Sometimes you just need to sit back and listen in life. When I first moved to New Jersey I realized that people here like to talk. No matter if you are a stranger. Doesn’t bother them. Maybe I just have one of those sympathetic faces. I don’t know. But something I give off, be it in my mannerisms or facial expression, makes people want to tell me their stories. I needed to write this one down before I forgot.

First of all I want to say that the hair salon I go to (which is next to our Shop Rite) is a mecca for elderly ladies. Mostly they take over the salon on Fridays. They come in for their wash and set like they’ve done for their entire lives.

Yesterday when I walked in to the hair salon for my trim an elderly woman was sitting at the front of the salon. I took a chair by her, leaving one seat between us. She commented on how she thought my bag (as in purse or handbag) was handsome. She said she was waiting for her daughter to pick her up. Next thing you know she’s telling me that her daughter is a recent widow with two children ages 10 and 14. She’s only 52, you know, she told me. Had her children late in life she did. Now she’s all alone with those little ones. Her husband lived three days after his heart attack. The didn’t have any insurance on him and now she owes $50,000. He was only 54. Such a shame. She taps her cane a few times on the floor and shakes her head.

I nodded and expressed my regrets.

I’m 89, you know. Back right after the war I gave up a lot so that my husband could attend a government-funded school. He became quite successful. But after 37 years of marriage and all I gave him he left me and married somebody else. It felt wrong that I had given up so much for him and then he left. But I try not to dwell on that. Plenty of good things have happened in my life and like to think more about those. Still, sharing that seems to help me get rid of it. I hope you don’t mind.

I don’t mind at all I replied. Share away!

I’m 89 years old. I told you that, right? I’ve never smoked and didn’t really drink either. Everybody else my age was smoking but I didn’t go along with them. I’m glad of that now. I have my health. You ever smoke? she asks me. No, I reply. Never. Good for you! You got kids? No I said, they never seemed to fit into our life. She has no reply for this and seems to take it in.

As she’s doing so, I study her a bit. She looks very good for 89. Slight of build, with snow white hair and eyes that sparkle. Like many older ladies she has sprouted a pretty good mustache on her upper lip. I long to grab a pair of tweezers and pull out the thick black ones.

She squints up her eyes a bit and seems to be gazing off into the distance, thinking. She soon takes up right where she left off. Well, sort of.

I had a passionate hobby my whole life. I made pots. You know, out of clay. I was very good. My hands won’t let me work the wheel anymore. I miss it. My wheel is under the porch. I signed all my pots “Toni” on the bottom so if you ever turn over a pot and see the name “Toni” there, that’s me!

Toni is not my real name.  My real name was too difficult for people so I just started to call myself Toni. My real name is (and here she spells for me) E-M-M-O-N-D-S. Now I ask you what kind of name is that for a girl? But it’s a family name, some uncle I’m named for. I grew up around Indianapolis, all my family settled there. I’m from English stock. Had a relative in the Civil War and one was a general under Washington.

I’m 89. In great health!

At this point I see Margaret, my stylist, patiently waiting for us to finish our conversation so she can take me back for my trim.

As gently as possible I end our conversation and tell her to keep up whatever she is doing because it’s obviously working. As I head to the back of the salon, she’s still talking, only now she’s almost yelling so I will hear …

I’m 89!

Bless her heart.

Have you ever seen the movie The Station Agent? If not, you should! It’s an independent film that won the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and stars Peter Dinklage (of Game of Thrones) and was filmed not far from my house at the Newfoundland train depot. Matter of fact, Peter is a fellow New Jerseyite from Morristown.

The depot was built in 1872 and helped to bring tourists to the resorts in the area. Today the line is still used infrequently for freight but the passenger trains are long gone.

A few years ago after seeing the movie I stopped to take photos of the depot and the abandoned railway cars, but at that time someone was actually living there and they sort of chased me away. I vowed to go back, and this week I finally went.

Today there are Private Property / No Trespassing signs up here and there but I swear I didn’t see them right away! There is a sign in the window of the depot that states it’s available for parties, filming shoots, etc. so I could always say I was scouting it out. Anyway, no one bothered me on this nippy day.

I think it’s been a long time since the old signal was used.

This little out building stands behind the depot. To me it looked like an outhouse but when I peeked inside there were just a bunch of rusty old railroad spikes.

The two cabooses sit on the side looking very forlorn next to the old cement water fueling tower. At least they have not been covered with graffiti. Their weathered exteriors do make for a few interesting photo ops.

From reading online I found that this caboose is an Erie caboose from 1946.

I loved its weathered color. (and well … maybe just a little bit of graffiti!)

This one is a Pennsylvania caboose from 1914 and the poor thing is really showing its age. The paint is peeling away, allowing the wood to be exposed to the New Jersey elements.

A little further down the tracks sits an old passenger car from 1926.

I took a wide angle approach to the side and in this case I like the slight skew. How about you?

All aboard!!

I was not really in a creative mood and the light was not the best for some angles so I might repeat this photo shoot next year in the spring. Or maybe it would be cool in the winter too! (So to speak.) I am relatively happy with most of the photos.

Please do watch the movie! You can see a trailer here.

(P.S. This is only one photo, not two. My window bisects the view!)

Rose hip “spider”

I guess I haven’t had a lot to say lately. Not much to take photos of either at this time of year. Although this quote out of my photography class book does hit home:

“Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform them by photographing them.”

That obviously takes a bit more work! Work that I am sometimes uninspired to find. You either have to be in the mood to take good photographs, or you’re not.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday. The weather was perfection and very much like remembered Thanksgivings of my childhood: sunny, a little brisk.

The turkey was phenomenal! This year I splurged and instead of getting our “free” turkey after earning points at our Shop Rite I placed an order for a fresh turkey from Pennings Farm Stand in Warwick, NY. I got the idea when we had lunch there a few weeks back and people kept coming up to the counter to put in their turkey order.

When I went to pick up the turkey on Tuesday there was a white duck wandering around their parking lot. This wasn’t too strange since they have a “petting zoo” on the premises with chickens, goats and etc. I walked in and said “Did you know you have someone loose in your parking lot?” One of the women behind the counter looked up at me and said “Does it say AFLAC?” (Note: those of you who don’t live in the States will not get this reference to a commercial on TV for insurance that uses a white duck. The insurance company name is Aflac and the duck is constantly shouting the word.) She went on to tell me that someone just dumped the duck at their store and they have no idea where he came from. They can’t put him in with their chickens because they tear each other apart. She’s said but he’s the friendliest duck. He just hangs out and greets people.

My “Thanksgiving” cacti are going all out this year. Fuchsia, white, red and salmon colors decorate the sun room. The cactus shown below is only one of the four that I have. Beautiful, no?

The turkeys came to visit us on Turkey Day. Brave souls! Not the most attractive birds up close but they are so ugly that I find them cute.

This tom had his tail feathers spread until I grabbed the camera. You can see the sacs on his neck are still inflated.

Up close their feathers are prismatic and quite lovely.

I think they are getting ready to breed. This morning I had a flock of 13 in the front yard and the toms were chasing the hens around. It won’t be the first time we’ve witnessed turkey sex in the front yard! Ah, country life.

Rick has a bad cold that he is trying to shake so our plans for taking Mia out today (it’s supposed to warm and beautiful) will have to be changed to taking it easy and watching movies. Let’s hope they are better than the one we chose to watch last night called “The Grey.” If you like movies where no one makes it out alive, I can recommend it. We recorded “The Poseidon Adventure” yesterday and at least some of them make it out in the end.

I really am quite boring lately and for that I apologize! I just can’t wrap my head around Christmas in a month. Where does the time go?

Last night Rick and I went in to the city for dinner. We’ve long wanted to go to Sue Torres’s Sueños in Chelsea ever since we saw her battle it out with Bobbie Flay on Iron Chef and also when she competed in Top Chef Masters, Season 4. We love Mexican food and we were intrigued by her style. But, like everything else we never seemed to get around to actually going.

Then a really good deal came up on Rue La La: a three course prix-fixe dinner for two for $60.00! It was not the normal prix-fixe menu as a part of their usual menu, but an upscale menu just for Bloomspot and Rue La La customers. I purchased the deal and we had two months in which to use it. Since our coupon expired this week we knew we had to use it or lose it (like they say).

We left ourselves more time than usual for the drive in since we didn’t know how the traffic would be. Traffic turned out to be unusually light and one hour and eight minutes after leaving our house we were parked and walking towards our destination. Only thing was that we were also 45 minutes too early. It never ceases to amaze me that we can drive in to New York City faster than we could drive to Denver back in Colorado from our house!

We had booked the first seating of the night which is a little bit earlier than most people eat (5:00 p.m.) and that is exactly when they open their door. We did it early so we could sandwich ourselves between the evening rush and still get home at a decent hour.

So, we roamed up and down 8th Avenue to kill time. It was downright cold! And damp. I always forget how just the littlest of breezes gets funneled straight down those city streets and becomes a much bigger, and chillier wind! Brrrrrr!

A few minutes before 5:00 we finally gave up walking and tried the door to the restaurant. It was open, so we stepped in. Clearly they were not ready for customers as employee jackets and backpacks were strewn in the bar seats. A waiter came up to us and told us they were not quite open and could we please come back in a few minutes? Not looking forward to going back out into the cold again, we complied.

We opted to stay in the little passageway between two buildings that leads back to the restaurant’s entrance which is tucked away from the street. At least we were blocked from the chill wind that way. We waited.

One minute after 5:00 the door opened and an unassuming woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing a sweatshirt hoodie and jeans popped her head out and asked us in. It was Sue Torres herself! I think the look on my face was one of surprise and recognition but I forced myself not to be a groupie and didn’t gush something silly like oh it’s you, Sue! We joked about being early as she grabbed a few menus up and went to seat us, but then she asked if we might not want to sit in the bar and take advantage of Happy Hour 2-for-1’s. So that’s just what we did.

Imagine a chef/owner seating customers! She was so cute about it. She went back to the kitchen and that was the last we saw of her. A celebrity appearance just for us!

Rick had a straight-up margarita (which they are known for) and I had what they called a Paloma which was silver tequila, mexican grapefruit soda and lime. Very refreshing and two was definitely enough given the amount of tequila the bartender put into both our drinks. We opted to drink the second one with our meal.

They started us out with a complimentary appetizer of extremely thin cornbread with a bean and crema dip. For appetizers we chose shrimp in a coconut-habanero sauce and chicken chilaquiles. It was hard to say which one we liked better. (We shared!) For mains we chose Chicken Enchiladas with mole sauce and a Poblano Chile Relleno stuffed with quinoa, mushrooms and spinach. Again, they were both very good. Desserts were a dense bittersweet chocolate cake with crema de Mezcal whipped cream and an apple galette which was made with very thin slices of apple and cinnamon toasted tortilla “chips.”

All in all a delicious dinner for $60.00 (Plus a tip based on the real value of the meal and our drinks.) And let’s not leave out the ridiculously expensive parking! Oh well, it is New York City after all!