View from Over the Hill

I don’t know which one of us found the pattern first, me or my best friend Barb. It was probably her – her Mom was a Home Ec. Teacher and an excellent sewer. The pattern was easy: cut out twelve identical “petals,” sew six together to form two round flower shapes, and then sew the two halves together, inverted, to make a reversible floppy hat shaped vaguely like a tulip. Don’t laugh. It was the 60s.

We were about 15, free for the summer, and restless. Our parents didn’t want us to get summer jobs until we were older, but we wanted money. We had read (we were into competitive reading that year) Cornelia Otis Skinner’s Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, her memoir of being a teenager in the 1930s, going with her best friend on a voyage to Europe. Shipboard, of course. The book is very funny. We had decided that we were going to do this (not recognizing that young Cornelia was sponsored by parents who were considerably better off than our own). It being the 60s, the idea of backpacking through Europe was in the air. When we finished high school, we would bicycle and backpack through Europe, seeing all the historical sights and seeking adventure.

This is where the Tulip Hats come in. We decided to spend the summer sewing these hats and selling them to our friends, neighbors, and anyone else we could persuade to buy them. Each of our mothers had a sewing machine, and the pattern was simple enough that we could create an assembly line method for the project. Our first fabric came from scraps our mothers had; when that ran out, we looked through the cotton remnants at local fabric stores. Remember fabric stores?

We wore out that first tissue-thin pattern pretty quickly, so we traced the petal shape on shirt cardboards and cut out sturdier ones. We made flowered hats with plain colored linings, flowered hats with flowered linings, plaid hats with whatever linings we could devise, and on and on. We wrangled our mothers and all our sisters, female cousins, and grandmothers to buy them. The cost: $1.00. We had a booth on the street for a while; we went to relatives’ businesses and sold them (I remember going to the offices of Your Host restaurants, where my grandmother kept the books, and beguiling all the “office ladies” into buying hats.)

We set up our workshop in the front porch of our house, a place airy with big windows, cool from the shade of two large chestnut trees, and out of the way of our families, who decided we had gone crazy. We bought a little cash box at the 5 and Dime (remember 5 & Dime stores?) and kept our proceeds in it. We had the transistor radio I had made from a Heathkit for background music: “Hot town, summer in the city/ Back of my neck getting dirty gritty” was a hit. So were the songs “Windy,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” and “Light My Fire.” By that you know it was 1967.

Every so often my father would pop his head through the front porch door and ask, “How’s the sweatshop going?” We had a great time, bopping along to the music. We pumped most of our earnings back into buying more fabric for more hats. We made about 15 or 20 cents on each hat, if that. And then, we ran out of people to sell hats to, just as summer was waning and 10^th grade was approaching. We made about $12.00 in all – not quite enough to get us to Europe together, but the dream didn’t die. I went on an exchange program in college, and a few years later Barb, as a History teacher, got her wish.

This place is not what it was advertised to be. No longer a Crowne Plaza, it is being converted to a Holiday Inn Express. My first impression is that it’s a bit shabby and empty – hard to tell how much of the changeover has been accomplished (the fellow at the desk said, ‘we’re being renovated,’ and a small sign confirms that). The large lobby is nearly empty, except for a few chairs on the far side, well away from the reception desk. Though it is only two weeks until Christmas, there are no Christmas decorations. The rugs in the halls are worn, and the accommodations are pretty basic for a mid-price chain hotel room. The steel elevator door has a mysterious greasy handprint out of reach at the top.

In the room, I have two big beds – very high. I have to launch myself into bed by rolling myself in. There’s a reading chair, a “desk chair” on wheels, but no desk, only a small oval table with the ice bucket and coffee things on it. Big working TV, clean bathroom, though the toilet paper had not been put on the roller, just set next to it, wrapped. Picky, picky. First world problems. A wood panel beneath the sink has not (yet?) been secured, so it falls off if you bump it. But the room is clean and apparently newly painted – Renovations!

When I first arrived, I thought the GPS had brought me to the wrong place, as there was no sign for a Crowne Plaza, down a dark secondary road. Once informed about the takeover, I inquired about parking and was told to park in the many-tiered garage, but to take my suitcases in first, as “the garage has no elevator.” Luckily, I commandeered a handicapped spot by the front entrance. Blessings on the handicapped hang-tag! Next, I found that my key cards would not work – had to return (down the elevator with the greasy handprint) to the desk to have them redone.

So here I am, beginning my “free luxury weekend,” which I will later pay for by attending a sales pitch for the timeshare I have no intention of buying. Good thing it is free. I am now in the restaurant (should I use scare quotes?), eating a turkey club sandwich with three tissue-thin sheets of grocery-store-style pressed turkey and about half a head of lettuce. The bacon is real, however. Fries are okay, though – no ketchup. Must hail Gabby, the waitress, when she reappears, and must order my second glass of mediocre wine.

There’s a small lit-up Christmas tree in a darkened empty area a way off, in what looks like an abandoned banquet space. My fellow guests are an uninspiring group, so I fit right in. Glad I didn’t bother to wash my hair before driving over from Albany. There’s a washed-out elderly couple sitting side by side in a booth, so they can watch the TV that’s silently flashing over the bar – some news show, not FOX, not CNN. About seven or eight men, some chatting to each other, some hunched over their phones, sit at the bar, eating and drinking. At least four are wearing ball caps, thankfully none of them MAGA. A younger couple are sitting in the booth behind me, also sitting side by side so they can watch the TV. Is this a Pittsfield thing? They speak loudly enough for me to hear their conversation, which is mainly about what is wrong with their dinner. I think they are very choosy, until my sandwich arrives. We are all very, very white, it being dead of winter in western Massachusetts. One of the men at the bar is wearing athletic shorts with red stripes down the legs, despite its being December 14^th.

Now the TV is tuned to Wheel of Fortune. This seems appropriate. A second man wearing shorts just came to the bar. His are jeans shorts, though. The exercise room is also on this same floor of the building – maybe they are having a post-exercise beer? Neither one looks particularly athletic. New ballcap arrives, wearing long jeans and a long skinny ponytail. Jocular arguing with shorts guy #2, then exclaims, “I gotta go! I gotta go!” And off he goes. It’s possible that some of the men at the bar are traveling for business. Some could well be the workers who are responsible for the renovations.

I wonder what the going room rate is for my “free” room. Glad I am calling this weekend “a writer’s conference for one.” I pull back the curtain by my table, wondering what the view is, and look into the faces of two women and their little kids, who are eating their dinner at a table by the pool. The pool is being used, mainly by small children.

Jeopardy comes on. The old couple leaves. A woman and three young girls, all different ages, all four in bathing suits, get off the elevator and head to the pool. The mother is carrying a decorated birthday cake.

Where is Gabby? I’m still waiting for that second glass of wine. Okay. She took my order, and is now talking to the couple behind me, describing in painstaking detail how the chef messed up their orders, it apparently having taken several tries for him to get the extras they wanted on their burgers just right. “Are you allergic to any particular kind of cheese?” she asks them. Apparently they are now reordering their dinners. “No, any kind of cheese is fine. Any cheese AT ALL,” says the woman. Although I can’t see her, I can hear her teeth gritting.

The bartender has white hair cut short, glasses, and a mild expression. Black dress shirt, red tie, pens in the breast pocket. He looks like an accountant pretending to be a bartender. Otherwise, there’s a lot of denim in here. As my wine arrives, I hear, at the bar, “Ya gotta work tomorrow? “ “Yeah.”

By the time I leave the hotel on Monday morning, a two-inch gold Christmas tree has been placed on the table that sits near the elevator, and a large, decorated Christmas tree has appeared in the otherwise empty lobby. The handprint at the top of the elevator door, however, is still there.

Now in our sixties and seventies, my family, friends and I have entered the Age of Scary Tests. Someone is always scheduled for an EKG, an ultrasound, an MRI. Getting multiple vials of blood drawn for lab work is as routine as going to the grocery store – maybe even more routine than groceries, what with pandemic measures and curbside pickup. It’s not the lab work but waiting for results of the big tests that tries our souls. Which one will reveal the glitch in a heartbeat that will change everything? Which test will require further tests, engendering greater fear? Which will bring a diagnosis requiring treatments, even hospitalization? For decades, medicine meant one annual doctor’s visit and one OB-GYN visit, forgotten immediately until the anniversary date rolled around. Then came annual mammograms, colonoscopies, and now, the rounds of tests seeking answers for various discomforts. “ Consider the alternative,” quips one friend. “Now we have a doctor for every body part,” says another, whose weekly lunch group has to begin with an “organ recital” before they begin to settle the state of the world. It seems as if there’s always another life phase ahead. This is the age of scary tests.