Can you keep a secret? Well, can you??
Hmmm...I don’t know. I’ll have to see what I think by the end of this letter, whether or not I will tell you...
Perhaps I’ve told you, Keith has been working with Teddy at Precision Auto, ever since he hurt his knee the day David was killed, when he fell from a ladder. He’d climbed up to a loft in David’s shop to get a big piece of plywood that they were planning to use to cover the big hole in the side of David and Christine’s house, and when he was coming back down, he mistakenly thought he was at the bottom of the ladder when he was not. He fell, landing on his knee, with the plywood on top of him. Well, he thought that working for Tom would give his knee a rest and let it heal, but scrambling around under and over vehicles on cement floors hasn’t been so easy on it, either.
Dorcas works for the Daycare now and then in the mornings; they are short of workers, as usual. Many of the children remembered her, and were delighted to see her returning.
Monday afternoon, the littles picked oodles and gobs of mulberries, and then we had a whole flock of purple kids. I tell you, they were purple from head to toe. They had purple tongues and teeth, too; what does that tell you?
I made mulberry cobbler for supper that night. It takes a lot more lemon juice, a little more brown sugar, and a dab of salt to make it taste as good as peach cobbler, which is the recipe I use, from an old Farmer’s Almanac Cookbook.
We took some of it to share with one of Larry’s cousins (first cousin thrice removed, to be technical), whose name is Gordon. He moved here not long ago, and we’d tried a few times to get in touch with him, but never managed to do so. Well, Larry’s cousin Rhonda, who is Gordon’s aunt, gave us his address. Sooo...everyone washed faces, combed hair, and brushed teeth; and then we went to find that address.
He lives in a basement apartment of a big, nice, old house not very far away at all. Larry took the cobbler to the door, and talked with this cousin whom he’d never met for a few minutes. We didn’t go in, since Gordon had only recently gotten off work and was not prepared for company--and Larry never told him we’d come along, leading Joseph to say that we’d gotten ourselves all ‘spoofed’ up for nothin’. (He meant to say, ‘spiffed’ up.)
Larry liked that cousin of his; perhaps we’ll see him again soon.
When we got back home, I made mulberry/strawberry pie for supper the next day. Hannah came while I was making it, hoping to cut out a dress on our kitchen table, which is bigger than hers. Bobby’s brother Matthew and one of Larry’s cousins, Regina, were getting married Sunday, and that’s what the new dress was for. So...the table had to be cleaned off, which was one major chore.
I went on making pie. I wanted to give a pie to my brother and sister-in-law, Loren and Janice, the next day, so I put a pie crust into an oval dish that is just the right size for a pie for two. I poured the mulberry filling in--forgetting both the almonds and the strawberries. By the time I remembered, I’d already put a streusel topping on. Botheration.
I left it as it was and drizzled corn syrup over the topping, then baked it slowly under the broiler. But then it occurred to me that that wouldn’t work for Loren and Janice, because Janice had all her teeth pulled Friday, and false teeth put in. She spent a bad two or three days after that.
Anyway, the big pan was clear full of filling (and I had managed to remember to put the almonds into it)...but I still needed to put the strawberries into it. Sooo ...I made another pie shell in another little oval dish, and left off the streusel topping. I would put whipped topping on it, instead.
There was plenty of filling for the second dish after putting the strawberries in; in fact, I think I could’ve had one more medium-sized pie, if I’d wanted. But...we like nice thick pies.
I finished the pies and put them into the refrigerator to set up some time around 2:00 a.m. Hannah was still cutting out material, so I kept her company nearby writing names into old photo albums. It’s easy to forget who is which and which is who, especially if you have friends who have a whole volley of kids with identical hair color, eye shape, schnozz, and length of wattle and dewlap. Amazing how, in the short space of five years, Higgenbotham the Eighth looks exactly like Higgenbotham the Third did, back then. Ever notice that phenomenon?
The next day, we were just getting ready to go out the door with Loren and Janice’s pie when Hannah and Aaron came. Since Hannah had with her Aaron’s new one-year pictures that she planned to give to Loren and Janice, she came with us. We stopped on the way to get whipped cream to go on the pies. I gave Bobby and Hannah the one with the streusel topping.
Gehrings are constructing a road in front of Loren and Janice’s house, then around the west side and on up the hill to the north--at Loren’s expense, ordered by the city--because they sold lots from their property, and are therefore considered ‘developers’. He didn’t know he would have to put in a road until a man who’d bought one of the lots couldn’t get a permit to build until the road was done. The man himself had agreed that a nice, white gravel lane, such as the one Loren has, would be fine--but the city did not concur. It will cost Loren and Janice a pretty penny, will that road.
After taking Hannah and Aaron home, we went to Norfolk, hoping to go to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill to get a red blouse for me to wear to the Fourth of July picnic. Hannah had given me a pretty red plaid skirt with little hearts here and there and a triple pleat in the back, and that’s what I needed the blouse to go with.
Hannah told us the directions to the Goodwill. Following these, I drove straight to the Salvation Army. Hmmmmm.
The Salvation Army was closed, but there were people in the parking lot selling foodstuffs, so we climbed out to take a look. I bought two small buffalo roasts and four buffalo jerky tube sticks from a man who owns Circle P Ranch near Dixon, Nebraska, where he raises buffalo.
I purchased sugar cookies from a lady who was also selling rhubarb pie and jellies, and I got a handful of baby onions from another lady selling rhubarb/mulberry pies and wild jellies: elderberry, wild plum, rhubarb-strawberry, and chokecherry.
We decided to go see the Wild Duck State Wildlife Preserve southeast of Norfolk, so off we headed--in the right direction, although not necessarily on the right road.
Upon arriving in Stanton, we knew we’d gone too far. I turned west, and then south onto a country road--and discovered ourselves on a beautiful, hilly drive all the way to Route 91. I tell you, those were some hills! The littles kept laughing, because the abrupt ups and downs tickled their stomachs. Joseph managed to video a pheasant flying up in front of us and then soaring into a nearby field, and in the pastures calves romped and frolicked.
When we got home, we found that Dorcas had bought Teddy and Larry tacos. Larry had been home since 6:00; he would have liked to come with us. Rats. I would have liked him to!
I fixed a quick supper, and then we took the six-wheeler and the three-wheeler out by the Loup Trestle and drove them around for a while. Even I went for a ride in the six-wheeler with Larry driving, and Hester, Caleb, and Victoria with us. I am now a good candidate for eardrum transplants. I tell you, that Thing is loud.
Joseph was riding the three-wheeler, and, although its motor isn’t as loud as the six-wheeler’s, he was making his fair share of noise, because he kept honking the silly horn--a big silver thing with a large black squeeze-bulb, sort of like one of those squeeze-horns on a little kid’s tricycle, only a hundred times louder.
Several trains went over the trestle while we were there. It’s quite a racket, to stand underneath while a train rumbles overhead. Victoria, while not wanting to miss the excitement, nevertheless slid a small hand into mine as we stood there.
Larry went down the steep hill near the river and then turned toward the trestle. In order to turn, the Thing has to be skidded, partly because that’s the nature of the beast, and partly because a belt is slipping on account of Larry oiling everything up so good and proper. We got out to walk down by the river--and Victoria stepped on the whatchama-gidget, which is connected to the dohickeydad, and when we got back, the Thing wouldn’t start.
Meanwhile, Joseph went on ripping 'round the spinney on the three-wheeler. “TooDLE, tooDLE, tooDLE!!” it remarked blithely every time it passed.
Larry adjusted the jiggerdytraption (in the dark, now) (well, there was the light from the lightning bugs) and cranked the starter. He readjusted it and cranked some more. Readjust. Crank. Readjust. Crank. Readjust. Crank...crrrrank...crrrrrrr---
The battery ran down.
Joseph came tearing around the spinney for the 1,034,062nd time. “TooDLE, tooDLE, tooDLE!!”
Larry drove the Wagoneer (did I once tell you it was a Cherokee?--if so, I fibbed) down there, loaded the six-wheeler onto the trailer with help from his winch, and came back up the hill. Halfway up, the winch suddenly released and unloaded the six- wheeler, whuddle whuddle whuddle PLOP, onto the ground, where it rolled gaily all the way to the bottom.
“TooDLE, tooDLE, tooDLE!!” said Joseph happily as he tore past somewhere on the paths above his father.
Larry stopped, backed up, put on the emergency brakes, climbed out, and reloaded the six-wheeler. He set the winch, making sure it wouldn’t slip again, and then drove up onto the hill.
“TooDLE, tooDLE, tooDLE!!” whooped Joseph, flying madly at us, dragging both feet, and leaving a rolling cloud of dust. (The three-wheeler doesn’t have brakes.)
We shifted nervously from left foot to right, then from right foot to left, wondering if we should flee for our lives, until we ascertained that we were not going to get run down, after all. Larry loaded the three-wheeler, and we went home.
When we got home, Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron were here. Larry gave them some mulberry/strawberry pie. They were watching Victoria’s ‘Kids’ Video’, and Aaron was much enjoying it. We plopped down and enjoyed it with him.
After they left, Teddy wandered in, got himself some pie, sat down in the big chair in the living room, and began to eat it.
“Mmmmm,” he said through a full, purple mouth, “This is even better than the pie I had at noon.”
Now, that brought me out of my doldrums. My hair rose high in the air, and I leaped up rapidly in order to stay with it.
“What???!!!” I screeched, making Teddy jump out of his hide. “What pie did you eat at noon???!!!”
He had to have helped himself to one of the pies in the small white oval dishes, one that I had already given to either Loren and Janice or Bobby and Hannah.
Teddy stuttered, looking wide-eyed and a bit shell-shocked. “Um, well, er, it was just a, well, uh, er, a pie.”
I hovered over him menacingly. He shrank back. “Which pie, and how much did you eat???”
“I don’t know,” he answered, glancing to the side for a possible escape route, “It was a, um, uh, mulberry pie.”
“But which pie?!” I howled, exasperated.
Then I gathered my wits about me and explained myself. “I made two extra pies, one for Uncle Loren and Aunt Janice, the other for Bobby and Hannah. Uncle Loren and Aunt Janice’s did not have the streusel topping, because Aunt Janice just had her teeth pulled and wouldn’t be able to eat that. Now, did you or did you not eat a pie that had streusel topping?”
He didn’t know.
I tried another tack. “Did it have strawberries in it? Bobby and Hannah’s didn’t.”
He didn’t know.
I sighed deeply and went to the phone to call Bobby and Hannah, so I would know if I needed to make Loren and Janice another pie or apologize to Bobby and Hannah and be glad we’d given them each a piece tonight.
Bobby answered the phone, acting a bit puzzled over my questions. Was I checking to see if he’d been overeating? Taking more than his fair share? Not leaving any for Hannah? Then he figured it out.
“Oh, that’s why Hannah asked me if I’d already eaten some, when I hadn’t had any at all yet!” he remarked.
I was relieved. Bad enough that Teddy had eaten theirs; worse if he had’ve consumed part of Loren and Janice’s.
Wednesday, I took the pop-up trailer canvas, which had been torn by the hail, to the Village Cobbler, asking for it to be done by Friday, which would be unlikely, for him, unless I stressed that it was some kind of a dire emergency.
I did.
It’s not that he’s lazy; it’s just that he’s swamped with work, because he is one of only two cobblers in this entire town. He told me to call Friday morning to remind him, and he would have it done by 1:00 p.m.
That afternoon, I cut out Lydia’s birthday dress--the material is from Bobby and Hannah--and started sewing it. Hannah would have liked to sew it herself, but she was trying to finish the dress she wanted to wear to the wedding Sunday night.
Then all of a sudden it was time to get ready for church, and if we didn’t hurry, we’d be late. Everyone donned their glad rags while Caleb helpfully put three chicken casseroles into the oven. (Thank goodness I have a convection oven.) Then the ladies combed their hair and shellacked it, the gentlemen tied their little nooses around their necks, and we were ready to go.
Robert asked us to pray for Larry’s cousin, Arthur, who has cancer. He’s had it for several years now, and is getting worse fast now. He and his wife Pat were at an Omaha hospital that night; they were planning for surgery the next day. Doctors hoped to make it easier for him to breathe. They thought cancer tumors had wrapped around his esophagus tube, because he can hardly breathe, let alone talk. He tried talking to Robert on the phone, but Pat had to take the phone from him and talk until he could get his breath again. His voice, that he once used to sing so beautifully, is raspy now, hardly audible. It’s so sad. He’s only 47 years old.
That night, as I sewed, I listened to the story ‘Lad, A Dog’, on tape. I’ve never read the book, but we have watched the film a few times. It’s entirely different from the film, as most books are. The book is better. It’s a true story; why did the filmmakers think they should fictionalize it so?
Larry came home at 5:30 p.m. Thursday so that he could go to Dr. Crabtree, a chiropractor he likes. (Yes, that really is his name. The other chiropractor in town is named ‘Dr. Jerka’. hee hee)
Larry’s elbow has been bothering him worse and worse. This is the elbow he hurt some years back, when he was using a heavy hand jack, lifting a truck--and all of a sudden the jack handle, a big, thick thing, broke right in half. Larry’s elbow came crashing down onto something hard, and he’s had troubles with it ever since, especially since the poor thing has a penchant for getting itself in the way any time there is something convenient for it to bonk into good and proper. Larry rarely complains, and is of the inclination to do nothing about it till he can hardly run the shifter in the boom truck or trowel off the top of a wall.
Dr. Crabtree, who is about the same age as we are, told Larry that in February he had fallen from his horse and broken his neck. Fortunately, it was not too bad a break, and he has recovered.
After Larry came home, we went to Fremont to get a pickup Larry has been wanting to buy. It’s rather a dog; it even dogtracks. It’s rusty, smokes (diesel)...but Caleb and Victoria say it’s altogether ‘fun!’. The thing is, you see, it is worth more, and gets better gas mileage, than the Wagoneer.
I dropped Larry off at J&S Car Sales and went to the Goodwill, where I found the red blouse I needed, plus a few white and beige tops for the girls, a denim vest with black velvet collar for Hester, and a short white blouse with flowers embroidered all the way around the hem for Lydia’s birthday. The littles found a Li’l Tykes waffle-block bin in pastel colors, full of waffle-blocks, for $2.99. You can be sure we snapped that up in a hurry.
At 9:00, Larry came back to get us, and we went to Fremont Lakes, where we trotted out onto the fishing dock and fished for a few minutes (‘we’ not including ‘me’; I took the opportunity to go exploring).
Home again, I began sewing a quilt from the long, skinny triangles of material I cut off the girls’ Fourth of July dresses, making a fan shape that I will applique onto another piece of fabric. It is dark rust and navy blue; I think I will have an ecru background.
At 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, I called the Village Cobbler; he had sho’ ’nuff forgotten about the canvas, but promised to get it done right away.
The cats had run plumb out of food during the night, and they were being very vocal about it, too; so I thought I’d better get meseff to the store and buy them some victuals. I needed some detergent, too.
I looked for my keys.
They were nowhere to be found.
I looked...and I looked...and I looked... but they really were nowhere to be found.
I called Teddy to see if he had an inkling as to their whereabouts; he asked if I’d called Larry to ask him. He then suggested that I drive the Wagoneer; its keys would be in the door pocket.
The jaguars, meanwhile, escalated their purring and whirring and yrrrowing around my ankles. When they are out of food and are telling me about it, I can think of nothing else but that the pitiable pussies are cruelly starving to death under my very nose because I have uncaringly let their food supply exhaust itself, and their unbounded trust in me is fast declining.
I hastily cracked open a couple of eggs, whipped them with a fork, and set them before the poor famished felines.
Socks purred his unique little ‘thank-you’ trill and daintily lapped up about a fourth of one egg.
Kitty sniffed at it disdainfully, lifted her aristocratic nose, and stalked haughtily off in high dudgeon.
Tabby, I suddenly realized, was still sound asleep on the loveseat, upside down, front paws straight up above his head, twisted in the middle as usual so that his rear legs draped off strangely to one side.
It had only seemed like three panthers around my ankles, what with Socks and Kitty raising such a ruckus. And perhaps Kitty was not quite so hollow as she had said she was, or she would surely not have been so persnickety with her Shirred Eggs ä lä Grequé?
Perhaps she would have preferred Cälifôrñìâ Eggs Viñáigrètte.
Ewwwww. Have you ever read the instructions for that?! Listen:
In a large bowl, combine beet liquid, vinegar, water, garlic clove, bay leaf, pickling spice, and salt. Mix well. Add hard-cooked eggs. Slice onion and separate each slice into rings and add to eggs. Cover and refrigerate for several days. Serve with Antipasto as an appetizer or as an accompaniment to meats, poultry, and salads. Cover and refrigerate for several days.
Aauugghh! That’s awful. No puma worth it’s while would eat that. A dog would; dogs will eat anything, even spinach, so long as you butter it. Why, a dog will eat a pre-chewed stick from William Wrigley, Jr., and Company, and gaze up at you in mute adoration, since he can make no noise, anyhow, whilst he waxes stucker...and stucker ...and stucker, as the gum wraps itself inextricably around every tooth in his simple head.
“Cover and refrigerate for several days.”
Would you eat that????!!!
Maybe the Felis cătüs would prefer a nice Deñver Pârmesän Cörnmeal Sôuƒƒle, or possibly a lovely Eggs Wélsh Crab Mëât Quiché. Eggs a la Cäracäs, Kitty? And will you have that with, or without, a dash of cayeñne? Poaçhed Pan-Dandies, Socks? With a dab of extra cottage cheeŠe, pôr ƒavöur? Egg Çhilès Relleñós cön Quésò, eh, Tăbby O'Felidæ? With perhaps a delectable little mouse to take the place of one of the green chili peppers?
I called Larry. “Do you know where my keys are?”
He seemed to be thinking deeply. (I found out that evening that, actually, he was quietly smiting a bee that had stung him on the arm without provocation just as we started talking.) (The waxmaker’s twin sister repeated the procedure, on the same arm, in the same location, both on the job and also on Larry, the following day.) (He slew that insect-of-the-order-Hymenoptera, too, without a care for the impoverishment of honey in the world.) “Have you looked in your purse?”
Duh, of course I had looked in my purse, did he think I would call him first, just to see if he knew my keys were always supposed to be in my purse?!
“Have you looked on the key holder?”
Well, yes, I had looked on the key holder. That would be the second place I would look, now wouldn’t it, since a certain man of the house, no matter how many times he is told that my keys belong in my purse, insists on hanging them on the key holder, if he happens to get hold of them??!
He sighed deeply, somewhat chagrined over my unappreciative attitude toward his helpfulness, and, unbeknownst to me, nursing a bee-stung arm. “Have you looked on the kitchen counter?”
“Yes.”
“The bathroom counter?”
“Yes.”
“The nightstand?”
“Yes.”
“Your dresser?”
“Yes.”
“Have you looked on the table?”
“Yes.”
“Your desk?”
“Yes, yes, yes!!! I’ve looked for the keys! That’s why I’m calling, because they are gone! Lost!! Nowhere to be found!!! They have va-MOOSED!!! va-MEESED!!! va-MICED!!! And I need to go to the store, right NOW. The cats have NO FOOD.”
He paused. This, he knows, is indeed an emergency, even worse than when the children run clean out of milk. Children can squeeze mulberries and make mulberry juice, don’t you know. Or they can pour coffee on their cereal. Let them eat cake!
But cats must have chow.
Then, reluctantly, “You can go out to my Wagoneer and get the extra set of Suburban keys out of the ashtray,” he told me.
Aaarrrggghhh!!! AAAUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! He knew, all along, that those keys were there.
As I rushed out the garage door to the back driveway, I discovered that it was a jolly good thing I had to go out that door after all, because there on the back doorknob hung the bag of library books a certain person had convinced me not to return to the library the previous evening, telling me that he would do it the next morning before he went to work.
So much for that declaration.
Well, if those books were in the book return before 10:00 a.m., we would not be charged overdue fees. I glanced at the clock and sped up.
Shortly after I returned home and fed the cougars, Caleb crawled groggily from the feathers and made his way upstairs.
“Have you seen my keys?” I queried, thinking he probably had not.
He yawned and nodded at the same time. “Yes, they are on your bed,” he told me.
I raised my eyebrows. My bed? That thing I had earlier slept in? I went to my bedroom, where the bed was as yet unmade, and began lifting one cover after another, carefully, watching and listening.
“Jangle,” said the keys, and tumbled right out onto my hand.
What happened, it seems, is that Thursday night after getting home from Fremont, I walked into my room and set my purse on my bed. Later, after showers and baths, Caleb and Victoria climbed up on my bed to play with their new waffle-blocks. One or both of them managed to upend my purse, spilling the keys from the side pocket I always keep them in.
So that is the answer to that.
I put the keys away, collected my camera, and went out to take pictures of my flowers--they are really blooming, the hollyhocks, gaillardias, butterfly flowers, and now purple coneflowers--while the children watered them.
Dorcas went with Hannah and Aaron that day, first to Dr. Luckey’s, then to Lincoln to go shopping. The lady who stays with Mama in the mornings stayed the rest of the day with her, till 5:00, when another girl arrives. Hannah got Victoria two adorable dresses, one of which she wore Sunday night to the wedding. The other I will save for Thanksgiving, or perhaps the Christmas dinner. It’s made of soft flowered velvet with a lacy white collar. Sunday’s dress has a pink brocade skirt and ivory top with lots of lace and ribbon roses.
Friday afternoon, Lawrence brought Tyler, his grandson who is another of Larry’s cousins (no, you’re not just imagining things; Larry has cousins to beat the band), with a bucket containing a large catfish and a crappie Tyler had caught at Wagner Lakes that morning while Lawrence was cleaning windows nearby. They don’t like fish, so they were both for us. Tyler, in order to show his wonderful 18” fish to us properly, took him from the bucket and laid him right down on our sidewalk, which was hot enough to fry eggs. And then he was perplexed as to why the fish was no longer flopping about, as fish are supposed to do until one tells them otherwise.
I planned to spend a profitable afternoon doing all sorts of industrious things; but just as I began, Lydia reminded me of her poor sore toe, which seemed to be getting sorer as the days passed. It had been a week and a day since she bent it back stubbing it on Victoria’s toy grill, and, if anything, it was worse than it had been right after it happened. I called the Butler County Clinic, and we got an immediate appointment with Dr. Luckey’s assistant, Chuck, unrelated to Charlie Brown.
He determined that the painful little toe was not broken, nor was it out of place. It had most likely been jammed, and would be sore for a couple more weeks. He put gauze between the toes and then wrapped it to the next one to help hold it still. He recommended a pair of those cloddy high-platform shoes, making Lydia’s small nose wrinkle a bit (please reread paragraphs one through three on page one of the letter of March 24, 2002), shook Lydia’s hand with aplomb, and bid us adieu.
We drove back via Octavia and Schuyler in order to go to our friends Frank and Elaine’s small farm, as Elaine had invited us earlier in the day to come visit.
She showed us chicks, goslings, ducklings, and kids, and her boy Stuart showed us baby bunnies and a handful of baby white mice.
Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria got to feed the baby goats their bottles. They gulped down the milk and hunted frantically for more. William, the billy goat, carefully polished the lenses of both my cameras with his big, slimy tongue, and then checked to see if the battery on the camcorder was edible. He is quite tame, and adored having us all petting him and rubbing his scratchy forelock. He carefully tasted Hester’s necklace, and then stood blinking his ridiculously long-lashed eyes at her when she gently shoved his head away.
We got home around 6:30, and I baked the buffalo meat with the baby onions, several cans of baby potatoes, and altogether too much lemon pepper. As it baked, it made the house smell so good...
We decided to eat at Pawnee Park. Hannah, who’d just arrived with Aaron, asked if she could come, too. Of course! Hester then asked if Jodie could come, whereupon Lydia asked if Sharon could come. Sure! The more the merrier, and Walker cousins are always welcome. (But I made a mental note to tell those two young’ns to ask me in private next time, in case it occurred, as indeed it did that night, that I had only food for us, and barely enough, at that.)
Fortunately, Jodie and Sharon had already eaten. So they played, alongside Hannah and Aaron, while we ate.
Buffalo meat, I have now learnt, is tough. Even though I baked it slowly, it was tough. If I ever have cause to cook the high-priced stuff again, I shall pressure cook it; that will help. And I will cut down drastically on the lemon pepper; the poor kiddos looked like fire-breathing dragons.
They were in such a fever to go play with their cousins, they soon dashed off without even a bite of one of their favorite foods: watermelon. That, they saved for dessert at home.
As we were cramming our way back into the Suburban, Caleb queried, “Where’s gonna sit who?” quite without realizing he’d said it backwards.
We learned that day that the doctors didn’t operate on Arthur, after all. He can draw a breath in fairly well, but can hardly expel it. The problem, they discovered, was from a tumor cutting off a blood vessel in his lungs. In a week or so they will decide if they can do something to make him more ‘comfortable’. A week? But they said he only has three to six weeks to live! Cancer is horrible, isn’t it?
Friday night I finished washing all the clothes--and there were piles and piles when I started. I use up oodles and caboodles of Spray 'N Wash on Larry’s shirts. Sometimes on Teddy’s, too; but always on Larry’s.
Hannah brought over her dress that she planned to wear to the wedding, disheartened because it didn’t fit well. She decided to make a big lacy collar for it; that would cover up the ill-fitting bodice nicely. Ah, the twubbles and twials of seamstressing!
Hester, Caleb, and I walked with Hannah out to her car. Looking at my mowed-down tulips, I complained, “Those boys! I’ve told them so many times that the leaf nourishes the bulb.”
“What’s a bulb?” asked Caleb.
“It’s one of those roundish thingies,” responded Hester, putting fingertip to fingertip and thumbtip to thumbtip to make the right size circle, “that you screw into a lamp socket so that you can see better.”
Caleb giggled. He knew better than that.
At noon Saturday, Larry called; he was heading off to Blair to pick up some forms, and wondered if Caleb would like to go with him.
Caleb would.
So he ate and got ready as fast as ever he could, and before he was quite done, Larry drove up in the boom truck, and they were off.
Oh! Yes! I nearly forgot! Did I ask you if you could keep a secret, do you recall?
Well, can you??!
Okay, if you’re quite, quite sure...I’ll tell you.
Larry and I are going to be grandparents again!!! Yes, Bobby and Hannah are expecting a new baby, some time in middle to late December.
There. That’s your secret. (Yes, it is; it’s yours; it’s certainly not mine anymore, is it?)
I put Hannah’s zipper into her dress, hemmed it, put the interfacing and the facing into the sleeves, and tacked them down by hand. I wasn’t quite finished when Larry got home, wanting to go to Timber Point Lake near Brainard, a lake he had seen while working in that area. We grabbed paraphernalia and rushed off, depositing Hannah’s dress at her house with only five minutes of sewing left to complete.
Around Octavia, we took a country road south to route 92, then made the error of turning west instead of east. Soon we were approaching a small town with a smallish water tower, and Larry thought it was no doubt Brainard, but I thought the town was entirely too big to be Brainard. We drove through the residential area the road had placed us in, suddenly arriving at a Texaco station, which was exactly what we needed.
Having approached it from the rear, Larry parked at the side, and we both got out. We walked around the corner of the building.
“This is David City,” I announced.
“It does look familiar,” Larry admitted, and then he grinned. “Hmmmm. Guess I should have turned east on 92.”
Having now established our location, we were soon to Brainard, which is about fifteen miles southeast of David City. Driving a little farther southeast on country roads and an extremely hilly, scenic minimum maintenance road, we came to Timber Point Lake, our destination. It was a pretty little lake, rather new, I think--at least, the amenities and few facilities (one) (is that less than ‘few’?) were fairly new. The built-up edges of the lake were of dirt, and the tracks of caterpillars and big earth-moving equipment could still be seen.
About the time we arrived, it occurred to me, or rather, it occurred to my stomach, that it was suppertime, and there was nothing around to eat.
My stomach complained out loud, and I voiced accompaniment.
Receiving no noticeable reaction, I increased the velocity of my complaint, whereupon Larry suggested that I return to Brainard and get some food. So Lydia, Victoria, and I returned to Brainard.
The one and only small grocery store in this burg of 356 souls was closed. A small boy with sopping wet hair and a damp beach towel wrapped around him happened by, so I smiled at him and asked if there was anyplace we might purchase some food.
He grinned, friendly as could be, as is often the case in little Nebraska towns such as that. “Sure!” he replied, turning around to point out the two places. “Right over there is one, and across the street down there” he turned and waved his hand “is the other.” He bobbed his head happily. “They stay open all night,” he added.
‘They’ were bars. Both of them.
“Okay,” I responded, “Thank you!” I gave him a wave and hopped back into the Suburban.
We returned to David City.
On the south side of town, we found exactly what we were looking for; our stomachs told us so: an Amigos.
We ordered chicken nachos, tacos, chocolate milkshakes, and milk. Then back to Timber Point Lake, devouring tacos as we went.
The residual fishermen (and the fisherboys and the fishergirls, too) promptly quit with the fishing and got on with the taco dispatching.
After that, I was ready to take up camera and camcorder and get down to business.
The wildflowers are in bloom, from woolly verbena to wild Marjoram to meadow clover. The ox-eye daisies and the narcissus-flowered anemones add a bright touch, and there are some tiny, white-fringed asters that I’d like to dig up and plant in my flower gardens.
One reaches the shores of Timber Point Lake by a consecution of jumping, sliding, and bounding down the surrounding hills, and, once there, discovers one’s feet to be mired in several inches of mud. I, having shed my sandals, reascertained that I do not like mud squorshing up between my toes, same as I didn’t when I was three (and six) (and ten) (and thirteen) (and sixteen) (and twenty) (and thirty), converse from my friends, who thought it was an altogether lovely feeling, this squishy, yucky, gooey ooze coming up between one’s digits. Maybe I wouldn’t mind (maybe, I said), if only mud wasn’t so muddy and dirt wasn’t so dirty. I do not care to be dirty, thank you very much.
I like roughing it, camping out, hiking, playing all sorts of sports; but I want to be clean whilst I am at it, please. Or, lacking that, then directly afterwards at least. I will not camp, I will not, where there are no showers. Furthermore, if my children get dirty, you mark my word: they are going to get washed.
Okay. Now that I have established that, listen to this: I took a video of the mud squoooshing up between my toes. Looks funny, does. We watched it when we got home tonight, and everyone laughed. Yep, it sho’ ’nuff looks funny.
Would you believe, we caught no less than seventeen fish, all bluegill except for one catfish and two smallmouth bass. Joseph, who caught the majority, is convinced that our success was occasioned by our recent watching of an interesting video from the library wherein a couple of men give thorough instructions on how to attract fish. But what I think is curious is that Joseph was using the directions on catching bass--and caught bluegill.
Furthermore, those men were using flyrods to catch bluegill; we were not.
Ah, well; those men were from a different part of the country; perhaps our fish have a disparate dialect from theirs. And our bluegill don’t fly; nobody has to snag them in midair; we can simply use closed-faced reels. Or jigs.
‘Reels’ and ‘jigs’. Are those anything like ‘jitterbugs’?
When the sun went down, we packed up fish and gear and headed for home.
“What’s a jig?” I asked Larry, who was sitting in his recliner behind me.
“Here, I’ll show you,” he responded, and I started laughing even before I realized he was getting to his feet, really going to show me.
He filleted the fish, using his new knife and glove from Teddy for the first time. They worked splendidly; Larry is pleased.
Larry went to the store for me this morning, getting twelve cans of soup, salad, and assorted other groceries. I thought the whole family would be coming, so, after church, I put all twelve cans into a pan to heat. (Well, I did open them first.) Now, I had ordered chicken dumpling soup, but there were only nine on the shelf, so Larry got three cans of chicken and vegetable soup to go with it. Not getting told in time that only Amy would be joining us, I mixed it together. It tasted fine; but I would have liked it better not mixed. We were done eating by a quarter to two, when Amy had to go to the church to help fix sandwiches.
I am staying with Mama tonight. Lura Kay called at six to offer to stay so that I could attend the wedding, but I was ready to stay with Mama, not to go to church.
“If I should change tack now,” I told her, “I would wind up competing with the bride in our mad dash down the aisle!”
Sooo...I asked Lydia to take the camcorder and take some videos for me. She does a pretty good job, and is quite careful with it.
Speaking of weddings, listen to this:
‘Wedding’ staged to ease drought
NEW DELHI, India (AP) --
The drought-plagued residents of a small village in southern India organized a ceremonial wedding for two donkeys to appease the Hindu god of rain, a news report said Thursday.
Dressed up like a bride and groom, the donkeys were escorted to a temple in the village of Sakkayanayakunar in Tamil Nadu state on Wednesday, the Press Trust of India reported.
A local priest chanted prayers and led the donkeys in a ritual ceremony. - -
There now, how do ya like that? It’s pretty funny, yes; but don’t you agree, it’s pathetic, too? Those poor deluded people are so far from God, they have no idea under the sun what to believe about anything--although they are quite certain they are right, I suppose.
But come to think of it, I once knew a couple of married donkeys...
* * *
P.S. Ah-HA!!! Caught you!
You thought you’d skip to the end of the letter and sneak a peak at the ‘secret’, didn’t you?
Well... Toooooo bad. The secret isn’t here.
(tee hee)
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