Tootie, Paula Shene [read out loud books TXT] 📗

It's been said that everlasting friends go long periods of time without speaking and never question their friendship. These friends pick up like they just spoke yesterday, regardless of how long it has been or how far away they live, and they don't hold grudges. They understand that life is busy… and… you will ALWAYS love them. *


When I married forty-six years ago my future husband told me to pick out and pay for our rings; he would be providing the honeymoon - it was to be a surprise.

The surprise - we spent the three day honeymoon camping ~ camping on Lake Follensby at the then family camp in upstate New York; the structures within camp were wooden to waist high and then upper canvas sides and roofs.

The second night of the honeymoon, the first in camp, to have a mouse {I hope that was what it was} run across my face; to be greeted in the outhouse by a spider the size of a dessert plate in one corner and another small dinner plate size hanging in the opposite corner and not a broom in sight and I a city girl with summer country roots.

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We were to leave our reception on Long Island and drive to Saranac Lake, New York. Our first stop for the night was to be spent at his ‘favorite’ sister and husband’s home. I had been hearing about Tootie during our courtship and this paragon had already earned her spot at the top of my ‘hate’ list so to be told we were to stay at her home on the first night of our marriage was ... dismaying.

The then ten to twelve hour trip was accomplished in eight in my husband’s MG. The beautiful Adirondack scenery sped by, clothed in a gown of darkness only broken by the high beams cutting a swathe as we climbed the winding cascade roads.

We arrived at Tootie and Ron’s after one a.m to a house seemingly totally mad: a man with arms a windmilling holding the screen door open with his left leg, followed by a bath-robed woman, kerchief covered hair in pin curls, welding a broom as a weapon in one hand, a can of beer in the other, and a cigarette held firmly between her lips.

This is Tootie?! Tootie’s real name is Ruth; why and how she got the tag Tootie is hidden in family mystery. I’ve been told several versions but ‘Tootie’ is not as odd as my husband’s nickname of ‘Bug.’ His grandmother named him, ‘her little June Bug’ which naturally got shortened to Bug so I figured Tootie could have started out as Tootsie or TootToot or some such but that was my wryness in cheek and never voiced.

The ice breaker antics were due to a flying squirrel who insisted on being there for our arrival. We were enlisted in the fray to encourage this bushy tailed rodent to return to his or her family on the outer side of the door. How this was accomplished without their daughters being awaken, to this day, I do not know.

When sanity again reigned and introductions were made we were ushered into the kitchen where a humugous pot of spaghetti was heating, awaiting our arrival. They had even delayed their eating to celebrate with us.

Ron and Tootie were in the process of building onto their home during this period of time and their bedroom was made up for us to enjoy the first night as man and wife but we were told some construction was still in process. Not something we would have noticed.
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How can one keep a person on a ‘hate list’ when they keep their kitchen open all hours to feed family and an unknown bride. How can one even think such a jealous thought when given their bed while the hosts bunk down on the living room floor?

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The three honeymoon days are a blur of meeting the people important in my husband’s life. Very few of all I met can I recall but my first meetings with his older sisters were memorable.

His eldest sister Joan, and her family while not as madcap as his ‘favorite sister’ and family, had their moments too. Their daughter Linda recently had open heart surgery to correct a hole in her heart. Linda almost three years old and very proud of her operation and the scar, asked us if we wanted to see it ~ as she whipped up her shirt.

I later was told, these two older sisters had teamed up to throw their two year old brother, my husband, down the stairs because he kept interfering in a game they were attempting to play. They were seven and eight at the time of this infraction.

During the first year of my marriage, Tootie and I exchanged letters during our pregnancies; she birthing Carole and I, Paul III. Tootie caused the one and only occurrence of hysteria in myself shortly after she gave birth to Carole.

Carole’s birth was not an easy one for her mother who would have fatally bled if not being attended in a hospital. Tootie described this ordeal in gory detail to me in a letter during the seventh month of my pregnancy; fortunately, I was at my in-laws when I read the letter and had the meltdown; my mother in law assured me this very rarely happened but Tootie later told me that Mom had sternly spoken to her about scaring me.

But even good comes out of scares.

Tootie was the bookkeeper at the local Grand Union. She worked her shift and went directly to the hospital to give birth which she apparently also had done with her first two daughters, Clayre and Cathy.

I was working a part time physical and part time clerical position which included the daily pricing for a laundry and their weekly payroll. I too had planned on working until the shift was over - this truly is a hardy women’s outlook on childbirth - but after reading Tootie’s missive, I decided to take maternity leave a month previous to my son’s birth, though I still did the weekly payroll, including one in hospital the day after his birth.

Tootie and I continued to write one another until Paul and I relocated from Long Island to the family homestead in Bloomingdale so Paul could finish his education at Plattsburgh State University to become a teacher ~ he had studied partying his first year of college at Plattsburgh and I had met him during a subsequent year at night school while attending Southampton College.

His plan was to return to school after my second pregnancy produced our second son, Patrick; we moved upstate in anticipation of that birth.

Paul and I, being 'the children’ siblings younger by eight to ten years to his sisters, were expected to present ourselves to either Ron and Tootie’s or George and Joan’s home on a Sunday afternoon for dinner and family bonding; some times allowed to present a dish to accompany dinner but most times not.

Tootie’s house was always more relaxed and we seldom ate until later in the evening, never quite knowing when partying would be interrupted for food whilst Joan’s Sunday dinner arrived on table on schedule and you brought your partying along, but to the table you came.

During the short five years we lived in the same area, family always met on Sunday. This was a tradition my husband’s parents bestowed on their children. I never made a Sunday dinner until Paul joined the Navy and we traveled to different bases within the US; then we had young enlisted men, usually without family, to our table to share our blessings; we had arrived at being the adults.
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Due to a stroke in my late thirties and to the limited time spent physically together, I have so few memories of Tootie and myself in that tapestry of time, but the ones we had were joyful or deeply meaningful.

I spent one evening with her when she had arrived at the point of believing her beloved cat was killed because he had not returned in almost a week. While I listened to her tearful fears and attempted to give comfort, her tom arrived at the door dragging a steel jawed trap attached to his right rear leg.

She and I, with tears blurring our eyes, removed the trap before we contacted the local vet for services. In the week to come, we both asked around and found the trapper, and reported him. Never underestimate the determination of animal lovers for justice to be served. Her dad once remarked in my hearing that if reincarnation was a fact, he hoped to come back as a cat in the Shene family.
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Our times at family camp were spent in cooking and watching {but not intruding} in our children’s play. The children of our generation were treated more as ‘little people’ with their play as ‘work’ ~ that is, working out relationships, learning to make a puzzle come together, learning to play a game, learning to master their innate skills but especially learning they could do anything they put their will into doing if that was their wish. Tattling was discouraged and peace treaties encouraged so strong relationships have been forged with siblings and cousins and friends.
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I was enlisted to join Tootie and Joan as a substitute bowler on their league team. Joan asked and when told I didn’t really bowl very well, Tootie was given the job of cajoling me into joining. Joan was always the leader but Tootie was the negotiator. I was assured that I was to only be a substitute, ‘probably’ only to bowl once a month or so; I agreed. I bowled every week for three years save one.

The weeks I had the most fun were the weeks both sisters were present because after bowling we would then go to a local bar and drink and talk for hours heedless to the fact we all must be at our respective jobs the following morning.

I tried to quit after two years because, while my bowling improved by twenty points during that period, I still was the low man on the team but the last man in the line up - the one expected to make up the difference … and could not.

Joan was, it seemed to me, discouraged with my progress and was vocal which made me determined not to return but then ... she sent in Tootie. Tootie had bought Sergeant stripes, told me she was going to sew them on Joan’s bowling shirt, and promised me the lead in the line up. I’m not sure which of the two made me agree to go back for the third year, but Tootie had accomplished her goal.
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Through the years, we would return to the Adirondacks, always stopping at “OUR favorite sister’s’ home first and then on to the others. Everyone understood this because Tootie was every one’s favorite sister. Day or night, Tootie’s door was open to family and friends and newly made friends. She and Ron had their differences just as any couple do but through the years, their love for each other and their family kept them tightly knit.

Ron died nineteen years ago after thirty-seven years of marriage; Tootie determined not to allow Ron to leave her without his company ~ Ron waited, in an urn set upon the coffee table, for his bride, until this past Father’s day morning when she joined him on the other side.

Tootie and Ron raised three highly motivated individuals