Those 70ish Girls

Our daughter and son-in-law were in Tyler over the weekend and decided to go to the movie. When they walked into the theater, three visibly upset, “older” (probably my age), ladies were running out. One rushed up to my daughter and grabbed her arm. She seemed terribly overwrought.

“What movie are you going to see?” She asked.

“Mamma Mia,” my daughter replied. “Did you come to the earlier showing?”

“No!” We came to see a spy movie, but we had to leave after five minutes. I don’t want my Lord to come back and catch me sitting in a movie like that!”

I told my daughter and her husband that I really enjoyed Mamma Mia. I finally admitted that I had gone to see the spy movie, too. I even admitted that I stayed for the whole thing…and I snickered slightly a couple of times.

It was probably the most offensive movie I have ever seen, but I didn’t want to appear rude to the others in the theater, not to mention I paid $11.00 for the movie, popcorn and a coke. I never leave without finishing my popcorn. I eat slowly.

When I was in college, my cousin and I took Grandpa Sanderson to a movie. We told him it was a western because it sounded like one to us. The name of it was, “They Shoot Horses, don’t They?” Have you seen it? It’s about several couples with identity problems who spend the entire movie trying to win a marathon dance contest.

We kept sneaking looks at Grandpa to see his reaction. It never dawned on us to get up and leave. Grandpa fell asleep twenty minutes into it. When we woke him up, he said, “Boy…that was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t see one horse!”

Grandpa never said a bad word in his life unless he heard someone he admired say it and didn’t know it was bad. (We had to tell him a couple of times not to repeat things unless he knew what the words meant.) Dancing was not his thing either, but he did like horses.

I have to be honest. I hate to miss out on anything. Would I go to a bad or offensive movie just because all of my friends were going? Probably… but I wouldn’t follow them over a cliff. everybody has their limits.

Between you and me, I think a lot of the people I saw in that spy movie knew they weren’t going to see James Bond. It was rather funny watching them stumble out of the movie. It’s hard to see in a dark theater when you’re wearing sunglasses. I saw someone today still wearing them. It’s raining, but those rainbows can be bright! (It wasn’t anyone I know.)

 

 

 

The first sentence of that letter shook me to the core. Against my better judgement, I went on to read some more…

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

It said…

I know I’m not your favorite. I never tried to be. But never mind all that! You can learn from me.

So listen up my dear and I’ll tell you what it takes. It makes no sense for you to make all of my mistakes.

I had a noose around my neck for Lord knows far too long. It took me years to figure out exactly what went wrong.

I was a farmer…not a farmer’s wife… I figured that I had enough old goats in my life.

I had no time for family. No one  ever called me nice. You’re my only niece and I think I’ve seen you twice.

You threw away your family, too and ran your best friend off. I’ve given you a new friend. His name is Arf.

You know where the farm is and I’ve given you the key. There you’ll find the answers that will set you free.

Arf will stay right with you. He won’t leave you alone. But he’ll have to bring his favorite chewed- up bone.

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

Arf came with me willingly. We were quite a pair. We headed for the farm….I wondered what would happen there… 

I heard the whispers in the wind and it comforted me somehow, but they had to do with then, and this was now.

And the wind will whisper your name to me,
Little birds will sing along in time,
The leaves will bow down when you walk by,
And morning bells will chime.

(Peter Paul and Mary)

To be Continued…

I was walking through the park and fighting back the tears. I had never felt this sad in all my thirty years.

My job was going nowhere and I couldn’t pay my bills. It seemed no matter where I turned, I was always climbing hills.

My best friend and I weren’t speaking. We’d had some silly fight. I had given up on sleeping. I just cried all night.

I hadn’t seen my family since many years before. There was just one, anyway, I truly did adore.

The sound of someone whistling broke through my  melancholy. I looked around but all I saw was a little border collie.

He was sitting near an empty bench. He appeared to be alone. He was guarding two possessions, a small bag and a chewed-up bone.

I felt drawn to the park bench. I was feeling so fatigued, but even more than that, I was profoundly intrigued.

I feared the little dog might leave but instead… he moved closer to my knee where he laid his weary head.

Several minutes later I opened my eyes to see that he had picked up his small bag. Was he giving it to me?

He dropped it on the bench and nudged it closer to my hand. I looked inside and what I saw I could not understand.

I found two things inside the bag…a letter and a key. The thing I could not believe? The letter was addressed to me.

I fumbled with the envelope and found a note within,  but before I could begin to read, I heard the whistling again.

Before I knew it, I was whistling along. Where could I have heard that familiar song?

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

Part 2 of Gone 2, next post…I promised you it wouldn’t be sad…Trust me.

I remember watching our granddaughter, Skyler, opening presents on her second birthday. When she got to a book, she opened it and pretended she was reading. “Once upon a time,” she read. Then she closed it and said, “The end!”

Skyler wasn’t interested in the story in the middle. It was more exciting to continue unwrapping all the other packages.

I feel gratified when you Murdo Girl readers go beyond the title of the blog and read the whole thing. I know it’s not all that easy sometimes. In fact, lately, I’ve been suffering from subject matter issues. I’ll admit, the HaHa Sisterhood got to be a little too much, and it’s so time consuming to cut and paste all of those pictures. I’ve given up on that one. Some thought the poem about the hanging was too sad or gruesome. I was going for a wild west type of story. Billy’s birthday songs were pretty well received, but Lav and I thought they were funnier than anyone else did.

The favorites this past week have clearly been the one about the decrepit playground and “Time Out.” Both these stories were about my old hometown of Murdo and the people who lived there many years ago. Sometimes I think if the first and last sentences had Murdo in them, and I threw in a picture, the blog would be a hit no matter what was in the middle.

Token Murdo pictures: Don Edwards and Mari and Eddie Jackson, 2016…Billy and I at the 1991 reunion

If I sound like I’m complaining, I’m really not. I enjoy writing and I love to try new things. The stories about my current life in Mabank, TX are popular as are the blogs I write while we are traveling. People seem to like the funny poems and anytime I write about real people and true life situations, I get good feedback.

I’m currently working on a project that has turned into a labor of love. I started writing picture storybooks about each of my grandchildren. It takes a lot of time, but I’m hoping it will be something they will enjoy and someday they can show their kids my picture storybook about my memories of them.

I’ve also started doing some volunteer work at the library, and we are going to be heading out on our trip the last week of September, so life is busy. More likely than not, I will only be blogging a couple of times a week until we go on our trip and I start writing about our daily travel experiences.

Below is an excerpt from Grandson, Mason’s book…

 

I hope this doesn’t sound to you like psychobabble.
But that young man was a whiz at scrabble.
I challenged the words that I was willing to bet,
He wouldn’t find on the internet.
It worked quite well since we had no dictionary,
But when the Internet went down, I was very wary.
“Would you cheat?” I asked and saw him grin.
 Or will you be a good boy and let your grandma win?
“Aw-Shucks,” he said. I’m not that kind of kid.
I can’t help that I’m as bright as a proplyd*.”
He won playing cards, and bought the board in Monopoly.
And how to hit a golf ball, is still a mystery to me.
(Look up proplyd on the internet.)
He couldn’t be having fun, I thought. He’s so good and I’m so bad.
I was about to give it up, when I heard him tell his dad,
“I like that Grandma plays with us, she loses without crying,
And she never, ever does give up. She just keeps on trying.”
You’re probably wondering what it takes to be an Aw-Shucks kid.
 I’ll tell you about the next few years. You’ll understand…..I did.

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

Aw-Shucks kids are wise beyond their years.
They aren’t really looking for loud applause and cheers.
So if you see an Aw-Shucks kid, just know you can replace,
A pat on their back with a smile on your face.

They were standing on a hill, waiting to meet their fate.

One was sorry for what she’d done, but her sorry came too late.

One said to the other… “There is so much hate in you.”

The other said, “I know, but ain’t this a pretty view?”

“I gotta speak my piece,” said one, “I won’t have the chance again.”

 “I never did know why we killed that woman and those two men.”

The other thought for a moment, then she sighed and shook her head.

“How many times do I have to tell you? They ain’t really dead.”

The first one said, “I can’t believe you said what I just heard. 

I know your memory of that day couldn’t be that blurred.”

“I killed one of ’em myself. All together we shot three.

Soon we’ll be dangling from a rope. Hanging in that big ole tree.

I think I deserve to know how they done you wrong.

And why in bloody blazes did you take me along?”

One looked at the other… and said, “You had to come.”

“I’ll try one more time to make you understand it some.

It’s not what they done to me. It’s what they took from us.

You accepted things with grace. I always made a fuss.

You were the sweet one. I was loud and some said mean.

I was hard to look at. You were pretty and serene.

They left when we were little. The worst kind of betrayal.

I tried to keep you with me, but deep down I knew I’d fail.

How could a Ma and Pa run off and only take their son?

All those years of waiting caused much damage to be done.

I had to come and find you so we could make them pay.

We gave them what they deserved for leaving us that day.”

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

I was there the day of the hanging. I looked high up in that tree

There was only a single rope, and just one woman, that I could see. 

I began to realize why both of them had to come. 

The two very different women, were really parts of one.

She had lost her beauty. Her kind heart could not hold on.

They left her with the anger. All the good in her was gone.

Those three weren’t really dead, because her memory escaped their death.

She knew they would never die, until she’d taken her last breath.

She smiled as she stood there waiting. She would get what she was due.

She would be joined with all she’d lost. Until then…she’d enjoy the view.

The “Gone” plaque was created by Amber Diehm. When a saw the photograph taken by her mother, Dianna Diehm, two possible stories came to mind. I want to post the other, very different, story in a later blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was busy all day and I have not thought one minute about what I could write about tonight. I decided to go to the WordPress blogs and write about the first prompt I came to. When I saw it, I seriously thought about moving on. In other words, cheating on my own rules. I wouldn’t feel right about that, so here goes…

The prompt for this week is A Decrepit Playground. I am going to revisit the playground at the grade school in Murdo. The one I played on in the late 50’s and early 60’s. It’s no longer there. I think it was around 1966 when it was torn down, but it should be of no surprise to all of you, that I remember every detail of the layout. My visit will take place in the 90’s.

decrepit definition: in very bad condition because of being old, or not having been cared for, or having been used a lot:

Every time I go to my old hometown, I visit the grade school and the high school. It’s a beautiful day, so I decided to walk over to the grade school. There’s a new school now, but the old building and the playground are still sitting there waiting to be torn down. At least they were the last time I was here. Of course, that was over ten years ago. I remember I brought my ten-year old. He was very skeptical when we got there, but I think he had fun. Later, someone asked him how the old playground was and he said, “rusty.”

I can still hear the really young kids playing on the rickety old teeter-totters. The kid with the longest legs had a clear advantage. If you were short, sometimes you never got the chance to push-off. You went up and down at the tall one’s pace. If they were mean kids, they would get you up in the air and then suddenly push down on their end and bounce you off your seat. There was a handle at each end of the board that even then, it was in such bad shape, kids got slivers in their bottoms.

Next to the teeter-totters were the monkey bars. I didn’t play on them much.

The swings seemed so much higher back in the day. We would pump ourselves up really high and then bail out. My knees hurt just thinking about it. Remember, girls had to wear dresses back then. Sometimes you could talk someone into sitting on the flat seat while you stood up, putting a foot on either side of them. If you both pumped, you got dangerously high up…we got even with the pole the swings hung from. When we were there after school, we would throw the chain around the top several times to make the swing higher, or we would twist the chain as tight as we could so we could spin.

There was a short slide and a big tall slide. We threw sand on them to make them slippery, and then slide upside down, backwards two or three at a time, and whatever other combination we could come up with to make it more exciting.

When Donny Johnson and I were only two years old, his older brother took us to the playground and Donny fell off the top of the big slide. He didn’t survive. I don’t remember it happening, but I remember the sorrow everyone felt for years afterward. The family lived across the street from us. It was a sad day when they moved away.

I remember the day Mom came to visit school. It was during recess. I ran across the playground to greet her, forgetting I was wearing the glasses I had stolen from my brother, Billy. I was so mad coming back from Rapid City the day we got our eyes checked. Billy bawled all the way back because he had to wear glasses and I cried because I didn’t. I purloined his glasses and held the earpieces under hot water so I could twist them to fit me. I wore them to school for several days. Mom said it was a wonder they didn’t make me go cross-eyed because Billy’s eyes turned out a little and that’s what they were trying to correct by drawing his eyes toward his nose.

Billy later told me my cousin, Mark snitched on me and that was the reason for Mom’s unexpected school visit.

I tenember I loved playing tether-ball when I was in the 7th and 8th grades. You had to stand in line a lot of the time unless you kept winning.

Well, I’ve been sitting on this teeter-totter for so long, I’m afraid to try to get up. This playground isn’t the only thing that’s decrepit.

Since I didn’t have a partner to hold me up in the air, I’ve been sitting on this board which is all the way to the ground.

I’ll just slide up to the middle where it’s attached to the bar. Up the board I go… “OUCH!!!”

The HaHa Sisterhood is currently visiting Pierre, South Dakota. MG won the trip and took all of her HaHa sisters with her. It turns out Windy Lindy Bergh has a twin sister who is the sitting Gov of Pierre. 

Anyway, YO Gov, decided she would put on a big citywide parade. The HaHa’s are all lining up now to traverse down Main Street.

MG: Hey Lav, Have you seen Gus and Billy? We have some bills to pay around here.

Lav: Yeah…They said they were going to Ft. Pierre and see where the cowboys drink their pop.

MG: Well, we can’t wait for them. It’s time to get this show on the road.

Queen, Gov, Queen

Next we have Miss Airy Heart. She had to take her rental biplane back to Enterskies, so she decided to uh, ride in a convertible of sorts.

Airy: Hi, I’m Airy and I designed my ride myself…when I was in kindergarten.

Next we have PG who is riding with Queen E. and Prince Charles. I tell you what! You can’t turn around without running into a Queen these days.

Hey PG! Have you seen AI?

PG: Yeah…I just saw her run a red light down on Main Street. I hope she didn’t cause an accident.

UhOh…what do we have here? KK must have been in a little CC car crash with the PP Pierre Police. Bummer! I wonder who they ran into…looks like a multiple CC with a red truck.

Were is Pattycake and all the rest of the HaHa’s?

Oh…

Where are Windy and Pearl?

Pattycake: Look up! They are flying over the beautiful Oahe Dam in Ft. Pierre. I sure hope Pearl doesn’t fall out on her head! I guess if she lands on her pom pom, she’ll be okay.

 

After the parade, we’re all going PDQ over to KK’s house for BBQ.

Arf: Arf! Arf!

 

It only takes a moment for a moment to be gone.

Time will not stand still, though we keep trying to hold on.

“Time Out!” We want to beckon!

Alas…a camera is our weapon.

Someone took a moment to take a photograph

Of my mother and her sisters. It always makes me laugh.

She’s in overalls… Her hazel eyes squint to peek

From beneath her hat as she stands there at Horse Creek.

The Homecoming King and Queen of nineteen-sixty looked so royal

In crowns made from cardboard and covered in tinfoil.

My brother Billy got to drive them in this classic car.

This captured moment has lasted fifty-eight years, so far.

Summer fun with family. This picture taken long ago

makes it all come back to me. I see a friend I treasured so.

The summer of sixty-six, we almost never were apart.

She died far too young. When I heard, it broke my heart.

Ione Webb, Pat Rada, Marlene Rada, (Ione was married to Bob Webb, but this looks more like Jack Richards), I’m not sure who the two little ones are. This was taken in 1963, the year after Marlene’s brother, Earl, and my brother, Billy, went to California. They left the day after they graduated.

Look back at the Horse Creek picture. I’m sure you know the one.

That little girl in coveralls grew up and had a son.

Her baby sister, Elna, is shown in the picture below

Having coffee with her sister’s son, about thirty-two years ago.

I’m sure you all have photographs that you’ll forever treasure.

I have thousands I look through. They bring me so much pleasure.

Pictures of hello and pictures of good-bye.

Reminders of moments, captured with a camera’s eye.

MG won an all expense paid trip to the South Dakota State Capital in Pierre. She and Lav split the prize and took the Statute of Liberty and invited the HaHa Sisterhood to join them. Pierre is pronounced like pier and not how the French pronounce it, but then, the French didn’t give Pierre a Statue of Liberty, henceforth the Statute of Liberty, hysterically speaking.

We’ve lost a few HaHa’s along the way, but we’ve also gained a few. Since we were so close to Murdo, Windy and Airy stopped by to visit Pearl and Grace who both decided to join the HaHa’s.

Since biplanes are only two-seaters, the girls had to go to Enterskies and and get a rental so they could bring both Pearl and Grace to Pierre.

This time, they landed at the Pierre Regional Airport instead of downtown. They have a Town Cryer for an air traffic controller.

TC: NOT THE PARKING LOT! THE RUNWAY!! HEAR YE, PLEASE!

Airy: All passengers… Please prepare for landing. Thank you for flying Ha One and Ha Two. We will be landing as soon as we figure out which knob to turn. If your cups and peanuts haven’t already blown away, please clean up after yourself. This is not your mamma’s biplane. If you enjoyed the complimentary Elixerfixer, please see Pearl in the baggage claim area, and watch your step.  Objects that appear, may not really be there. Elixerfixer takes a little getting used to.

Grace: It’s me, Grace, and I’m your only passenger. I help Pearl make that Elixerfixer and I don’t think it’s a good idea to serve it on an airplane. It’s twice as medicinal at high altitudes. You can either drink or breathe, but you can’t do both.

Windy: We need to land, I can’t breathe. Pearl…secure your pom pom purse and be prepared to jump! Geronimo!!

Airy: Where are they flying off to?

Meanwhile, back at Pierre Palace, the two Queens are preparing for a state dinner. They haven’t been invited to one, but surely when they are seen in their gowns and crowns, on the front lawn, the congressional leadership will fall all over themselves to make sure they dine in style.

Lav: MG, I think we should take our crowns off. The tinfoil seems to attract ducks and geese. The droppings are kind of killing my appetite.

MG: Okay, but wait! Here comes a distinguished looking person. He probably wants to invite us to our reception. Hey, mister…are you looking for us?

Mister: You two shouldn’t be standing out here. I’m going to call security.

Lav: That’s really sweet, but can’t we just follow you?

Mister: Absolutely not! Wait here. You had better not move!

MG: Look! Here comes the rest of the HaHa’s. Boy are they a sight for sore eyes. Come on sisterhood! Security is coming to take us to our reception. Are you hungry?

PG: What’s up with all the ducks? I’m tired. I just want a nice warm bath. I always bring my own bathtub, but I’ll need a pillow.

Where is AI? And where are Airy and Windy? They’re going to miss the reception!

Next:  Wuhoh…we learn the first HaHa Sisterhood secret.

We meet the Gov, who is somebody’s twin. Looks like she has a happy cabinet…

To be continued…meet Gov YO

How would you see yourself, if there were no mirrors around?

What if your birth certificate was nowhere to be found?

Your doctor took your records and left without a trace.

Thoughts faded into feelings you weren’t able erase.

 Where were all the people you had once befriended?

No names or faces came to mind. Your life had been upended.

You tried hard to remember important milestones in your life.

Were you living in the present or in the afterlife?

 It didn’t matter anymore if you were ten or ten times ten.

The days had no beginning nor did they have an end.

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

Then one day, your worries leave, but does confusion stay?

What is happy, what is sad, what is work, and what is play?

What is love? What is commitment? What is calm and what is fear?

 Your loved ones feel the need to make your memories reappear.

They want to teach you new skills to replace those you have lost.

They can’t comprehend a line, that has been forever crossed.

You’re not the person you once were. Someone different took your place.

But there is one single blessing those who love you must embrace.

If they do all they can to keep their memories of you alive.

Then you will feel their peace and all the love will still survive. 

 

word of the day…understanding