Do You Know Reddy Kilowatt?

One Girl Scout field trip was to the electric utility company's Home Ec demonstration kitchen with electric stoves, which we had never seen, and we practiced cooking on them, back when they WANTED people to use up electrical energy.

The electric company 's mascot was a figure made of lighting bolts with a bulbous head, a light-bulb nose and electric-socket ears, named Reddy Kilowatt, and it gave out Reddy-themed potholders and lapel pins, and electric bills had his picture on them, but after the energy shortage of 1973-74 -- the winter that, to save energy, we walked to school in the mornings with the stars still overhead -- saw him rarely, and now Reddy Kilowatt items are collectible. My sister and bro-in-law in Wisconsin collected two nostalgic Reddy potholders for me. Flummoxed because they had no tabs to hang them, I left them in a drawer for years before realizing they contained magnets for sticking them on the fridge. I now use them frequently. Here they are assisting me, saying "Be modern, cook electrically," on the propane stove with a pan of lavender shortbread.

Although Reddy looks to me now as if he suffers from terrible arthritis, I am fond of him. He was designed in the 1920s, to be consumer-friendly when farmers hemmed and hawed about buying electricity because they'd gotten along for 10,000 years without it. As I moved around the country I met people who had never heard of Reddy Kilowatt, and at times felt very alone, the way you feel when no one around you shares your archaic memories.

Then one day I had at the Divine Cabin a guest, born in Missouri in 1947. He saw my potholders and said, "Oh, Reddy Kilowatt," and I almost threw myself at his feet and begged him to marry me.

What Is It About Old Stuff?

I rearranged my bedroom to look as much as possible like a hotel room for no reason except that I adore hotel rooms, private, clean and comfy, pillows and towels plumped and straightened beautifully and magically every day while I'm out doing something fun, and I'm ecstatic and smitten out of my gourd if it's a firm mattress with--oh, rapture!!--white or cream-colored shadow-striped bedsheets.

So I bought the sheets, and a hotel-looking bedspread and pillow covers, and then rearranged the room, dragging to the garage a battered old metal foot locker given me when I started college, which nice ladies filled with "hope chest" doilies and linens -- boy, did they get a wrong number! -- I was 17 years old and the Vietnam War had ended the previous year so maybe foot lockers were on sale. It had not been moved in 16 years and was locked. Total genius me, I knew exactly where its key was: in the junk drawer, on a key ring that's a souvenir of San Francisco where I've never been: the carefully preserved "key ring holding keys I never use."

Inside the trunk lay Christmas things like stockings and "crafty" tree ornaments that had lost all their crocheted and decoupaged charm, and two green-and-maize rough woolen woven placemats, except they were too small for placemats, as ugly as they sound: a souvenir from Ireland from a certain mother-in-law, God rest her soul; all this I threw out. At the very bottom in a plastic casing was my old Girl Scout sash I thought I'd lost years ago.

You had to "graduate" from Brownie to Junior Girl Scout to get a sash to sew badges on, if we earned them. Nerdy girls earned badges enough to fill the front of the sash and start up the back--Girl Scout cool. The next step up, Cadette Girl Scouts, earned badges with yellow borders instead of green. Earning each badge required genuine mastery: 10 or 12 steps increasing in difficulty, and each step had to be shown to or performed in front of an adult, the Scout leader, who'd sign off on it. I remember most the intensity of earning the Needlework badge. Several wars later, I can still cross-stitch, huck-a-back-stitch, satin-stitch, applique, whipstitch, hem by hand, tie French knots, darn small holes, and what-all. It's the leftmost badge in the third row, above the first-aid box.

(I don't remember any first aid, though. When I'm accidentally cut or stung the first thing I do is swear.)

I left Girl Scouting halfway through Cadettes because the badges had increasingly discouraging requirements: The "Aviation" badge asked us to correctly fold and pack a parachute. I earned the "easy" ones like dressmaking and storytelling and dropped out.

Today with one click I ordered airline tickets like it's nothing and from Amazon.com a programmable coffeepot for my mock hotel room, so I will wake up to coffee or hot water for tea without moving from the bed, and the coffeepot arrives the next day.

Boy Bait

I hated selling Girl Scout cookies. I still hold the record for selling the fewest boxes – six – for Troop 114/Racine County, WI, set during the 1969 cookie season. The troop leader chewed me out. I never got over it…

So whenever I see pimply, fattish, greasy-haired, pasty-faced, bespectacled, saturnine, truculent little Girl Scouts such as I was out in front of the Sav-A-Lot or the Wal-Mart, I buy their cookies. The above photo was taken on top of my car because I keep them locked in the trunk. In the house the Peanut Butter Patties would not last four hours. I don’t care for Thin Mints, but everyone else loves them. Ladies, these are major Boy Bait. Give it to the right Midwestern man and he will chase you around the table, if he’s a spry one, or just propose marriage if he’s lazy.

Girl Scouts camping experience gave me my love for the woods and country and rocks and birds and brooks, and that is why I now live in my dream home that has all these marvels and delights on its 100 acres.