COLUMNIST ROQUEMORE'S CORNER
2024 October 20
Cedar Key resident and Cedar Key Beacon columnist Susan Engle Roquemore has compiled her writings into two wonderfully and cleverly titled books:
When I was a very young child (I’m now a very old child) I shared a room with a dining room table, six chairs and four thousand comic books, two parakeets, a cat and dog and a space heater. That’s the most orderly my room has been in the last forty years. It’s a certain magnetism in my personality that attracts clutter. It’s not that I like working in the middle of a mess—around me, it just happens to be there.
My father once wailed: “I thought girls were supposed to be neat!’ (He’d survived my brothers’ room and was chagrined.) My sister and I were not the epitome of feminine daintiness. Kathy brought with her to our room cages of hamsters who strewed seeds around like we wish the DOT would on State Road 24. Despite the difference in our ages (that we never thought about), we had certain things in common: we were both slobs. It wasn’t that we weren’t clean slobs—if ever anyone needed a towel, he or she could find a slightly damp (or moldy) one on or under our bed. By the time her hamsters had another litter, I’d opened six more bottles of nail polish and left them uncapped.
Eventually, I went away to college to room with a tidy person, I thought. Carol Ann didn’t bring her hamsters with her but she had a habit of leaving lingerie in strange places—like in the clothes hamper. I soon broke her of that habit. I also taught her how one could iron only collars of cotton shirts, wear a sweater over it and look neat. Her mother was appalled the first time she saw Carol Ann wearing dirty white sneakers with a Villager dress. (Does anyone remember Villager dresses—the derigeur of the early sixties?) There was hope for Carol Ann.
Once, before I moved into the university milieu, my mom had to be away for several weeks. My dad and I were batching it. I’d brought a friend home for the afternoon. Emily asked naively: “Are you all moving our or moving in?” She had seen my room.
Not much else has changed. I’ve yearned for one of those houses that is self cleaning. One of those places where the brass is always gleaming and dust doesn’t accumulate on tops of door frames. It would be a house—or room—where spiders don’t build webs and cats don’t give up hair balls to the carpet, where dishes are always rinsed and stacked and the black iron skillets are seasoned to perfection. It’s a place where the flowers in the quaint pot are not perennially a “dried arrangement.”
Some people used to trade cars when ashtrays got dirty, I understand. If that is so, I am in need of not only a new car but a new house. My room—consisting of 100 square feet—resists every attempt of mine to pick up the papers, organize the files or make it beautiful. I’ve put an antique quilt on a brass day-bed. I’ve decorated windowsills with cutesy plants and shells. The nice furniture is shelved with good reference books and the carpet is luxurious by my standards. Susan’s “playroom” also has a half-can of peanuts, four or five cups and glasses half-filled with congealing liquid, an Early Sears mirror pasted with notices of meetings tacked up with early K-Mart tape. My grandmother’s carefully quilted coverlet is decked with papers from every “Save The...” organization in the United States and abroad. Calendars, notices of meetings, personal letters each have a separate file heading. Data is filed on the floor or the bed or under a cat. It is simply of no use to put it in the metal cabinet: I’d never find it.
I’m the kind of person who calls her child long distance to find out what his area code is. To make me feel worse, he tells me.
I have a child who takes after me. I won’t say which one, but he will recognize himself and someday a wife will curse me for the legacy. He arranges his clothes on the floor, Diet Coke bottles grow from the curtain rods and glasses clone themselves on windowsills.
It can’t be easy being a neat person. It must be impossible to be a neat room given these circumstances.
Turn Left at the Big Osprey Nest and
Water Under the Number 4 Bridge: A Memoir of the Beacon Years (1988-1993)
Water Under the Number 4 Bridge: A Memoir of the Beacon Years (1988-1993)
These books are currently sold at:
the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce Welcome Center,
the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum,
the Florida’s Nature Coast Conservancy events,
and the Woman’s Club.
These organizations receive the book’s full sales price.
the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce Welcome Center,
the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum,
the Florida’s Nature Coast Conservancy events,
and the Woman’s Club.
These organizations receive the book’s full sales price.
For your reading pleasure and enjoyment of an incisive, often humorous
view of Cedar Key two decades ago, Ms. Roquemore and the Cedar Key News intend to publish selected articles monthly.
view of Cedar Key two decades ago, Ms. Roquemore and the Cedar Key News intend to publish selected articles monthly.
Cedar Key News hopes you enjoy the articles. If you do, and should you purchase one or both books, the above non-profit organizations will certainly appreciate the effort.
CAN THIS ROOM BE SAVED?
Every house has at least one. Why, Lord, is it always mine? The room that refuses to clean itself or allow anyone else to do it?
When I was a very young child (I’m now a very old child) I shared a room with a dining room table, six chairs and four thousand comic books, two parakeets, a cat and dog and a space heater. That’s the most orderly my room has been in the last forty years. It’s a certain magnetism in my personality that attracts clutter. It’s not that I like working in the middle of a mess—around me, it just happens to be there.
My father once wailed: “I thought girls were supposed to be neat!’ (He’d survived my brothers’ room and was chagrined.) My sister and I were not the epitome of feminine daintiness. Kathy brought with her to our room cages of hamsters who strewed seeds around like we wish the DOT would on State Road 24. Despite the difference in our ages (that we never thought about), we had certain things in common: we were both slobs. It wasn’t that we weren’t clean slobs—if ever anyone needed a towel, he or she could find a slightly damp (or moldy) one on or under our bed. By the time her hamsters had another litter, I’d opened six more bottles of nail polish and left them uncapped.
Eventually, I went away to college to room with a tidy person, I thought. Carol Ann didn’t bring her hamsters with her but she had a habit of leaving lingerie in strange places—like in the clothes hamper. I soon broke her of that habit. I also taught her how one could iron only collars of cotton shirts, wear a sweater over it and look neat. Her mother was appalled the first time she saw Carol Ann wearing dirty white sneakers with a Villager dress. (Does anyone remember Villager dresses—the derigeur of the early sixties?) There was hope for Carol Ann.
Once, before I moved into the university milieu, my mom had to be away for several weeks. My dad and I were batching it. I’d brought a friend home for the afternoon. Emily asked naively: “Are you all moving our or moving in?” She had seen my room.
Not much else has changed. I’ve yearned for one of those houses that is self cleaning. One of those places where the brass is always gleaming and dust doesn’t accumulate on tops of door frames. It would be a house—or room—where spiders don’t build webs and cats don’t give up hair balls to the carpet, where dishes are always rinsed and stacked and the black iron skillets are seasoned to perfection. It’s a place where the flowers in the quaint pot are not perennially a “dried arrangement.”
Some people used to trade cars when ashtrays got dirty, I understand. If that is so, I am in need of not only a new car but a new house. My room—consisting of 100 square feet—resists every attempt of mine to pick up the papers, organize the files or make it beautiful. I’ve put an antique quilt on a brass day-bed. I’ve decorated windowsills with cutesy plants and shells. The nice furniture is shelved with good reference books and the carpet is luxurious by my standards. Susan’s “playroom” also has a half-can of peanuts, four or five cups and glasses half-filled with congealing liquid, an Early Sears mirror pasted with notices of meetings tacked up with early K-Mart tape. My grandmother’s carefully quilted coverlet is decked with papers from every “Save The...” organization in the United States and abroad. Calendars, notices of meetings, personal letters each have a separate file heading. Data is filed on the floor or the bed or under a cat. It is simply of no use to put it in the metal cabinet: I’d never find it.
I’m the kind of person who calls her child long distance to find out what his area code is. To make me feel worse, he tells me.
I have a child who takes after me. I won’t say which one, but he will recognize himself and someday a wife will curse me for the legacy. He arranges his clothes on the floor, Diet Coke bottles grow from the curtain rods and glasses clone themselves on windowsills.
It can’t be easy being a neat person. It must be impossible to be a neat room given these circumstances.
Now, well, then, there, anyone can reform! Today I mailed my Christmas Cards. Okay, they were from two years ago. Tomorrow, I’ll get that letter off to my mom. Son Jim’s birthday was only last February, maybe he won’t notice that the card that was sent him was lost in the morass. Tomorrow I will clean this room. Garden Club stuff goes here and letters will be mailed. Woman’s Club stuff goes there. I promise to answer phone calls. I’ll finish articles for the newspaper before “saving” and “losing” them sets in. I’ll dust and I’ll clean. If you don’t hear from me for the next few weeks you will know why: I’ve lost myself in a room of no return.
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