movies and see a lot of them.  I have to admit 2010 has not been a great year for them….so far anyway.  There are some we are really looking forward to, but lately Hollywood has sorta been scraping the bottom of the old film cutter’s floor.  We saw two movies this weekend that could have both been your average weekend romantic comedies.  That, they weren’t.  They could not have been more opposite in watchability.  Is that a word?  If not, it should be. 

DATE NIGHT:  I had no real expectations from this movie…you know, thinking we’d already seen all the good parts in the previews and TV ads.  Aaah!  Nice surprise. 

Never in my wildest imagination would we ever have to worry about getting bumped off for snagging someone’s dinner reservation at the Palm Valley Fish Camp here in Ponte Vedra!  The seafood and bread pudding at the camp would almost make you do that though.  But, back to the movie. 

The "Tripplehorns" on a date like they've never had before.

 

Ponte Vedra isn’t York City and not too many mobsters roam around trying to kill folks for blackmail purposes.  Tina Fey and Steve Carrell are just superb in this madcap mix where romantic comedy meets crime thriller.   These two actors have chemistry.  I’d like to say it’s like Hepburn and Tracy, but that’s a lot to stand up to.  If they do enough movies together, you’ll think of them that way as well. 

When all is said and done, a date night with some great seafood from the Jacksonville area topped off with this movie would be a really good idea. 

Now, here’s a really bad idea:  THE BACK-UP PLAN 

Back out of any plan to see this bomb.  Not even mildly amusing, it is absurdly crass.  I can barely tolerate one “poop scene” in a movie, but there are TWO here and both are terribly disgusting.  

Quite the opposite of DATE NIGHT, there’s no chemistry between the JLo and AlexO.  It was painful to watch these two at times.  The movie draws on every crude pregnancy cliche` you might imagine.   

So, if you want to see Jenny From the Block slurp barbecue from the pot, see her prance around NYC while 9 months pregnant with twins in stiletto heels, watch the birthing scene from hell and watch a conga line at the senior center, this might be for you.  If not, don’t even bother to look for it in the $5 rack at Wal-Mart in a few weeks.  

I’ll never understand how this thing got a PG13 rating.  We have three 13 year olds in our family and I certainly wouldn’t want them to see this garbage.  I am trying to imagine Jennifer watching this with her children some day.

Does This Mean I Have to Practice?

Maksim – Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 – He plays slightly better than I do

Keyboard with my new music books

Many decades ago, my dad and my grandpa bought me a beautiful upright piano.  Of course I was delighted as any child would be.  My grandparents, uncles, cousins and friends could all play effortlessly.  Why shouldn’t I be able to do that as well? 

I was hustled off to piano lessons with Mrs. Chauncey Hull.  I can still remember her admiring my rather large hands (at age 6) saying “these long fingers will make a fine pianist”.  What she didn’t impress upon me deeply enough was that I’d have to practice and practice and practice.  Well, maybe she tried, but that flew right over my head.  I had the “piano gene”, didn’t I?  My cousins could play anything they wanted to…and without sheet music or books.  If they’d heard it, they could play it!  Why not me?

Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsodie No. 2

Evidently, that piano gene escaped my little twig on the family tree, so I struggled on with more lessons from Mrs. Hull and then Miss Mumma.  She was an amazing and odd little woman (we all giggled about her tiny & funny shape and demeanor outside of class) who taught us all how to sing in harmony in the first grade, but her magic didn’t fall onto my large hands that could already reach and play an octave and 2 keys.  But, have I mentioned that I wasn’t much good at that practicing thing?  That truly wasn’t in my genes.  I was much more inclined to be out playing baseball with my brother and his friends.  Miss Mumma surely considered me one of her life’s disappointments.

After a few years, my parents realized they were wasting their money on my piano lessons….they cost a whopping $1.00 for 30 minutes back in the 50′s.  I was still singing in any outlet available and was in band by Jr. High.  I “got” all that music theory stuff…but, I still couldn’t make it work for me on that damned piano.  I learned some favorite songs like Lizst’s “Hungarian Rhapsodie No. 2″, “Love Me Tender” and ”Red Sails in the Sunset”.  Dad used to tease  me and tell me to quiet down; that my sun needed to set.   I nearly wore out my poor old pink Elvis “Love Me Tender” sheet music. 

I’ve always said that if I could have one talent, it would be to play the piano like my cousins, my childhood friend Karen and Liberace.  The talent fairy hasn’t dropped that on me yet, but I keep hoping.

My son’s family gave me a keyboard for my birthday; we thought it might be good exercise for my not so limber arthritic hands.  I can still play “Love Me Tender”, but that’s my whole repertoire now.  I thought I’d be able to download some free sheet music online.  Well, that’s hardly worth the effort, believe me.  I finally traipsed over to the music store; it is only 7 blocks from my house, so it was a trip I should have made much earlier.  To my delight, there was John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano along with some other music books I’d used back when I thought I should have been blessed with the piano gene.  I bought a few books and have tried my hand at some of the songs… argh! I’m pretty rusty.

About half of my grandchildren are in piano lessons and are quite accomplished for their ages.  They got more of that gene than I did and their parents are better at getting them to practice than mine were (I was really good at sneaking outside!).  And, now that I have the piano, the music and even a very convenient place to play, I guess my son is going to expect me to practice!  Thankfully, there will not be recitals!

Kleen Easter Mayhem

This is my family; Shot, LaVeryl, Gail, Me and our fantastic parents

Back in the day when our nephews and nieces were young, my oldest brother Shot, his wife and I were the craziest of Easter Bunnies.  We colored LOTS of eggs and hid them in our younger brothers homes.  And, I do mean HID them.  Eggs were placed in the tops of ceiling fans, in shoes and boots, in the very very back of cupboards and cabinets, behind childrens books, in the shower, under the bathroom sink, inside the toilet tank,  under sofas, inside sofas and well….you get the point.

Around Halloween, Gail put on his winter suit for church.  In the middle of the service, he reached into his side pocket and found one of our prettiest eggs.  It took everything he and his wife Linda had to keep from bursting out laughing. 

Eggs were known to explode when they got too hot hidden in light fixtures.  LaVeryl stepped into his cowboy boots and sadly, he had to change socks before wearing them.  Our nieces and nephews also found eggs in the hoods of winter coats and way in the back of their underwear drawers.  Sometimes they didn’t smell so good any more.  Some of them I fear have never been found!

Marsha

Marsha was, shall I say, our prissiest neice.  On her graduation, my brother Shot clasped her hand to congratulate her with an egg in his hand.  Aha!  It hadn’t been cooked…colored, yes, but not boiled.  She’s never been a trusting girl since then.

The Kleen family got it’s sense of humor and strong urges to pull pranks on family and friends from the head of the family.  Dad was widely known for his practical jokes in our neck of the woods in rural Ruskin, Nebraska. 

Well! I really miss all that mayhem.  Yesterday as I was sending out a few Easter greetings to family and friends, actual tears ran down my cheeks as all of these memories filled my mind.  I dye eggs every year…sometimes I’m lucky enough to have family to share them with and sometimes not.  However, the mayhem is pretty much gone.   All the kids are grown up and have families of their own. 

 Hmmm, Kristy (Marsha’s sister) invited us to Nebraska this summer.  Maybe I’ll have to bring some belated Easter “gifts” to all of them.

Hello World!

Hello world?  Who in the world do I think I am?  Oh yeah, I’m just the crazy cat lady at the end of the block who dresses up her flamingos, likes to take photos of junk on shelves all over the country and wants to slap on a happy grin.  I’ve never written a blog before, so this will undoubtedly be disjointed and haphazard (isn’t that a great word?) most of the time. 

Since it is Easter season, I thought I’d begin with a favorite Easter photo of mine:

Happy Easter from Florida

The world is full of great mysteries, but now you all know where the plastic Easter eggs come from. 

Have a wonderful Easter my friends!  Enjoy your life every day.