Category: nostalgia

A NIGHT OF NOSTALGIA AT THE OCALA DRIVE-IN

We enjoy going to the movies but not during this pandemic. We’re just not there yet, so we decided to take a long drive to go to the Ocala Drive-In in Ocala, Florida. It seemed like a good idea, as we could socially distance from the car or from our chairs in front of the car. There are two screens there, and three of the screens played first-run movies (“Tenet”, “Spontaneous”, and “The Last Shift”). We opted for the Halloween classic “Hocus Pocus” with Bette Middler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

The movie start times varies according to the time it gets dark, so be sure to check the movie start time seasonally. When we visited on October 3, the movie started at 7:45 PM, and the gate opened at 7:00 PM. I highly recommend getting there early, as close to opening as possible to get a good parking spot, as the drive-in appeared to be nearly sold out by the time the show started. The price is six dollars per adult and three dollars for children from six to twelve. Children under five are free.

The man at the gate entrance was very pleasant and gave us brownie “Z-Bars” with our receipt, which was a welcome surprise. I am a big fan of the “small good thing” one receives unexpectedly. When I voiced my surprise and thanked the gate keeper, he gave me a warm and genuine smile in return.

We have been to a few drive- in theaters in Florida in the last ten years or so, and a few are in less than desirable neighborhoods and looked a little worse for the wear. Ocala Drive-In, however, is in a pleasant and safe neighborhood and has been kept up well. The rest rooms have been updated a bit, very clean, and the owners take pride enough in their drive-in to place a decorative item on the vanity in the women’s rest room. I was happy to see the door to the restrooms propped open to allow adequate exchange of air during this pandemic, too.

The concession stand delivers food to your car if you want, but there are newer patio chairs and tables for those that wish to eat at the concession stand.

During the height of the pandemic, cars were parked in every other spot to allow for maximum social distancing, and at the time of our visit, only a few blocked spots remained for social distance. However, cars appeared to be parked four or five feet away, and the distance from driver of one car to passenger of the adjacent car appeared to be well over six feet.

I appreciated the proprietor’s request to stand when the National Anthem was played on the screen and had forgotten this happened before every movie I saw as a child in the drive-in. I also was pleasantly surprised to see a black and white Popeye clip play just before the movie, along with a kitschy concession advertisement like those I remember advertising the “hot buttered popcorn” at the concession stand from my childhood.

The quality of the movie, even though it was old, was great. The sound coming through the FM radio of our car was equally great. Patrons were all well-behaved, and we viewed no sketchy characters there.

All in all, it was a great outing to the Ocala Drive-In, and we will definitely go again. I highly recommend this particular Drive-In, too, as the attention to detail the owners provide for this old but in good condition theater shows.

Life is good; find a way to do something different today. Carpe diem, friends…………..

LIVING LA VIDA LOCA….SEVEN DAYS OF EATING LAVENDER, DAY THREE (LAVENDER CAKE)

I can still hear my wonderful father saying to me time and time again in my head: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That was him, “King of the Colloquial Expression”, always finding a teachable moment everywhere. A man of few words but words that meant something. He didn’t speak much, of course, unless he had something to say. No idle banter for him, but a pleasant and funny disposition, a kind and loving heart, a warm smile with a sunny laugh, and a man of few words. Life lived well and lived fully.

I think of my Dad today on day three of a week of lavender recipes I am trying. It comes down to the idea of cut the idea of cutting your losses while you are ahead versus you never know until you try. Go the distance; live without wondering what could have happened. Go the distance; risk disappointment but know you tried. I impart these same words to my daughter, “Teen Traveler” and decide without blinking an eye that the proverbial “show must go on”, another quip from my beautiful days with my father before he passed on. Even though we haven’t really cared for the two lavender recipes we tried this week, we will continue in our quest.

Day Three: Lavender pound cake. Pound cake brings to mind simpler, almost more old-fashioned times, as my beautiful mother adored pound cake and served it to me when I was small like her mother did before her. Pound cake, buttery goodness and sweet confection, just like Mom. Throw in a little lavender, and it HAS to be good, right? This time I am going to decrease the amount of lavender I use to see if that makes a difference and pair it with lemon. How could lemon pound cake go wrong with wise words of advice from my father coupled with sweet memories of my mother……

I decided to use my Mother’s old vintage Corningware loaf pan, complete with the cornflower from a lifetime ago filled with less complication, confusion and without Covid. This was either a very good thing to use my Mother’s pan as fond memories of love and comfort surrounded me while I was baking, or…..it was a bad thing because my mother wasn’t much of a baker. In either case, it was fun to take out my Mother’s old pan again if for nothing other than the sake of nostalgia.

Yesterday my track record for yummy lavender recipes was 0 for 2. I waited with excitement as I watched the cake come out of the oven and cool. I used a vanilla confectionary sugar glaze when it was cool enough as the recipe directed.

And I added sprinkles. Of COURSE I added sprinkles, as I had learned years ago from marrying into my husband’s family that sprinkles on our Italian struffali is the ONLY way to go. LOTS and LOTS of sprinkles. My daughter also taught me that life is better, always better, with a little sprinkles on top.

One person who tasted it said it felt like they were eating a scented drawer liner. My daughter said it would be delicious WITHOUT the lavender. I actually liked it, but I would have preferred the recipe to have a little heavier glaze on the top, as it was almost transparent in the recipe, even though I added even more confectionary sugar to thicken it than the recipe called for.

Day three: 1 for 3. Finally a recipe that tastes good (to some of us). I actually think I’m on to something here with the combination of lavender and lemon. Perhaps tomorrow I will try lavender lemonade. You know how it goes…..”if life gives us lemons, we make lemonade!”

Life is good; carpe diem, friends……..

(photo 1:dreamstime)

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ANGEL ON THE TOP OF A CHRISTMAS TREE I HAVE EVER SEEN

Although it is only May (already), my thoughts turned today for some reason to an anecdote that I hold dear in my heart. When I was first married many many years ago, my husband and I had so many wonderful discussions about how we would begin our lives together. Because we got married in September, it seemed that the holidays would arrive before we knew it. We began talking about our first Christmas Tree together, and we visited a local farm in New England, which has since closed, to find, tag, and cut down our own tree.

It sounded like such a fond memory even before we went to the farm, and it was every bit as wonderful as we thought it would be. There is something so tender about finding a tree together in the snow and dragging it off the field after going on a hayride or sleigh ride to get to the field in the first place. I think we even had the classic Hallmark cup of hot chocolate afterwards.

Some of our compromises that seemed like such difficult concessions at the time really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things I’m thinking now. It is so very easy to get caught up in the mundane at any stage of our lives, to give importance to the unimportant and somehow miss what is right before our eyes. I have learned since then that life is far too important to be taken so seriously. It doesn’t really matter to me whether we have garland or ribbon, tinsel or no tinsel, ornaments that all match or are mis-matched, or even Christmas lights that are all white or multi-colored, as long as we spend our Christmas season together with those that we love, laughing, baking cookies, and creating new memories and traditions while remembering the old ways fondly, too.

We decided somewhere along the way that we would have a photo ornament that represents each year that we have been married, in good times and in bad, and THAT is something I would decide to do all over again.

Our discussion at the time many years ago, however, turned to whether we would have a star or an angel on top of our first tree, as we set out to purchase our first ornaments together to decorate our tree. Growing up in the same city, there were many similarities, as well as differences, to our upbringings, but both households had an angel on top of the Christmas tree. That made that decision very easy, and an angel it was. While we were walking through the store to find the perfect angel to top our perfect tree, I remembered the angel that sat on top of the tree in the house I grew up in. Christmas was a special time for me, as I was the youngest child, and the youngest in our family had the privilege of being the one to put the very last decoration, the angel, on top of the tree. For years and years, my father lifted me up on his shoulders to accomplish this task. This made me feel like I was on top of the world, which I really was because my parents were the center of my world at the time.

Because my parents had moved out of state before we were married, there was no angel from my childhood to show my husband, as my parents were still using it on their tree in another state. I tried to find the words to describe to my husband how very beautiful the angel was, dressed in a gold dress with perfect pleats. The size of the angel was just perfect, too, neither too large nor too small. The angel’s hair, with it’s perfectly flowing and uniformly curled hairstyle was not like any more modern angel I had ever seen, either. The angel was, in fact, the most beautiful angel I had ever seen, and I would be hard-pressed to find anything at all that would compare in anyway to this angel from my childhood. We settled on a pretty angel, but she held no proverbial candle to the angel from my childhood in my mind.

Fast forward to a few years later. My parents sold their home and started using a smaller, table top tree, that many seniors use after growing tired of puttting the tree up and taking it down again in such a short amount of time, after having taken it up from the basement for many years, year after year. My parents decided when sorting through their decorations they would no longer need that it was very clear that the angel from my childhood should go to me. Time to pass down the baton, so to speak. One day when I went to visit them, my parents unexpectedly presented me with a cardboard box, flat and brown. I recognized the box immediately, as I removed the angel gently, very gently, from her resting spot between Christmases, before putting her on the tree each year. When I opened the box, I was surprised to see that the angel from my childhood was a little “worse for the wear” than I had expected, and the perfect pleats on her dress were a little imperfect. Her hairstyle was a little messy, and her arms were a bit bent. Not only was she a little old, my perfect angel wasn’t so perfect after all. In fact, I was shocked to see that she was a bit ugly, too. Her facial expression wasn’t nearly as beautiful as I had remembered, maybe even a little creepy, but I was oh so very grateful for the gift.

When I came to the realization that the angel wasn’t quite what I made her out to be in my mind all these years, I smiled. I realized that she was the most beautiful angel in the world on top of any tree that I had ever seen, mainly as a child, because of all the love, laughter, and happy memories at Christmas with my family that made her beautiful to me. While I can’t quite bring myself to put the angel on top of my tree now, I keep her in that same flat, rectangle, cardboard box from many years ago, among my present-day Christmas decorations. She serves as a reminder of where I have come from, who I came from, and what makes Christmas, and life, meaningful. I also have come to appreciate the need to see as much as we can through child-like eyes to see the beauty from time to time. Even if the angel is quite ugly, she is still so beautiful in so many ways, because of what she represents. And timeless memories of years past with those we love, even if deciding on unimportant things which seemed so important at the time, are priceless.

Life is good. Carpe diem, friends…………

photos: Dreamstime