I did not write anything in my journal until Saturday night, since my computer was in dry dock [i.e. a big box] from Tuesday till then, and paper and pen were things of scarcity and extreme rarity. Therefore, I have no doubt but what I shall have forgotten a good percentage of where and how and why and what we did from Tuesday through Saturday. You will not know if anything I write is fact or fable!
Last Monday, Hannah and the children came visiting while Larry was home for lunch. Baby Joanna smiled and cooed at Larry, which pleased him immensely. That’s one beautiful baby, let me tell you.
Victoria brought her report card home; it was exactly perfect, highest marks possible in every subject. Hester, Lydia, and Caleb got straight A’s, too. So that was a successful third quarter.
Last week, several hunters were out somewhere around Spalding, shooting coyotes. One man shot something that, upon closer inspection, wasn’t a coyote. They took the carcass to the authorities, who shipped it off to … uh, Montana, maybe? I guess Nebraskans can’t recognize a wolf when they see one. Perhaps it doesn’t look wolfish enough, when it is dead. But those who ought to know say it was a grey wolf. Spalding is about sixty miles northwest of Columbus.
And then it was Tuesday, April Fool’s Day, MOVING DAY!!! No foolin'. I got up early and started getting all the jetsam and flotsam off the furniture. Hannah and the children came, and Hannah picked up things in Lydia’s room while I threw Imelda Marcos’ shoes into boxes. Well, they must have been Imelda’s; certainly a moderate, temperate person like me would never have accumulated that many millions of shoes.
Baby Joanna was in her little infant seat nearby, and every time I turned and talked to her, she beamed at me. Now and then, Aaron popped around the corner, pointed at the shoes, and informed me, “Shoes! Shoes! Shoes!” He sure enough had that right.
Teddy got off work early so he could help us move. He borrowed Tom’s roll-back truck, backed it into our back drive, and then he and Larry wrapped straps around the shed and, with some difficulty, with the truck’s winch, pulled it onto the truck.
I came out with the video camera, and Teddy ordered, “All cameras back in the house!”
I ignored him, as mothers should, and went on taking pictures. They then filled the shed with all the bicycles and everything else they could fit in there, and headed out to the house.
It wasn’t long before they were back again, this time for furniture. Boy, oh, boy, did they ever fill that thing full. They strapped everything on securely, and then I asked, “How fast are you going to drive?”
“As fast as we can,” Teddy responded promptly, an answer I ought to have expected, from him.
They were a little longer getting all that stuff unloaded out there. By the time they came back for more, Keith and Bobby had come to help with the heaviest furniture. They were all skipping horn practice in order to help us. Hannah brought a big dish of chicken enchiladas and some canned peaches, and everyone ate a bite or two any time their hands were empty. Yum, those were scrumptious.
While others went out to the new house, Keith stayed behind and, after laying down the second seat in the Suburban (the third was already down), he filled it from the back of the front seat to the rear doors with all the clothes from Larry’s and my closet--and I am here to tell you that that Suburban was full. He went to Wal-Mart for me, too. Esther filled their car with as many boxes as she could fit into it, and then she and Lydia took the load out to our house.
Meanwhile, Hester stayed with Mama while Dorcas went to practice her violin at church.
Once when Larry came home for another load of furniture, he told me, “Caleb’s bed won’t fit; we can’t get the box springs up the stairs to his room. The mattress went, but not the springs.”
I looked at him, wondering how in the world other things had fit, if something no bigger than a full-size set of box springs wouldn’t go. Then, “What color was it?” I asked.
“Pink,” replied Larry.
Ah-ha. “What color of a mattress did you put downstairs for Hester and Lydia?” I queried.
“That white one with the patches you sewed on,” he responded.
“Well, you got them mixed around,” I informed him.
“Siigggghhhhhh,” said Larry.
Late that night, the kids took their last bath at the old house. Larry had left his pickup at the new house, expecting all of us to ride out together in the Suburban…but Keith had loaded the Suburban so full that there wasn’t room for all of us. So Teddy and Amy took the littles out to the house--and all three cats, too. One held Socks and one held Tabby, and Kitty rode out in the pet carrier. Unhappy travelers, those! Socks was the best behaved--but that was only temporary.
Larry and I, in the Suburban, arrived not long afterwards, and came in to find the cats upstairs, scared spitless. Hissless. Somethingless. We sent the kids hastily to bed--as hastily as possible, anyway. Teddy and Amy bid us adieu, and there we were then in our new house, surrounded by lovely cedar trees, prairie-clad hills, starry skies, and… boxes.
I’m quite positive I went back to town to get a few more things in the wee hours of the morning--4:00 a.m. or so--, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. And it couldn’t have been much, because I didn’t empty out the Suburban before I went. Anyway, whatever I was doing, I finally went to bed at 5:00 a.m., hoping to sleep a couple of hours before it was time to get up and help the children get ready for school.
It was not to be. I was not yet asleep when the cats--and Socks, in particular--went to howling bloody murder. Like a bevy of banshees. I hissed at him to be quiet a few times, at which point he rushed madly for the kids’ doorways, where he howled all the louder, making me fervently wish to throttle him. Wring his neck. Murder him in cold blood.
My alarm went off before I had quite fallen asleep.
Oh! I remember what I went back to town for: it was a box that held Caleb’s nebulizer and puffs. That was one thing, anyway. One important thing.
Wednesday morning when I took the kids to school, they could barely fit in the Suburban amongst all the clothes that hadn’t yet been unloaded. I dropped them off and went back home to unload the Suburban. First, I sent Victoria back to bed; she slept till a quarter after twelve, when I had to wake her up to take her to kindergarten. She must have been as tired as I thought she was.
As I was bringing in things from the Suburban, Jim C., who was putting up fence nearby, spotted me. “Good morning!” he called. “Did you sleep well, your first night in the new house?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “And it wasn’t because of the house, or the beds, or the kids; it was because of those awful cats!!!”
He guffawed. His wife, Sandra, came down the lane and gave me a warm welcome.
“I see you’ve planted flowers! And they’re blooming already!”
Unfortunately, I felt like death warmed over, and my eyes looked exactly like roadmaps. But I put on my friendliest face, and hoped amiability would counteract the hangover appearance. We are glad to have old friends, quite nice people, for neighbors.
Lydia and Caleb’s teacher took Hester, Lydia, and Caleb to her house for dinner that day. She fed them chicken-fried steak on buns with pickles and cheese, peach fluff jello, some sort of big fat potato chips that they thought were unique and impressive, and Sierra Mist drink.
I took Victoria to school, then loaded the Suburban as full as I could get it. I cleaned out the fish tank, and put the fish into a plastic bin with one of those handled, snap-on lids. When it was ¾ full of water, it was so heavy I knew that if someone picked it up by the handle, there would be a big ka-bang, a ker-sploosh, and — fish all over the sidewalk. I washed the rocks, plants, and coral, and then put it into the Suburban--except the fish, which stayed in the bin with the oxygenator bubbling away until the kids came home from school.
Hannah came while I was in the middle of all this fishiness, and Aaron immediately got himself underfoot--under my feet, that is--helpfully pointing at the tub when he knew I was going to fill a jug of water, then at the toilet when I needed to dump it, then at the plastic bag when he knew I would be pouring the rocks into it.
One of Hester’s teachers brought us lasagna, apricot jello, and cherry bars after school. The lasagna needed to be baked for thirty minutes. So I stuck it into the oven, and then napped on the one remaining bed while it baked. I mean, while the lasagna baked, not while the bed baked.
And then we went home. Lydia held the bin, which was sharp around the southern edges. On every bump and every corner, it sloshed onto her. In the other kids’ laps were all sorts of things--food, shoes for church, long-lost dolls, homework…you name it. The back of the Suburban was full to the brim.
We took the first corner a bit too fast.
“AAaaaaaa!” said Victoria.
Something had fallen off the top of the stack onto her head. We took the next corner a little slower.
Home again, first things first: I set up the fish tank as quickly as ever I could, and threw the fish into the water. Just like they always do when I put them into fresh water, they swam wildly about.
Victoria laughed. “Do you think they are wondering why in the world they are in a different house?” she asked.
Hee hee We raise smart kids, smart dogs, smart cats, and … smart fish.
Larry got home shortly, and we ate supper. Marlene then arrived with more of the supper: green bean casserole. There was enough food for three meals! The rest of the cherry bars would be for breakfast, and the remaining food would be for dinner the next day.
We flew into a rush getting ready for church half an hour earlier than usual that evening, fearing lest we be late on account of the drive to town. But the children nearly snickered right out loud when we walked into church and found almost all the pews empty, for we were one of the first people there.
I had had no coffee all day long, because the can of Folgers had hidden itself well, and refused to come out. That, on the day after I’d had no sleep! Furthermore, I’d only slept three hours, the night before that. After church, we stopped for coffee at Cubby’s. Larry went in to get it…came back out…handed it to me… Ahhhh. I could smell it…I could alllllmost taste it…I gladly took a sip…
BLEAH!!!
It was lukewarm.
That’s worse than cold, you know that?
We all went to bed earlier that night--11:30 p.m. And we slept nicely until the alarms went off at 6:00 a.m. That morning, I suddenly decided to empty the last of the stuff out of the Suburban before taking the kids to school, which made them extremely nervous about getting to school on time. We still had enough time to get there early when we left our house…but just as we were taking the ramp onto Hiway 81, it occurred to me: I’d forgotten my glasses. I planned to work all day at the house in town, and I knew I’d have a splitting headache before long without those spectacles, so I turned around and went racing back for them. We drove lickety-split, breaking the speed limit all the way. Our Suburban, which has a high-rise on it, goes better in the wind at high speeds, anyway. Makes it more aerodynamic, don’t you know. So there we were then, flying down the road, hoping desperately that we wouldn’t meet up with any state patrols. The kids thought it was jolly swell, rattling down Howard Boulevard at 60 mph rather than the posted 35.
We didn’t meet a police officer, we got to school on time, and we resolved to get up earlier in the future.
That day, the lady who stays with Mama in the morning made us chicken and baked potatoes and jello for supper. We sho’ ’nuff have an awful lot of nice friends!
We did more moving after people got off work. Poor Larry; he worked every day but Monday. Amy, Hester, Lydia, and I started hauling heavy boxes full of albums, books, and decorations into the living room from the washroom in order to make room for the washer and dryer that I knew would be coming. We’d just about gotten the last box into the living room--and, let me tell you, that living room is now piled--when the phone rang.
“Hello!” said Larry with cheery enthusiasm, “Make sure there’s enough room in the living room; we’re bringing the piano!”
I howled. “But we just filled it up!!! You said you were bringing the washer and dryer!!!”
“Well, I called Columbus Music to ask about the music cart, and they said it was available for rent right now, and then wouldn’t be for a while after that. They don’t rent it to anyone but professional movers, but said that if Dale (a good friend of ours who used to have his own moving business, until heart troubles caused him to quit) would help us move it, they’d let us have it. So that’s what we’re doing.”
I sighed. “Well, you’ll have to put it in the dining room, because we’re not moving those boxes again.”
Lawrence and Norma came…Keith and Esther…Teddy and Amy…Bobby and Hannah and the children. Norma, Amy, Hester, Lydia, and I pulled up carpeting in the washroom. Hester and I had tried, but we just weren’t tough enough. But when Norma helped us, we got it up with fairly good success, or so we thought--and then along came Teddy.
He watched us a bit disdainfully, and then marched over near Amy, saying, “Here, like this.”
With that, he grasped one corner of the rug, gave a gigantic yank on it--and nearly upended his wife. I yelled, she yelped, and everyone else laughed. When the rug was all torn out, Teddy opened the back door--it’s one story up, you know, and there is as yet no deck--and started throwing it out. Norma reached out and collected a fist full of his coat in order to keep him from falling.
Teddy peered back over his shoulder to see who had a grip on him, grinned at her, and remarked, “Grandma’s going to be my parachute!”
Norma, Esther, and Amy put away dishes and cleaned off the counters.
By the time all that was done, everybody’s stomachs were rubbing on their respective backbones. Pizza would have been wonderful--but Tuesday night I’d misplaced those certificates--$50 worth, remember?--for Pizza Hut, and they never showed up again. I remember picking up the envelope and thinking, I need to put this in a safe place, a handy place, where I can get them easily when I need them. After that, I have no more idea than the man in the moon what could have happened to them. I looked here, there, everywhere…but I can’t think what I would have done with them. $50!!!--gone!
Well, Keith, Amy, and Lawrence doled out some money, and Amy and Lydia went to Taco Bell and bought 25 tacos.
Friday I worked at the house in town again after taking the kids to school, loading the Suburban, as I’ve been doing every day. That day it was all my hats. Then, at noon, since the refrigerator and stove were now gone, we took our food across the street to Mama’s house, warmed it up in the microwave, and ate in her kitchen. Dorcas made cookies. Mmmmmm…
“Why don’t you eat here at noon every day,” Mama started to say, just as I said, “Maybe we could borrow your table at noon every day,” and then we both laughed, and that’s what we’ve done ever since. [I mean, we’ve eaten at her table at noon on school days, not that we’ve been laughing ever since.]
Amy came to help me that afternoon. Soon the children got out of school, and our vehicles were full. Amy went home for a bit, we did a few errands, and then we all headed for our house.
We dropped off library books, got some groceries, then went to Cubby’s for gas and freecoffeewithagasfill. I was straining my brain to try to remember the other errand I needed to do--and then, just as I was pulling away from the gas pumps, it occurred to me: the paper that needed to go to the police station so we could get our new address.
Aaauuuggghhh!
We headed back downtown. I’d gone right by the police station, when I dropped off those library books! Senility settles in early. We should get our new address in 72 hours. Does that include Sundays, I wonder?
That night Keith and Esther came and helped do all sorts of things. Esther and I arranged furniture in Caleb’s room. His room is almost done. Larry and Keith set up beds downstairs (the right beds, this time), and they also put up two long shelves in the storage area under the front porch.
Esther and Lydia then went to Hy-Vee for doughnuts and Doritos and other snacks. Esther bought Hy-Vee brand cheese-flavored tortilla chips.
Keith came to get a handful. “Hey!” he protested, “Fake Doritos!”
But they were good, regardless. Even Keith admitted it.
It was late when we went to bed, soooo tired… And then Socks started howling. He howled…I hissed …he howled…I hissed… he was quiet for a wee little bit, then howled again… Finally, at 4:30 a.m., I leaped out of bed, kicking over the pile of nine boxes of hats I’d stacked beside my bed, and went to find him. He was sitting on the steps, eyes all bugged out. When he saw me, he ran, which only goes to show that he knew he was being a first-class brat. Or maybe that I looked like Nightmare Alice. I went after him, collaring him shortly in my sewing room. I snatched him by the nape of the neck, hauled him downstairs (with him screaming all the way), told him (in rather loud and rude volumes) what I thought of him, gave him a shake (not a milk shake), and went to bed. We never heard another sound out of him.
Saturday, we put all sorts of things away, especially in the bathroom. In one corner, there are big white built-in drawers with gold and white porcelain handles, and they hold a lot. I put all my hats on shelves in my closet, and put a dozen or so in Victoria’s room. Next, I exchanged clothes from dressers in the basement to dressers upstairs so that they’d be in the right person’s drawers.
When Larry came home from work that afternoon, we borrowed his Uncle Clyde’s stock trailer for Dorcas’ bedroom set. Clyde was at his daughter-in-law Pat’s house working with his horses; that was where his trailer was, too. Remember Arthur, Larry’s cousin who died of cancer a few months ago? Pat is Arthur’s widow. Anyway, Pat invited us in, so Victoria and I went inside and visited with her and Aunt Joan. The other children gravitated toward the horses. Uncle Clyde and Larry hitched up the trailer, and then Clyde began exercising one of his horses.
When we went to the house in town (notice the subtle change of ‘house’ and ‘home’: ‘home’ is now the place in the country; ‘house’ is the place in town), and Teddy came to help Larry carry out the last of the heavy furniture.
Guess what?! Esther had washed all the dishes, and the countertops too! The kitchen was clean. I only needed to get the rest of things out of drawers and cupboards. Lydia washed something in the sink, pulled the plug--and the water came gurgling out the disconnected dishwasher hose and gushed all over the floor.
We mopped it all up with some cloths Esther had left.
But once wasn’t enough; she had to do it again! Aarrgghh.
I then went downstairs to pick up things in Victoria’s room. I started vacuuming. Something went wrong with the vacuum, and then Larry was ready to go. It was late, the stock trailer was full, the children needed baths, the girls needed their hair curled, and we needed to turn the clocks forward. Daylight Savings Time was about to begin.
The cats now know what to do if they are outside and they want in: Kitty rat-a-tat-tats on the door, almost like she did at the other house, except here it’s a metallic noise instead of rubber hitting the door. Socks stretches up as tall as he can, and then slides all the way back down, his claws scritch-scratching on the screen. Tabby simply goes to the window nearest one of ‘his’ people and yells “Meeeee!!!” at the top of his voice.
Socks went exploring quickly the first night--but Winston barked and scared him out of his wits. He came flying back to the house with his tail about five times bigger than usual. The hair atop his head was standing up so straight that his ears looked like wee triangles. And he’s the short-haired cat! Socks didn’t again explore so far soon.
Tabby was the one who went the farthest; he headed up the hill to the north, sniffing cautiously with each step, and turning back to look at the house every now and then; the house was his lodestar, evidently. He found a big log, which, after a good deal of snuffling about, he climbed on and walked the length of. He then disappeared into the prairie grasses to the northeast, and I wondered if we’d seen the last of him… But fifteen seconds later, the grasses parted, and a little yellow head peered back out, looking down the hill toward our house. Only a few minutes later he was home again. Now the cats go exploring regularly, and Jim C. told us that Tabby was once in his barn.
Larry set up my computer on the kitchen table Saturday evening, and I typed my journal.
Sunday, we arose shortly after 7:00 a.m., and we managed to get to church in plenty of time, thank goodness. The Big Snow began about the time we were getting up. By the time we walked to church from the other house, and back again between Sunday School and church, it was deep. We with the heelless or sideless or toeless little Sunday slippers froze our feet solid, we did. When we headed home after church, visibility was low, what with the giant flakes careening down and the wind whipping already-fallen snow into a ground blizzard.
We got home safely, and decided to have Larry’s scrumptious pancakes. Larry mixed together the eggs… milk…pumpkin pie spice (because the cinnamon is who-knows-where)…vanilla…
“Could someone hand me the flour?” requested Larry.
The cupboards were duly searched, but the flour was not forthcoming.
It seemed that a box had been left behind, the box in the kitchen that said ‘Food’ on the side, the very box that Larry had asked me about, the very box I had said we needed. That box. Sooo…we had French toast, instead.
Later that day, Larry, Hester, Lydia, and I put the oak roll-top onto my computer desk. I tell you, that thing is heavy. I nearly got beheaded, getting backed up against the sloped ceiling with the top edge of the desk right against my throat. (Mind you, I yelled before I was in any serious danger.) Now my sewing room/computer room is neat as a pin, and ready to have decorations hung in it. I like hanging pictures and ornamentation; but it’s going to be a different sort of an operation in this house, what with the plaster walls.
On the scanner, we could hear the state patrol telling of one car after another sliding into the ditch. It was slick out there. By the time we left for the evening church service, the snow in our lane was deep, and we were glad for our four-wheel-drive.
I stayed with Mama that night. I’d planned to read the Omaha World Herald and the Columbus Telegram in their entirety, but, as I said to Larry after church, “Mama blabbed so much, I didn’t get much of the paper read.”
Mama didn’t bother to protest, she just laughed. I reckon she figures everybody knows her. And they know me.
After taking the kids to school Monday morning, Victoria and I went to the other house. Larry had no work that day on account of the snow; we’d gotten a total of nine inches in town, and it was an inch or so deeper in the country. He first scooped the snow off our drive with his little tractor, and then came into town to get fittings for the washing machine. He stopped by the house to put switch plate covers on the light switches--but he had white and should have had beige, so that job was left for another time. He instead hooked up my washing machine.
I filled the Suburban with coats and all the clothes from Lydia’s closet, plus piles of clothes from one of the rods downstairs. I fixed the vacuum, vacuumed Victoria’s room, and then the vacuum cleaner was completely full. So full, in fact, that it kept spitting wads of this and that out onto the floor. Unfortunately, the vacuum bags had already been packed and hauled off to the new house.
Our motto, it seems, is as follows: We have it, but it’s not where you need it, and you’ll never find it! haha!
When the children got out of school at noon, we all went to Mama’s house, where we polished off the rest of Sunday’s French toast. Dorcas had made banana cake and gave us each a piece.
At one o'clock, after sending the children off to school, Larry and I went to a court hearing for Joseph. Teddy and Amy and Keith came, too.
There we discovered he had again been charged with trespassing, this time for breaking into the church and stealing food and $76, and also for breaking into a house the church owned and stealing items, including a gun, from the man who lived there. The judge said he was ‘stumped’ about what to do with Joseph; said he’d had a problem for five years and had been ‘horribly mismanaged’.
‘Horribly mismanaged’, eh? Wonder who gets the credit for that? I supposed that’s why they’re being so lenient with him, as to merely charge him with ‘trespassing’ when he was guilty of breaking and entering, and burglary, too--because it was somebody’s fault other than his?
The judge said that Joseph had gone off to Columbus with his Uncle Terry H.’s car--without his permission. He also said that Joseph was wanting to join the military; but he hasn’t finished school yet.
The judge told Joseph that he didn’t know if his behavior could be sufficiently modified so that he could join the military, and “I can tell you right now that if you take one little thing that doesn’t belong to you, your career in the military will be over. Done. Finished.”
We talked to the same two probation officers out in the hallway afterwards. They were very nervous.
“Do you have any questions?” asked one.
Yes, I wanted to know why they had asked me about my brother and my father, and who had told them stories. I asked why they’d inquired about things that happened when I was a toddler, and what all that had to do with Joseph.
What did the G. court case, for instance, have to do with Joseph? This is a case where three brothers and their father owned the company--and one brother’s wife did the bookwork, over twelve years ago. And did she ever do the bookwork. She embezzled some $350,000 over several years, that’s how she did the bookwork. But that wasn’t enough. She divorced her husband, and another brother’s wife divorced him (the two wives were cousins). Some time later, two of the brothers sold their shares in the company to the third brother. One brother started his own business pumping cement, and now owns several pump trucks.
They tried to file charges against the woman who embezzled all that money, but the woman who was the county attorney back then wouldn’t do it, and some years later the people who worked in that office claimed there was no record of any such filing. Something sound fishy here?
Well, the divorced wives are now suing the company, which has become steadily more successful (which explains why they’re suing, of course), claiming they had shares in it and never received their just dues, even though they both received hefty settlements in the divorces. And guess who one of their lawyers is: Terry H. He’s a cousin to both those women, by the way. And he well knew about the embezzling.
Anyway, I wanted to know why they asked Larry and me about that case, and how they came to know about it, and who told them that--quote--‘the business was sold to hide assets from the ex-wives’.
They were so vigorous to defend themselves, they hardly let me finish my questions.
I said, “You asked me what T. was so angry and bitter about--” and the man interrupted and tried to tell me -- well, I’m not sure what he was trying to tell me. He stuttered, mostly. But I wasn’t asking him about it, I wanted to tell him:
The reason that family is so bitter is because T’s father, who was a builder, built houses on spec. He had two houses that didn’t sell, and the bank foreclosed on those and the home he and his wife were living in. He thought the church should have bailed him out.
The trouble is, it’s illegal for any charitable institution--churches included--to help just one person with that much debt…and, besides, it’s just a little church and we didn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars, which was how much he was in debt.
The church has sometimes helped people with their house payments, and my father, who was a minister for about 48 years, was known for giving people who were in need a car--nice ones, too. Usually, when the church found out he had done such a thing, they reimbursed him. But he helped people plenty of times--financially and otherwise--when he wasn’t reimbursed, too. A more generous person, I have never known.
There used to be a rumor going around that my father took the congregation’s paychecks and doled out small amounts back to them. What a fabrication to spread about a man like that!
Another issue was that T's father wanted to be the assistant pastor. I well remember him talking to my father, telling him that that was what he wanted to do. My father was kind to him, but the man’s doctrine was not Baptist, and Baptist churches do not generally hire assistant pastors whose doctrine differs from theirs.
“So why were you asking us about all this?” I finished, having told Nervous Probation Officer I and Nervous Probation Officer II these stories.“Oh, uh, well, you know, I mean, when you work at the courthouse, you always hear all sorts of things like that,” stuttered N. P. Officer II, looking sideways at N. P. Officer I, who nodded with vigor.
Sherrrrr. Forty-year-old stories. You always hear all sorts of things like that.
“There has been bias against us for many years,” I told them, “and we are often given occasion to learn that it is still alive and well.”
They assured me they were not biased.
“Why has the charge been dropped to trespassing?” I queried.
They looked at each other and fidgeted. “The $76 Joseph had stolen from the church has been totally repaid,” answered NOP II.
I raised my eyebrows and we all looked at the men.
They shifted from foot to foot. “Yes,” added NOP I, “repaid by Mr. H.,” he said, “or Joseph,” he added quickly.
NOP II nodded. “Joseph or Mr. H.,” he confirmed.
On the way home from the courthouse, Larry and I stopped for half a gallon of milk for Mama, since our urchins had practically inhaled hers at noon.
Then we went to Pizza Hut. We walked in, and I asked for the manager.
“I have a sad story,” I told her, and proceeded to explain about losing those gift certificates from Tom and Rebecca.
At first she seemed a bit doubtful, but the longer I explained myself, the more she smiled at us.
“I tried to blame it on Larry,” I said, turning to grin at him, “but he hadn’t done it, and neither had the kids, and finally I just had to accept the blame myself.”
She went off and looked on their computer, found the purchase, and then she wrote out five $10 credits on the back of business cards. I thanked her profusely, and gave her my word that we would bring in those wayward certificates if ever they floated to the surface; we would not try to use them.
Back to the 42nd Avenue house we went then, where I vacuumed Victoria’s room, swept the shelf room, and picked up things.
The children came home from school, and I came upstairs and prepared to go. I picked up Mama’s milk jug from the counter--and discovered that it was half gone. It seems the thirsty urchins had discovered it. So, after a few more things were finished, we went to Hy-Vee to get Mama more milk, and ourselves some, too.
Then, since nobody had ever told us that Mr. H. or Joseph had repaid the stolen $76, I called my sister Lura Kay, who is our Sunday School treasurer, and asked her.
“No,” she told me, “it has not been paid, and the probation officer was just here a few minutes ago with some papers about the hearing, and he told me that Joseph’s parents would be paying the $76.”
How do ya like that?!
No wonder they were so nervous; liars often are.
There will be another hearing May 5th. Reckon anybody will come to any conclusions as to by whom Joseph was so ‘horribly mismanaged’?
We came home and I gladly started the first load of clothes in my newly-hooked-up washing machine. When they were done, I put them into the dryer and started it--and promptly turned it back off when the stench of those horrid Styrofoam beads from Lydia’s lap desk (yes, they’re still in the depths of that there dryer), along with the odor of hot, wet lint, came floating up to our nostrils. I peered behind the dryer--and discovered that there were no pipes or tubes, or whatever those things are called, running from it to vent it; it was venting right into the washroom. Aaaaauuuuuggggghhhhh! Now there was a load of wet clothes in the dryer, and a load of wet clothes in the washing machine.
Meanwhile, Larry was putting a new carrier bearing in his pickup, which sounded somewhat like a bullfrog with a sore throat. He brought home a huge pot of chicken noodle soup and a big box of crackers from Lawrence and Norma.
After supper, he went back to town for the tubes for the dryer vent. Right now he is sawing away at floor and wall, preparing to run the vent outside. He wants it to be beneath the floor level in the washroom, so that it will be below the deck when we build it.
We finished washing the dishes. “Where is my hand lotion?” I asked, looking around for it.
“It’s in the glove department in the Suburban,” responded Victoria, and so it was.
Hester and Lydia helped me put away a few more clothes in Victoria’s room, and now I think we shall head for the feathers. Ah, sleep! It’s becoming a rare commodity around here.
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