Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi everyone, this is Dawn Klem and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
Today I'm gonna share a story about both of my parents and their influence on me when I was growing up and how those good habits carry forward today in my life.
So when I was in, in grade school, my mom was on a bowling team in a bowling league and they played on or they bowled, I should say every Tuesday night.
I think There were like 10 or 12 teams in their league.
And then the goal was to become good enough so that you could go to the tournament.
And the tournament was, was every year in the fall.
So they would bowl the whole.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Year long until the fall, sometimes late fall, November it would seem like if I can remember right. And then they would go to the tournaments if they were good enough.
On her team was always her older sister Jeanette. Those two did everything together.
And my mom was a good bowler, but my aunt Jeanette was an awesome bowler. She just was a natural athlete, my aunt Jeanette.
And so, but the two of them were always on a team together and then they had three other friends that would be on the team and those three friends rotated through. So there was, there was always a bunch of people that bowled on there after a while my cousin Ann would bowl on the team with them. She might be a sub for them when they needed somebody. And then later on it was just my mom and Ann that bowled on a team with other players.
So my mom bowled for years and it was such a good thing for my mom because when my brother and I were born, she was a stay at home mom until I went into the fourth grade.
And so my mom really needed an outlet. It's a lot of work to be a full time parent. I don't think mothers get the appreciation that they should because it is a lot.
Not that they're not cut out for it, but it's 24 hours a day and you don't have that much free time to, for yourself to meet your own needs.
And so I was glad when I look back now, not at the time, I didn't know any difference, but when I look back that she had an outlet for herself once a week.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: So her team always bowled on Tuesday nights.
And it worked out great because either my dad would come home for dinner and then just stay with my brother and I, or we had a cousin that lived two houses down and he would come down and babysit us.
And that way my mom had a good night out. She would leave about 7 o' clock to go to the Bowling alley. And then she might not get home to like 10:30 or 11:00 clock at night.
She always went with the ladies after they got done bowling that night, out for a Coca Cola and a sandwich at the Big Boy. It was like a routine.
And it was something that really made her feel like she still had some free time to herself.
Well deserved, if you ask me. My brother and I were pretty rambunctious.
I would like to say we were calm, mild children, but we really were. We were crazies.
So it was good for my mom.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: She started, I think I was about in the second grade, maybe first or second grade.
If I would have a day off from school on Tuesday and Wednesday, then she would ask me if I wanted to go bowling with her.
And I really like to go. I don't know why. I really don't because I didn't do anything. I would sit behind their team on a bench. A lot of times I would bring a book and I might read a book or a lot of times I would just sit there and root for their team.
It was kind of fun.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: And I. It didn't go that often, but like, if we had school vacation, if there was a reason that we had Tuesday and Wednesday off, something like that, I would go. So probably two or three times a year I would go to the bowling alley with my mom and I was excited to go. I like to listen to the ladies, see what they would talk about. It was fun when they would get excited if they got a strike and they were competitive, you know, so in there, you know, jabbing each other against the other team, giving them a hard time.
And it was a good experience for me to see that women could do team sports.
I mean, it's not basketball or baseball or anything like that, but it was still a team sport.
And they were up against another team that night.
And at the end of the season, they would total up all the points and wins and then they would see if they were eligible to go to the tournaments.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: The tournaments were always held in like, Pontiac, Michigan, it seems like that was a name I heard a lot up in the Detroit area.
So they would be excited about that because then that meant she was going away for a whole weekend, away from my brother and I and my dad.
The one of the best parts about going to.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Bowling league with her, though, was that at the end of bowling they went to the Big Boy. And that's really what I looked forward to. That's probably the only time I ever got onion rings. We never had them at Home.
So I looked forward to going to the Big Boy and just getting onion rings and drinking a Coke.
And I was always so quiet. I really did not talk that much unless they asked me a question.
I was really just there observing adult women, their behavior, and how they managed to be on a team and work together. They had so much fun. They had the best, best time.
And you could tell they all really liked each other.
It was.
It was really such.
When I look back, I think, wow, that was such a great example that she showed me, because there weren't a lot of women's team sports when I was growing up.
So it was a glimpse into something that could be.
And women really could have camaraderie and have a lot of fun together.
They always make it sound like in some of those movies that the only thing that women.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: Would fight over were men, but that's not true. They are competitive when it came to winning, and they wanted to win, Trust me, had nothing to do with any men.
It was the women's league and they loved it. I still have pictures of her team several times when they had gone to the tournament and won a championship. And it's just got the five of them lived up with their bowling balls. It's so great when I get my website fixed, which shouldn't be forever, but I'm going to start putting out pictures so people can see these kind of things and they'll know what I'm talking about.
So anyhow, the whole bowling experience was a lot of fun for me, and I enjoyed it.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: The other thing, the other part of it, though, was this.
My brother never went with her, which I think is kind of funny. He never went bowling with her.
But when they made it to the tournaments, then my dad was gonna have to take care of us for three days.
So my dad really, I mean, he was a great dad. He went to our, you know, whatever event we were doing. When I was a cheerleader, he would go to all the football games.
I mean, he loved the football anyway, and he loved basketball. So he would go to all the games and my mom, too, and they went because I was a cheerleader. But really they enjoyed watching the sport. So I always felt my parents were pretty engaged.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: In our activities. My brother was on a drum major for the band, and so at halftime, he'd be leading the band. And so they loved that too.
So it didn't matter what we were doing.
They were very supportive of the choices that we made. And we felt like they were engaged with us, with. Which is good.
So when we knew my mom was going to be going away for a long weekend, usually they would leave Friday and then they would come home late Sunday night.
We knew that we were going to be with my dad for three days.
In the beginning it was kind of, wow, this is different, you know, because my mom is like meeting our every need, you know, what do you want to eat? And she would make specifically what we wanted back then.
And my dad is like, we're going out to dinner, get ready.
So the every. We would go out Friday night, Saturday night, and I think on Sunday we had a big bowl of popcorn. He would pop like a giant bowl of popcorn. And we just would eat popcorn and watch movies until my mom got home. That was his free day.
So Friday night we would go out, inevitably to one of the local restaurants and we would always get a hamburger and french fries. That was our deal.
We didn't get to get out that much.
Eating out wasn't a big thing back then. You wanted to be at home because you liked the way your mom cooked. You know, now everybody goes out all the time. My husband, it's just my husband and I and we go out all the time. So it was a different time, obviously, since we're talking about the late 60s here, when my mom was on her bowling leg.
So anyhow, we the. The initial time with my dad, my brother and I are like, oh boy, what is this going to be? My dad was a workaholic.
So we always were anticipating what's he going to make us do this weekend kind of thing. Are we going to be stuck outside raking leaves all the time? You know, not that we actually minded that either because it was during a time where you raked the leaves into the gutter on the side of the street. And then we would have gigantic bonfires, marshmallow roasts and hot dog roasts. So it wasn't so bad to do a little work and then have a party at the end result, right?
[00:12:09] Speaker A: But there was one thing we could always count on without fail from him when my mom was gone.
First he would drive us around the countryside.
We would go for probably two hour drive in the car out in the countryside, and he would point out every tree, every stream, every hill, what he would used to do when he was a boy, where he used to go when he was a boy, all those kind of things.
Just it was a time for him to reminisce and it was kind of a time for us to get to know him better because he was gone all the time at work. He worked in the car dealership. He'd leave for 7:00 in the morning, he'd come home for dinner and then he'd go back to the dealership. A lot of times we're getting ready for bed before he would get home from work.
That was just the way of life back then. We didn't really think that much of it. So these weekends were his weekend for us to see who he was and how he started out in his life. And he would tell us tons of stories and neither one of us were really bored. I don't think we were ever bored. Even though we're captivated in a car just driving around. My dad loved to drive. Okay, but we would always end up the drives never failed.
In the Lost Nation, which is like a giant wooded area in Hillsdale County. Just a big woods, lots of hiking trails in there. People will put up little bonfires, you know, there's little pits for fire pits and, and hiking. And it's just, it is beautiful. There's no doubt about it. It's absolutely beautiful. And we were lucky to grow up in an area where we had so much nature.
Southern Michigan is absolutely very beautiful and so is Northern Michigan. It's really is a beautiful state if you like the outdoors.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: So he pull into the Last Nation. Brother and I are like, oh no, here we are, you know what's coming next.
And sure enough, you'd open up the trunk of the car, he'd park the car, find a good place to park, drive around until he found a place to park. And then he'd be like, okay, this is where we're gonna do it today.
Pull up, open the trunk of the car, and in the car were three giant garbage bags.
And off we would go on the trails picking up trash.
And this is the honest to God truth. My dad could not stand litter.
He was obsessed with keeping the sides of the road clean, the parks clean, Lost Nation clean. And this was an annual event for my brother and myself.
We would march all around the woods there, up and down trails, picking up trash everywhere we could find it, including bottles, whatever, and for however long he wanted us to do it. A lot of times it might be three or four hours that we're just hiking around picking up trash. And I am not kidding you, that is what we did.
It didn't seem so bad the first time I think we did it. We were both like, what the heck? What kind? This isn't any fun, right?
We thought we were going to be going to do something really great, but now we were doing something great, but it didn't include fun.
Just kidding. It really was fun. We had a lot of fun. We found things, too. You know, we might find an unusual coin that somebody had left behind. A penny, a quarter, something like that. And we'd always check out the date on it. Oh, I got an old.
Know that kind of thing. I think one time I even found a button hook. An old button hook. Like, what the heck is a button hook doing out here in Lost Nation? Of course, I still have the button hook, right? Couldn't get rid of the button hook. It's just a memory that I held on to.
So we would look for treasure in the trash, and then we would haul all the garbage bags back, all three of them, to where we parked the car. And my dad would build a bonfire, and we would burn all the burnable trash.
We would put the bottles in another bag and cans or whatever we found out there.
But the burnable trash, we would burn in a big bonfire.
And we would always have marshmallows. And sometimes we'd have hot dogs, too. But mostly it was just marshmallows as a way to thank us for being good stewards of the countryside.
He felt so passionately that God had given us such a great playground to live on. Why would we want it to be messy?
And so that was kind of a habit that my brother and I lived with. That was the thing that we did when my mom went back bowling.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: She would get home on Sunday night after being gone for three days. She's exhausted, but she's had a wonderful time. And she'd be like, well, what did you guys do while I was gone? My brother would always be like, mom, come on, you know what we did? And she'd be like, no, what did you do? Goes. We went to the Lost Nation, just like we always do. Mom.
My mom would just crack up because she knew how my dad felt about trash. It wasn't unusual. Even if we were just going for a ride out by the lake in town, Bobby's Lake, if there were trash, was trash out there. My dad would have us get out of the car and pick the trash up and put it in the bin. That's just how he was.
And you know what? I hate to say it, but that habit has carried forward in my life the craziest thing, right?
[00:18:38] Speaker A: And when my kids were in school, that's when they started doing the Green Day. And I was so happy about it. So they would actually give them a whole afternoon off, sometimes the full day to spend and walk around.
They did it when we had them in school in Maine and they did it when we had them in school in Michigan. And they would have the whole day to walk around and pick up trash in town or out on the freeways. They would bunch up in groups, kids, and there would always be one driver, adult driver with them. And they would choose an area where they really wanted to go and clean it up and they would spend the whole day doing that.
So my dad would have been so happy to know that there was actually a movement like that now where people actually take care of the, the countryside.
It's not like going to the lost nation and hiking around and picking up trash, but it was invisible areas where people could see like on the side of the road.
And it's really great. In Michigan you don't see that much trash on the side of the road. I think they always do it sometime in April every year. So after we make it through the winters here and spring is starting to pop out, they'll clean up the side of the roads, so. So it looks so beautiful.
And I. That's a nod to my dad. Every time I think about it, I just think about my dad. My oldest daughter absolutely loved it. It was one of the best things she ever did, she thought was join the movement to get out there to help clean up the trash and make the roadsides look good.
I think some of the reason though is she did know that I loved it too. She saw me picking up trash and I lectured them right out of the gate about we don't throw TR out of the window. That's a big deal. That's how I was raised. That's the habit I carried on to them.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: So now, you know, we're all grandparents age, all of my friends and myself, we're all at that age where there's grandkill children running around.
And though I still want to keep those habits going right, that's what I want to do.
So I was at my friend's house and she has two of the greatest little girls.
They are now five and six, but at the time I started going there, they were three and four. The four year old is definitely active and she wants to be outdoors all the time.
And I'm like, okay, this is good. I'm going to keep this kid going, right?
So I had her outside first. I'm, you know, throw pitching the ball to her and having her swing a bat. See how good of an athlete she's gonna be. But you can't wear her down.
Believe me, I tried everything ran circles around.
She lives on a farm south of town, and they have a lot of acreage, and there's a lot of cars that drive by.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: And I would walk around the perimeter of the the property with her to try and tire her out. Well, while I'm walking around the perimeter of the property, I get the big idea that I'm gonna start picking up trash with her.
Okay, don't ask me why.
So we got the garbage bag with us, right? And she goes, what are you doing? I said, we're gonna pick up trash. She goes, what? I go, look at this. You don't want your yard to look trashy, do you? People just throw stuff out the window. They shouldn't be throwing trash out the window.
So she's like, yeah, they shouldn't. So the next thing you know, we're walking around the perimeter of the yard picking up the trash. Then we're walking around the front of the yard, which is the road, where the road is, and there's trash all over the place.
The littler one decides she wants to get in on it. So I got these two little girls with me walking down the side of the road picking up trash all the way to the end of their fence.
They've got quite a few acres, but we didn't care. They were in heaven picking up that trash. They loved it. And they be, look at this, Dawn. Isn't this terrible? I mean, it was so funny. It was so funny.
And they really, really enjoyed it. So this is what I mean. I think sometimes we make things so complicated.
Here we have something that is so simple. We're walking the perimeter of her property, picking up trash. And those girls thought it was the best thing that ever happened to them.
And to this day, they'll say to their grandma, well, Grandma, I think it's about time for us to get back out there and start picking up the trash again.
And they wait for me to come and visit so we can walk the perimeter of the property and pick up the trash.
You know, I love the story. I love it so much because it's something so simple. But it made such an impact on three generations.
Me, my daughters, and my friend's grandchildren.
I mean, those are the kind of habits that we want to pass on.
Those are it.
That's what makes you feel good.
And they love to be active.
All of us did.
We all loved it. In the beginning. My brother and I were doing the eye roll, I can tell you that. But the longer we were out in the woods picking up the trash, the more accomplished we felt. We actually really, really loved it.
And I saw that with my daughter, and I saw it with my friend's granddaughters.
She says sometimes now they'll say, grandma, when are we going out to pick up the trash?
She'll say, well, as soon as your Aunt dawn gets down here, right?
[00:25:09] Speaker A: And that's, that's just how it goes. It's going to be passed on. And I hope when they're adults, they're going to pass it on.
Maybe that'll set a good habit. It's a good way to go.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to my story today.
I hope you enjoyed it.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: I hope you think of a good habit that you want to pass on to your children or your grandchildren, that you make it fun and it's something that sticks and is rewarding to everyone.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Until the next time.
