And that recording now one must not get one's knickers in a twist. I'm trying. These are the stories your granny never told people loved by everybody. I was raising the country's kids until I slipped up on some stoop unusually low and pushed my mother like. OK, we're recording so you can tell me your name and if you want your age, OK, my name is enough.

I was born editor Diana Stoll, but my name now is Edna Owling.

OK, and you live in Queens? I live in Queens. And you've lived here since 1970. 1970? Yes. Were you born here? I was born in Brooklyn. So do you have any stories that come to mind that you want to tell already made about being born of anything in your life?

Or I can ask you about some of your beautiful collection that you have in your house.

OK, let's say I'll go back to my father's father. My father was born in New York City. It has destroyed my grandfather was born in Europe, not quite sure where because it was the Austrian Hungarian empire in those days. And he came to America in the eighteen hundreds and was a peddler at first. And Manhattan eventually had a store business selling paper goods, which were basically the kind of rolls of paper five, six feet high that were used by garment manufacturers in the garment industry, in the fur industry.

So was you know, the fur industry is practically dead. Yeah. And when I started teaching in the nineteen fifties, we said that New York City was the center of the garment industry isn't true anymore. Yeah. It also was the biggest port in New York and the head of the publishing companies. All these things have changed. Yeah. So you're a teacher. I was a teacher. I was born in 1970, which is the year before the Empire State Building was completed.

Wow. And I think the Chrysler Building was completed that year. So you're older than the Empire State and the Chrysler Building. That's pretty monumental.

So on the other hand, my father was born in 1899, so he was born before there were cars, before I flew the first plane, before there was electricity. That house had gas lighting. And that's why I said I'm starting there. So, yeah, my father was born at the turn of the century. He actually got into the army in 1917, but the war ended before he ever went anywhere lucky. So that was that thing.

But this is a great story. My grandfather built a house in Ball Park, which was a Jewish Italian neighborhood then, and now it's an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, mostly Hassidim. And he built a house of five thousand dollars to family house with torches. And we lived upstairs of my grandparents is upstairs. They had a close, a big covid porch, a living room, a library, a dining room, two bedrooms, a basement, and wait for five grand.

And upstairs there were four huge rooms and the sinks, not a toilet. But since that's in the attic. So in 1970, when my father was 71, he was getting so many tickets because he wasn't cleaning the sidewalk, he couldn't do it. He sold the house to a rabbi. He was offered sixty thousand of the house. Oh, my God. And he didn't want to sell because they wanted to tear it down. So he sold it to a rabbi for forty five thousand dollars with ten children.

Three years later, I sold it for nearly a million. Yeah.

In New York. Wow.

And three houses were put up on the lot and my father made forty five thousand. The rabbi made God does what. So I mean you have to laugh at these things. So my father was not a good businessman.

Well it's New York which you never know. Never.

No, never. Never. Never. No, but my father was an Orthodox Jew, my grandfather was an Orthodox Jew. And when I was maybe 12, 13, my cousin Lewis was six months younger than I. We had to make a speech in Hebrew at Yeshiva University congratulating my grandfather. Azalea's birthday, which was very close to this day, hated making that speech. And I sort of don't remember that. So you speak Hebrew or you learned it at the time?

Let me put it this way. In the 1920s, my grandfather was in a movement to make Hebrew a modern language. Oh. And I think the movement was going to have Roosa. So people would say to me, you know, Yiddish and I say no, because my grandfather did not speak Yiddish. He spoke Hebrew at home. So when I was six years old or younger, I learned Hebrew, which I don't know today. I mean, I.

I can say certain things when I talk to the people from Israel, I am talking in antique language.

OK, is that the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish?

I personally think that, first of all, those of us who came from Central Europe were Ashkenazi Jews. Those who came from the Mediterranean was Vadim. And the Hebrew of today is a modern language that's changing. So let's say I said a word. I would say I would say my do y oh, you don't say that today. In other words, words that I say are antique now.

OK, like I see like in English, like in English, like all young people. We have our whole new vocabulary now with a podcast.

So I don't know the vocabulary of today. I know the grammar I could on the Yelda. I'm a little girl but I'm not saying it with the accent that they they do. They say I would say actually they would say that. I would say Shabbas. They would say Shubat. OK, so it's slightly different, is slightly different and they speak too fast. But so that's Hebrew.

And then Yiddish is an older language or Hebrew was a very old language. Right. Yiddish is basically using the Hebrew alphabet and using a German basis. So people speak Yiddish very often can understand German. Yeah, not all of them can.

I think I've heard some Yiddish and then speaking German have understood some words and was really surprised.

My my friend was as far as a Jew, grandmother and mother were born in Turkey, but they originally had come from Spain to Turkey and they spoke Ladino, which you never hear anything about. Ladino uses the Hebrew alphabet with Spanish words as the basis rather than German words.

So I had no idea how something like that. When you were a teacher, did you teach about these things or did I speak about these things to teach?

Absolutely not. I'm teaching social studies. Oh, I didn't know of a city public school. To what age? Junior high school in high school. I started out teaching in high school. All this part I don't really want to talk about. Right. Quickest way, way back in 1952 when I took the exam for a teacher, they only were offering substitute exams. They weren't offering regular exams. So I became a substitute teacher in the high schools.

And my favorite story is I started out going to an elementary school that was a yeshiva for girls. So I went to an all girls elementary school. Then I went to Hunter High School, all girls that I went to Hunter College, which was all girls when I graduated in 1952. And my first job as a substitute was at Chelsea Vocational High School, which was all boys.

So I walk in and the assistant principal says to me, You have a math class. I said, I don't know if I'm a social studies teacher. English, history, math. He says, don't worry about it all the all they're doing is adding inches and feet and yards. And when you get to 13 inches, you're supposed to transfer to one foot. One inch if you get to four feet is supposed to make it one yard, one foot, OK, he says have them put the homework on the board and correct it.

So the kids put the homework on the board and I'm looking at it. They're all right. But it's wrong. So finally, in desperation, I say this. Anyone in the class have a 12 inch ruler on them.

And from the back of the room comes everyone has a teacher because it was so that was my first job teaching all boys.

Oh, just diving straight into that was I taught in high school for six years and I got my regular license.

But in those days to get a regular license, you had to take a teaching test, you had to pass an oral test. So you didn't have a lisp. Oh, really? And then the last part of it all, you had to pass the physical and the physical said you had to wait and I wait. So they gave me a period of time to come back. Oh, now I weighed minus, but I wasn't minus enough.

OK, so they told me that I couldn't get a license for the high school, only for the junior high school.

So you couldn't teach because you were a certain weight and that wasn't allowed.

That was finally broken about fifteen years later. So I hope so. But at that time it was not broken. Why.

Who the hell knows I can curse of anyway.

So I went to a junior high school and that was like compared to teaching in a high school where the kids just terrible. This is the days of, you know, the gang fights. OK, in those days I learned what is zip gun was how to make a zip gun. Hello.

I don't even know what that is. The kids would make a wooden gun shape and they made a groove in it, and while the teachers parked outside the school, you took your aerial, which was a separate aerial, and you unscrewed it and put it in your car, the antenna that like, bent the antenna, which we don't have anymore.

And then they took the antenna and they put it into the grooves that they made in the pistol.

And they'd shoot you with car antennas. Yes, darling. And they had a bullet. Oh, no. Did you get hit by one? No.

Oh, good. But they will make it for their enemies. The other gangs, you know, like West Side Story. Yeah. That concept that I lived through that you exposed to working class, to the streets, you'd look out the window and you would see the gang waving with the garbage can covers ready to hit somebody. Oh, it was fun in those days. It was fun, OK? They were gang wars. And in fact, sometimes you wanted to take a class on a trip and the subway took you into one territory so certain kids would not go, they wouldn't go.

And they were afraid of. They're afraid. They're walking with the class that teaches them walking into the territory of the people. Does the stories OK?

Yeah. Those are definitely, like, surprising. I mean, I I'm fresh in New York and it's a lot safer now. But yeah, I can imagine at the time there were interesting things going on.

You think things going on. So that was one junior high school story. Yeah, I have a lot of junior high school stories. I'll give you another one. Sure. It's what is more fun. So my friend Dienes had duty and she had a career guidance class and I had a career guidance class of these big ninth graders, mostly boys, you know, who were not good in academics. Some of them were lovable point of quotation, and some of them were pretty awful.

But anyway, she was on duty and I had a free period. So I came down the stairs and I'm talking to her on the staircase. And all of a sudden there was one of her career guidance kids. I had them two. Oh, Zola, hello. What are you doing here? We said, why aren't you in class? He says, Oh, I can't find my you know, he's giving us all these reasons for saying go to class.

And he he doesn't want to go anyway. Maybe we talk to him for ten minutes and we're standing right next to the outside door to the school, which has the kind of barnet that you push to get out of a school that is locked on the inside. Yeah. For a reason. All of a sudden he says, hold out your hands and he gives us the bar and all the parts of the locking mechanism of the school while these two stupid ass white teachers was talking to took the door while you were talking to him.

How why that's I mean, that's how clever he was.

Yeah. So he feels that leverage is not at school. All right. So that's a lot of stories. This is probably about the early 1960s. What can we tell you? And then that same story, I just they kept saying to me, you never take us any place, every other class you take. So I said, you know, come back with that. We had a section sheet. They had to have A's because if you don't get any C's or D and the S.

sheet for a week, we'll plan a trip. OK, so I figured I'll take them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nice. And because I want to talk them out, I taught social studies and art med school.

So anyway, so I went over the idea of seeing nude pictures. That's how they should act, how they shouldn't act. You don't think of all those possibilities of things that they might do wrong. Yeah. So anyway, we get on the subway and we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and they were actually pretty good. They brought their lunches and we went out to the park eating their lunches and they decided they wanted to go back to the park to get on the train on the other side of Central Park.

So we went back to the park. They were jumping over rocks. I couldn't even follow them. Finally, we get to the other side and I have a pass which says the name of the school, how many kids? And you have that in. So they're all in the subway milling around. I tell you, every one of them was over six feet tall. So I'm pushing through them. And all of a sudden the cop says to me, Lady, are these kids bothering you?

I said, no, they're my children. So that's my end of that story.

OK, right now I I'm wondering, have you, like, lived through any important historical events that that marked you where you were in like a certain place? And you have a specific story related to that? I lived through events, but I didn't really take active parts. Like today is the fiftieth anniversary of the march in Selma. I lived through it, but I wasn't marching down there. I'll go back for the sheriff.

The first thing I really remember was December 7th, 1941. My father had a brother who was a big shot in Chicago, and he came in and he always stayed at the Essex Hotel. On Central Park South. Mm hmm. So we took the train to visit him. I was about two o'clock in the afternoon we got there and the door, there's no television. Remember in those days? Yeah, that comes after World War Two. The doorman has a little radio.

And as we come into the building, the radio says Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Oh, so we go upstairs and my father, my uncle turn on the radio and we kids ended up spending the day sitting on the floor of his hotel room as we listened to the attack on Pearl Harbor. So I was 11 years old. December seven, 1941. How did that feel to an 11 year old? It was shocking. It was shocking. I remember before that I used to walk through the street and you'd see the first star and you say Starlight Starbright was on the first door was Shetler would die or something like that?

Oh, I don't even think you can see stars in New York anymore. That. OK, but what a story.

So my friend Claire, who I talked with at one point, she was a Spanish teacher and the ESL kids were mostly Japanese. This is after World War Two. Japan bought the success. So the first time I was in the Essex House, we were hearing about Pearl Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. The next time I was in the Essex House, one of the parents of the kid that Claire was giving English lessons to was in honor of was I don't remember what the company was that only Essex House.

But he was on the board and he gave clear and said a weekend there and they invited body and be my husband to come for brunch. I always felt very weird about that. Yeah. Second time I'm the success. It's owned by the Japanese. It's a strange memory, a strange family.

What you said about Pearl Harbor was really interesting because I think people from my generation have a similar feeling about 9/11, where I know I was sitting at home watching the TV that whole day. So it's sounds really similar in that aspect. If I say to you, where were you when 9/11 happened? Yeah, everybody knows.

Everybody knows at home. Where were you?

We have a house in Pennsylvania, a vacation house. And there was a Monday morning, I think, in the guest bedroom. We had we had a television and I would say, what do they have a movie at nine o'clock in the morning? Because I'm seeing the plane flying into the in the World Trade Center. And then I suddenly, you know, after a few minutes realize what's happening. So I go into the bathroom, I say, get out, get out.

You've got to see this couple pieces. I'm take this show. I said my you know, I'm yelling at him to get out of the shower and he's not getting out of the shower. So finally gets out of the shower and we sit there for the rest of the day watching. And at that point, we realized we couldn't go back to New York at that time. And when we got back, we could see the smoke. You could also see it out the kitchen window here.

You could see the smoke wafting to Brooklyn. If you look out the window, you'll see the Moscow Bridge. Brooklyn is there would have then like a scary silence for months, months, really months. So that's that's like a dark topic. I was going to I have another topic, but it's also not as happy. How have you noticed, like, differences in being a woman in you were a teacher and how has that changed way you talk about the way women were treated?

Yeah, I was never a person who got catcalls and whistles when I walk down the street.

Sorry, you're lucky. Oh, it's terrible.

But I was assistant principal and we're meeting two assistant principals, two males and one female, me and the principal, to give evaluations for the teachers for the end of the year. And there was this particular science teacher who not only stole things like fire extinguishers and other equipment from the school, the custodian was always screaming that he was taking, you know, things that belonged to the school. Her and Norman, who was a principal, said, I don't want to give so-and-so a satisfactory.

I want to know who's going to give him a satisfactory minus, blah, blah, blah, an evaluation evaluation. And and then he gets to pillar.

Pillar was what I would describe as a not a fat woman, a tall woman, OK, big woman, but very sexy, very sexy.

And she was a Spanish teacher also. And she she could be sexy just the way she walked down the street. So he says, what about that pillow? Oh, boy.

And I said, Norman, you didn't call someone.

So operagoers. Yeah. Or something else. Why are you calling out that? He said she's always like all that. She was a really good Spanish teacher. The kids loved her, but he wanted to give her an unsatisfactory because he really was turned off by the fact that this was a very. Every sexy woman who exuded sex, so he was intimidated and confused. Yeah.

And so when I said that, he said to me, you can leave the room. You don't have to stay for this.

Oh, my God, that's frustrating. Now, that is to me what we're talking about. Yeah. I don't know how much he's my boss. He's the principal of the show. Yeah. He's not giving it to me any harassment, but it's aimed at another woman.

And it's like this is for the men to talk about. Right. For you. Right. Yeah. I don't know how much those things have changed.

I mean, things like this probably still happen.

I'm sure they thought. I ask you, were you ever sexually harassed or physically abused?

Um, yeah, all the time. I mean, in the subway, people grab like one subway incident. Yeah. People just grab you wherever they don't care. Yeah. This happens.

I think every woman that you would talk to has definitely had some form of harassment before you go into that, going back to when I was like 14 years old and I went to Hunter High School, and in those days the subway was five or fifteen cents and there were no transfers. So when you transferred, you had to go out and go into the next train and pay another fare.

How many lines were there? There were three lines. BMT, A.R.T., an independent. OK, so I went to 14th Street where I changed very crowded. OK, so you she was so crowded I couldn't get past the vestibule to get into the long section. And I came home and I said to my mother, people are touchy, the breeching, you know, into my rear end of my clothes. My pockets. Yeah. What do I do?

So my mother said, take a hatpin. Yeah. She gave me these long hatpins. Oh, I love this. And I had the hat pin in my wrist like this.

And when I felt the hand touching, she said, hey, that's a great tip, I'm going to buy a hat.

I actually heard that people were trying to ban happens because men felt threatened that for once women could actually protect him.

With my life going to high school, you heard it here first.

It disappeared very fast. Yeah, that's a great idea. And high school to such a young age.

It was a high school student. Him I never used to happen again. I got I never used the assault weapon to get.

Yeah. Did you actually use it for your hat or just. Yeah, we did use it for a hat. I have some here still.

Oh. I'll have to look at them later. There's somewhere in the house.

I don't know exactly when I was in Italy one time I took the ship. You took a boat to Italy.

You way back in nineteen fifty seven. One of those. Yes, I took the cellar door to Naples and I was supposed to come back on the advertorials. Which song.

Oh no. So whatever the evidence is that was there, I went to Italy so I wanted to see Sicily because I'd been didley before and I was planning to make that trip all Greek and Roman ruins. So I saw Sicily, saw all the Greek ruins, Roman ruins there that I came back to Rome through from Rome to Athens. And then I spent three weeks going to the Greek islands and going all the way up to my see the Corrine's I went I went all over Greece.

Anyway, I climbed the monasteries in the night because I just broke down and we had to sleep in the monastery. I'd say, look, the people in the busto, OK, no problem, OK?

And then I came back to Athens. I really saw a lot of grace. We came back to Athens and took a plane from Athens to Izmir, Greece, that Izmir, Turkey, OK. And at that time, the Americans had a force in Izmir. So when I got off the plane at Izmir, I met some American soldiers. They asked me if I was a relative, someone at the base there. I said, no, I want to go to all the Greek and Turkish to the area.

So they met me at the hotel the next day and took me on an Army Jeep. There was no other way to get there. I mean, since then, more has been discovered, more it's been shown. But I marched all over those rooms by yourself. By myself. Yeah. But with two guys in the U.S. Army, that was fun. Yeah. And then from that point, I decided to see Turkey. I went from there all the way to Ankara by local bus stopping at PopTech sites.

How was Turkey like back in the day?

A single woman through Turkey alone is a very stupid thing to do.

One time they say, do you have any children? We said no.

And this guy says to me, I help you, huh? So I said to my husband, the next time they ask if we have children, the answer is yes. Men looked at you and I can't do it. But they were a little. You open your buttons, like with their eyes, your eyes realize nobody ever pinched me in Turkey. Nobody ever touched. I say this because it's truth, but you were very uncomfortable and you realized this was not the right thing to do.

So anyway, anyway, I did anyway. So now I'm in Ankara and I'm at that time, the museum was very old fashioned. I went to look at the Hittite ruins and I meet this British woman there and I'm telling her I'm going to go east of Ankara to go to the alcohol shack, I think it was called. And whatever the other Hittite ruins. Well, yeah, I really like the look of it.

So at that time, I forgot what was happening. I think Turkey and Iran or Iraq were having some shooting things like I don't remember which one it was.

So she said to me, this British woman, and this was a battle she had to beat you up. A bunch of you get shot. Well, and I went anyway, look, I've been to places like Mahendradatta, which is the Indus Valley Civilization and India, actually in Pakistan. I've been to all kinds of sites in Peru. I've been to Piedras Negras, I've been to Palanca. I've been to Tikal, where I climbed the temple so that you could in the 1950s also.

And this was just for fun or as as hard as I like to archaeology.

So you must have had some adventures I can imagine, especially in South America or in the jungle. Right.

My my friend and Joan and I left New York the first time in the 60s and we went by bus to Mexico. And then we saw most of the sights in Mexico. Sixty four dollars for a bus. Right. It's a long bus ride. Went down to wait, wait.

Chenango crossed the border there and worked our way to Peru by land.

OK, OK, that's very chic in Honduras. She quit there and I continued on myself. So.

But you were walking or you were on in a car or walking. You just walked to Peru?

No, I going to Panama. I took six class buses. I took the dugout canoe. I took seats in a car. How was the canoe ride? OK, OK.

Yeah, the seats in the car ride was sort of uncomfortable because they really pushed you into it. And I was, you know, well built on the sitting board.

My total cost of transportation all the way to the edge of Lake Titicaca was 90 bucks from New York from here to Lake Titicaca because she paid nothing so Bolivia wouldn't give us a visa, wouldn't give visas to Americans. So I met this Dutch girl whose uncle was a priest or minister around Lake Titicaca. He took both of us across the border as Peruvian women. And we were not supposed to talk for the day. And then we went out on the lake and you were walking on the sinking reeds.

And you see all these people living on Lake to the Lake Titicaca was very difficult because it's 14000 feet high. And the first day, I think it was three steps to the hotel and you felt yourself gasping because of the TUD just to walk up three little steps.

I mean, what I'm telling you, that I climbed these temples by the roots of the of the trees and everything. You know, you look at me now and you say, she really did it.

I did. I believe you. I do. All right. Sounds very adventurous. Like I'm jealous.

That was my best adventure. That was before the 60s. So I did that part of the fifties going from New York all the way down to the the Bolivian border and into the first town on the border.

So to be clear, you went by bus and all that because flying was not an option, was too much money.

I didn't have that kind of money. How much would it have cost back then? Well, I'll tell you that anyway. Now I have to come back and the idea of coming back the same way Joan had already quit.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. So my sister was married. So I called her, of course, collect and I said, I need money to get home.

So I turned out I took a plane from Cusco where Machu Picchu was in town, both of these other sites up there. And I was an eight day wait to get on the plane because, you know, I don't know, you know, let's say a plane comes in to Machu Picchu and it weighs so much fuel, people, etc.. Well, it has to weigh less going out because they have to clear the Andes. They're at a high altitude.

I went down there and you got weighed along with your luggage, everything that weighed another time where you had to get went.

Yes. Yes. Anyway, I was stuck up there for eight days. I got to see all kinds of sights of the. Geological sites. So now I fly into Lima and I have a plane from Lima to Miami for 150 dollars disremember, and at the time one hundred and fifty dollars was like a lot of money, probably.

And I waited for the midnight flight from Miami to New York, which was thirty five dollars. Oh. And I flew into New York, didn't have the money for a cab. I called somebody to come get me. OK, so that was that.

So along the way what I was taking the car, I met somebody and she was a girl who spoke English coming home from school and she invited me to a patch of mocha, which was like a feast. They dug this pit the earth put a hole laminate covered with stones, and it cooked for God knows how many days. I do not like the air and I don't like this. I'll drink for him. But those days I didn't drink anything.

So how old were you when you were doing this trip?

27, 28.

OK, so I should be doing that now. I should be doing something like that under 30. OK.

OK, I might finish anyway because they make jackets. Oh yeah. Choucha are they chew. They chew the corn.

They it. Yeah they masticate the corn and spit it out and that's what makes the beer. OK, remember that I'm jumping back at the beginning of that trip. So when we got on the bus in Guatemala and there was this famous canyon El Tarpon or something was cool.

I don't remember names from so long. 57 you taking the bus, Mexico City and you cross and get away with Chenango. And then the bus goes so far and then there's a suspension bridge. A rope bridge. Oh, boy. And in those days we wore dresses and he carried his suitcase. There was no wheel. You had to carry a suitcase over the rope and the side over here.

You did this entire trip in a dress. In a dress. Oh, man. What? I was in Mexico City. I went into a men's store and bought pants to go climb in the jungles because I didn't have pants. I bought khakis. And Joan did also because we knew that we weren't going to be able to climb in dresses.

Yeah, OK, back to the bridge. OK, so what? Over the bridge. And there was another bus waiting to take you on. We're in this mountainous part of Guatemala and all of a sudden whatever happened, the bus dies and we all get off. And I look, I don't know anything about what I saw looking and there was no want to know what to think about. There were ropes. There were things tying things up. It was OK.

So even though you didn't know anything, you knew something was wrong, except for Joan and I, everyone else on the bus was an idiot, like a native, a native person from South America, those seeking Kichwa, whatever the language is, while Kichwa Kichwa.

And when they found out we couldn't speak Spanish, that we spoke English, they liked us. If we spoke Spanish, they wouldn't have liked us. So anyway, we get out and they put rocks under the wheels of the of the bus and it's a mountain road. I wouldn't call it paved. Just there is no guardrail, nothing stupid like that. Now it's daylight. And the women were all little. All the women look like up to here on us little little Guatemalan women, blonde braids down their back.

They pulled Joan and be over. And we climb down a little ways. We sit with them and they offer us cookies. And we had some cookies that we'd taken with us. So we got cookies out. They were passing those around and then it got cold. And when we were in Mexico City for a few days, Joan wanted a bike a little. Remember Claude Kalua, the drink? Yeah. Yeah. So she bought a bottle of Kahlua and we have our raincoat on us, like we're freezing up the altitude.

So they stopped passing. I would say the jug was that high. That was a very big jug. That's what you're showing with your hands. They start passing it around. Everyone's drinking it. They bring it to us and we say, no, no, no. And they will look at us because was warming everyone up. So John said, we have the off. So she goes up there, gets a suitcase, takes her about. We drank a whole bottle of glue that I, I did not touch glue of thirty or forty years I believe would not tell you.

I mean we tried to hold you just to stay semi warm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So you would you now looking back have rather of drinking the beer or you know still Kalua I can't drink, I don't like it to this day and especially beer that's made from people chewing stuff and then spitting it back into the.

Oh it's corn right. What's corn.

Yeah I think all kinds of corn there. That's very different than our corn. Yeah.

I mean that's where corn. Originated in archaeology, and I have a favorite here, I'll help you with that, you have to give me a moment. No worries. I'll be back. OK.

Play, so we just took a little break to look at some fabulous pictures of Edna back in the day, which I love the sunglasses.

Then I was going to tell you about, you see the plaque on the wall over there next to the Japanese vase. Yeah, OK. Well, Joan and I went to New York, to Lima on that famous trip, stopped in Guatemala City. And we went to the museum and we saw something that looks like that in the museum. I have a book that shows pictures of the lintels, impalements, integris, which is broken. And then Courtright made a drawing of what it would have looked like.

So somebody in Guatemala made a copy of the drawing to represent Piedras Negras. And when I asked the people to visit them about it, because I said this doesn't exist, it faces a smashed of certain pieces of missing.

So you saw the copy one in the museum, is what you're saying? No copy was in the museum. There's no original because the original was damaged. And he said they have a sculptor who makes ten of them for the government. One is here in the museum and the others are given as gifts by the president of Guatemala to visiting dignitaries. But he said lives right outside of town. He gave us the address. So we went and we were carrying a book of art because we knew going on to Peru, poor Spanish between us and him.

And we told him how much we loved it and we'd like to have it. And he said, no, no, no, he doesn't make it. He's looking at the book. And I said, here, take a look. He's look at the incourt in the book and he's very interested. And I said, please keep it. And that January I get a knock on my door, you see. Is there with a package, please sign.

No charge.

Said to me he sent you this replica that he usually gives to dignitaries and that's in the museum. And now you have one. I have one on your wall. I love it in exchange for that book. Yeah. Oh, the best thing I ever got. I'm going to put a picture of that next to all the other pictures so people who can hear about it can also see it.

So then when I bought the mask, this one over there was a choose a light to the sticking out the dark. One of this one I bought in the same country many years ago on a Halloween. I put that mask on and I opened the door to little princesses and they screamed and ran. So that's the only one I ever wore.

OK, I have a little just some questions to close up. I wonder if you have any advice for my generation. I know that's like an old and tired question, but.

Well, I know I have to keep a hatpin with me in the subway.

You know, I would say that they say, oh, I don't want to think politics. What certain people are doing now. Political science major. I can tell you that I'm upset and you should vote.

So your advice is just vote to vote. And I think that's good advice is global minded. I mean, to be climate and all the rest of it is very important. I'll be a hundred and twenty years from now. Congratulations.

I will make it. I don't talk. I don't expect to be around after 100. I really expect to be around 92.

So we have to pay attention. The sort of things we have to look at. Yeah, that a piece of Antarctica the size of Florida and broken off. It was melting. Yeah. Think about how much water that is. Yeah. That's, it's so what a lot of young people are concerned about.

And then I get very upset about things like the burning of the Brazilian forests. Yeah. And Australia forest is the longest.

I mean, I can't talk climate to people your age. They don't believe it.

Oh, we do. I mean, it's very, very concerning, actually.

A lot of people are just depressed about it because what can we do with it? It's it's hard to change such a big thing. Never mind. I know it's it's I think the point you're trying to get across is we need to work together to try and avoid climate change or make an effort.

And you can't close your ears and say, I'm not interested in that. Oh, I don't care. I'm fine. Now, the stock market is good for me.

All right. So we have dinner. Yes, we'll have. Thank you so much. I know without ever knowing about how many children I have in Afghanistan, if you like that and you want to hear more episodes launch at the beginning of each month, you can follow the podcast at stories your granny never told on social media. To get more updates about episode launches, we are at stories your granny never told dotcom at Gmail dot com. And we're also on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

And if you aren't technologically minded, you can also leave a voicemail if you'd like to be an interview veep or if you have a granny who has a story that she might not have told you. Our voice mail is at three, three, two. Two or three to five, not the background music is the maple leaf rag from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Keep that inner granny alive. Let me scarf feed your cats a little bit too much.

And Yeltsin pigeons, I.