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Category: Vayo

spooky jack-o-lantern
The theme was spooky

The theme was spooky

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Among the many trunks and boxes of Mom’s poetry, prose, and other papers, a Halloween story surfaced this week. The one-page spooky story looks to be a theme paper written for a high school class. Young Joan Cassidy typed it carefully; she was a student of New Haven’s St. Mary’s Academy. Associates in Magic My buck-toothed product of the harvest grinned maliciously in the kitchen window. His crooked nose and glaring eyes made him appear utterly ridiculous. I attempted futilely…

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Frankenchair
The Frankenchair

The Frankenchair

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Back in June, as Gary and I cleared out my parents’ home for sale, I phoned my cousin Suzanne about one particular wooden chair. “The chair with the lions. That was from Grandma and Grandpa’s house, right Suzie?” You mean the Frankenchair? Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized the chair in my folks’ music room had a story behind it. Our grandpa was a policeman in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1926 through 1952. He loved to walk the beat…

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Halloween pillows
The witch hat

The witch hat

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There’ll never be a Halloween when my brothers and I don’t think of Mom. She loved everything about fall, especially getting spooky in late October. In addition to decorating the house and loading up on apple cider, Mom got a lot of use out of this witch hat: We liked that photo so much, it reappeared as a pillow, which Mom treasured: It’ll be years before I run out of Halloween poems from Mom. She wrote a bunch! All Hallows…

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Venezuelan stamps from Dave's collection
The stamp lady

The stamp lady

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Mom would be pleased that her poems – even those from long ago – are causing her children to research and reminisce. This poem was written in August of 1977 following the death of someone named Madeline. A friend? A relative? I checked first about a certain writer friend, but she spelled her name Madeleine and lived for three more decades. A search on our massive family tree on ancestry.com brought me – at last – to Madeline. Madeline Sturmer….

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dictionary by Daniel Webster
The dictionary

The dictionary

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Does anyone really use a dictionary anymore? I mean a real dictionary. Hard-covered and hefty. With hundreds and hundreds of tissue-paper pages. Tiny type. Here’s Mom‘s copy, now in our home: I weighed it. Thirteen pounds. Measured it, too: 11.5″ x 9.5″ x 5″. Thousands of pages … … starting with Mr. Webster: Researching Mr. Webster a bit, my favorite quote is that he was instrumental in giving American English a dignity and vitality of its own. He served in…

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1952 letter from Grandpa
Sarcasm, 70 years on

Sarcasm, 70 years on

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Well, I left something out in an earlier story. As much as I learned about Grandpa Vayo while researching “The Family Scholar,” I didn’t pick up on one important attribute. Sarcasm. Grandpa knew how to take a sarcastic turn in his writing. Here’s a letter Grandpa mailed to Dad on July 30, 1952. My father was in boot camp at Fort Dix, New Jersey, preparing to be sent overseas during the Korean Conflict. Dear Son: Guess there isn’t much news…

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Mom & Dad in Alaska - Harold & Joan Vayo
‘Handyman Hal’

‘Handyman Hal’

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A few weeks before Dad‘s 60th birthday, Mom wrote this playful poem about her handy husband: Handyman Hal If you need a window lowered at nightOr somebody strong to switch on the lightOr the tablecloth straightened from left to rightCall Handyman Hal! If you reach him the key he will open your doorGive him a jug he’ll be happy to pourAll of these projects and many things moreHandyman Hal. If you want Christmas presents placed under the treeA wise man…

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Dad, cousin Gloria, Jean
The wanderer

The wanderer

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The year was 1934. The location was Utica, New York. Dad was four years old. And he was on the move. Dad wasn’t running away from home, he just had things to do and places to go. Dear Grandma had her hands full. With the lad who was called “Big Boy” at times and “Junior” other times, plus baby Jean (a year younger than Dad) and another sibling on the way (Aunt Janet), it probably took a few minutes for…

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1958 Mom with three Vayo children
The carriage

The carriage

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A few months ago, I went through a big pile of Mom’s poems. Little by little, I’m reading them and trying to sort them into decades and themes. I set this one aside. The carriage Mom mentions in this love poem to Dad wasn’t the type of carriage you read about in a fairy tale. Something as Bright What did you know of mewalking our children under the leavesand over the bridges of towns too smallfor memory. Shoes from the…

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Mom with future inlaws
A father’s letter

A father’s letter

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It’s been a weekend of sneezing and itching, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Treasures from the past are stored in attics. And attics get dusty. One document in particular is from 1952 and speaks for itself. Dad kept it preserved all these years in a small cedar box. A letter from his father. Mom and Dad met in 1943. Within a year, they promised to marry someday. They were just 14 at the time. Nine years later,…

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