It’s amazing how much can change in a week’s time. After selling the shop last summer, Larry looked for a place to rent, as a temporary measure before perhaps buying a place in a better location. But no plans were set in concrete, for he was not sure just what route he should take--other than the routes to Indiana and Colorado, that is. ha
The trailer hauling paid well, but was not really something he wanted to keep doing, because it kept him away from home too much. Also, it was hard on his pickup, and if he kept hauling, he could either expect the poor thing to require a good deal of repairs, or he would need to buy a bigger truck.
But buying land or vehicle was out of the question until we sold a vehicle or two--and the vehicles weren’t selling. So we were glad to find the larger shop for rent, just south of town. Larry and the boys spent many hours loading things and hauling them out to the ‘new’ shop. He was about three-quarters of the way done, when plans changed.
My nephew, David Walker, offered Larry a business proposal that Larry took him up on: he bought all of Larry’s inventory--vehicles, tools, and all. And he offered Larry a job working for him. Our friend Merlin Gehring, who owns Gehring Construction, also offered Larry a job. Larry worked for Gehrings when we were married, but he had to quit, because the cement dust was getting into his lungs, and since he’d just recovered from pneumonia, his lungs couldn’t cope with it. But nowadays, Gehrings have big, new buildings and new equipment, and there is practically no cement dust that escapes from anywhere--unless Larry’s Uncle Clyde overflows his hoppers.
Larry decided to work for David. As you may remember, Keith and Bobby both work for him. He will probably start working on Tuesday.
Last Monday, after Larry finally got home, about midnight, I went with him out to the ‘new’ shop with another trailer load of stuff from the old shop. He drove carefully, because he had all sorts of valuable things on that trailer, including his big Snap-On toolbox (it’s five feet tall, four feet wide, four feet in depth), in which are many thousands of dollars worth of tools. Not something one would want to upend in the middle of Highway 81.
It was a cold night, and ice and frost made the cornfields and ditches twinkle in the moonlight. We saw several falling stars. Would they be from the tail end of the Leonid Meteor Shower, I wonder?
Hannah came Tuesday afternoon, and I finished her dress for her--cuffs, zipper, overlocking--because her machine won’t zigzag. Something she said reminded me of an article she had once given her teacher, Penny… I looked it up…and decided to put it into my letter so you could enjoy it, too:
The History of the World
Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birthmark. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They traveled by Camelot. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. David was a Hebrew king who fought the Philatelists. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
The Greeks invented three kinds of columns -- Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. The mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Styx until he became intolerable. In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who died form an overdose of wedlock.
Eventually, the Ramones conquered the Greeks. Nero was a cruel tyrant who tortured his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
In the Middle Ages, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was canonized by George Bernard Shaw. The Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. William Tell shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.
In the Renaissance, Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh invented cigarettes, and Sir Frances Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
Queen Elizabeth's navy defeated the Spanish Armadillo. William Shakespeare wrote about Romeo and Juliet, a romantic couplet. Miguel Cervantes wrote "Donkey Hote." John Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife died and he wrote "Paradise Regained."
Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was that the English put tacks in their tea. Benjamin Franklin invented electricity by rubbing cats backward. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Abraham Lincoln's mother died in infancy. In 1865, Lincoln got shot by an actor in a moving picture. His name was John Wilkes Booth. This ruined Booth's career.
Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.
Bach and Handel were famous composers. Handel was half-German, half-Italian, and half-English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven was so deaf that he wrote loud music. He expired in 1827 and later died from this.
Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.
And that's the end of that, folks.
Larry left Wednesday night to go to Indiana for a load of cargo trailers. There were only two this time--or so he’d been told--and they were big ones, especially made for hauling several snowmobiles at a time. He called home at 1:30 p.m. Thursday; he was still 250 miles west of Elkhart--and Elkhart is an hour ahead of us--so there was no chance of him getting to Wells Cargo Trailer Manufacturing Company before they closed. But they’d told him they would set the trailers outside the fence for him; he hoped they would not forget. He prefers to get there before the place closes, so they can use their big forklift to put the cargo trailers on his slant trailer. If not, he has to use his winch, and it takes quite a bit longer to put the trailers on.
Before loading, Larry has a habit of opening the doors of the cargo trailers to check such things as vents, and to see that the order number, usually affixed to the inside of the door, matches the identification number he’s been given. Evidently, the people in Denver (Commerce City, actually) who’d ordered the trailers didn’t anticipate the driver doing this, because they’d tried to pull a fast one: they’d had Wells Cargo insert two smaller trailers inside each large trailer. They were planning to have Larry haul six trailers for them, while only paying him for two!
This made them so heavy, they nearly burned up Larry’s winch when he pulled them onto his trailer. And of course it took more fuel, and was harder on his pickup and trailer. Soooo…he informed the people at Dunlap Trailers in Commerce City that he had upped the price from $1.30 per loaded mile to $1.75 per loaded mile. They paid without complaint--after all!, it would’ve cost them a lot more, if the trailers would’ve been brought in two loads, rather than one.
Larry got home from Elkhart at 2:00 p.m. Friday. He would not have made it to Denver by 5:00 p.m., the deadline for picking up a couple of cars he was hoping to bring back; so he came home to sleep before he continued on to Colorado, rather than driving on through on Interstate 80, as he had planned. He was tired, having spent many days and nights moving things, and then driving for hours on end. He slept from 4:30 till 12:30 a.m.--the most sleep he’d gotten in a long time--and then Victoria awoke him to tell him goodnight.
He tucked her into bed, and was soon ready to go to Colorado.
In my quest to add my Web Site address to every place I can without having to pay for it, I accidentally made myself a RingMaster, whatever that is. Others may add their Web sites to my Web ring, if I approve. Help! I don’t know what I’m doing! Good grief, I don’t even know who I am.
Pablo, of course, thinks it’s funny, and now calls me Mrs. RingMaster.
Friday afternoon, while Larry slept, David and some of his crew, having had a short day, cleared some of the things out of Larry’s ‘new’ shop. Saturday, they went at it again, getting the old shop completely clean, and even washing everything down with the power washer. The new owner was delighted.
“Look, look!” he exclaimed happily, pointing about the shop. “You can see the floor!”
Oh! Have you heard the newest developments? In an emergency session of Congress just completed, an official change in the name of one of the fifty United States will take place. As of noon today, December 2, 2000, the state formerly known as Florida will officially be renamed Floriduh.
And further:
Dimpled chad. Hanging chad. Swinging chad. Saint chad!
Centuries before the spotlight turned to bits of paper punched on this year's election cards, creating debris known as chads, the Catholic Church consecrated St. Chad, apparently without a recount.
Chad was involved in a dispute over his appointment as Bishop of York in 665 AD. Four years later, a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, realized that two of the three bishops who consecrated Chad belonged to a Celtic church.
The English church didn't recognize the Celtic church at the time, and Chad gave up his see to the bishop who previously held the post.
“If you know I have not duly received episcopal ordination, I willingly resign the office, for I never thought myself worthy of it,” Chad wrote to Theodore after the announcement, according to biographies.
Archbishop Theodore was so impressed that he created a new diocese for Chad among the Mercians in Lichfield, England.
It certainly benefited St. Chad when he humbly stepped aside. Hmmm…
Joseph Harbaugh, the law dean at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, who has researched Chad's episcopacy, recommends that we learn a lesson from this: prayers for patience are needed, and those who are frustrated with the pace of resolving the presidential dispute may offer a prayer to St. Chad.
I hope none of you to whom I write think anything like that would help; or, if you do, I certainly hope you are not still praying on Chad’s feast day: March 2nd.
Friday evening, Dorcas put together a couple of cute felt books for Danica, my niece Susan’s little girl, whose first birthday is tomorrow. Just the fact that Danica is here at all is a miracle, there were so many problems before she was born. It is hard to believe she’s already a year old! She’s absolutely a beautiful child, and as bright as can be. There have been many ups and downs for her throughout the year, healthwise; but I think she is going to be okay, and we are ever so thankful.
Friday night, we thoroughly practiced all the songs in the Christmas Program. The children have improved since last week…perhaps there’s hope for this program, yet! Next week I will have the children recite their poems. The second-graders will be holding ‘symbols’ such as a sceptre, and crown, a baby, the manger, an angel, a star, and so forth. One little girl is going to hold a lamb. Now, somewhere in this house of mine is the lamb we want…it looks exactly like a baby lamb, long gangly legs and all. But do you think I can find that thing when I want it??! I saw it, just a couple of weeks ago…but where???
So, as a replacement, I took a little stuffed dog (or is it a young donkey?) with a large fluffy thatch atop his noggin whose ears flap when you squeeze him. Kristin, the girl who needs the lamb, is a little bit timid--but she flung her head right back and guffawed when she saw that goofy-looking creature with his ears flapping up and down, clack-clack-clackity-clack! (No, we won’t really use that thing for the Christmas Program.)
Larry left for Denver at 2:00 a.m. Saturday. After unloading the trailers, he went to pick up a car. It was a ’63 Chrysler Imperial, one of those big old boats from the Dinosaur Age, and it did not run. Now, the man knew he was coming…and he further knew what Larry would be driving. So there was really no good reason that he had that tugboat in a back alley that Larry could not possibly fit his rig into.
Well, thought Larry, at least the alley is a downhill slope to the street…
His optimism was short-lived, for he soon discovered that the behemoth had a flat front tire, making it nearly impossible to push. Furthermore, there were intermittent mounds of dirt in the alley, effecting creating several nice speed bumps that periodically brought progress to a grinding halt.
But he and the other man toiled on, and eventually they got that ocean cruiser close enough to the trailer that Larry could use his lucky-to-still-be-working winch on it. (Look, I’ve spelt winch right every single time!) (so far)
(I accidentally spelled it “wench” in a previous letter, and our grammar teacher at our church school had many bright comments to make about it. (“How big is that girl, that she can tow that big pickup right up onto that trailer?! hahaha!”)
Anyway, Larry charged the people more than he’d intended to for hauling that car, too; so the trip wound up being more profitable than he’d thought it would be.
Tomorrow he has a few business details to see to, and then he’s done! All through, finished. He will be working for Walker Construction. Teddy will work for David, too; and Joseph will work on Saturdays (full time in the summer).
Think of this: I will have no more bookwork to do! (The bookkeeper dashes to the other end of her doghouse roof and swings her feet jubilantly.)
(swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet swing feet)
This morning after breakfast, as I was curling Victoria’s hair, she told me ever so quietly, “Daddy spilled some milk when he poured it into my bowl.”
“Did he?” I said.
“Yes,” she affirmed, and continuing, “And he spilled some wheat puffs, too.”
“He did?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “But Caleb spilled waaaaaaaay more.”
Speaking of spillures (what? Microsoft Word doesn’t know that’s a word??? How ignorant of it), one evening Hester was pouring herself a glass of water. I heard a slight commotion, Hester said, “Uh, oh,” and then Teddy started laughing. I walked into the kitchen in time to see Hester laugh and then make a face at her brother.
“What’s funny?” I queried.
“You can always tell,” laughed Teddy, “when Joseph or Hester are pouring themselves something to drink: glug glug glug SPLOOSH ‘uh-oh’. glug glug glug SPLOOSH ‘uh-oh’. glug glug glug SPLOOSH ‘uh-oh’. And, ‘Could somebody hand me a towel?’” He laughed the more.
“Oh, quit it,” said Hester. “Could somebody hand me a towel?”
hahahaha
I’ve got funny kids.
Messy, but funny.
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