There is more than one way to skin a cat.

I woke up this morning with the cat on my head.  Naturally, the first thought in my mind was one of mother's famous sayings:  "There is more than one way to skin a cat!"  Now let me go on record as saying, I have never skinned one; nor do I ever intend to do so but I have been known to flip the sheet so she flies off of me and onto the floor.  Trust me, she does not stay there.  I have had a lot of cats in my life and everyone of them has been devoted to me.  Well, mostly.

All of my cats have been Calico cats and so they were females, because all Calico cats are females, or so I have been told and it has been my experience.  I did at one time, have a male cat named Boots and I do not think he liked me at all.   He was a gray and white striped cat.  He was pretty much Kenny's cat.  I think Kenny always wanted a cat, because at one time he got a white Spitz dog and named it Kitty.  That dog did not stay with us very long and moved on to someone who actually wanted a white dog.  Except for that dog from hell, all animals that find their way into my home are here for the duration.  If you doubt my sincerity, you might want to take a look at the 8 geese residing in my back yard.  I do not even know how old they are.  My guess is about 16 or 17 years old because I got 3 geese when Bret was a wee lad and he now has a wee lad of his own.

Now I have Icarus.  I know Icarus was the little boy in mythology whose parents gave him wax wings and he flew to close to the sun and they melted, but I did not name this cat.  He was named by Sherman who liked the name and did not think anyone else was smart enough to know who Icarus was, but there you go!

But back to this cat skinning business.  Many years ago when I was in grade school and the body still bent, we had a Jungle Gym on the playground and one of the favorite things to do was swing by our arms  on the bars then do a thing called "skin the cat" which entailed pulling our feet up putting them behind your head and sort of turn ourselves wrong side out and then drop to the ground without breaking your neck.and not totally dislocating your shoulders.  As I write this, there are many things flashing through my mind.  One of which is the knowledge that we wore only dresses back in those days so when we were swinging on the bars and when we were turning ourselves wrong side out the perverted little boys were all setting on the ground watching us.  Holy shit!  How damn stupid were we?

Or were we naïve?  I am thinking naïve fits the bill a lot better.  I like to think that the days of sand and shovels were also the days of innocence and freedom. I do not know when the innocence ended for me.  Seems like about the second year of high school.  That was when I became friends with a girl named LaVeta.  Her dad made home brew and I really liked that.  She taught me how to shop lift.  I learned to dance.  I learned to smoke.  Life was good!  I dropped out of school in my senior year.  I ran away.  I broke into a gas station and stole the money out of the cigarette machine.  I had friends and what friends they were!  Sadly none of them showed up for court.  But on a good note, my downward spiral was ended at that point and I became a functioning member of society.  It was not until many years later that I became a respected member of the human race.  Which brings me to the lesson for the day.

"That is water under the bridge."  Been there.  Done that.  Sometimes the water under the bridge is low and just amounts to a stagnant puddle that just breeds mosquitoes and other vermin.  But that a clean rain falls and fills the creek and the puddle is gone.  Water under the bridge.  You can look at it and move on because in due time the cleansing rain will wash it all away.  Or not.

Even the mud puddles are different here in Coloradol

It rained the other night and I have to confess, it scared hell out of me.  Seems like when I was a tot back in Kansas, rain was more frequent and softer.  In Colorado, it seems to be either feast or famine, so to speak.  We lived about a mile from Bull Creek and it always had water in it, but when we got a good rain the little Bull Creek became a raging torrent and overflowed it's banks and came up the highway clear past the sand pit and almost to our corner.  I remember wading up the highway and the crawdads scooting away from me.  The scoot backwards, you know.

Strong Street was dirt.  Well, all the streets were dirt in that area.  Mostly the dirt was soft, but when it rained it would have puddles standing on it.  (Having a little problem here with proper English.  Do the puddles stand IN the road or ON the road?  Since they were on the road that sounds right, but since the actually were a part of the road they could be in the road.)  You choose.

Any way, after a rain the puddles were there and the sun shone brightly on them.  Now I am sure some of the water seeped into the earth, but it took a while and I remember seeing pollywog's swimming in the water, but it could have been mosquito larvae.  Who knows.  There is something so primal about wading in a mud puddle, that it defies description.  To feel the cool mud ooze between my toes was second only to walking on dried mud.

I do know that eventually the water was gone and the sun beating down on the puddle would cause the silty dirt to dry and crack.  The cracks would the curl on the edges and separate.  If I could be really patient, the sun would continue drying and then I was left with a big dried out patch of curled up mud.  The happiest memories are in the remembering, and I can still close my eyes and recall walking very slowly across the dried up mud in my bare feet.  The fragile mud curls made only a tiny crackle and I would walk slowly back and forth to be sure I mashed them all.  I have not had an experience like that since I left Nickerson.

Mud in Nickerson was also good for making mud pies.  The mud held together because parts of the road had clay.  My best friend, Barbara had a brother who nicknamed me "Mud Pie" and that name stuck until we went to high school.  Just happened to remember that.

The reason I am thinking of this is after our rains, there is a place in my driveway that water stands in for a short time.  I was looking at that yesterday, and the quality of the mud is not the same as Nickerson.  And for some reason, I do not see it making the curls like Nickerson mud made.  I suppose there is more gravel in my driveway.  Nickerson was sandy, hence the Sand Hill Plum Jelly that the Amish make and sell.

So as I start my day today, I will put on my shoes and socks and not even look at that puddle over there.  Some things can only continue in our memories and the days of sand and shovels and mud pies are over and are best left in the far recesses of my mind where I can use them as my safe place when life becomes too tedious and I need to escape.

B & D Carryout helped raise my kids.

Debbie and I were talking today about how parents do not always raise their own kids and it turned to my early years of being a single parent.   I know I was working at the Red Carpet and I was off on Sundays.  Through the week I worked the morning shift, came back and helped through the supper rush and then went down on South Main to sack bread at the bakery.  When you maintain a schedule like that, days off are a definite luxury so it was important that they be savored.  Now I have to say I was not very good at attending church, but I made sure the kids got on the bus every Sunday morning for their religious training.  But Sunday afternoons were special.

The fishing poles were always in the trunk of the old black Ford.  There were no such things back then as car seats so the kids just piled in wherever they fit.  They climbed back and forth across the seats, hung out the windows and generally just made a nuisance of themselves.  Of course they were hungry.  They were always hungry.  They were always hungry, always thirsty and always needed to pee.  It was all just part of the living thing back then.  They were kids and that was all they knew.  But any time we had a little time to kill and a little gas in the car we were good.  Gas was like 20 cents and the Ford could go 20 miles or more on a gallon of gas, so life was golden.  The only thing the old car lacked was an actual floor board on the drivers side.  It had a lot of floor, but it was mostly holes.  Well, no radio and no heater or windshield wipers, but it ran and that was what mattered.  Well, stopping mattered and the brakes worked most of the time.  I guess it was a way to get to the B & D Carryout out on fifth street where dinner awaited us.

Now keep in mind that coffee was 20 cents a cup and a hamburger at McDonalds was 19 cents.  At B & D Carryout I would purchase 8 hamburgers and French fries.  The bottom of the box was covered with French fries and then 8 hamburgers were placed on top of the French fries.  Each hamburger had a pickle slice and a squirt of ketchup.  That was it.  For this I paid $1.00.  Try and feed a family of 6 for a dollar today.  Not happening.  You are probably thinking that those were some damn little hamburgers, but you would be wrong.  When a rag tag carload of people are off for an afternoon of fishing and playing in the sand, there is no better meal to be had and the memory of those afternoons will some times pop into my mind at night and make me so homesick I cry.

How I would love to turn back the hands of time and be given another chance at raising my kids.  There would have only been one husband and father and there would have been college funds.  No home made clothes and no hand me downs.  There would have been a bedroom for each kid with a bed and sheets and blankets.  There would have been a puppy and kittens.  I would have read them stories and taken them for walks in the park.  We would have filled the pew at the Presbyterian church on Fourth Street.  And there would not have been a B & D Carryout.  Of course there would not have been fishing trips either.  So would the trade off have made that much difference?  Do my kids enjoy life because we went fishing  or would they have been better off going to college?  It is all irrelevant now.  There is no going back, so I guess I will just try to remember it as good times.  I am old enough now that I can get my fishing license for $1.00 at Walmarts.  I bought a new rod and reel and a new tackle box, but for some reason, they have not been taken out of the shed.