Remember the preacher of that huge Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, W. A. Criswell, about whom Joseph wrote a report last month, and I typed it for him? We learned last week that he had passed away. He was 92.
Did I tell you that another of our favorite ministers, J. Harold Smith, passed away in November? He was 91. He had pastored the second-largest Baptist Church in the United States. He was a guest speaker at a large church in Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 6, 1964, and my parents and I were visitors there that Sunday. It was the day of my fourth birthday, and was the first time I was old enough to go to Sunday School by myself.
I was delighted. Ever since I could remember, we had listened to J. Harold Smith’s radio broadcasts. He always started with the verse, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth...”, Romans 1:16. We often heard the broadcast as we were traveling somewhere in the car, especially if we were in the south, where it was easier to hear.
I can remember sitting forward in the back seat, resting my chin on arms lopped over the middle of the front seat, the better to hear the radio...and thinking with fervor as he quoted that verse, “Neither am I!”
Men such as W. A. Criswell and J. Harold Smith simply cannot be replaced; there is no one ready to step into their shoes; they were extraordinary men of God.
I stayed with Mama Wednesday night during church. I spent the time putting things into my scrapbook--things I’ve been needing to put into it for a year and a half--and reading Mama some of the more interesting cards and letters and articles. I picked up a birthday card given to me by Bobby and Hannah in the year 2000--and found a $20 bill inside.
I snatched it out. “Lookie, lookie!” I exclaimed, waving it wildly in the air. “I’m rich, I’m rich, I’m rich!”
Mama laughed at me.
That evening, she ate almost an entire carton of yogurt, and her whole peanut butter and jelly sandwich (one slice of bread). Later, when I was leaving, I heard her tell the girl who was staying overnight with her that she wanted to finish the yogurt. I was glad she was eating better.
Mama uses her wheelchair most everywhere she goes, although now and then she decides that she really must have some exercise, and then all of a sudden, without saying anything to anyone, she gets up, gets behind the chair, and goes pushing it down the hall and into the kitchen, startling the girls who are supposed to be looking after her something awful. She grins at them mischievously as she goes past.
She doesn’t have much strength, though, and afterwards she is all worn out.
This week I finished sewing ribbons and lace on Lydia’s dress; it’s all done. I think it looks like a short, ruffled dress with a can-can falling out from underneath it. Botheration. Let’s hope Lydia’s real can-can solves the problem; if the bottom ruffle is held out stiffly enough, it will look okay, I think. Perhaps I’ll sew horsehair braid at the hem; that would help. That stuff is scratchy, though, and would doubtless cause Lydia to make faces.
The white suit I once sewed for Dorcas for Easter now fits Hester perfectly, although I think I will add a ruffle and some lace to the bottom of the skirt. I still have a bit of the material left, and plenty of matching lace. So all three girls, Hester, Lydia, and Victoria, now have Easter dresses for the main service, and they are all white.
I also mended several pairs of jeans and a few other things. Are there any brands of jeans that use steel-belted denim, and if so, where may I purchase them, do you know?
Thursday evening, we went to the library. Upon our return home, I read some of Victoria’s books to her. One is mostly pictures--excellently painted pictures--and it’s called ‘Carl Goes Shopping’.
Carl is a Rottweiler, and he is supposed to be babysitting a child in a buggy while the mother buys some curtains. The baby climbs out of the buggy and onto the dog, and they go off to explore the entire store, riding the elevator and pulling all sorts of shenanigans before rushing back to the buggy just in the nick of time before the mother returns. She thinks the baby is still sound asleep and the Rottweiler sitting in exactly the spot in which she left him.
Victoria thought it was a splendid story, particularly since there were no words on anything but the first and last pages (except for signs here and there throughout the department store), so she could tell the story to me rather than the other way around. She did a fine job, too, noticing details that I might very well have missed.
Friday Teddy bought an electronic dart game, having decided he needed one after playing the game with Keith Tuesday evening. He set it up in the garage and then brought Amy and Charles over to play it.
Hannah and Aaron came visiting, too. Aaron sits on the floor and plays happily with the littles. They were still here when Teddy came home from his date. He picked Aaron up and held him up to the chandelier, letting him touch the hanging crystals with his hand, just enough to set them swinging and gently clinking together.
“Doink,” said Teddy, jumping backwards.
He stepped forward and let Aaron touch another crystal. “Doink!” said Teddy, and leaped back again.
Aaron laughed so hard, he could hardly hold his arm up to touch them.
Saturday, Larry worked most of the day on the log splitter, hooking a new pump to the engine. He put a hydraulic filter on it, along with a bigger reservoir for the hydraulic fluid. He split some of the large logs that have been loitering uselessly by the back fence, so we could have a warm, crackling fire for once this winter, if someone would just bring in some wood and light it.
That’ll probably be me; I’m still waiting to find out for sure whether or not that’s in my job description.
Larry also fixed the dishwasher, for which I shall remember him in my will, you mark my word. Fortunately, the motor was not ruined; rather, it was the built-in garbage disposal that had lost a few cogues and blades and teeth. We had to buy a whole new one; they don’t sell cogues and blades and teeth separately. Built-in dishwasher garbage disposals haven’t enough brawn, it seems, to devour salad forks whole, nor yet diary keys, neither.
That done, Larry took Dorcas, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb ice skating. Joseph continued working on his homework. I stayed home with Victoria because she had a stomachache and a fever. I opened Album #37 to hunt for a photo--and spotted a good picture of Malinda, my friend who passed away in November, holding one of her babies. And that’s when I remembered: Another friend of mine wanted me to give her pictures of Malinda and the rest of the family, because she is making scrapbooks for each of the children. So, at five-thirty, I started on Album #1, searching for pictures. I took a short time-out for supper and to curl the little girls’ hair, and then went back to the albums. I finished looking through Album #110, my last one, at 2:30 a.m., having come up with 192 pictures for my friend to copy.
Dorcas has had all sorts of mishaps this week; Wednesday she pulled some thing off the shelf in her closet...but it was caught on another shelf, which tipped and sent a fan tumbling down onto her nose. It looks and feels like it’s broken. (The nose, that is; not the fan. The fan is fine.)
“What shall I do about it?” she queried, “I don’t think they put noses in casts.”
“You go to a plastic surgeon,” I informed her. “Do you have $3,000?”
She looked properly horrified. “Guess it stays crooked, then,” she said ruefully, feeling gingerly of the poor proboscis.
Saturday she fell and hurt her wrist. Next, she sat down good and hard, after which she removed her ice skates.
The family came for dinner Sunday afternoon; we had chicken and dumplings, crackers, applesauce, a platter of carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli with ranch dip, or southwestern dip with jalepeño peppers in it. Mmmmm. We also had fresh strawberries sliced onto angelfood cake with whipped cream on top.
Amy and Teddy went to Amy’s house to get three peanut butter cheesecakes she’d made. They were adorned with nutter butter cookies on top, and were made with chunky peanut butter, which made them scrumptious, if you ask me.
After dinner, Keith, Bobby, and Caleb played a game with the large bag of dominoes I had discovered in the garage last week. Hannah played the piano, Larry sang with her, and Keith and Bobby added tenor and bass while also adding to their domino scores. Esther entertained Aaron until he spotted me meandering around the room video taping everyone, and then he squealed and held out his arms. I picked him up--with a bit of difficulty, I might add; that little boy weighs almost 27 pounds!--only nine pounds less than Victoria. And I have become a wimp in my old age. He pumped his legs vigorously as I lifted him, the better to arrive in my arms quickly, which was not at all helpful and in fact made me feel as though he had rearranged several vertebrae while compressing several others. Baby hugs make those sorts of things worth it, though.
Tonight after church we sent the third pie home with Amy. It was only missing one piece until she told Teddy he could keep some for himself. He cut the equivalent of two pieces, put them back into the refrigerator, and then took Amy home. Soon he was home again, salivating as he came in the door, and making a beeline toward the refrigerator--and then we were all aroused by an ear-splitting yowl: his pie had been eaten.
Yes, Joseph had come upstairs, stomach a-rumble, looked into the refrigerator, and spotted those last two pies of pie. He, not knowing that we had sent the rest home with Amy, thought, ‘Ohmygoodness, I barely got upstairs in time to have another piece of pie before everyone ate the whole thing,’ and then he proceeded to eat the whole thing.
Fortunately, Teddy had just Friday night gobbled down a cinnamon roll that should have been Joseph’s; so, on account of that, he was reluctantly willing to spare his younger brother his life. Larry and I dutifully lectured Joseph on such topics as Finding Out To Whom Belongs Foodstuffs Before Devouring Same and also Not Being Such A Pig As To Eat A Double Helping When Someone Else Might Want Some, Too.
Teddy looked somewhat mollified and quietly plotted revenge.
So ended another week at the Jackson Barracks.
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