I stopped by the Goodwill store to see what was newly old or oddly new. My eyes went straight to a ceramic pig. She was a bank, I think. Anyway, she was purple and she was wearing a little tutu….And..a shiny crown.

I took my remarkable find to the check-out counter where the clerk looked all over my purple pig for a sticker with the price on it. She couldn’t find one. She said the rule is…if there is no price tag, they can’t sell the item until the next day when someone prices it. I know why they do this. People take price tags off things hoping they can get a better deal. That might work at the Church garage sale, but it is a punishable offense at the GW store.

So they said….

I started to write a poem in my head about Empress the purple pig. I got so attatched to her that I actually decided to stop by and visit her after work. I would take a picture of her…yes! That was a great idea! I could show how I saved her from crashing to the floor in some little kid’s room and breaking into smithereens.

On Wednesday, I would buy her. (At this point, I was willing to pay any price..within reason.) I would take Empress home and introduce her to all of my Beasterhops and dolls and show her my crowns. But that didn’t happen.

“We sold her about 15 minutes ago,” a different clerk said.

“What?” I gasped. “Don’t you know the rules around here?” I frightened her, I think, but I had to leave anyway so she wouldn’t see me cry.

I thought it might help if I wrote a different poem about Empress.

Empress

I’m Empress the dancing pig. My agent thought he had me a gig.

But when it never did pan out, my owner kicked my pig can out.

She took me to the GW store…My price tag fell on the floor.

I fear no one will know my worth? My tutu barely fits my girth.

A real strange nice person wanted me. She said her heart was filled with glee!

‘Cause no one knew how much I cost. Another chance for me, was lost.

Couldn’t they just take a guess? Then I could be a great success!!

The stranger said not to worry, for tomorrow she would hurry.

She said, “I’ll come and buy you honey, shine your crown, and give you money to fill your empty hole inside. You’ll wear that purple crown with pride!

She said she’d take me off the shelf and teach me to self- help myself.

Well… that glorious life was not to be. Another person purchased me.

She didn’t give me a chance to show her how this pig can dance.

She took me to a real nice store. Will I stay here for ever more?

She gave me a close inspection. She wanted me for her collection.

It seems I’m worth thousands more, than the price she paid at the Goodwill store.

The above story is true..I found this pig picture on the internet.. Empress was purple. This one goes well with my Francis Plumbing and Heating ceramic commode.

You can dance without music if a tune can’t be heard.

Some cry with no tears, which to me seems absurd.

You can smile without laughing. (I can’t deny it.)

You can’t laugh without smiling. (Did you just try it?)

If we’re living the dream, then there’s nothing to fear.

Long lazy days can become a short year.

You can close your eyes tightly and see a beautiful place.

But can’t find your glasses when they’re right on your face.

You can age gracefully or chase after youth.

You can never do both. I’m telling the truth.

Friends are there for the good times, but you know they care,

When you’re going through bad times and you feel covered in prayer.

I want to wish an amazing lady and wonderful friend a very happy birthday.

 

Since we moved into our RV full-time, I try to take Rylie and Nellie on 3 brisk walks a day. I have to walk them one at a time. Kip is having back issues, so I’m the walker in chief.

In addition to the walks, we take them to a nearby field once a day to run free…no leash. It’s only a problem if there’s inclement weather. Let’s just say the rubber boots I got at Walmart 6 weeks ago have really come in handy.

Here are a few pictures I took yesterday. It was a gorgeous afternoon. The Indian Paintbrush wild flowers are in full bloom. We haven’t seen many blue bonnets, yet.

“She was the Queen of the Silver Dollar. She ruled the smoky kingdom. Her scepter was her wine glass and a barstool was her thrown.” That song, Queen of the Silver Dollar, by Dave and Sugar was a song I used to play over and over, even before I became a self-appointed, I mean self- anointed, Queen.

I may have sat on a barstool once or twice in my lifetime and I’m sure Cousin, Lav probably has too, years and years ago, but I would be willing to bet that she has not been to motorized barstool races. I got the pleasure of that experience just yesterday.

BEN WHEELER, Texas — You may be asking yourself, “So what is this crazy motorized barstool thing anyway?”

Well, it started in 1978 at The Quiet Man Bar on Knox Street in Dallas. The original circle of six barstool creators consisted of Bill Jenkins, Thomas Spangler, Johnny Gable, John Pullman, Mike Carr and Keith Blackwell. 

Each man created his own version of a motorized barstool and then they began to race them outside the bar. Soon it grew into something much bigger.

The Dallas Farmer’s Market quickly took up the event in full sponsorship along with Ben E. Keith and Budweiser to blast the race city wide. 

Last seen in 1991, the barstools have resurfaced around every St. Patrick’s Day in Ben Wheeler since 2015. This year, the annual festivities were held on Saturday.

Downtown Ben Wheeler roadway (FM 279) was closed due to the barstools racing on the streets.

It was a hoot!

By Mary Francis McNinch

Some of my favorite stories told at the Mesa Gathering were about Mack’s Cafe in Murdo, SD.

Karen Haugland Poppe regaled us with her memories of the iconic Cafe located uptown in Murdo, SD. It was on the NE corner across from the Murdo Show House and next to the Gem Hotel. In the years her parents, Nels and Doris Haugland, owned it, Mack’s provided a lot of great food and good times. It was the place all the farmers and ranchers and later highway construction workers came for breakfast and left with ample sack lunches all made with food prepared from scratch by Doris beginning in the very early morning hours of each day. My own memory of the caramel covered or frosted cinnamon rolls Mom would bring the girls who cleaned the rooms at her Chalet Motel make my mouth water. When I mentioned the delicious ham and beans Doris made, my cousin Valerie who had been wolfing down a plate of sweet desserts at the Gathering and was not paying close attention to the conversation piped up and said, “There’s ham and beans!?” Sadly, they were only another mouth-watering memory.

Doris would make hot beef sandwiches with a mound of mashed potatoes covered in rich brown gravy and some of the best meatloaf you could ever eat.

“What’s on the menu besides fly specks and ketchup?” Ben Dykstra, a local rancher, would ask as he sat down in one of the booths.

Karen told us things I didn’t know…like how her mother made sure those who didn’t have a good meal to eat on all the holidays got free food from Mack’s before her own family ate. Doris and Nels had a family of 6 and the 4 kids worked without pay. Karen said one year she complained that she wanted a job that paid. Her mother said, “Then go and get one.” She went to work at the Murdo Coyote Newspaper office. She said, “I went home covered in ink, but I had money in my pocket.”

Doris started her day a few hours before dawn, but the locals like my parents and numerous other couples would crank up the juke box and party after hours on the weekends. I remember Mom saying, “Marge Bork played The Orange Blossom Special a million times.” (One of Mom’s Lorettaisms was, “I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate.”)

When Mom and Dad were building our new house next to Mowell’s, Grandma Sanderson, who was very hard of hearing called Mom and asked her what she was going to feed the men building the house for noon dinner. Mom said, “I’m sending them to Mack’s Cafe.” Grandma said, “Yes, and coffee.”

We talked about Slim, who worked at Mack’s and helped himself to packs of cigarettes, which he rolled up into the sleeve of his white T shirt. He didn’t much care for my Aunt Elna, and when she asked him to pass a note on to my mother, he told mom it came from the old bag.

Mack’s Cafe was where all the kids were welcome to fill up the booths and nurse a Coke after the movie until closing time. Sometimes, we pooled our money and ordered some delicious French fries. I always ate a Bing Candy Bar with my Coke.

Lots of my friends worked there. Marlene Rada Baker worked all through high school. Josephine Jost worked there, too. I had to work at Mom’s motel, but that’s another story. I remember Linda Kerns and so many others. I was in the Café one day, and Bill Jackson was sipping his coffee and said to the waitress, “This weather is like your leg…I’d like to see it clear up.” The waitress was his wife, Alice. She just filled his cup and moved onto the next customer without even smiling. She took the pencil from behind her ear and wrote down an order. She was a petite lady with red hair done in a perfect candlestick hairdo. Everyone wore a crisp white uniform and an apron.

I have such fond memories of that wonderful place. I’m sure anyone who lived in Murdo from the 1950’s through the 70’s have their own special memories of Mack’s Cafe.

Karen Haugland Poppe did her parents proud. She managed another iconic SD place called Wall Drug for 40 years… no ink.

https://www.edsullivan.com/artists/the-beatles/#:~:text=At%208%20o%27clock%20on,live%20performance%20on%20U.S.%20soil.

Where were you 59 years ago today? (Were you even born yet?)

I was at Suzanne and Cynthia Bork’s house in Murdo, SD. I was  12 years old. We were playing Monopoly in the kitchen when we heard the Beatles being introduced on Ed Sullivan’s “Really Big Shooo!”

I thought their hair was ridiculous!

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something for a while, now,” Kip said.

“That sounds rather ominous,” I said. “Are you not feeling well? Are you sick? Please tell me you’re okay! I need a driver. I can’t drive this rig out on the open highway! Someone could get seriously injured! Think of the dogs.”

“What are you talking about?” Asked Kip.

“What are you talking about?” I volleyed.

Kip would have walked over and sat on the couch if we had one, but because we don’t, he pulled out a chair and sat down on it, while I stood there and became increasingly concerned about where this conversation was going.

“You have to get over your need to put everything we own in a basket,” he proclaimed. “You have begun to put little baskets inside of bigger baskets. You can’t walk by a basket in a store without standing there for what feels to me like an eternity, trying to decide where you can put another basket and what you can put in it! And while we’re on the subject, what is the purpose of using paper plates if you have to put them inside a paper plate holder basket thingy?”

“But they’re all so cute,” I said.

“Babies are cute, baskets are beginning to irritate the heck out of me. I was looking for my wallet the other day and guess where I found it?”

“Well,” (I volleyed, again). “It was either in my handbag or in that cute little ‘container’ I found on sale at Tractor Supply.”

“A basket by any other name is still a basket,” he countered.

“I like baskets because I can pick them up with all of their contents and easily dust under them…I knew I had lost the argument before the words were even out of my mouth.”

We are officially homeless. We closed on the sale of our house yesterday. When we finally got back to the RV, Kip said, “We can never go back there, again!” He said it like it’s a bad thing.

We are free! Free to travel unencumbered by yards, mortgages, garbage pick-up days…a major stressor. “We forgot to put out the garbage! Now it will sit there for another week!”

We have made a few tentative plans, but we can’t go anywhere until our new RV furniture gets here in mid-February or early March. In the meantime, we had to tie down a kitchen chair to drive to the RV park.

As always, our sweet pups seem to thrive in spite of all the chaos. It’s all they have ever known.

I will post pics when we get completely settled into our new full-time home, that being the RV we bought last year. I think we will be happy travelers for a few years before we contemplate the next stop on this our journey of life.

Ben Wheeler pop. 1000, is a cute little place with a great downtown square. The Forge is a great place to eat and there is a delightful little wine tasting/boutique that I plan to check out as soon as this bad weather leaves us. It’s been down into the 20’s with freezing rain.

Yup! We’re going to be just fine…as soon as we can find a place for all the stuff in the Uhaul…

I was so excited to be off on my long-awaited trip to see my son, Mason and his beautiful family. It’s a 1 & 1/2 hr flight from Dallas to Denver, a 1 & 1/2 hr, layover, and another 1& 1/2 hr flight to Gillette, where they live.

The flight didn’t exactly go as planned. We boarded the plane in Denver and then after taxiing down the runway, the plane suddenly stopped. The pilot said the GPS wasn’t working. I was in a hurry. Why couldn’t they just fly low and follow Interstate 25…easy, peasy.

GPS was not working well for United Airlines that day. I was slightly nervous when they told us that, but not as nervous as the guy sitting next to me. He flies several times a month, and he had never heard of an airplane’s GPS going down. Those words just don’t sound right in the context of an airplane ride, do they? I secretly wondered if they could use maps on their Iphone, but then I realized we all have to shut our phones off. I think it’s so they don’t mess with the airplane’s GPS.

We taxied back, deplaned, and walked to another gate to wait for a different plane to be readied. We were delayed (you guessed it, 1 1/2 hrs.). My son was trying to watch his son, Ethan, a freshman at Campbell County High School, play basketball. My delayed flight didn’t fit into my plan, either. Ethan scored 13 points, and the score was 13 to 13 at the end of the first quarter. Mason and I both missed it. Timing is everything. We made it to the gym for the 2nd half of the first game and all of the 2nd game. Eth plays for his freshman team and the JV1 and JV teams, but he can only play 6 quarters a day. The right team won all 3 games.

Anyway, I made it to my destination, and I had the absolute best time. Mason’s wife, Amy, is a wonderful person. She is a nurse and manages 3 offices for a group of orthopedic doctors, She and Mason have two great kids, Mason Jr. is 20 and is taking classes at Gillette College in anticipation of returning to UW next fall. He also does trim work for his dad. Ethan is 15. Amy’s mom, Linda, divides her time between Gillette and Florida. She has a place on Keyhole Lake, near Gillette, where she spends the spring and summers and then stays with Amy and Mason, when she closes the house down in the fall. She goes to Florida after New Years to spend time with her sister. I love hanging out with Linda, and we each even have our own mother-in-law’s quarters.

While I was there, I made my special chicken enchiladas, which, for some reason, didn’t taste very good. I redeemed myself with homemade banana pudding. Mason Jr. got an airfryer and mastered the art of cooking salmon. It was delicious. Everything Linda cooked was amazing. Let’s just say I ate my way through Wyoming and came back 5 lbs heavier. Ask me if I care. Well, I do now, but it was fun while it lasted.

Last Wednesday, I went to Buffalo with Mason where the company he works for is building 10 houses and they have lots ready to go for another 18. Buffalo, Wyoming is booming. Mason manages the project and is boucou busy. They don’t sell the houses until they’re finished so he gets to pick out all of the countertops, cabinets, paint, and floor coverings. I got to go with him to buy all of the light fixtures for 2 houses.

I have so much to tell you about regarding the sale of our house, but I will save that interesting story for another day. Hint: I had to trace 3 people down to get a deed signed that should have been signed 23 years ago. Do you think that was easy? The couple, who are 84 and 85, never deeded it to their son, or at least the deed was never recorded. He sold the lot to someone else, who sold it to us. I was wracked with nerves. I would love to tell you that Kip handled it worse than I did, but I would be lying. The son finally came through for us. Sheesh!!! Now, we are waiting for the appraisal. Stay tuned.

Amy is sending more family pics. Most of them are on her phone.

I was standing in the check-out line at the Woolco Store, right down the street from where we lived in Casper, Wyoming, when I felt a tug on my jacket. I looked down at this really cute little boy who obviously was troubled by something.

“What is it, honey? Is something wrong?”

He looked down at his feet. I thought he had become shy and was reconsidering telling me what was bothering him, when he looked up and said, “How old do you have to be before you know what’s going on?”

“Why would you ask?” I stammered. “What do you think is going on?”

“Never mind,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

I know I didn’t give him a very good answer, but that was back before people deeply analyzed the thoughts of children. I’ve thought about it many times since, and to be honest, if a child asked me that same question today, I would still be stuck for an answer.

The little boy was mine. I had to give up my place in line to take him to the bathroom. I was a caring mother, but I never looked too deep into my kid’s psyche. In all fairness, I was only twenty years old when I had him, and I realized early on that I could easily be outsmarted by children of almost any age.

The other problem was I had a guilty conscience and really hoped he hadn’t caught on to what I was doing. I was at Woolco to buy a birthday card. I already had the gift. It was a nice, pinkish colored, bottle of Ambush. I can’t remember if it was cologne or perfume or even who gave it to me. I just hoped it wasn’t the girl from work whose birthday gift I had forgotten to buy. Back then we didn’t have an acceptable name for what I was doing… like re-gifting. My little boy tugging at my coat would have called it, lying.

I was really late, and I was taking the smart little thing, who was wondering how old you have to be before you know what’s going on, to the party with me. Time for a foxhole prayer. Please don’t let him rat me out. How embarrassing would that be.

Fortunately, he had gone on to other things his little mind questioned like, “Mommy, why is the goldfish so much smaller today than it was yesterday?”

“Remember? He was sick. He must have lost weight.” I tried to think… Did I bury the (now dead) “other” fish deep enough in the garbage?

“You have to take us swimming because you promised! You said you should never break a promise.” I reminded my son, who now has two kids of his own, that he had to keep his promises to his boys, because he made me take him swimming that day.

“I remember,” he said. “The pool was closed by the time we got there and I threw a fit all the way home. “Besides,” he added, “I break promises to my kids all the time. They understand that sometimes the stars just don’t line up and I can’t make it happen. It takes them about two seconds to get over it.”

The above picture was taken when he was a little older. He got to travel by himself to visit Grandma Retta and Grandpa Gus in California.

****************************************

I have several, better pictures of those times, but they’re all cataloged by date, person, event, and place. I didn’t have time to alphabetize them, so it would have taken me too long to find them.

“Don’t lie, Mom. They’re thrown into large plastic crates, with people whose names you don’t even know!”

This was taken right before I told him what really happened to the goldfish.