Trees and Tinsel

December 23, 2020 / Black Tortoise Press / 2 Comments

Everybody has their traditions, especially around Christmas. We had lots of baking, sewing, decorating, and making construction paper chains; and of course, getting the Christmas tree. I’m not sure where we got our Christmas tree when I was really little, but I sure have a lot of memories of cutting down our own; right out in the field on our farm.

Dad had a good friend from work named Don. I was never allowed to call him Don, ‘cuz that’s disrespectful, and I had to respect my elders. There’s no commandment about elders, just parents. Still, my parents said I had to, so if I didn’t, it was still a sin against honoring mothers and fathers. Anyways, I called Dad’s friend, Mr. B, cuz that’s respectful, the same thing for his wife, too, only she was Mrs. B, of course. Anyways, Mr. and Mrs. B bought some land from Dad and built a house, and became our neighbors. They had a son, Scott, and a daughter, Sandy.

Scott’s dad and mine got a grand idea to have a Christmas tree farm. They hoped to sell Christmas trees someday and make a whole lot of money, then they could say, ‘money grows on trees.’ But that never happened. For one thing, it takes a long time to grow trees, and they sorta lost interest. For another thing, it takes a lot of tending to get good-looking Christmas trees: pruning and training the branches to grow straight, and those two dads were way too busy working overtime for Ma Bell, to be out in the field babying Christmas trees. In the meantime, Scott got asthma from drinking drain cleaner he found under the kitchen sink, and the whole family moved to Arizona where the air was easier to breathe and Mrs. B’s hair stayed as straight as a pin and never got frizzy like it did in the summer when she was our neighbor. Those are stories for a different day. This story is about Christmas trees.

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Sledding, Santa, and Sin

December 16, 2020December 16, 2020 / Black Tortoise Press / 1 Comment

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a little girl, summer lasted an eternity. I thought school would never start again. Once school started, I looked for snow.

Before I went to bed, I knelt in front of Mom and her part-knitted mittens going round and round on four needles for the next kid who poked a thumb through last year’s. Mom was a knitting maniac.

Way away in the spring I was gonna make my first communion, so I practiced the Act of Contrition kneeling down in front of Mom and her knitting. The Act of Contrition is the prayer I had to say after I confessed all my sins and had my soul scrubbed clean for Jesus. It’s a special prayer to say you’re really sorry for all the bad things you did or might be planning to do, and you promise with all your heart to keep away from sinning and not to even think about it. Prayers say things fancy for God. I had to say, “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, for having offended thee,” instead of just “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, God.” I guessed God likes fancy words.

My friend Beth got to pray with her own words. She was Methodist. If I could do that, I’d pray for snow, that’s for sure. Anyways, I had to say fancy words like “I detest all my sins, because of Thy just punishment.” Being Catholic sure was good for the vocabulary. Mom said God knows what everybody needs. No sense in bothering him, if he already knows everything. He’s different from Santa, who only knows Continue reading →

Hot as the Dickens

June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 / Black Tortoise Press / 3 Comments

This week promises to be into the 90s, with growing humidity. Just thinking about it makes me remember hot summer days when I was a little girl and a not so little girl.

I never even heard about air-conditioning when I was a little girl. If anyone told me I would think that was make-believe, or something only rich people had.

We had fans. Fans that we propped up in windows to cool us down at night.

I shared a bedroom with Deanna and Bonita. Deanna wanted the fan to blow out because that would pull all the hot air out of the room. I believed the fan could blow the sound of crickets and frogs over me, along with the smell if lilacs and peonies or fresh cut hay; whatever was out there.

Bonita never said a word because that would mean she had to take sides so she just stayed quiet like she never even thought about it.

Together we compromised. Each day one of us got to choose. Bonita had to keep track so she didn’t get on anyone’s bad side: one time facing in; the next time she got to choose, facing out.

Sometimes avoiding something is way more work than just sticking your neck out and blurting out an opinion. Anyways, I hardly ever stopped myself from blurting stuff out. Mostly because I didn’t think about it until it was too late.

Seems like time slowed down on super-hot days in the summer.

I could just lounge around all day long and read one of my Weekly Reader Book of the Month books. Of course, I couldn’t really do that on account of chores to do, like weed the garden and hang clothes on the line and teach my cow, Ladybird, how to walk like a show cow, stopping her front feet right together and her back feet with one back and one forward, so her udder showed the best way possible. On super-hot days, me and Ladybird took a break from training.

This is Bonita and me getting Ladybird ready for the big 4-H show.

Hanging clothes wasn’t so bad, cuz they started out cool and wet. Sometimes it seemed like they got dry before I even got a load up, but I never took them down until the whole four lines got filled and dried and Mom said I had to, cuz that meant another job: folding clothes.

Deanna liked to get some sort of board game going, like Monopoly. Nancy, from across the road came over, and Tommy next door, and sometimes Diane and Mike from down the road. Lots of kids playing Monopoly meant the game lasted forever and a day. That got super-boring.

Sometimes we played card games like Spoons, I Doubt It, and Oh Hell but we changed the name to “Oh Heck,” so we didn’t have to go to confession. That’s before I learned about wooden swearing and before I knew it was just as bad to say a word that meant the same thing as “Hell,” and maybe even worse cuz you were trying to pull one over on God.

I never told my blood-sister, Connie, about wooden swearing, so she kept on saying “fishy damn” instead of “dam it.” I figured I’d just let sleeping dogs lie on account of one rule I really liked about sinning: You have to know it’s a sin and do it anyway. I figured if Connie never knew about wooden swearing, she could “heck,””fishy dam,” “shoot,” and “fudge” up a storm and God could just tell the devil, “Sorry dude, she didn’t know.”

Mostly, we played outside cuz mothers didn’t like kids in the house. Sometimes we had pogo stick contests or hula hoop contests. Nancy was super good at hula hooping.

If the day was so hot we could hardly move, we waited until nighttime to play outside cuz by then things started to cool off and all those chores took up time during the day. Night’s when we played Piggy in My Pen. Another game that can last forever. Or at least until bedtime.

Piggy in My Pen is sorta like Hide and Go Seek, except instead of saying “1-2-3 on Bonita,” you say, “Bonita’s in my pen.” After that, Bonita had to stay in my pen, which was the boxelder tree, until she got a signal from another Piggy. The game didn’t end until all the pigs got caught. Which most nights was never.

That’s me with our dog, Bingo. Bonita’s got one of our cats. It looks like Deanna just got all our tennis shoes off the line.

The day is already on its way to being a scortcher. The air-conditioning is on. I have chores to do. The first thing I need to do is finish the edging around the flower beds and along the curb. After that, I’ll be inside reading and working on my next novel, working title May His Tribe Increase.

What will you be doing in this heat?

Locked Doors

December 6, 2019June 16, 2020 / Black Tortoise Press / 1 Comment

“Why do you always start the car and lock the doors before you open the garage door?” Loved-One asks me.

“It’s because of what happened to Mrs. Bowman.”

When I was a little girl, the Bowmans bought an acre of land from Dad and built a little house there. Mr. Bowman worked at Ma Bell with Dad. Mrs. Bowman worked at Ma Bell, too, but not the way the men did.

Dad and Mr. Bowman wore Carhartts to work in the winter and drove trucks and climbed poles to fix the lines. Sometimes they crawled under houses and down coal chutes.

Mrs. Bowman wore church dresses to work and earrings and kitten heels. I might have thought she was going to church, ‘cept no pretty hat. You always wore a pretty hat to church.

I guessed Mrs. Bowman didn’t have any kids when she first lived next door to us, cuz I never knew a mom that worked. Well, Mom worked, but not after she had two kids. I heard her tell Mrs. Bowman that she tried to work when Deanna was a baby, but it was too hard.

“At work I had a calendar with a schedule, and I had things I had to do, and they got done,” I heard her tell Mrs. Bowman. “At home, every day was a new day. No matter how hard I try to keep things on a plan…”. Her voice got sort of lonesome. “Well, it’s just too frustrating to try to control the chaos that comes with children.”

Mrs. Bowman nodded and sipped her coffee and looked at the floor. Maybe she tried to keep her mind and eyes off all the chaos.

I heard Mom and Dad talking about something that happened to Mrs. Bowman on her way to work. She opened the garage door and was heading for the car when somebody grabbed her. She managed to push him off by stabbing him with her keys. She jumped in her car super fast and locked all the doors. I guess it was lucky she had long arms and didn’t drive a van like we did. Mrs. Bowman was so scared she just drove off and left the garage door wide open.

“Can you imagine that happening way out here where everyone knows each other?” Mom said.

“Just goes to show, you never can tell.”

“I’m going to put another sign on the door that says, ‘There’s six kids in here and they all have the chicken pox,” Mom said. “That’ll keep any sane person away.”

Later on, Mrs. Bowman had three kids: Scott, Sandy, and Mark. Scott was just the same age as Loren Dee-Dee-Bopper, so come to think of it, he must’ve been a born when the Bowmans moved next door. Scott decided to drink some Draino and got asthma from it. Mom said he was lucky to be alive and why would a kid drink something so horrid. By the time Mark came along, Mrs. Bowman decided to stay home with all the chaos and stop working. Bonita and I were old enough to babysit whenever Mr. and Mrs. Bowman went out to the show or to the beer garden.

I liked to read Mr. Bowmans science fiction magazines after the kids went to bed. I stories gave me the heebie-jeebies, and sometimes I dreamed about pear-shaped men hanging from dead trees, like in one of the stories I read.

Bonita and Adela

Once Bonita got a phone call when she was babysitting.

“Do you want a truck?” the caller said.

“You’ll have to call back later,” Bonita said.

“I said, do you want a truck?”

“I’m just the babysitter. You’ll have to call back later.”

“I wanna know if you want a truck.” Bonita told me the guy was getting sorta mad.

“I can’t answer you. Call back later.”

That’s when Bonita realized the frustrated man was not saying truck, but something that rhymed with truck. She told me she could feel all the blood drain out of her face and she hung up with a bang.

I heard Mrs. Bowman tell Mom that I was so good with her kids because I liked to play with them. Mom said I was still a kid myself, that’s why. I remember thinking that I was never going to forget what it was like to be a kid and playing with kids is the most fun ever. How could anyone forget what it was like to be one?

After a while the Bowmans moved to Arizona on account of Scott’s asthma. Mrs. Bowman said the dry air was super good for her curly hair, too. She never had the frizzies like she did in Michigan.

It’s funny how one little question Loved-one asked brought back so many memories. Bonita and I still laugh how she frustrated an obscene caller. I never forgot what it’s like to be a kid. (Well, maybe the tough part has faded a bit.) Loren still keeps in touch with his childhood friend, Scott.

All the tripping down memory lane got me thinking about how the things one person says and does can have impact for a long time. I’m sure Mrs. Bowman has no idea how much I remember her or how much her words and actions stuck with me. And I’ll bet Mr. Bownman never realized that he turned one little girl into a science fiction fan.

I’ll bet neither Mom nor Mrs. Bowman would ever guess that one overheard conversation would make a little girl make a promise to herself to never forget what it’s like to be a child.

Who has an impact on you like the Bowman’s did on me? Do you ever think about looking them up and saying thank you?

Egghead, geek, freak, or Coo-ool class Reunion

October 14, 2019October 14, 2019 / Black Tortoise Press / Leave a comment

When I was in high school, I thought I was a grown up, or at least a big girl. This summer, I had a chance to get together with a bunch of my classmates for a reunion. Looking back to my senior year, I realize now that I was still just a little girl. Perhaps a bit of a misfit, perhaps a little girl who spoke out when she should have kept quiet, and perhaps someone who liked a whole lot of people, ‘cuz, hey why not?

This is the way my high school looked like, only with more circles:

I always did like Math, even though my first high school teacher, who got awards for being a good teacher, looked me straight in the eye and said in front of the whole class, “Some of you don’t belong here.” Right then and there, I was out to prove him wrong. Cary was in my math class.

A circle for my band geek friends, a circle for my cool friends, a circle for my egg-head friends. In the middle, d-x, was me and my boyfriend. We had a secret, we were in love, and mostly everything faded out of view except that. Only it really didn’t, cuz, you know, those other circles were still there.

Cary was in my egg-head friends circles. He was quiet and studious and super-duper nice. Of course none of those things are particularly cool. Just ordinary. Cary was in the science club, on the prom committee, in National Honor Society, and the manager of the basketball team. I was a cheerleader for the basketball team, on the banquet committee, in National Honor Society, and Band. Cary and I were in a lot of classes together: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Math. Mathematically speaking, we were x in the intersection diagram. If I was a smart as I thought I was, I’d have realized that x was quite a bit bigger than d-x.

I loved those classes. So did Cary.

I had Boyfriend, so I didn’t know Cary all that well. Boyfriend was not studious. He was an athlete, football player, a track star, a baseball player, a basketball play, and even a wrestler. He was Coo-ool. He had a picture in the year book from shop class with the caption, “A dirty old rag, for a dirty old man.” That was Hilarious. Only a cool kid could pull that one off. Boyfriend didn’t talk to eggheads like Cary and me. Boyfriend loved me, he didn’t actually talk to me. But you know, big hairy deal, not everyone needs to talk.

Here’s me and Cary, back when we thought we were so grown up. (It would be funny if the picture actually had me and Cary magnified. I did that.)

Well to be honest, I didn’t even like Boyfriend that much at first, but he picked me and everybody thought he was coo-ool and I’d be a fool not to like him back. I told him if he grew his crewcut out and got on the honor roll, I’d consider him. He tried really hard, but only succeeded in getting longer hair.

Then the first dance came, and Boyfriend cut-in on someone I had more in common and liked quite a bit. Someone who could play “Yellow Bird” on the piano. That’s when I fell in love. Maybe it was Boyfriend’s English Leather, maybe it was because Boyfriend’s mother made him take dance lessons at Arthur Murray School of Dance. From then on, it didn’t matter that we had next to nothing in common, we had a secret, we were in love.

Boyfriend wasn’t at the reunion. No one even asked me about him.

Cary was the star of the reunion

Everyone remembered and knew Cary. We had such a good time catching up on what we were like in high school and what we’d done since. Cary was so delighted that people remembered him. Of course we remembered him. Cary was smart and kind. Those are things that last way longer than cool.

Here’s a photo of Cary now.

Loved-One loved Cary, too. The two of them had quite a discussion about the world, the country, and the state of the environment. I stayed for part of that, and then flitted off to get my Year Book signed. Something I didn’t do when I was busy being such a grown up little girl back when I was in high school.

Here’s the bunch of us at the reunion. To tell the truth, I can’t tell who is cool and who is a band geek and who is an egghead. But I can tell you this, I wish I had more time to catch up with everyone. I love these people.