I’m becoming a mechanic, in answer to my father’s hopes for me. He thought everyone should be a mechanic, simply to live properly. And yes, he was a mechanic, and quite a skilled one, at that. He wasn’t only our congregation’s preacher, he also helped the people service their cars. He was known for asking people how many miles they had on their car, when they’d last changed oil, and what sort of gas mileage did they get. If things didn’t seem quite right, there was Daddy, then, working on their vehicle in his ‘Big Garage’, as we called the garage the church people built for him to park his trailer in. He was sad when he became unwell and was unable to help people in the way he had done. And he didn’t just do it for them; he taught them how to do it themselves.
Anyway, Daddy was secretly thrilled to pieces when I, at age three, dismantled my little red tricycle, taking it into more fragments and segments than one would have ever dreamt a tricycle could have gone into. I was somewhat distressed afterwards when I was unable to ride it for a time, until somebody put it back together for me. But it probably wasn’t mechanical ability at all that made me do such a thing. On the contrary, it was more likely immense, unflagging curiosity, which drives me yet to do absurd things to this day. I like to know what makes things tick. Trouble is, they sometimes cease ticking after I am done finding out.
Well, I’m afraid I disappointed my father when it came to mechanics, although I did partially redeem myself by falling in love and marrying someone who was every bit and more of a mechanic than he was. After that, I didn’t need to be a mechanic.
But now I am.
You see, I, all by myself, actually put part of the dryer vent pipes together. And then--and then!!!—I actually removed the door from the dryer and switched all the parts to the opposite side so that it opened from the other direction. That, because the dryer is now on the opposite side of the washing machine. Now, you may not think that was so very spectacular, but I am here to tell you that it was, oh, it was.
Once upon a time, when I was an extremely intelligent sixteen-year-old, I came into the kitchen to find Daddy sitting at the table having a lunch with several men and boys. They’d all been out in the Big Garage, helping him service his vehicles. He always kept his cars in perfect working order; they were like brand-new no matter how old they were. Better, probably, because he’d ‘taken all the bugs out’, as he was fond of saying. That way, he could be ready to go quickly if someone from who-knows-where called and asked him for help of one sort or another. He got many such calls, and I don’t remember him ever turning anyone down.
Daddy looked up from buttering his toast and asked, “How’s your car working?”
I had a purple Renault LeCar, and it was my Pride and Joy. I beamed at him. “Oh, fine!” I responded.
“Have you checked the oil lately?” he queried.
“Yep,” I answered readily, “It’s clear full, and it’s clean.”
He nodded. “How much gas do you have?”
“About three-quarters of a tank,” I replied. “I got 33 miles to the gallon, last time I filled!”
“How about the tachometer? What does the gauge read?”
I drew a blank. Tachometer? Whuzzat? Wherezit?
I thought about the few other gauges. Most had captions that read Low…Normal…High. The hand invariably stayed at Normal for each of those gauges. Furthermore, I knew my little car was running like a sewing machine. So, trying to look nonchalant and sound intelligent at the same time, I said, “Oh, about normal, I think.”
He looked at me, and I had an inkling something wasn’t quite right. “Normal, you say?”
I nodded.
“Are you sure?”
I hadn’t been sure in the first place, and I was getting less sure as the seconds passed. So I said, “Uh, I think so.”
Daddy grinned at the men around the table, who, I belatedly noticed, had been trying not to grin, themselves. Evidently they knew something I didn’t know.
Daddy told me.
“Your car doesn’t have a tac.”
Aaauuuggghhh! Unfair, unfair, setting a person up like that! And his own beloved daughter, at that! You should have heard everyone laugh. There was nothing else for it; so I laughed, too.
Hannah and the children came to Mama’s house while we were eating lunch there Monday. Hannah had dresses for Hester and Lydia, hand-me-downs that used to be Bobby’s sister’s. They are beautiful, and Bethany, Bobby’s mother, who sewed them, wouldn’t take any payment for them, saying she wanted to give them to the girls.
There was a lavender doeskin satin with a silver sequined bodice and pearl-covered lace that fit Lydia perfectly. Hannah made her a barrette to match it. Lydia had needed another Easter dress; her others were not fancy enough for the main service.
When we are eating at Mama’s table, she often looks around the table, sees all the kids sitting there, decides she doesn’t need the food on her plate, and tries to dole it out to anybody and everybody.
“I haven’t touched this; I’m not hungry,” she says. “One of the children can have it.”
I tell her, “No, we have all the food we can eat. You need to eat it.”
She leaves it there, untouched, for a little while; but many times, by the time we depart, she has eaten most of it. So she was hungry, after all.
After school, we stopped by Hy-Vee. I sent Hester, Caleb, and Victoria in with a list. There were two important things: mint-flavored (that’s green) Hy-Vee brand throat spray. Hester got cherry-flavored (that’s red) DayQuil. #2: Hall’s Menthol cough drops. She got Celestial Seasonings, citrus-flavored cough drops, which taste like candy and probably would give you a sore throat, if you were so disposed, rather than take one away. Bother. She’s as bad as her elder siblings! Can’t read, I guess.
We came home to find a box full of potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, limes, and kumquats on our porch, compliments of our neighbor man. Not long later, Dorcas brought us a dish of chicken enchiladas. Mmmm…
That evening, Larry and Keith went to the old house to get the things in the garage. It turns out there was a lot more than just one pickup load full, and they are again saying, “Just one more load tomorrow!” There were several of those ‘just one more load tomorrows’. Larry rented a storage unit a couple of miles away to put some of the Stuff and Things in until he gets the new garage and bedroom built.
Tuesday after school, we went to Wal-Mart to look for shoes. Hester got some silver sandals, but wanted white, too. Lydia found nothing that fit and looked nice, both at the same time. For Victoria, we got some white shoes with cut-out sides, and pearls and sequins outlining the vamp. She was totally delighted when she discovered that there was a matching purse in the box--and it had pearls and sequins outlining the flap.
On to Payless. There we found cream-colored shoes for Lydia. All the shoes are so cloddy and gaudy; we don’t like them very well. Hester got a pair of white sandals with embroidery and beads across the toe. But they have extremely high heels and a bit of a platform. She is smug, I expect, to be standing so tall; but must act like she doesn’t much care for those clodhoppers in order to be agreeable, since her mother doesn’t like them--but there was nothing better. We could have proceeded on to J. C. Penney's, but their shoes are twice the price--on sale.
Hester stayed with Mama that afternoon while Dorcas went to orchestra practice.
It was terribly windy, and the skies were looking steadily more stormy. There were areas on the highway where the dirt from the plowed fields was blowing so hard I could hardly see the car in front of me. Because of the wind and blowing dust, there was a ten-car pileup somewhere in the state, and two people were killed.
Larry came rushing home after work and hastened to the front porch, where he put a healthy dose of sealant between house and porch. We were in a severe thunderstorm watch until 11:00 p.m., and if it rained, there was a long rack of clothes in the storage area under the porch that would get soaked unless the porch and house were sealed. A couple of weeks ago, when the Big Snow – all nine inches of it – melted, we had a small flood down there. Sooo…while Hester vacuumed with Larry’s shop vac, and Lydia mopped with big towels, Caleb and I marched out to the front porch and shoveled and swept, shoveled and swept, shoveled and swept.
We won that skirmish, barely (although a box of my favorite magazines got ruined), but this time there were a whole lot more clothes down there, and they were a whole lot closer to the wall down which the water would come gushing, if it was so prone to gushing.
Keith came to help Larry put studs up in Hester’s room; it is now ready for Sheetrock. I put bunches of my everyday clothes away in the drawers Larry put in Caleb’s room, since Caleb doesn’t need that much drawer space. And I emptied out one--yes, only one--box. I’d been working all day long—but what had I done? I don’t have any idea what I did, really… although I did get the plumbing adhesive (is that what it was?) (pipe sealant?) (conduit goop?) off the bathroom floor, and now it looks almost like new. I wanted to clean the bathroom like Geech cleaned the ladies’ room at Merle’s gas station: he stood safely around the corner and lobbed a hand grenade inside. Blew the door clean off--but the room did get sanitized, although not necessarily cleaned.
Well, I thought that might not be prudent, and, besides, I couldn’t find the Grenade Department at Wal-Mart; so I simply scrubbed, after which I scrubbed some more.
Later, I went downstairs to see a) what progress was being done, and b) why in the world did my washing machine not work??! Answers: a) boards were being nailed to walls at a good pace, and b) because Larry was using the heavy-duty extension cord.
Wednesday was the last day of school last week, and there was no school today, either. It was nice to have a break.
Hester helped me carry the wooden rocking chair upstairs to Caleb’s room, where we perched it on one of our new rugs. It looks nice in there. These upstairs rooms are even bigger than I thought.
Larry got home a bit late, but would have had plenty of time to get ready for church--if he’d not sat at the table so leisurely eating. And then, of all things, when it was nearly time to go, and he hadn’t yet had a bath, he decided to take the faucet off the tub and see why the water trickles in so slowly.
“What are you doing?!” I yelped. “If you don’t get a move on,” I threatened, “we will go off and leave you, just like I’ve promised. And besides, I’ve put enough water into the tub for you already.”
He meekly screwed the faucet back on and took a bath.
A few minutes later, as we all stood in the living room by the front door waiting for him, he yelled, “Okay! I’m ready! Somebody find me a tie to match my green robe!” Then, within seconds, he came galloping from the bedroom yelling, “I’m really ready, now!” --and his britches were all wadded up, half in and half out of his boots.
So we all went out the door, a littler later than we’d wanted to be, but laughing.
The first order of the day Thursday: cleaning out the fish tank. A couple of those goldfish are huge, and so is the scavenger. And there they are, all crammed into a little ten-gallon tank. We need a horse tank for them. Larry has big ideas of ponds with fountains and waterfalls and lilies and flags and reeds (“…and cattails,” I added. “No!” objected Larry, “They make me sneeze!”) and wrought-iron benches and arbors and trellises and stone walkways…and goldfish in the pond. I figure the cats would go fishing, that’s what I figure.
As soon as the fish were whizzing around in such crystal clear water that they all had surprised looks on their faces (do fish have faces?), we started the burn barrel afire and proceeded to burn every bit of garbage and boxes we could find. [Burn barrels are fun! Wheeeee!!!] I emptied boxes as fast as I could, while Hester trotted them outside and threw them into the barrel. We folded up (with difficulty) the big box that had the shower and tub in it (well, actually, the shower and tub were out of it at the time we folded it), and put it into (or on, as the case may be) the burn barrel.
It didn’t fit.
“Maybe you could just lay it on the ground,” observed Caleb.
“But the fire is supposed to be ‘contained’,” protested Lydia.
I gestured at the now-burning box sitting precariously atop the barrel. “Does that look ‘contained’ to you?!”
Now and then some ashes floated out, and we watched carefully to make sure nothing started on fire. Fortunately, there is nothing but bare dirt around the barrel.
Socks hurt the pad on his right front paw. I picked him up, put him upside down on my lap, and looked at it. He growled unhappily. I try to be patient, but my patience doesn’t last long in the face of a dumb cat growling at me. I clipped off a piece of pad that was loose and released him. He avoided me for several hours after that. But he did stop limping.
Winston The Neighbor Dog Who Used to be Black Bandit tried chasing one of Jim C.’s new calves. The calf, an innocent young’n who had recently been having all sorts of jolly fun with his other black relatives, must have assumed Winston was another of the same. With complete fearlessness, he spun around and chased Winston. Winston backed up. The calf skipped forward and butted him good and proper. Winston fled, to the great amusement of the children.
I went back to putting away books, albums, and decorations. I even hung Caleb’s mirror, which entailed the use of the cordless drill and a couple of looong, wide-waled screws. Oh, er, uh, Larry informs me they are wide-threaded screws. He even had the audacity to laugh. Hummph. I’ll betcha he wouldn’t know one wale of corduroy from another, so there.
Hester was going to help clean the church at 5:00 that day. She was pleased to be on the same crew as her cousin and best friend, Emily Koch. We went at 4:00 so I could unearth a few more flowers. Caleb and Victoria brought their scooters, and I brought a bunch of boxes, shovels, and gardening gloves. Hester and Lydia watered the flowers I planned to dig up so that I could get the shovel into the ground easier.
I dug up columbine…hosta…lilies…purple coneflower…iris…tulip… and then, lo and behold, there on the north side of the house, where I thought some of my favorites had died out the year I was sewing purple bridesmaid dresses instead of pulling weeds, I found—bleeding heart! Yes, two bleeding heart plants. One had tiny fuschia hearts on it already, little buds that gradually get bigger and prettier. The other had no buds yet, but I’m fairly sure it’s the white bleeding heart. And then, as icing on the cake, I discovered—Virginia bluebells. That was another I thought was dead and gone. They were all in different places than they used to be; either they’d come up from the root, or some seeds had fallen and germinated this year.
I took a couple of honeysuckle runners from the prettiest vine--the one called ‘Magnifica’. The runners had put down roots; we’ll see if they make it.
But the first thing that happened was that I learnt one should not dress in straight skirts when one plans to go digging, particularly when one’s shovel is one of those sorts with a long, narrow scoop. After nearly ripping the pleat out several times, I trotted across the street to Mama’s, where, after a search through her closet, I came up with a short-sleeved white blouse. Dorcas loaned me her one and only drawstring skirt, a flimsy, floaty thing with yards and yards of fabric.
I changed clothes, having a good deal of trouble getting that drawstring to pull up tight enough that the skirt would stay on; and then, feeling rather as if I were dressed in a big black garbage bag, I returned to the flowers. Trouble was, the skirt was so long that I was practically sweeping the turf with it. I’d lift my foot, set it on the shovel, and push--not realizing I’d also set my foot on the skirt, too, until I felt it suddenly heading south. AAAaaaaaa!!!
I tried digging up the rhododendron (or is it a hydrangea?), but it was too big for me. I probably assassinated it. Next, I tried getting the barberry…the light green variegated…the dark green variegated…but the ground was too hard, and I couldn’t even get the shovel into the ground, in spite of the fact that we'd soaked it thoroughly. After I’d been digging for two and a half hours, I decided I’d better quit, or I wouldn’t have enough oomph to plant them, once we got home again. Besides, Hester would soon be done cleaning the church. I put all the boxes of flowers into the back of the Suburban, then a garden hose, all my little wooden posts, and a couple of long wooden timbers.
Dorcas sent over some banana bars, which is exactly the right thing for hardworking gardeners and scooter riders. She also gave us a couple pieces of pizza for Larry’s lunch, over which the kiddos duly drooled.
As we were leaving, we saw a mallard drake and hen flying low overhead, and then, to our surprise, they landed on the roof of a nearby house.
“What are they doing?” exclaimed Caleb.
“House-sitting,” I told him.
“Is that a pun?” he queried, giggling.
“Yes, but it was an accident,” I assured him. (My puns always are.)
Home again, I planted the honeysuckle by the fence…but I don’t know if that was such a good idea. First, Jim Cumming is liable to come marching along, fixing his fence, and tromp straight through it. Second, the cows are liable to eat it. Third, it’s liable to turn into Jack’s Beanstalk and overload the newly-put-in fence. Hmmm… I divided the hosta and put it around a couple of pine trees in the front. I’d like to fill the ground under all our trees with shade-loving, fragrant, and showy flowers like lily-of-the-valley, astilbe, and columbines. But…for now, I put the lilies beside the porch, along with purple coneflower. I’ll probably wind up transplanting bunches of the flowers I’ve planted, because I really didn’t want to line the sides of the house with flowers. That’s not exactly good landscaping. But…I’ve no choice at the moment, because the rest of our land isn’t smoothed down properly for grass- or flower-planting either one. At least the flowers are growing and healthy. One thing at a time. Unless we win the lottery. ò¿ò
Hester, filling one of my plastic watering cans in the tub, dropped it, making a mess of the just-cleaned bathroom and cracking the can. Then, not knowing the can was cracked, she refilled it and spilled it all over the floor a second time.
The Schwan man arrived. Dorcas had just come, and she bought some groceries, too; so maybe, betwixt the two of us, we made it worth his while to drive all the way out here and then lumber his big truck down our winding lane, trying to stay out of the ditches the while.
The children played outside all day long until suppertime, getting themselves quite sunburnt.
Teddy came to have Larry cut his hair. Larry got out the hair-cutting supplies while Teddy went to the garage for the barber chair.
We showed Teddy what we’d accomplished around the house, including our closet. He peered in.
“Where’s Daddy’s nail?” he asked.
Later that night, I wandered back into the kitchen—and discovered that Larry and Teddy had both gone off without sweeping up the hair that was all over the floor. Furthermore, someone had spilt the grape juice. And boy, oh, boy, had they ever spilt it. All over everything, I do believe. Why, it had even splashed into the open spout of the orange juice jug. The table was sticky…a chair was soaked…the floor was sticky…
“Aarrgghh!!!” I shrieked, shaking a foot like a cat after a puddle. “Who did this?!!”
Several heads popped cautiously around the corner.
“Hester did,” Victoria informed me solemnly.
Hester, looking properly chagrined, was swiftly marched in to clean it up.
The kids, quite tired, took baths and went to bed.
In the meanwhile, I vacuumed hair off the floor. It wasn’t until everyone had already gone to bed that I walked into a spot so sticky it’s a wonder I’m not still stuck to it. Furthermore, gobs of hair were in it.
Now, I grant you, that part of the floor is an ugly floor; we haven’t put a remnant of carpet on it yet. It’s ugly, I tell you. It even feels ugly. Nevertheless, I do not want juice on it, nor do I want hair in the juice. Sooo…I mopped the ugly floor.
Then, with a pot of fresh coffee beside me, I ensconced myself in the new recliner, which is still residing in the washroom, put a newly-washed dogbone pillow behind my neck, covered up with Mama’s soft old quilt – it was a wedding gift, so it was probably made in 1936 – that she gave me some years ago, and read the morning newspaper, despite the fact that it was almost the next morning.
Friday, Hester stayed with Mama while Lydia went with Dorcas to Norfolk to look for something for Dorcas for Easter. The dress she’d sewn herself hadn’t turned out well, and she was quite disheartened about it. The matching hat, too, was almost-pretty-not-quite, although it definitely has possibilities—if someone could just tell me how to get a gallon of glue off of it so I could redo the trim for the poor girl.
It rained gently all day. At noon, I suddenly remembered: I’d left my muddy suede shoes outside on the porch. Well, now they were worse than muddy. They were soaked. Probably ruined. Furthermore, it was still leaking in the storage room. Not much, but a leak, nonetheless.
{“How much is it leaking?!” exclaimed Larry in dismay upon hearing this.
“Oh,” pondered Caleb carefully, “not much. Probably about two drips every couple of seconds or so,” he decided.
‘Not much,’ he says.}
In spite of the rain, Larry was able to work all day, for which he was glad.
Dorcas and Lydia came home from Norfolk. Dorcas had bought a pink suit from J. C. Penney's, and she got Hester and Lydia each a dress, too. Just what they need: more clothes.
She also got them each a pair of sandals, one pair navy and one pair white, and for Lydia some navy and white spectator pumps that go perfectly with the navy and white check suit she planned to wear to the evening service. Wouldn’t you just know it, both Hester and Lydia wanted the same pair of sandals--the pair that was the most comfortable and fit each of them the best. They came to the same conclusion at the same time: they would each wear one of each. ê¿ê
Lydia got Caleb a purple dinosaur soap, because a few days ago she was holding Caleb’s prize Garfield soap that Teddy had given him, dropped it, and knocked a chip off its front paw. Caleb was delighted with his new soap, and immediately displayed it on his dresser alongside his funny-looking jointed and flocked dogs.
We were in a tornado watch till 10:00 p.m., and a severe thunderstorm watch till midnight. A tornado destroyed some property on a ranch near Ansley. When I went to get Hester, the sun came out from under the cloud cover to the west, making a rainbow in the east. It wasn’t very bright, because the clouds were greenish and strange. Halfway to Columbus, I ran into a hard downpour; but by the time I got to Mama’s house it had tapered off.
Larry and Keith went to the old house to cut the wood floor out of the living room and hallway. It was easy to take out, because it wasn’t glued to the floor. They said we wouldn’t recognize the house, so many walls are gone. So that house will be definitely improved upon. Whoever drew up the original plans ought to be forced to live in a tight maze with everything he needs just out of reach, and only supplied to him when he is on the verge of expiring.
Larry and Keith then brought the wood flooring out here, and after eating supper, they worked on the basement. I managed to finish the mending just before they quit for the night.
Esther came to get Keith, bringing a couple of dresses that Norma purchased for Lydia and Victoria. They are blue with little sweaters covered with lovely, thickly-embroidered-and-beaded flowers and leaves on the front, and silk sheath jumpers underneath. They’re too long. Lydia’s would do, maybe; but Victoria’s is clear to the floor. And it’s only a 7! So I need to hem it up. They’ll wear them next Wednesday night.
After the girls went to bed (not necessarily to sleep, on account of all the racket Larry and Keith were making), I went into the bathroom…and discovered deep, soapy water in the tub, as usual. And one of the big drawers wide open, as usual. (Yes, it was Hester, as usual.)
I walked to the top of the basement stairs. “Hester and Lydia!” I called, unsure yet which girl was the culprit.
“What?” they answered in unison, and Larry and Keith were quiet, too, in order to hear what I was going to say.
“Your ducks got loose!” I called down to them.
Silence.
Then, “What?” asked somebody.
Louder, “Your ducks got loose!”
“Ducks?” asked Larry wonderingly.
“Well,” I explained, “I figured they must have had ducks, since they left so much water in the tub. But they’re gone now.”
Keith and Larry guffawed. Hester laboriously got herself out of bed and came to let the water out.
“And wipe the duck scum off the sides, too,” I ordered.
She sighed, and everyone else laughed. Poor Hester. The child needs more sleep, I think.
My hands are sore from pulling staples out of the steps, even though I used leather gloves. Some of them, I simply cannot get a grip on and pull out. What do you do with them?!
Saturday, amazingly enough, I got all the clothes washed. (Again.) I sewed a lace insert into the too-low neckline of Victoria’s pink dress, let out the hem in Caleb’s white linen slacks, and then started ironing. I ironed…and ironed…and ironed…and ironed…and ironed…and ironed…and ironed…and ironed… Two hours later, I finished. I’d ironed most of Hester and Lydia’s dresses and Caleb’s suits. I then sewed non-matching buttons onto Caleb’s cuffs, and a non-matching button onto my blouse. Yes, it is too the style! (Well, actually, I couldn’t find matching ones.)
When Larry got off work that afternoon, he went to get a haircut, which took a good long while, because the few barbers who were open were doing a brisk business. By the time he got home, he was snoozing on his feet, lucky to have arrived without snoozing at the wheel. He plopped into the recliner and slept till 7:30, too tired to do any work on the house. Then he emptied the ashes from the nearly-full burn barrel, the kids carried out the garbage, and he burned it…and that’s all he did. Too many early mornings and late nights; it was high time he had a break. Besides, if he hadn’t have napped then, he would probably have done it the next day during one of the Easter services, and then the ushers with the goads would have descended upon him.
Hannah called, wondering whatever to do because she’d neglected to pick up Bobby’s suit from the cleaners Thursday or Friday, supposing she could get it Saturday. Unfortunately, they were closed. I looked in our city directory, but it didn’t list the owner’s name. I told her to find out from Amy, whose boss at One-Hour Martinizing might know. That she did, and Hannah was eventually able to contact the owner, who cheerfully met her at the Laundromat and refused to take any extra for his helpfulness.
“How often do you have to do this?” Hannah asked apologetically, and was surprised when he answered, “This is the one and only time it has ever happened!”
“Does that mean I’m the only one who ever forgot her husband’s suit?!” Hannah asked me later.
We decided it was the perfect afternoon, cold and chilly as it was, to make our neighbors the muffins I’d been wanting to give them. Hester got out the strawberry muffin mix I’d bought—but it required milk, and we had none. She miraculously found one of the boxes of cookbooks, and I looked through the quick bread section, discovering that most all muffin recipes do indeed call for milk. I finally found one that listed sour cream instead--and, wonder of wonders, we actually had some. It was called Filled Sour Cream Bread, and its ‘filling’ was of brown sugar, butter, and crushed walnuts. We didn’t have the walnuts, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to leave them out. So we made muffins instead of bread, which didn’t take as long to bake, anyway. We also made a loaf for us, too, so we could see what it tasted like. Just in case, you know. In case it was totally yuck and blah.
Shortly after Hester got the batter mixed up, Larry came home with a gallon of milk. So I made a frosting of powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk. When the muffins were done, Lydia, Victoria, and I took half a dozen to the neighbors.
Richard A. was in his front yard, puttering around, Winston lying nearby. He really does look like Adolf Hitler’s homely little brother. (Richard, not Winston.) (Winston looks like Abner Doubleday.) Winston suddenly noticed us, whereupon he sprang to his feet and did his dogly duty of protecting his property, in spite of the fact that he really, really likes us. As soon as he was done with his tumultuous barking, he rushed to greet us, nearly wagging himself in half.
I asked if his wife was home. (Mr. A’s wife, not Winston’s.) (Winston’s wife, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, is buried near Blenheim Palace, and is unavailable for comment.)
He yelled (as loudly as he could yell, which wasn’t very loud), “Vi!” Then again, “Vi!”
I thought, She’ll never be able to hear him, and then the door opened, and out came Viola. We noticed that, in the middle of the Junk Yard, there was a little circle of short white fencing, in the center of which were clusters of colorful tulips.
Victoria handed her the Easter card, in which I’d written, Dear Mr. and Mrs. A.: Thank you for your kindness and friendliness to us, your new neighbors. May God bless you this Easter. Your new neighbors, Larry, Sarah Lynn, and family.
I gave her the muffins, telling her, “This is just a little Easter treat.”
She thanked me warmly, and then used the as-yet-unopened Easter card to smack Winston on the head for being so rambunctious that he knocked Victoria down. From the way he was acting, he must have had a few too many nips of his old favorite Pol Roger champagne.
We took our leave, and Richard A. actually smiled at us--at least, I think he smiled, under that extra-large Adolf Hitler moustache of his--and then lifted a hand in a farewell gesture. Unless he was saluting his big brother.
We walked back to our house, went all the way around to the front porch, opened the door, and asking Hester to hand us the other platter of muffins and the card, since our feet were all muddy. Then we headed to the other neighbors’ house.
We entered a region that is surely the total opposite of the grounds on the other side of us. Sandra has flower gardens and arrangements all around the property, with brick walkways, just like I envision putting around our house, curving through the gardens. She laid them herself; they got them free when an old brick barn was torn down.
I rang the doorbell. Jim C. opened the door, and promptly invited us in.
“What’s this, what’s this?!” he exclaimed, looking at the muffins. He looked at Lydia and Victoria. “Don’t you girls know that it’s not Easter Bunny Egg Day till tomorrow?!”
We shed our muddy shoes in the walkway, and then they gave us a small tour of their log cabin-that’s-a-whole-lot-more-than-a-cabin. It’s beautiful. There is an open stairway up to a loft that encircles the living room on three sides, and over the banister hangs multitudes of attractive hand-loomed rugs and large, heavy throws, many with pictures of animals on them. There are antiques throughout the house, and several lovely china hutches. Sandra has collections of all sorts of things: bells, blue delft, … She gave us all a large handful of Easter candy, candy that she’d gotten for her grandchildren. But none of her grandchildren or children, nor Jim’s, either, were coming for Easter. Several had made plans to come, then canceled, one by one, in order to go elsewhere. The C.'s were quite disappointed. She wanted them to see all her tulips, hyacinths, crabapple, magnolia, and plum trees in bloom.
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| Crabapple Blossoms |
After baths and lots of curlers on young heads other than Caleb’s, Larry and I went to Hy-Vee for the orange juice I had been asked to bring to the church breakfast. We got the store brand orange juice, not the Premium that tastes so good; but it was only $2.00/gallon. It tastes like they juice the rind, too. Bleah. Sorry, people.
Sunday morning, I got up at 3:30 a.m., and woke the rest of the household half an hour later. Even so, we barely made it to church on time. Ah, well; a lot of other people barely made it to church on time, too; we weren’t the last ones in, by any means.
Robert preached from John 20. He reminded us how, in chapter 19, John, the ‘Beloved Disciple’, had first taken Jesus’ mother to stay at his house; now he had evidently taken Peter under his wing--Peter who had denied the Lord, Peter who had gone out and wept bitterly, impulsive Peter who often spoke and acted before he thought things through. By that we know that John was a sympathetic person, a forgiving person.
We need more people like John for all of us Peter types, don’t we?
As usual, we had hard-boiled eggs, ham, rolls, jelly, milk, orange juice, coffee or tea, and more varieties of doughnuts than you can imagine.
We rushed home after the breakfast and changed into our best glad rags. Then off we went to Sunday School and church.
The horns played two songs, one of which was Crown Him With Many Crowns, a favorite of mine. The Wright quartet--Bobby’s father, uncle, and two aunts--sang He Could Have Called Ten Thousand Angels, and the octet, of which Keith and Teddy are a part, sang a song whose chorus comes from the verse in Isaiah 53:5: ‘He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; surely He bore our sorrows; and by His stripes we are healed.’
The first time I ever heard that song was many years ago, and it was done by the Children's Bible Hour from Grand Rapids, Michigan. They used to sing it so beautifully, and with such feeling… Nowadays, they’ve gone to mostly contemporary music, and I cannot bear it. UGH!!! Contemporary music sounds like someone threw a jumble of notes into a hat, and the musician(?) reached in and drew notes out at random, and someone sang(?) them. How does anyone ever learn those non-melodies?! I’ll betcha there won’t be any of that discordant cacophony in heaven. Bleah!!!
Okay, I’m done ranting and raving.
Maybe.
I love the glorious Easter story. How can anyone read a passage such as this without yearning to live a more godly life: “His visage was so marred more than any man” (Isaiah 52:14)—meaning, he was so beaten and abused that he hardly resembled a man; and then, in 53:2—‘He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.’ Think of that: the very people who caused Him to have no beauty, by their cruel beatings and scourgings, then hated Him because of it.
53:3: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4) Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5) But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
He willingly suffered all that for us…and yet, so often, we are unwilling to suffer for Him. But the Bible says in II Timothy 3:12, ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’
Sooo…sometimes, it seems, we haven’t any choice but to suffer, willingly or otherwise. But we have God’s promise in Ephesians 3:20 that He ‘is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’, and Hebrews 11:6, ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.’
Some of those rewards we have been given already. We have so many blessings we can’t count them all--especially our family and friends whom we so dearly love.
By the time we came home from church that afternoon, we were starving again. After all!—we’d been up for nine hours! Belgian waffles seemed to be just what the doctor ordered…but we couldn’t find the cooking spray. Larry brought in a few boxes from Uncle Clyde’s trailer, but the cooking spray did not materialize. There was Crisco, but Larry, thinking it was too much trouble to smear Crisco all over the waffle irons, simply added more cooking oil to the batter and hoped that would do the trick.
Didn’t work.
The first waffle stuck like glue, and we attempted to scrape it out with a heavy-duty earth-moving machine. When that didn’t work, we tried a dragline, a backhoe, an excavator, and a power shovel. {Luckily, we have two waffle irons, and the other one I coated with Crisco before Larry put batter into it.} Finally we threw the recalcitrant waffle-iron plates into a sink full of hot water and went to take a nap, planning a later endeavor with a dredge.
When our alarms went off a couple of hours later, we were not at all done with our naps. But we struggled from bed and made ourselves presentable. I stayed with Mama that night.
We always have a lunch after the service on Easter night. Pauline, the girl who stays with Mama evenings and Saturday nights, brought us ham, deviled eggs, and all kinds of cake; and Amy’s mother, Martha, brought us some orange juice. I filled plates for Mama and myself; she actually ate everything I gave her: a small piece of ham, half a deviled egg, a small piece of carrot cake. Maybe I should have put more on that plate! But she said she was full; so I didn’t try to force-feed her more. Instead, I pigged out, myself.
Bobby and Hannah and children came over after the lunch. Aaron told us what he had to eat, in his unique way of clipping the words off short: “Ham. Eggs. Cupcake. Cupjuice.” Well, they were both in a cup! haha
Hester, Lydia, and Caleb arrived. Aaron greeted Caleb: “Caybood!” Sometimes it’s ‘Cayboot.’ Caleb, of course, thinks his little nephew is positively funny and endearing.
Norma sent Larry home from church with a box full of cake and a big jug of juice--Tropicana. Too bad it’s the kind without pulp. We went home and ate more cake (ugh) and went straight to bed. It was only 11:30 p.m. Unheard of, for me to go to bed that early on an Easter night, even if I’d stayed up all night the previous night, sewing. Getting old, I guess.
Well, I’d go get busy, but, once more, Kitty is having her daily bath and ablutions on my lap, and she feels terribly cuddly, and I’d hate to upend her.
As I type, I can hear a field sparrow whistling his heart out not far from my open window. There is an unknown warbler nearby, too, and of course the ever-present Agelaius phoeniceus--that is, the red-winged blackbird. The doves are cooing, and now and then I hear the cheery call of a cardinal, and the chip-chip of his mate answering him. Occasionally there is the raucous cry of a bluejay, and sometimes we hear meadowlarks and bobwhite quail. Yesterday I saw a little chipping sparrow hip-hopping down the lane. Yes, I like this place! . . . . . {Unfortunately, so do the cats, carnivorous beasts.}
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