We took our three aging dogs to have their teeth cleaned, yesterday. They were anesthetized so they felt no pain during or after the procedure. I should allow spellcheck to change that to pricedure. The dogs are fine, but Kip and I are in excruciating pain. It hurts to spit nails.

When we went to pick our babies up, the nice girl at the front desk said Pattie lost one tooth and Sammie lost four. Cyndie has great teeth, but her gums were slightly irritated.

We listened to the rundown and then Kip bellied up to the counter and asked,”How much?”

I never realized how two words could clear a room so fast. Suddenly, the poor receptionist was the only one to be seen. She must have drawn the short straw. All the other helpers became busy elsewhere. Even the two people waiting to buy flea pills ran out when they heard the amount.

I’m not going to tell you how much we paid, but if you see a for sale sign in my Jeep, you’ll know why.

The whole experience reminds me of the time we paid $300.00 to have a bladder stone removed from our son’s 3 foot long, iguana. The vet wanted to know if she could keep it. She said she rarely had the opportunity to operate on an iguana. Kip kept the costly stone in a jar for years. It’s gone now. A casualty of minimalization.

If you’re tempted to ask us why we don’t inquire about the vet fee ahead of time, bite your tongue. Nobody likes to look foolish in front of their friends. And if you ask us what we paid, we’ll have to reconsider our friendship. No one likes to appear stupid, either.

Yes our dogs can chew steak now… however, we’ll all be eating beans. That is, everyone but the vet. When you have three dogs, they see you coming. We all left with our tails between our legs.

I’ll tell you what! This vision board project is not easy. It sounded simple enough to design a poster board depicting my life at a point where everything is as it should be… but when I actually started to put it together, it got complicated.

I started with an unprioritized list of things that are super important to me. Then I thought about how I am currently fitting them into my life.

Do I give things that aren’t on my list too much time?

When I think about the things that I have listed, how do I feel? Do I feel satisfaction, frustration, happiness, guilt, fulfillment?

Here’s my start…the next step will be to make a poster that represents a clearer vision of a life organized around the things I’ve deemed important. (Though not mentioned, Kip is a given in all of this.)

I moved away from the town I grew up in years ago, but sometimes I reflect on what my life was like there and wonder if I should have stayed.

It seems that everybody wants to know where everyone else grew up. When I tell people I was born and raised in a town called Trickledown, they want to know how in the world the founders came up with a name like that!

I’ve heard a few stories, but the one that people repeat the most, is the one I usually tell folks. First, I’ll give you a little history of how the town came to be.

I’m a third generation Trickledowner, so my accounting will be somewhat subjective. Facts will be intermingled with folklore. I’ve also been gone for twenty years.

For a couple of decades, the place was nothing more than a wide spot in the road where people came to sell or trade whatever they had been able to grow on their land during the reasonably warm spring and summer months. They called it truck farming and it was the only thing that kept families going while they put together a temporary sod house, accumulated some livestock, and figured out how they were going to keep everything including themselves alive through the bitter cold days that would begin shortly after fall arrived.

Trickledown wasn’t like most other places people traveled great distances to homestead. Other parts of the country saw the leaves on the trees turn beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow in the fall. The leaves that were unlucky enough to be on a tree around what would be known as Trickledown, turned brown and blew away in a day or two. It was as if they knew it didn’t make sense to stick around and become nothing but frozen fodder trapped between cold, lifeless, tundra and hardened banks of snow.

The farmers and ranchers who settled in the area were those who were late to the game. The sign outside of town said, “Many passed through, but nobody stayed.”

Many of the families who dreamed of owning their own land didn’t stick around after experiencing their first winter. The ones who made it through the second, were tough, hardheaded, tenacious and extremely committed. I will include the women, children, cattle, horses, dogs and any other living thing in the category of, do’r die’rs.

Even so, it wasn’t long before a certain hierarchy formed. Five or six ranchers, who with their families, had stuck it out the full five years, which was the requirement to own the land they homesteaded, began to meet on a regular basis; ostensibly to plan the future of the little settlement.

One of the first buildings to go up was the school house. It was a small, square, structure. The unique feature was the second story. The idea wasn’t to make room for overcrowding, but to provide a small teacher’s quarters. They all figured it would take some added incentive to get a good teacher to live in Trickledown.

Both the school room and the quarters had a wood burning stove. If the pull-down ladder was down, and the hatch was open, the rising warm air from the schoolroom in addition to the stove going upstairs, would keep the quarters pretty warm. In the beginning, before a teacher was found, the ruling ranchers were very comfortable while holding their meetings up there.

 The building was perched on the side of a lonely hill so it also served as a lookout for any bad weather coming in… and a few other things. It was a widely known secret that more than a few hands of poker were dealt up there. Along with the cards, an occasional jug of moonshine, obtained by trading some of those valuable vegetables, was passed around. The men swore they were only thinking of the possible need to escape quickly when they put in a door to the outside leading to a small platform. Instead of stairs, they put a pole with places to put one’s feet and hands while climbing quickly down to safety. Coincidentally, the outhouse was only a few feet away from the pole.

Not wanting to have all the fruits of their labor thrown down the gullets of their men, a few of the local rancher’s wives had a meeting of their own, and devised a plot to kill their husband’s buzz.

It seems one of the plants that flourished in the gardens, but didn’t sell or trade very well, acted as a potent physic, (an old fashioned term for laxative). It was remarkably easy for the ladies to intercept the vile moonshine and add their own contribution to the mix. Soon, sliding down the pole, using the outhouse, and then climbing back up, interfered with the hierarchy conducting any business, such as naming the town. On the plus side, they were outside more than inside enjoying the comfort of the two-stove schoolhouse. Consequently, in addition to being cold they were worn out.

It must have been somewhat satisfying, yet difficult not to snicker, when those ladies watched their starving men gulp down a good meal, knowing it would be trickling down soon and they would be back out in the cold.

In the end, It was the rancher’s wives who came up with the town’s name. Trickledown had a ring to it, and it would be a constant reminder of the real value of a vegetable.

I have a new laptop. I wrote a whole blog. The laptop is very quick. I hit a key and lost everything.

The End

To be continued as soon as I figure out what I did so I don’t do it again…

 

When I was just a little girl, the stories I most loved to hear, were found inside my grandma’s trunk, filled with things from yesteryear.

I saw her in a picture. Not one hair was out of place. She wore a prim and proper dress made of satin, adorned in lace.

“Why aren’t you smiling, Grandma?” I asked her once again.

“My photograph was seldom taken. They were like portraits way back then. People struck a serious pose, stood tall, and calmly waited. A startling “poof” and blinding flash confirmed their likeness was created.”

(Mary standing in front her father in the buggy and her mother standing behind the wheel. Taken at the Tyrrell Farm.)

She reached inside the trunk and found an album bound in leather. Oh, the stories Grandma told when we looked at it together.

Time was captured in that book. Long ago came back to life, as Grandma told the story of becoming Grandpa’s wife.

“How did you and Grandpa meet?” Grandma knew I’d never tire, of the story beginning in the church, where she was singing in the choir.

Grandpa came with a lady friend, but Grandma caught his eye. He did some work on her father’s farm and came to know her by and by.

They were married May eighteenth. Nineteen eleven was the year. They moved from Iowa to South Dakota. No other family would be near.

Two daughters and two sons were born… a new home they began to seek. They bought land and a log cabin in a pretty place called Horse Creek.

They worked hard to make a living two more daughters soon arrived. Grandma said without their children’s help, they wouldn’t have survived.

Inside that big old trunk that had followed Grandma’s life, was a treasure trove of stories of happy times and times of strife.

When we finally closed the trunk, Grandma’s eyes began to shine. She said, “I could not be prouder of those six kids of mine.’

I heard a little cough. I turned around in time to see… Grandpa smile and wink at Grandma who was as pleased as she could be.