But Wait, There's More.

            If you’ve been reading SummerSalt for a while, you might remember the story of the two brothers and the vixen, Maria. The two brothers lived in a village in Hungary named Veszprem. One brother is my great-great grandfather, Anton, and the other was Josef. Josef was getting married, and in those days it was common for the brother of the soon-to-be-groom to bring back the fiancé to the village, so off goes Anton to retrieve the bride for the arranged marriage of his brother Josef. However, player that my great-grandfather was, he and Maria fell in love on the return trip. So, if you fall in love with your brother’s bride and totally betray your family in screwing up an arranged marriage, this leads to a rather awkward situation of explaining. As such, Anton and Maria decided to skip out on that process, and instead boarded a train without tickets. Of course when the ticket collector came by, they had nothing to turn over, and so instead Anton did the obvious thing, he pushed his true love off the moving train and jumped out after her. P.S., when I told this story to my campers up in Philly, the only question they repeatedly asked was “Were they hurt?” So, I don’t know the answer to that. However, if they were, it clearly did not mess up either of their reproductive organs, or I wouldn’t be here. So Maria and her love rolled to a stop (unhurt or in pain, unknown), in France. They had absolutely no money, so they got a job cleaning hotels, all the while saving up their earnings to come to America. Which they did, and this is why I’m here.

            The way we pieced together this whole story is, Anton’s brother Josef had one son very late in life (he was kept for some years as a POW), and that son’s wife gave birth to my cousin Zsolt. He still lives in Veszprem, and he contacted my grandfather here in America, and we compiled this whole little drama-drenched novel of my family.

            So, all this time, we had automatically assumed that my grandmother’s side of the family is purebred Italian (I’m half Italian), and that my grandfather’s side was Hungarian.

            We were wrong. Through Facebook (such a marvelous thing), we were contacted by a guy in Canada. My last name is not common in any country, not even Hungary where it supposedly came from. Even Hungarians would tell us the country of origin of the name wasn’t Hungary.

            This Canadian dude contacts my father (Italian), and sends him a message saying that his father-in-law just died, and his surname was the same as mine. He found hardly any of the name around the globe, but a lot of us in North Carolina. He had done some genealogy research about the family, and this is what he told us:

            200 years ago, my family came from Italy to Hungary to build Zirc Cathedral, and they settled there. Crazy enough, the cathedral is in the village where my cousin Zsolt lives. The fact that my family was church builders is a bit ironic, seeing as I’ve already mentioned in a previous article that I am not religious in the least. In the 1956 revolution, Canada took in 35,000 Hungarians, and the Canadian’s father-in-law was the only with my surname.

            So, as it turns out, my name isn’t actually Hungarian as we had believed all this time, and the way my family came to America (at least on my grandfather’s side), is worthy of a romance novel. Now I feel as if with a name like that, I have quite a lot to live up to. 

Salt Hits Youtube?

Hey guys, so you may remember me introducing you to the beautiful and incredible Hannah Newberry in the post What I'm Listening to. Well, she's back. But this time it's for me to toot both her horn and mine.
To my starry eyed surprise, when the camp I was working at last week in Philly had a snack break, I checked Facebook (as those social site addicts like me tend to do), and found a notification from Hannah. She'd turned a poem that I posted awhile ago into what I think is a brilliant song (and not just because I wrote the lyrics). So, check it out:

Underage

I actually got offered the position as a counselor for an arts and crafts camp in Philly about a year ago. I sew clothes, and a neighbor across the street saw the dress I had sewn for my aunt and fell in love, with both the dress and me. So she told me about this camp that she’s a director for.

The dress. Marvel at my awesome abilities.

So here I am, CIT (Counselor in Training seeing as it’s my first year) at this craft camp. I’m doing the handwork portion, as opposed to machine camp. I’m convinced Satan invented sewing machines. I can’t walk near one without it becoming possessed by an evil fabric-snarling demon. The girls I’m teaching are K-6 grade, and as cliché as it sounds, it takes me back to a different time, when I would be one of them.

So, these are the things I had forgotten about when the world seemed so big but my own sphere was so small.

#1: Cliques. I’m lucky enough to go to Raleigh Charter, and lucky enough to feel like I’m part of a family that just so happens to go to school as opposed to a part of a school that just so happens to not be family. I’m one of about 525 students; so being small tends to make people pretty close, ignoring the fact that this can sometimes be by force as opposed to choice. When these girls convene, though, there’s individual groups of about 2-4 people, and if you’re not in, you’re so far out you don’t even have a prayer. There are two private bubbles of just two girls each, and I swear I’ve never seen them move more than 2 feet apart from each other. There’s twins, sisters, cousins, and they come all included. It’s a package deal. Most of them go to the school I’m working at, too, and so they already know each other. Today one girl didn’t show up at camp. Concerned, we called the receptionist at the front desk to see if she’d heard from the girl’s family. The missing camper was younger, and although she enjoyed the camp a ton (who wouldn’t, I’m working there), she felt as if she hadn’t really connected with anyone or made any friends. So she stayed home. It was a really disappointing realization.

#2: Jealousy. This is the best example I can give: So, when the girls go home, me and my fellow counselors who I shall hereafter refer to as The Twins, and I stay after to take the role of “The Knitting Faerie.” Most of the campers are learning to knit for the first time, and unsurprisingly, they detest it and as such refuse to do more than a few stitches per day. So, today when they came in Skylar* saw that Amanda’s* project had been visited by the Knitting Faerie. She was furious. The entire day Skylar continued to pester The Twins and me about the fact that she hadn’t been visited and how that was totally unfair. Like, literally, if I had a penny for every time I heard something about that loathsome mythical creature, I’d probably have one hundred dollars. Which, incidentally, is twice what I’m making this week. Whatevs. Not like I care. Ha. So then, every time Amanda was showing how far she had gotten, Skylar insisted that she was only that far because the Knitting Faerie had unfairly helped her out. At the end of the day I told The Twins God bless our souls if someone didn’t pick up Skylar’s piece to work on that afternoon.

#3: Love hate relationships. So, back to the clique thing. There’s one duo made up of a group with two girls, Adrienne* and Nayla* who are totally inseparable… at least they are when they aren’t hating each other. They’re seriously the kinds of girls who yesterday wore matching shirts with Adrienne in a “Thing One” green tee, and Nayla sporting the “Thing Two.” That day however, they proceeded to get in fights usually ending in one running away, a counselor chasing that one down and holding her as she sobbed into one of our shoulders. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Once it was over a marker getting taken away by the other. And then the next minute they’re pretending that making pom-poms out of a plastic device is actually a hospital and they’re working in the nursery giving birth to pom poms. Oh, I miss the imagination of small children.

So, seeing as I’ve made it just a little over halfway through my week (yay for Hump Day), I’ll most likely have more delightful stories by the end of my session. Yay for cliffhangers.  

No, I swear, they love being shoved in lockers by yours truly.

*Names have been changed. 

I Journeyed All the Way to Urban Outfitter’s HQ and All I Got Was This Lousy Incredible Experience

Oh, and pictures, too.

Again, writing from Philly, but this time after an extravagant tour of the headquarters of the famous brand empire of UO, Anthropologie, Terrain, and Free People.

So, my aunt pretty much knows everybody who's anybody, and as it turns out, she's friends with the creator of Urban Outfitters. So I met Judy (aforementioned creator), just a few days ago when we were walking down the street. I didn't know at the time that I was meeting a god, until we walked away and my aunt explained. Needless to say, I went bonkers. There was screaming, jumping in the air, and tripping over a flowerbed (ouch). Then, to top off the highlight of my day, I find out that the empire's lair is located here in Philadelphia. WHAT? And we get to go. 

Skip forward to today, and you see me getting ready this morning, which took like an hour and about 20 wardrobe changes. 

We hop in my aunt's Prius and drive to the Naval Yard, which used to actually be an active base, but isn't anymore. 

Boat in back, and glimpse of UO Cafeteria. Side note: Those floating planters spell out URBAN which that plane landing in the back can see from the air. WOAH.

We're waiting to meet up with Sarah, who incidentally is the girlfriend of one of my aunt's employees and also a graphic designer for the company. So, we walk into building 543 (the buildings are numbered in order of the date when they were built, so they make absolutely no sense; 300 could be next to 12). We wait in the lobby while I absolutely drool at the hanging ferns draping from the ceiling and the gym on the second floor that employees use to work out.

Treadmills and machinery from when this was an active naval base building.

So, I'm having fun posing with fun things in the lobby and snapping pictures like some Urban Outfitter's groupie (which, let's be honest, I totally am). 

Me being a nerd

Finally, Sarah walks up. Needless to say, absolutely everyone that works for Urban Outfitters is a female in her mid to upper 20s. Most of them have small dogs, and they're pretty much THE most stylish people you will ever see in your life. Everyone looks like they just stepped out of a catalogue. Sarah's no exception. She has a light denim washed tunic, with white lace thigh leggings, cafe colored leather sandals, and jewelry that's totally to die for. I feel like I just stepped out of Oscar the Grouch's trash can. She's friendly, though, and eager to tell me about the company.

By the way, at this point I feel I should mention I brought my 23 month-old cousin. Yikes. He's obsessed with hoses for whatever reason, and when we walked into this building, 

Kai making a dash for the hose. Yikes!

 there was a hose on the ground, which he promptly picked up and would have sprayed inside the place if I hadn't nearly slow motion tackled him. It was dramatic, and Sarah looked like she might pass out right then and there.

The buildings are old, but with super modern touches, just like the Urban Outfitter's brand. 

Also, it's like being in a spy movie, walking around the buildings. You can't get in unless you have a top secret card to swipe in front of a sensor to unlock the doors. I felt so exclusive.

There's so many dogs strolling around inside, people eating in the cafe, and employees working out, it feels like there's hardly any work done at all. 

Eventually we sit and eat (me feeling even more like a bum in a whole room of uber style gurus), and the food was amazing. I got a Buddha bowl, which was fried tofu with edamame, chives, and brown rice in a teriyaki sauce. 

P.S., this is our goddess of a tour guide, Sarah

An internship offer? Yes, please.

I've concluded I need to make more friends in high places.

The Absolutely True Untold Stories of a Co-op

Hey, SummerSalt here from Philadelphia, PA. I come up to this corner of New England frequently, too frequently in some people’s opinions. It’s automatically assumed when we have a break in the school year that I’m flying up here. So, hello from my aunt’s house with my 23-month-old cousin. Side note: 2 things I wonder about babies. A. Why do people baby proof? It’s extremely obnoxious. Seriously, I struggled with a gate for like 10 minutes the other day before I figured out how it worked. Does this rate my intelligence on the same level as a toddler? B. How long do people go by the age as a month thing? It’s like, okay I’m sixteen and a half now, so should my parents introduce me as 198 months old? Gross. That’s a lot of months. I swear; parents need to start using the whole “year” thing a lot earlier.

Now that I have my little tangent/rant thing out of the way, I’ll explain what this whole article’s actually about. So, in Philadelphia on the street my aunt lives on, there’s a co-op. For those of you who don’t know, a co-op is like a teeny tiny grocery store market thing with all local and/or organic foods. It has a miniscule staff, and patrons can become members, meaning you get a discount. The catch is that to compensate for the discount and meager number of employees, members have to work six hours per year to maintain membership. Why does this involve me, you might ask? Well, because my aunt and uncle joined the program a few years ago and were subsequently kicked out for like… the past 10 years. So, they recently joined again and now I’m the lucky earner of 12 co-op hours for the two of them. So not complaining. They do a ton of work, plus I’m mooching off them for 3 weeks this summer and eating all their food and stuff. Plus, as it turns out, co-ops give plenty of good writing material.

            Shift one: My first shift is a little farther away, in the co-op’s other location. My uncle drives me in his dilapidated VW bus, which you occasionally have to use a Little Miss Sunshine jumpstart on, complete with running alongside open doors down a slight incline and jumping in at the last second. Seriously. I have flower duty, so after some standard disinfecting of buckets and watering outside, I meet Ginger. Ginger’s a pretty impressive specimen. She has absolutely no wrinkles, but you can tell she’s older. She has gingery (no kidding) hair pulled up in the back, and a lank frame. So we talk about the standard root of conversation for kids my age. Where do I want to go to school? She asks if I’m thinking about the northeast. I tell her the winter would be hard. Then Ginger talks about her childhood, going to college in Virginia, and then moving to New York to work. For a flower girl at a co-op, this is pretty interesting news. So (naturally) I ask her what she did. Ginger was a model in New York for about 15 years. She was signed with an agency and did commercials and catalogues, the whole shebang. Like, whoa! Then she met her husband to be. Jokingly I ask if he was a model, too. She laughs and says when he found out her profession he wanted nothing to do with her, and of course Ginger couldn’t resist a challenge. That was my first interesting character of the day.

            Shift two: So my next shift (incidentally on the exact same day), I have to ride my bike to the other location. I’m not from the area, so I’m scared out of my wits to try to figure out my way, even with the written instructions. I make it safe and sound, though, so no worries. This time I work on the floor. Do you have any idea how much work goes on behind stocking shelves? I have to “rotate” foods. Which means you pull all the stuff already on the shelf off, set it on the floor, and put the newer stuff you just unpacked back on that shelf and put the older things in front of the newer unboxed stuff. This is so the oldest ones with more imminent expiration dates are taken first. It’s a pretty lengthy job. Also, I’m not the most muscular person in the world, so unloading boxes of 12 olive oils is a yikes.

            So, intro new interesting character: Erin. She has a light airy voice fit for an adorable child, and a smooth, round face to match. We talk, and she asks how old I am. When I say I’m 16, she tells me about her son who just graduated from high school. I’m stunned. Nosy me, I tell her that she doesn’t look nearly old enough to have an 18-year-old son. She just smiles and tells me she isn’t. She had her son when she was my age. And she doesn’t recommend it. She turns out to be pretty maternal. She takes the boxes that are significantly heavier off the cart to pack away herself and save my weak limbs from strain.

            Shift three: The co-op is a whole microcosm you never get to see. Keith works in the back. When I’m packing cookies (which believe you me, I was more than a little tempted to nibble on), a young butcher comes back and looks at the cart Keith is stacking with bagged espresso grounds. The butcher spazzes with an expletive. “Dude! I didn’t know we had these!” His enthusiasm crashes him into the cart, tossing bags in the air. He apologizes in a half-hearted way, telling Keith he hopes they weren’t in any particular perfectly sorted order. Keith says they were, but he’s jesting, and throws an espresso sack at the butcher’s head. Why do we overlook these people working in grocery stores on a day-to-day basis? They have interesting stories, they brought up a child as a single teen, and they have a world of jokes and laughter that we so rarely witness. There’s so much we take for granted, and we tend to look at, but not really see. So look harder, ask questions. You might be surprised and discover some absolutely true untold stories yourself.

It's a Sign. Part Three.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. In recent escapades, I've found so many delightful signs I simply had to continue the series. So, background: in Part One I had humorous or thought provoking signs from my Christmas vacation in Hong Kong. Part Two was simply various trips I've made. The following addition is from my adventures in Topsail Island with my best friend, Jessie Tomlinson, and Philadelphia, where I'm staying for the next two weeks.

Okay, I lied. I forgot this one from Virginia. Misleading as I didn't know there was a U.S. boundary in the mountains...

Even to a vegetarian, I would prefer my bacon cooked. 

Apparently this restroom is reserved only for women and ninjas poised for action.

We dubbed this sign Franklin the turtle.

Note: Choclate.

Not the greatest thing to see on a nice day out.

So, from my limited knowledge of Latin roots, I know that Sans means without. Without appeal? Umm... branding issue.

I discovered that Franklin the turtle sign has a distant cousin up in Philly.

Note: My name is Summer. So get down and worship me at 9:30 on the dot.

All handbags "are 20%" 20% what? And why is it in quotation marks?

I don't know what would lead to someone spray painting PROB over an entire garage, but I'd like to think it was a response to a spray painted "Will you go to prom with me?" I don't know why Bilbo was dragged into it, though.

Note: This was a sign for a preschool.

Klassy with a capital K.

The honeymoon can be a visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary, as long as they're only there between 10 and 5.

Curses. I forgot to rotate this one, and I'm too lazy to do it now. Sorry to make you go to all the effort of tilting your head.

Business Owner Laid Off

A sign of the times, Oscar Stone, 43, previous business owner of Guild Architecture, has asked himself to leave the firm due to economic pressures.

“It was a really tough decision,” says Stone about his decision to let himself go. “The economy is in the crapper, I tried to keep myself as long as I could, but with taxes and budget cuts, I couldn’t work my way around it.”

Stone was put off by the meager severance pay he received from himself, but appreciates that he was able to grant any at all.

Oscar says he has no hard feelings towards himself, and that he hopes the company is able to pick itself back up without him.