Go Bananas with Anna

Admit it, you’ve Googled yourself before. I for one, am not ashamed to say that I have typed my name into the search engine just to see what pops up.

When I do it, I get that little italicized admonition, “I think you mean ‘Annie Oakley.’” No Google, I don’t. I am not a wild west sharpshooter. I was born in 1986, not 1860, and I don’t wear cowboy boots – they make my calves look fat.

I digress, but my point is, it’s fun to see if anything is written about you.

In the same vein, I was putzing around on the Internet when I came across the Quincy Public Library’s Historical Newspaper Archives. They are awesome. You can search for newspaper articles written in Quincy from 1835 to 1919.

I looked up the newspaper’s coverage of the Lincoln assassination and the 1918 influenza epidemic.

Then, I decided to have some fun with a Google-yourself-type exercise. I typed my mother’s maiden name, Scholz, into the search just to see what would appear.

That is when I hit the family story jackpot. I found two stories about my great-grandfather that show he was a man ahead of his time, a trailblazer, a visionary.

No, my great-grandfather did not invent the Internet or a manure-powered vehicle. He lived one of my favorite movies of all time – 72 years before it was made. Read these two stories and see if anything rings a bell at all. The first was published in the Quincy Daily Whig on Dec. 28, 1911. The second ran in the brevities section of the Quincy Daily Journal on Jan. 26, 1915.

As soon I read the story, I had to so some verification work. The first story says that Richard is the son of Otto Scholz. I don’t know how that mistake made it into the paper, but the second story correctly identifies his father as Adam J. Scholz.

Because both of the stories list the same address, I have to assume that is was an intern who wrote the story and included the wrong name. Note to self: Double check interviewees’  parents’ names before printing a story about them. Who knows when that information may be important.

A bit more checking around confirmed that my great-grandfather lived the plot of “A Christmas Story,” one of my favorite Christmas movies. Not a yuletide has passed without watching it as a family, and it is always on during the 48-hour marathon on Christmas Day.

Young boy from the Midwest writes an essay on why he should own a BB gun, boy gets a BB gun, and boy is shot with said BB gun. My grandfather is Ralphie Parker. I could not be more proud.

Now all the details are not perfectly accurate. Dick did not shoot himself in the eye as Ralphie did; another boy with the air rifle shot him in the ear.

Also if you notice, Dick won the air rifle writing contest four years after the shooting incident. But, come on, that is an amazing family story, and one that I will be sharing every year around Christmas for the rest of my life.

Until then I need to find out if Dick’s father, Adam, every won, “a major award.”

Before I get into the heart of my story, I need to make one fact very clear – I loathe cats.

Yes, loathe is a strong word, but I feel it’s appropriate. Cats walk around like they own the world. They emit an aura of arrogance that I just cannot tolerate.

I mean, come on cat, you are not better than I am. I have opposable thumbs; I wash with a loofah, not my tongue; I can open my own can of tuna – you are not my intellectual superior.

Ok, I just needed to get that off my chest before I relay a series of events that occurred right here in Quincy. So as you are reading along, I need you to remember that I am not a fan of the feline.

The night began in Quincy. It was about 10:30 on a Friday night, which I am ashamed to say meant that I was tucked warmly into my bed. My friend and fellow intern, Other Anna, as she is so affectionately called, had just rung to see if I was interested in a late-night bite to eat. Ordinarily I would has passed, as I was already in bed, but I was leaving the next day for vacation, so I wanted to say goodbye.

I quickly woke up, changed out of my PJ’s and went to pick up Other Anna (also known as Anna Frank). While I’m thinking of it, I should mention that Anna is only “Other” Anna because I have known myself for 25 years, and I have known her for about two months, so in my mind, I am original Anna. As far as I know, her parents, friends and pretty much anyone other than me call her Anna, without qualification.

Other Anna and I decided to venture into Missouri to go to the 18 Wheeler. Having grown up in New Jersey, I am partial to diners, and it is open 24 hours, so I thought it would be a fun trip to make.

Just as we were crossing the bridge into Missouri, it dawned on me that I didn’t know where I was going. I knew that the 18 Wheeler was somewhere in Taylor, Mo., so in classic Anna-fashion, I figured that we would just find it.

Some how or another, instead of following Route 24 until I reached Taylor, I got off the highway onto what I have now figured out to be County Road 313 – aka the middle of nowhere.

Other Anna and I had just about decided that our night was turning into one of those movies where the two young interns venture out, make a wrong turn and end up the unsuspecting victims of the movie’s deranged villain.

You may be wondering what my story, which has so far detailed my awful sense of direction and lack of planning, began with a rant on cats. Well, just as we had turned around to head back to Quincy, because that is what I usually yell at the movie screen when watching the aforementioned horror movie … just then, with Other Anna in the passenger’s seat, we saw two tiny sets of eyes staring at us from the middle of the road.

I initially thought they belonged to some nighttime vermin that I usually associate with roadkill. But as we passed, Other Anna realized that these ocular orbs belonged to two itsy bitsy kittens.

As I have said before, and as anyone who knows me can attest, I have no affinity for cats so my actions at this point is inexplicable. I had the overwhelming urge to pull over to inspect the kittens in distress. After a few minutes idling in the car, trying to figure out if this was just another scene in a horror movie where Freddie Krueger would jump out of the woods, Other Anna bravely stepped out of the car and scooped up the animals using a blanket from the back of my car.

So now, Anna Oakley, proclaimed cat nemesis, had two kittens in a blanket in her front seat.

Now I don’t know much about kittens. Because they will eventually turn into cats, I try to stay away from them. I was really in uncharted territory with two newborn kittens in my car in Who-Know’s-Where, Mo.

What the heck were we supposed to do now? I don’t want kittens, and Other Anna’s roommate had informed us that her apartment lease had a no pet clause in addition to her landlord living below her apartment.

By this time, it was just about 12:30 a.m., so stopping by the local pet store was not an option, and the emergency vet that we called said we were welcome to drop them off there … as long as we didn’t mind paying for putting the cats to sleep.

If I wanted the death of two kittens on my conscience, I would have just driven past them in the first place. With no one else to turn to, the kittens were our responsibility for the time being.

The only thing I could think to do was keep them in my basement overnight and hope we could figure it out in the morning; before my 10 a.m. flight to Seattle.

After a trip to Wal-mart to buy a cat carrier, a couple of play mice for our new friends and a can of kitten food, we headed to my house with the strays and snuck them into my basement.

As we walked in, the kitchen clock read 2 a.m. so we had spent nearly three hours with the things, so Other Anna and I figured we should give the kittens names. After a brief brainstorming session, we agreed to name them Anna and Anna. It was a natural choice. What’s better than two Annas? Four Annas.

We tucked the Annas into their carrier, gave them their toys and some water and planned to wake up early so the rest of my family wouldn’t catch wise to our new house guests.

As I woke up the next morning, I was in disbelief at what I had done. Anna Oakley, avowed cat-hater, was now playing kennel to two strays. I won’t say that I totally regretted my decision to save them, but I was certainly excited to make them someone else’s project.

Other Anna had agreed to pick the Annas up early so that my parents would remain blissfully ignorant.

It is worth mentioning that my family has never been big on pets. We all have allergies, and the idea of a cat in the house would surely not sit well with the family. I was eager to hide the evidence of my late night escapades.

As I walked down the stairs, much to my dismay, I could see my dad with a tennis racquet in hand, listening to a chorus of meows coming from the basement.

I timidly entered the kitchen as my dad yelled, “Anna, we have some type of infestation. It must be raccoons or some other rodent. Don’t worry though, I’ve called the exterminators, and they are on their way.”

I could tell by the familiar tone in his voice that he knew exactly what was in the basement, and the exterminator had not been called. For him, the tennis racquet was just a convenient prop that he used to scare me.

By assuring my dad that the kittens would be gone before noon, I had earned them a couple more hours’ stay in Chez Oakley.

Soon after, Other Anna showed up with a plan to guilt the local animal shelter into housing the Annas until a suitable home could be found.

The Quincy Animal Shelter ended up taking the Annas off our hands and we hope they will find a loving cat person to adopt them. I think they will, I mean these two kittens got me to pick them up off the road, so anything must be possible.

This has not been a life-changing experience; I still think cats are the mean girls of the animal kingdom. I only hope this incident will give me good cat karma, and they will just leave me alone from now on.

I’m a rather contemplative person, so I think it’s natural to imagine what heaven might be like. I have thought about this at various points in my life.

As a young child I had a rather simplistic view of heaven. You know, big fluffy clouds, all the McDonald’s fries I could eat, hanging out with Elvis – that sort of thing, though I don’t know why I was so sure that Elvis would be there. I was also quite certain that God looked like Father Roy Bauer from St. Peter Church.

As I have grown, though, so has my imagery. Pearly gates and harp-playing cherubs are the product of a childish mind that cannot comprehend a larger more complex after-life.

But now, as I have matured into adulthood, I think I have a much more realistic view: Heaven is a giant room that holds everything I have ever lost in my life. Even better, an angel gives me a synopsis of each item so I can finally know how I lost all those things now housed in my celestial storage unit.

Oh and by the way, my celestial storage unit is way nicer than the U-Haul unit I have back at school. And it does NOT cost $69.95 plus tax.

Instead of my life flashing before my eyes, I will experience a montage of all my lost items and the story of what happened to them after I left the scene. I think my tour will go a little something like this:

Washington, D.C.

1 purple purse I bought with birthday money and then lost a week later

25 or so metro cards with money still left on them

2 Bank of America debit cards

3 City Year Inc.-issued cell phones lost at various places around the city

1 credit card that I just cancelled so I didn’t go through the hassle of losing it again

1 super-cute wallet that included my college ID, an expired NJ driver’s license and a bunch of get the 10^th item free punch cards that I’m positive had nine holes punched.

1 current Illinois driver’s license

1 paper from the State of Illinois that was sent as a replacement for the aforementioned licenses

1 set of car keys, including the clicker thing-a-ma-jig with super-cute ID holder attached

Richmond, Va.

3 City of Richmond parking tickets that had I paid instead of lost, which would have prevented the boot that was then put on my car

1 new digital camera that I’m pretty sure I threw out while cleaning my car

1 set of car keys, including the clicker thing-a-ma-jig with super-cute ID holder attached –no I did not accidentally repeat myself, I lost another set of keys with the clicker thing-a-ma-jig and the super-cute ID holder that I bought to replace the first one.

1 gift certificate from Longchamps that I received after e-mailing the company the sob story of losing my purse only two days after buying it with all of my birthday money

Various points around New Jersey

1 cashier’s check from Lolli that I got for Christmas

1 passport that I’m sure allowed some girl from Quebec to escape her life in French-Canada and start anew in the U.S. under her assumed name, Anna Oakley

1 Mac Book laptop that I put on the roof of my car before promptly driving onto the Garden State Parkway. At this point I may take a pit stop so that I can see who found it. I bet he was super happy when he found that file where I saved all of my passwords, and I bet he was just as disappointed when he realized that I had immediately changed them all. You must realize that when you are an expert at losing all your worldly possessions like I am, you get pretty good at dealing with the consequences.

150+ homework assignments that I SWEAR I completed; only to show up to class empty-handed.

Countless clothing items, mostly ones that I stole from my sisters and then left at various friends’ houses.

Dubuque, Iowa

1 pink Motorola Razer cell phone

New Orleans, La.

1 Coach wristlet that my mom bought me as a gift when I went away to school

1 Illinois driver’s license. At this juncture, I will certainly visit the DMV lady with whichever guardian angel is escorting me so that I can prove to her that I actually lost all those IDs and am not running a black market fake ID scam.

St. Simons Island, Ga.

1 pair of Sperry Topsiders

1 pair of white sandals that my sister gave me as a gift for reading at her wedding

10+ towels that have mysteriously disappeared

Now these are just the items that I remember losing. I would guess that they make up 30 percent of everything I’ve lost throughout my life. And this list doesn’t even come close to all the things that I have ALMOST lost.

Now heaven will no doubt house my celestial storage unit, but I assume there will be a period of time where I will need to atone for my earthly shortcomings. This will include apologizing for all the times I lost something and someone had to go out of his or her way to get it back to me.

• Tim – This is my brother-in-law who drove for an hour from his house in Falls Church, Va., to the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, Md., to return my backpack full of homework and school books that I had left after a weekend of college visits.
• The camp counselor at Woodward Gymnastic Camp – I don’t know who specifically I need to atone to, but someone there answered a phone call from fourth-graderAnna, where I explained that l had left Benji, the stuffed dog that I got from my sister when I was born.
• Katie – This is my sister (who I’m sure I took clothes from and ended up losing them). More recently, I lost her credit card while running some errands for her. Katie had to drive me back to the store where we saw the card in the middle of the parking lot. Now that I think about it, my sisters – Katie, Meghan and Laura – probably deserve a blanket apology for all of their stuff I’ve presumably lost throughout the years.
• My parents – One way or another, nearly everything I’ve ever lost has inconvenienced them in some way. Like the time I lost my mom’s credit card while back-to-school shopping and she had to call my dad to cancel the card. It didn’t help matters that I found it 10 minutes later in the cuff of a pair of pants that I had tried on.
• The tour bus in Japan – This was a bus full of people who had to wait by the side of the road in Kyoto, Japan, while one of the tour leaders drove 20 miles to pick up the case full of CDs that I left on a table at a gas station.
• Oak 7 – This was my AmeriCorps NCCC team that endured a year of my most prolific period of losing things. They were with me when I lost my purse only to find it a week later hidden in a cabinet I had installed while working with Habitat for Humanity. They also witnessed my skills as a lose-a-holic when I talked myself into every bar up and down Bourbon Street after losing ID number three or four.

I have no idea how long this immortal journey will take, but considering that I will have all of eternity in front of me at this point, I think I can handle it. With any luck, after the whole process is complete, I will be free of the chains of my worldly possessions and get to explore the rest of heaven. I just hope that in heaven my head is attached to my neck, because you can guess what would happen otherwise.

In my last blog, “Quincy: The Forrest Gump of Cities,” I named many of the people and places that make Quincy the special town that it is. As I watched it pass around the Internet, first among friends and then amongst strangers, I’m not going to lie, I was pretty proud of myself.

The pinnacle moment came when a woman stopped me at Starbucks to say that she had shared my post with her nephew serving in Afghanistan.

My blog was a hit, so the natural next step was to start my career as a famous essayist. Move over David Sedaris, Anna Oakley is here. I had begun to plan out the book signing and publicity tour that would follow the release of my book, “Quincy: The Forrest Gump of Cities.”

That is until person after person, in email after email, pointed out a grievous omission in naming the jewels of the Gem City. One after another, they each pointed out that I was remiss in naming one place that made its home in Quincy in 1928 and hasn’t abandoned us since …  the Maid Rite.

After coming back down to earth after my brush with super-stardom, at least in my own mind, I began to ponder what makes the Maid Rite so important to us Quincy folk.

This affinity toward the Maid Rite goes beyond a tasty meal. To many, especially those who have moved away and then returned as a visitor, the Maid Rite is a pilgrimage. Coming to Quincy to visit as a kid, I could count on a trip to the Maid Rite as sure as I could count on a hug from my grandma.

To many, you aren’t truly home until you have had a Maid Rite.

Why?

Because the Maid Rite is the friend who hasn’t changed since high school … or ever since I’ve been alive. Your old crush or tennis teammates have gotten a little greyer, some a little wider and all a little older. When you see your best friend after 10, 15 or 20 years, the joy of seeing her can be followed with a hint of disappointment. She just isn’t quite the same, you aren’t quite same or maybe it’s both. It is simply impossible to count on a relationship to stay the same as people have come and gone.

There is one place you can count on though, the Maid Rite.

It’s still the same loose meat sandwich that you’ve always loved – and you still aren’t expected to tip. In fact, they down right forbid it.

And unlike some national chains that have added new nutritious items on the menu, Maid Rite doesn’t count calories, and for one, maybe two meals a year, neither do you because when you’re at the Maid Rite, it’s just two old friends, sharing a meal; calories can wait. What is a Super-Cheese Rite with mustard, onions, pickle with an order of onion rings and a milkshake among friends?

I think many will understand the feeling of familial ties to the Maid Rite. Just as four, soon to be five generations of my family have enjoyed our semi-annual Maid Rite visit, the Maid Rite is in its fourth generation of family ownership. Going to the Maid Rite is just like visiting the house you grew up in. Except that the Maid Rite didn’t get stainless steel appliances and a butcher block island because Rachael Ray told them to. The Maid Rite did not get wall-to-wall carpeting in the ’80s either; it looks the same timeless way that it did the last time you went.

For some, that bond takes time to understand. Visitors to Quincy are often confused when the one must-eat restaurant in town is not a fancy Italian place, a trendy tapas bar or an exotic sushi house. But when showing newcomers around, it is a loose meat sandwich, not the hottest new juice bar that says, “Welcome to Quincy.”

Just as I think for anyone to truly understand me, they have to meet my family, for anyone to say they’ve been to Quincy, they must experience the thing that embodies the sentiments of our city.

To become a true Quincyan, one must undergo this Maid Rite of passage.

Quincy has always been a bit of an enigma to me. Is it more like a big town or a small city? On one hand, Quincy has a symphony, an airport and enough bars and churches to liquor up an elephant and save his soul at the same time. On the other hand, I can’t run to the grocery store without running into someone I know, and I am convinced that there are only about 10 last names shared by everyone who lives here.

If Quincy is a city, then why do all my friends on the east coast think that it is just another suburb of Chicago? At the same time, some extraordinary things have happened here that lead me to believe that it can’t just be a nameless town in the middle of a fly-over state. I can’t tell you how long this has perplexed me.

I had just about decided to stop concerning myself with explaining the essence of Quincy to others, when it hit me: Quincy is Forrest Gump. Let that soak in for a second … Quincy is Forrest Gump. Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not suggesting that Quincy has an IQ of 76. For the purpose of my story, let’s just set aside the whole IQ thing and just focus on the main plot points. For those of you who need a refresher :

• 1952: Forrest dances for young Elvis.
• 1961: Forrest meets JFK after becoming an All-American football player.
• 1963: Forrest happens upon the desegregation of University of Alabama.
• 1971: Forrest meets John Lennon on the Dick Cavett Show.
• 1972: Forrest receives Medal of Honor from President Johnson
• 1972: Forrest meets President Nixon and witnesses the Watergate break-in.
• 1976: Forrest invests in Apple Computers, further solidifying his millionaire status.
• 1980: Jenny is sick and dies, presumably of HIV/AIDS.
• 1980: Forrest lives a quiet life with Forrest Gump Jr.

Forrest Gump had quite the luck. I mean come on, the man had a hand in every major cultural event, from his run in with Elvis in the ‘50s, to the loss of his true love at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the ‘80s.

Even after all that, was Forrest famous? No, he wasn’t; none of the people waiting for the bus believed him for a second until the lady saw his face on the cover of Fortune Magazine that is.

Despite his encounters with greatness during one of the most action filled 30 years of U.S. history, Forrest was still the same guy who loved his mother and wanted to care for the people around him.

So what does any of this have to do with Quincy? Like I said before, Quincy is Forrest Gump — the whole 76 IQ thing notwithstanding.  The Gem City has consistently had its brushes with fame, but deep down inside, it’s still the humble town where the parish picnic is an essential component of summer, and all of your friends’ parents went to high school with yours. Don’t believe me? Lets make a timeline of Quincy’s life:

• 1823: Quincy is born.
• 1858: Lincoln-Douglass Debates: Honest Abe and The Little Giant face off in our very own Washington Park.
• 1836: Rev. David Nelson founds the Mission Institute, which designated Quincy as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
• 1839: Mormons, including founder Joseph Smith, seek refuge in Quincy after their exile from Missouri. Brighman Young’s father is buried here during that same year.
• 1866: Sarah Atwater Denman man starts Friends in Council at her house on 9th and Broadway. “Friends,” as it affectionately called, is the oldest continuous literary club in the U.S. It still meets today.1871: Inventor of the postage meter, Arthur Pitney, was born in Quincy.
• 1883: Mark Twain, who lived just across the river in Hannibal, publishes “Life on the Mississippi,” where he describes our fair city. “Quincy is a notable example–a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city; and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.”
• 1886: Father Augustine Tolton is ordained, making him the first black catholic priest in the U.S. Tolton attended St. Peter’s School and graduated from what is now Quincy University. He celebrated his first Mass at St. Boniface. He is now formally up for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1887: Quincyan, Thomas Scott Baldwin, becomes the first person to parachute from a hot air balloon. Through his work with the military, he is known as “Father of the American Dirigible.”
• 1903: President Theodore Roosevelt visits Quincy.
• 1941: Actress Mary Astor wins an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The Great Lie.” Mary was born in Quincy and her father taught German at Quincy High School.
• 1945: Paul Tibbets, who was born in Quincy, pilots the Enola Gay and dropped the first ever atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
• 1955: Mountain Dew becomes commercially available. The soda was invented by Ollie and Barney Hartman of Quincy.
• 1958: Bob Hope and then Sen. John F. Kennedy receive honorary degrees from Quincy College, now Quincy University.
• 1960: Then vice-president, Richard Nixon, visits Quincy while campaigning against JFK
• 1988: James B. Stewart wins a Pulitzer Prize in Exploratory Journalism. Stewart is an alumnus of Quincy Senior High. Stewart went on to write a best seller about fellow Quincyan, Michael Swango.
• 1988: Professional golfer, D.A. Weibring, ties for third place in the U.S. Open Championship.
• 2000: Serial killer Michael Swango is indicted for murder. While it has not been proven, the FBI estimates that Swango is responsible for 30 to 50 deaths. He was valedictorian for the class of ’72 at what is now, Quincy Notre Dame.
• 2000: President Bill Clinton visits Quincy.
• 2010: President Barack Obama visits Quincy.

I could seriously go on and on … I haven’t even mentioned the Olympians that Quincy has produced or the fact that the lattice fry was invented right here in my hometown. I am also leaving out the fact that the current owner of the Boston Red Sox is a Quincy native. I’ll stop now, but I hope I have given everyone a new perspective on the Gem City, not to mention some great trivia to dazzle your friends.

Just in the interest of fairness, however, I do have to admit, contrary to popular belief, unicorns and rainbows were not invented here. Even so, hold your head high Quincy, you have the best of both worlds. You have the heart and soul of a town, with the talents of a city. Next time you try to describe Quincy and people just don’t understand, all you need to do is tell them that Quincy is the Forrest Gump of cities, IQ notwithstanding.

To view the Searchlights blog on the Local Q, featuring Anna Oakley and other local writers, go to Searchlights.