There was a barn and horses.

I woke up this morning remembering the barn.  The horse tank was out the back door of the house and off to the right.  For years it had a "pitcher pump" and we all took turns pumping to keep water for the animals.  Ever now and then we had to fish a chicken out because chickens can not swim.  That was not very often, because chickens are fairly smart that way.  We had Muscovy ducks and they occasionally took a spin around the tank, but they were very leery of those big horse teeth and mostly stayed around the back of the house where the kitchen sink drained out on the ground.  That was back before there were laws about that.
There was a red milk cow.  Her name was "Bossy".  She shared the barn with the other animals.  She eventually gave birth to a black calf that I immediately named Dennis.  She then took sick with milk fever (?).   My dad and the neighbor man tried to save her.  They even cut her tail open and put salt and pepper in it and bound it up.  That was sure to cure her.  Unfortunately, it did not.  Dennis took sick soon after and I think that was because he had no mother to feed him.  He also died, which broke my heart.
There was a brown horse named "Danny" that was my sister Josephine's.  It was her's because that was the meanest damned horse in the world and she was the only one who could ride him.  The rest of us kids were relegated to a Shetland pony whose name was "Star".  Dad would put one of us up on his back and then lead him around the corral.  I never did like either Star or the rides so I mostly hid out when that was going on.  The little kids got a kick out of it though.
My Dad had a big scar on his upper arm (think that is called a bicep).  (For this reason I have always been afraid of horses thinking that one might bite me.)  It dated back to when he was in the Army (World War 1).  He was in the Cavalry.  His job was to tend the horses and one bit him.  I knew my father to be a very mean man sometimes.  He never mistreated us kids physically, but he did tend to mistreat animals.  One of the things used to control horses was a stick with a loop of rope on the end.  The rope was put around the upper lip of a horse and twisted.  The horse was then pretty much at the mercy of whoever held the stick.  I do not remember what that thing was called.  Of course there was a black snake whip that hung in the barn for when the horses were really out of control.
Dad had a fondness (more like an obsession) for show horses.  They were not just show horses, they were work horses that were beautiful.  My dad was one of the last people to give up the horse and plow.  He would never buy one horse.  He always bought a matched pair.  The last matched pair he had was the only pair I even remember.  They were Strawberry Roans.  They were big and a light pinkish color.  They had blonde tails and my father would stand for hours brushing them.  When he went into town their tails were braided and he was a sight to behold.  My father.  (pause while a flood of memories leaves me in tears.)
The upper part of the barn was called the "hay loft."  It was called that because that is where the hay was stored.  That was also where the old cats went to have their kittens.  When the cow was alive and we milked her, there was a bowl by her stall that was always filled with fresh milk at milking time.  The one legged stool hung on a peg above it. 
When the hayloft was filled with fresh hay, we had to check it periodically through the day.  If some of the hay that went in the loft was not quite dry enough, it would heat up and if not turned to get air to cool it, burst into flame.  First it started to smolder and usually we picked that up right away.  We took the pitch fork and pulled that part of the hay stack out and threw it out the opening onto the ground where we spread it to cool, or burn if it was that hot.  Lots of barns burned to the ground because of that little problem.
My dad was pretty much a share cropper and us kids were put into use real regular. Sometimes we went to wheat fields and pulled out the Rye that sprung up magically.  If the elevator man found Rye in the load of wheat being sold, he would "dock" dad on the pay.  Sometimes we harvested field corn.  We picked the dry ears and stripped them in the field and then tossed them on the corn wagon.  The corn wagon was just a horse drawn wagon with board added on the back side so the corn bounced off and landed back in the wagon with the rest of the corn.  We picked rocks out of fields.  We pulled weeds in the garden.  Especially fun was cleaning the manure out of the barn and hauling it to the pile in the corner of the corral.  We gathered eggs.  Brought in fire wood.  Carried out the trash.  Made the beds. Washed the dishes.  In the winter we tried to stay warm and in the summer we tried to stay cool.
One of my clearest memories is laying on my stomach by the chicken house with my brother and watching the "dead animal wagon" back up to the fence in front of the barn.  The man pulled the wench chain out and over to the barn where he wrapped it around Star's neck.  He hit the button and Star was unceremoniously drug up over the sill, across the pen, under the barbed wire fence and up into the back of the truck.  My last memory of Star was seeing the truck pull onto the road and drive off with Star's  legs sticking straight up into the air.  Jake and I were very quiet the rest of the day and night.  Then life resumed, just like there had never been a Shetland Pony named Star in our life.
And now I sit here with my memories.  I see the house just as clearly today as I did then, only now I appreciate it more for it's simplicity.  I see my brother in his overalls.  The scar on his face was put there by Star many years before. 
There are only 2 of us left now.   I feel closer to the past then I do the future.  I long for those days when I could feel the breeze on my arms and face.  Back then I could not wait to grow up and get away.  I wanted my own home.  My own family.  Well, I got it and here I set.  If there is one thing I would tell the people I know it is this:  Hold on to today, because today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes.  I think they wrote a song about that.

And I remember when 9 below was nothing, or so it seemed.

I crawled out of the sack this morning and man it was cold.   I heard it was supposed to be -9, but I just checked and it is -2.  So I inched the furnace up just a hair and thought back to 65 years ago, when the best I could do was huddle around the wood stove in the front room and try to get just a little heat going.  It was mostly Jake's job to get up very early and get the fire going.  It just was easier for him to bank the fire and throw on another log through the night than it was to get up and build a whole new fire.  That way at least a little heat was going.  The stove was closest to the room where Dad, Jake, Josephine, Donna, Mary ande I slept.  Momma slept in the back bedroom with Dorothy and sometimes Mary.
Going to bed was never really anything to look forward to, if you know what I mean.  In the summer it was not so bad because we kind of spread out and slept wherever there was a flat place, but winter meant getting out the blankets and all of us piling on the one bed that was not occupied by dad.  It was a matter of survival back then.  Blankets were mostly the old wool things that came from the Army.  They were scratchy wool and if we were really lucky one side would have a sheet or something tacked on to it.  The idea of a sheet under us and one over us was unheard of at that time. If such a thing existed they would be on dad's bed.  Elbows were pillows.  Jake slept across the bottom of the bed wrapped in his own cocoon because he was a boy after all and could not sleep with his head near our heads.  I realize this is a weird way of thinking and would be considered scandalous today, but it was what it was back then in the "Grapes of Wrath" world of John Stienbeck.
Usually this sleeping arrangement worked pretty well, but there were times it failed.  Mary was not completely dependable when it came to sleeping the whole night without an "accident".  On those nights she was unceremoniously awoken and hauled off to mothers bed and we were left to sleep around the circle of wet  mattress where she had been previously.  We usually tried to put her on the edge of the bed because then her little bed wetting problem was not so catastrophic.  And another bad habit she had was chewing her toenails and the edge of the bed gave her better access to her chosen target. ( I often wonder if she ever gave up on that little habit.)  Mary was always Dad's favorite because she was little, quiet and very sweet.
Josephine eloped when she was 15 or so.  That freed up some bed space and we were very happy to have those few inches of mattress.  Now I have to go on record here as saying she eloped with a man who was 29 years old.  Today he would be tarred and feathered, but then it was fairly normal.  The legal age for a girl to get married back then was 13 in the state of Mississippi and not much older in most of the other states.  I think that is right.  And if a girl wanted to get married younger than that she needed one of her parents to sign for her.  We have definitely improved on that law!
Back in those days if a boy got in trouble with the law, he could join the service and they would drop the charges.  He had to be at least 16.  Jake changed his birth certificate and got in when he was 16.  He was in the service and back out before most of his classmates graduated.  He was sure handsome in his uniform.
I can remember walking home from school after a snow storm.  We had a friend named Jim Davis and mother made arrangements with him to walk in front of us and break a trail in the snow.  Had he not done that we would probably still be there.  I recall once it was so bad dad brought the horse to break the trail.  When they talk about record snow falls, I know what they are talking about.  We measured it in feet back then.
So this morning I set here in my warm little house and look outside at the snow on the ground and wish I could stay home, but no such luck.  But I have a car that goes in the snow very well and if I just use a little bit of common sense I can make it to town and back.  It is supposed to warm up today and being the heat seeking woman I am, I am looking forward to that.

Stay safe out there!

Whittlin' Joe and Smokin' Johnny Carson

We lived down on Strong Street and they lived up on Highway 96.  They lived the second house in from the corner in a brown tar paper shack.  I call it tar paper but it had a coating on it with flecks of brown, red and black.  You know what I mean, kind of like the asphalt shingles on roofs today.  Their yard was small but it was big enough for a chicken coop and an out house.  It had one tree and that is where Whittlin' Joe could be found every afternoon after school.  He sat on a wooden chair and leaned it back against the tree trunk and whittled his little things he whittled whatever they were.  I suspect he was there all day and not just after school, but that is when I saw him.  The chickens ran free in the yard and some times one could be seen coming out of the house.  They had a small trailer and it was said by my brother (who knew these things) that the trailer was full of things they had whittled and in the summer they went on the road and sold stuff.  I could not argue, because I did not know.  I just know I walked on the other side of the street because they scared me.
I had heard rumors that sometimes Hank Windiate would stop and pass the time of day with them.  Hank lived at the end of our street and was crippled.  I do not know why, just that one arm and one leg were pretty small.  He had a buckboard and an old brown horse which he harnessed and hooked up to it on a daily basis and "went into town."  I have no idea why he went into town every day, but he did.  There were rumors that he had been married at one time and his wife had died.  Hank was another one who let the chickens run in and out of the house.  Hank took sick and died and the town people came and built a fire in his yard and burned everything that was inside.  I never understood that.  And I do not know what happened to the goats, chickens and horse either.  This is just how I remember it.
Between us and Hank were two houses.  First was Rudolph Reinke and his girls, Irene, Delores, Florence and Venita.  He had several more girls who had grown and gone, but Irene was my age and Delores a year or so older.  The mother had died when Irene was a wee tot and Rudolph was left to raise the kids.  He did handyman work and left early and came home late.  He also raised pigs and he could be heard doing his chores and singing hymns in German while he went about his business.  The girls made doughnuts every Saturday morning.  They also had a cow so they made real butter.  They used to trade us butter for the white stuff with a yellow dot that passed for margarine in the old time.  I liked that.  They had a dog on a chain that barked all the time and I do not think anyone ever petted it.
Between Reinke's and Hank was Jake Smith and his wife who I never knew because she looked really mean and stood very straight when she walked.  She walked into town and was a cleaning lady for someone.  Jake was a retired peace officer and he liked to show us his gun and tell us what would happen to us if we ever did anything wrong.  He would arrest us because he still had his badge and he could do that.  He had a chair in the yard and used to tip it back against the tree and nap.  Pretty sure Jake was the instigator of the "sneaking up on Jake Smith while he was asleep and tying him to the tree."  Boy, was he mad!  Of course he was not tied very tight, but it was just the idea of catching him asleep that the boys could not resist.
Walt King lived over on the highway on the other side of our block.  He raised beautiful flowers and a garden to die for, which he did one afternoon.  We saw him sleeping face down in his garden all afternoon and so when mother came home we told her and she and Rudolph went to investigate, but we had to stay home.
The Feins and their son Howard lived between us and Whittlin' Joe on the highway.  Howard was probably 25 years old and still lived at home.  He worked in his garden a lot.  He raised mostly flowers.  I stopped to see him sometimes, but once he made his false teeth jump out at me and scared the living shit right out of me.  I did not even know there were such things as false teeth.  When I told mother she just laughed and said to stay away from there because I was probably aggravating him.  I pretty much avoided him after that.
Right catty cornered from our house was a lot that was a square block with an empty house on one side.  I mean a deserted falling down house with no roof.  Joe Hedrick held his rodeo's there.  I always liked to watch them ride the broncs.  Joe or Jerry.  One was an old man and one was my age.  Today they have an exotic animal farm on the other side of town.  I think it is a bed and breakfast, or it was.  I have not been back in years so I do not know.
Behind our house about half a mile was the cemetary.  I used to love to go there because it was quiet and sometimes there were pretty flowers.  I just looked at them.
So, these are my thoughts this morning.  I sure wonder where they come from?

And our saviour was born in a cattle stall.....

For my whole life I have known the story of the birth of our saviour.  When I was very young it was the one Sunday out of the year that many people went to church.  The only Sunday we were allowed to miss was when we were loaded kit and kaboodle into the back seat of what ever old car we had that was running and off we went to grandma's house.  It was an all day trip because we had to stop several times and put water in the radiator and one of us always had to hop out and go pee in the ditch.  It was an all day ordeal making that 22 mile trip over to Plevna and back, but it was the one thing momma insisted on doing at least once a month.

Dad never went to church.  He did not buy into that malarkey and until the day he died he never ceased to remind us that we were damn fools.  His funeral when I was 25 years old was held in the Lamb Funeral Home and I am not sure who officiated, but I am sure he was up there some where looking down and pitying us poor fools who were trying to get him into a place he never believed in.  I was just devastated because we were burying my father and I never knew him.  Eight months later we buried my brother.  I digress.

Everyone who knows my story knows that I married at 19 and immediately had 4 kids, took a short break and had the last one.  My husband was an athiest and so church was not important.  It was not that I forgot any of my upbringing, but it was just easier to not push the buttons that set him off.  After our divorce when I became truly independent, I made sure the kids got to Sunday school and back every Sunday.  Well, most of them any way.  Now that did not mean that I went, but they did.

And so I grew into adulthood cherishing my beliefs, but not doing much about them.  And much like the parables in the Bible, I had my awakening after I married Kenny.  Things happen in our lives that tend to bring us full circle and we end up on our knees.  So it was with me.  We all have our moments and as I look back, I wonder what in the world I was thinking.  At age 16 I wanted to be a missionary and was on the right track.  10 years later I was a single mom and working 2 or 3 jobs to feed my brood.  But I never lost hope.  Never once did I think there was not a God that loved me.  Several times I wondered why he did, but there he was.

Someone asked me the other day if I really bought that story of Jesus Christ being born to a virgin.  That just doesn't seem possible.  My answer at the time and will always be, " I beleive that story with my whole heart, soul and being.  I always have and I always will."  Then my friend asked why Jesus suffered and died on the cross.  He could have run away and hid.  He did not have to do that.  To that I say, "He died for my sins and your sins.  He died so we could have life ever lasting."

And that, my friends, is what I beleive.  It is why I get up for in the morning and it is my last thought at night when I go to sleep.  I am not scholarly in my Bible like some people, but Lou Mercer is a true beleiver  and I will be when I take my last breathe.

I beleive in Christmas miracles and I beleive in August 4 miracles.  I beleive there are angels among us and they guide our feet so we do not dash them on a stone.  I beleive there is good in everyone and if I die tomorrow I will meet Jesus with a smile on my face.

I would love to see you at my church because we have a very nice pastor named Karen Howe, but if I don't see you, please know I love you and accept you as you are.

And with that, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.  May peace and prosperity be yours for the whole year and the rest of your life.

A sharecropper Christmas or Gibby is gone, but the memories are not.

There were eight of us living in a lathe and plaster house where the snow blew in sometimes because there were chinks in the plaster, but Christmas was always Christmas.  It was the one holiday a year that really mattered in that 2 bedroom house at 709 Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.  There were 3 things that would happen that day without fail.  Santa Clause would have stopped by in the middle of the night, Dad would stay sober and  there would be a meal on the table.  The wheels of progress had started probably the Christmas before when Mother started counting her pennies and making the list of what each one of us would receive. She always had a stub of a pencil and a list in her pocket. I never really got a good look at that list, but I am sure my name had appeared there some where.   All year she worked towards that one goal.  Mother's do that, or at least mine did.
School got out for vacation about a week before Christmas.  Every classroom had a Christmas tree. and every tree had tinsel.  The last day before vacation started was the day to "take down the tree."  The tree then went home with who ever did not have a tree up yet.  We counted on getting one.  There were 6 of us little urchins and the teachers would decide.  We always got one!  I remember the year I was the lucky recipient.  Can you imagine my pride at dragging that tree home the whole mile to our house.  I was so damn proud I thought I would pop!  And the teacher had left all the tinsel on it.  Of course by the time I got it home the tinsel had thinned quite a bit on the side that was dragging in the dirt.  I thought I would pop my buttons when momma propped that tree up and Christmas was on the countdown!
We did not have stockings, but rather we wrote our name on a piece of paper and placed it where we wanted Santa to put our gifts.  Funny, I don't really remember ever giving my mother a gift in all those growing up years.  I made her cards, but never a physical gift.  And then there was the time I babysat and earned some money and went to Doc Wards store and got her a stainless steel mixing bowl.  I did that because I had broken her glass one and felt really bad about that.  Well, when I grew up and moved away I would send her stuff, but that really doesn't count.
As the years went by and mother picked up more house cleaning jobs the piles grew bigger at Christmas.  The first one I remember was a coloring book, colors, a red rubber ball, and an orange.  The last Christmas I remember Santa Clause was when my brother woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me he had helped mom and dad put out the gifts and there was no Santa Clause.  That year I got one of those tin doll houses that clipped together.  You know, the miniature ones with mother, father, sister and brother and all the tiny furniture and you could buy more!  And always there was new underwear and socks!  Wise mother to make the piles bigger with stuff we had to have anyway!
And then it was my turn to be Santa.  In all fairness, I do not remember much about those years.  The kids dad and I divorced when the kids were small and he was good at bringing presents, but not much for the child support.  His reasoning was that I had the kids and all the pleasure they brought so why should he have to pay me?  He was the one with not kids to keep him company and in my warped mind I saw the reasoning that made him tick!
I was always a procrastinator and sometimes Christmas got there before I realized that as Santa I had work to do!  One year my friend Gibby was kind enough to help with the last minute shopping the day before Christmas Eve mind you!  We rushed from store to store and finally had the trunk full.  The next evening I put the kids to bed and Gib came and we began to assemble the gifts, one of which was a tin miniature doll house for Debbie.  Luckily (?) he had brought a bottle of wine and luckier still that I had lots of band aids because those damn little tabs were very sharp and the wine was very strong!  Well, and there may have been a second bottle!  I woke up on the floor and no sign of Gib.
(An aside here, I must tell you about Gib.  He was a friend of my mothers and they worked at the Red Rooster together.  Gib was gay and one of the first to die in the AIDS epidemic, when it was an epidemic. He died in California and we never knew where he was buried.  I do know when I conceived the Pueblo AIDS Memorial Quilt  he was foremost in my mind and the first panel made was for my sweet Gibbie.)
Many years have passed and many Christmas's have come and gone to bring me to this Christmas.  I do not have a tree.  I gave all my lights and decorations to my son.  I do not buy gifts.  I do not fight the crowds.  I will spend Christmas Eve in church and Christmas Day I will attend church and come home.  I am not bah humbug at Christmas, I just prefer to live with my memories.  The best part of memories is that they can be altered to fit the occasion and this year I shall have beautiful memories of wonderful children and bountiful love and I wish you all the same!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!  

Life is not always as it appears, or I am the eternal optimist!

A couple days ago I was working in my little kitchen.  My home is a split level so the office is 4 feet higher then the main level.  I heard something  crash into the office window so I sprinted up the stairs to investigate.  I looked out the window and down at the ground and saw a dark bird standing there.  He appeared to be immobile but in no pain.  A closer look and I saw that he was standing on another bird.  Well, that was strange.  I watched for a little bit and the dark bird moved around and positioned himself on top of bird #2 and began to make jumping movements.
My first impression, being the optimist I am, was that bird #1 was giving artificial respiration to bird #2 and trying to revive it.  It was probably his wife.  As I stood at my window watching I realized I was seeing a miracle that few people would ever witness and I silently prayed for success and waited with bated breath for the gray bird to show signs of life.  Then the realist in me took over.  The bird flat on it's back with wings outstretched was a dove.  The dark bird perched on it's chest was darker, had stripes on it's tail feathers and a hooked beak which was now ripping the throat out of the bird it it's clutches.  It was a chicken hawk!  At that moment I realized what a damn fool I was.
The chicken hawk had chased the dove into my window with such force that the dove had fallen to the ground and became easy prey for Mr. Chicken Hawk.  Closer examination of said window proved this was not the first time this had happened.  The doves tend to hang out in the cherry tree outside the window and the predator birds know this.  When the hawk chases a dove it flies into my window and falls to the ground.  I now have the curtains closed on all my big windows.  I do not like having my windows closed as I feel trapped inside, but that is how it is for now.
And of course, I understand nature enough to know that while the doves eat seeds and such hawks are meat eaters.  I am a meat eater, but I can go to the store and buy my food.  Nature does not work like that.  It is called survival of the fittest.  The hawk outsmarted the dove.  That is how it is.  And isn't life much like that?  Somebody holds the mortgage on my house.  If I do not pay, they take my house.  My car needs gas to run, if I do not fill it up, it does not move.  On a daily basis I am outsmarted by the dogs and geese.  And the cat.  They expect food in their bowl and like a silly fool, I take my money and buy them what they need.  Elvira goes to the beauty shop, but I braid my hair.  How many of you out there are slaves to the same Gods?  (Did you ever notice that GODS and DOGS have the same letters?)  Our reward for the attention we give them is they will sometimes let us pat them on the head.  Not the geese though.  The only thing I get from them is the privilege of cleaning out the goose house 3-4 times a year and carrying water to them in the winter.  All they do for me is poop where I need to walk.
So I will keep the curtains closed for a while.  When the doves migrate away I will open them back up and delude myself into believing that all is well with the world and no one is eating anyone else.  I am an optimist and I shall stay an optimist because to not look for a brighter tomorrow is doom myself to a life of darkness.
So fly away, my little doves!  There is a brighter world some where!

Happy Thanksgiving, happy birthday to Susie and here comes the cat!

Yesterday is over and I think I accomplished everything I set out to do.  Told Susie happy birthday, went to Florence and ate way more food than I should.  Played with the baby for 16 minutes and then drove home the back way through Wetmore.   Pretty drive but I only seen one lonely little deer.  I got home and lit the emergency candle I am making for the homeless.  I had lit it at Arlene and Hillary's and let it burn for 2 hours.  This one is made of cardboard strips and paraffin in a cat food can.  It started out very small and burned like that for about an hour and a half before I blew it out and came home. Perhaps I should back up and tell you about said candles before you think I am nuts.
I know the homeless population needs a heat source at times so I got on youtube (and I do love that channel) and typed in "emergency candles" and up popped my information.  This particular one calls for tuna/catfood/altoid cans, paraffin and wicks.  Looked pretty simple to me, so I assembled said ingredients and began the process.

Paraffin

wicks

Something to melt it in.

And, voila!  There you have the finished product.

Of course this was many tedious hours later after I had cut many cardboard strips and wound them around a tiny wick and pressed them into my chosen containers covered them with melted paraffin and let them cool. Trust me, the winding around the tiny wick with stiff cardboard strips was no easy task, but it can be done.

The finished product is ready for testing.

And like any kid with a new toy, it was imperative that my creation be tested and the testing witnessed by an impartial audience.  I started out with Arlene, Alonzo, Jamie, Bret, Amanda, Jiraiya, a  little black dog.  That was before Bret hollered that the flame was about to get into the curtain, so I came home and finished with this audience.

The findings were thus:  A candle in a tuna can will start out as a small flickering flame and burn for  about 1 hour.  Then the flame begins to spread and burn the wax from the cardboard.  At this point it is best to move it away from the kitchen curtains, blow it out and bring it home to finish the test, and that is what I did.  Of course, I decided to set it in a bucket just in case and it is a good thing I did.  Before it was all over there were flames over a foot high and the whole can was an inferno.  Total burn time about 3 hours.  Oh, the things I do for my projects.

Ok, it is ready and I shall deliver them to Posado on Monday when we make supper for the kids there.  For now, I am off to the shower and then going to do some baking.  And going out east to see Shirley and her grandson and probably pop in on Los Pobres just for grins and giggles.

What is a friend and where can I buy one?

I woke up at 4:10 this morning.  That is not unusual.  What is unusual was the emptiness I felt.  Not emptiness of the soul, because I always have God with me.  Always.  I could not live if I did not.  This emptiness is different.  I guess I can only describe it as a lack of a  life force.  Now what that means can be a variety of things, but for me it seems to be the force that makes me want to face the day with a big smile and reach out and grab life with both hands.  That is missing.
 
I opened the back door to find something I did not expect in the form of rain.  Not just a sprinkle, but real rain falling and splashing on the back sidewalk.  That is usually enough to pull me out of a funk, but not today.  I put a turkey in the oven to bake, tidied the kitchen a bit and thought about this new phase of my thought process.  Emptiness is not a feeling I like.  So I will analyze it here and see if that helps.

I have friends; lots of friends.  Or do I?  Webster defines a friend as "1.  a person attached to another by affection or regard.   (Regard is defined as esteem or respect by the same dictionary.)  2.  a patron; a supporter.  3.  a person who is not hostile.  4.  a member of the Society of Friends:  a Quaker."  Now I have a lot of the 1, 2, 3, and even a few 4.  But I do not agree with his definition of "friend."  To me, a friend is so much more.

My mother always told me that to "have a friend you have to be a friend."  She also told me that if I could reach my golden years and count my true friends on one hand I was to consider myself blessed.  So here I am looking back down the road of my life and it looks like a damn war zone.   My best friend all through grade school was Barbara Hawk.  I do not know what became of her.   I remember when I was in  high school, I had a friend named Carol Mason who had moved to California.  She was going to give me a one way train ticket to San Diego for my graduation.  That never happened.

Then I got married and had babies and divorces and lots of acquaintences, but few "friends".  Gilbert Fields was my friend, but he died early on in the AIDS epidemic.  He is the reason I am an activist today.   ( I wonder if he ever checks in on me?)

 Oh, there are a  couple.  Vi Luna and Evelyn Decker come to mind.  I met them 50 years ago when I worked at the Red Carpet.  I have not seen Vi for several years, but I do see Evelyn and talk to her regularly.  She was out this summer.  So, let's see, that is 2.  And then there is Shirley Bagbey.  Shirley lived out here in the county and then moved to Kansas City 7 years ago.  Now she is back and we talk every day and do "stuff."  That makes 3.  I consider all my kids as friends, but technically they are family, so they go in that category.  There is a man in my life who is sort of boyfriend, kind of a friend and more like family, but not really.

I guess maybe I am expecting too much out of life.  Maybe I should not take life so seriously.  It is all an illusion anyway, or at least that is how it appears to me.  I suppose it is the getting old that bothers me.  I had such high hopes when I was young and even into middle age.  I was optimistic enough back then to adopt a 7 year old kid when I was 50 years old.  I look at the world around me and I hear the rumblings that they will have a pill someday that will keep us alive forever.  Sorry, but that sounds like pure hell to me.

Somewhere I am remembering "Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends."  That may not be accurate, but it sounds good to me.  I want a friend like that.

So, I guess I will go open the kitchen window and listen to the rain.  The sun should come up pretty soon and the day will grab me and suck me dry.  Life has a way of doing that!

My life after Trump

Anyone who knows me even slightly, knows I am a liberal.  I did not say Democrat, but I did say liberal.  And that should be in capital letters.  I was once called a flaming liberal by a man I cared about at the time.  Well, actually it was the "f" word, but not flaming.  My response was to walk away.  My mother always said to "call a spade, a spade."  She also said a "A lie by any other name is still a lie."  And "Be true to yourself because at the end of the day there is no one there, but you and your God."  So I have tried to mostly follow what my momma said, and that night was no different.  I must confess I felt a small tinge of sadness as I turned my back and walked away.  I knew I would miss the little guy, but it had to be done for me to live with myself.

Democrats and Republicans can live together, but not Conservatives and Liberals.  So I went off to my AIDS Walk and my Los Pobres and my Gay and Lesbian friends.  I went to my UCC church that my sister in law had called "a den of iniquity".  I frequented the soup kitchen and took water to the homeless.  And Sherman went his way.

For 5 months he did what ever it is big, tall, bigoted men do.  I heard not a word from nor about him.  I did kind of miss him sometimes, but life is never what we want as much as what we get.  I actually started dating a guy who, while he may not have approved of my Liberal stance, he accepted it.  That was about all I could hope for so I went with that. Damn!  I just realized that I can not remember his name!

Now those of you who know me, also know that I am a very simple minded woman and almost completely unable to lie.  I have been called many things in my life, but never a liar.  If I think something, I say it.  If I feel something, I do it.  This guy was not like that.  He fawned over me like I was some sort of goddess, but it was not in his eyes.  I did not see the acceptance and giving that needed to be there.  Oh, he was free enough with the old checkbook, but the smile on his lips never reached his eyes, and that is very important to me.  So when my phone rang that cold night right after Christmas and it was Sherman on the other end,  I could see hope for life again.  Intelligent conversation.  Eating at the greasy spoon on Northern.  And this time it was different.

He no longer watched Fox news 24/7.
He met with Sister Nancy at his home.
He carried my food up the stairs at the SCAP office when I held my lunches.

Those of you who know me know the story of Sherman and how he remained a Republican, but became a liberal.  You know how he died and you know he proposed on his deathbed and changed his will to leave me everything he had in life.  His clothes went to Los Pobres along with all the groceries he had rat holed.  When his will was probated he gave me $45,000 for me to use "as I saw fit for my causes."  And I did.

If you go back in this blog you can find a story called "Long Ago and Not Very Far Away."  He knew I liked to write and he wanted me to write our story.  So I did.  Or just email me and I will send it to you in pdf. fomat.  loumercer3@aol.com

So, back to my life after Trump.  I tell you about Sherman because he would have been a Trump supporter before he met me.  Now do not think for one moment that I am special.  I am not.  The only inference that sentence has is to make clear that I was the instrument that lead Sherman to explore the avenue that there were other beliefs out there and that the gays were actually human beings with human feelings.  He learned that there was a wider world where "wet backs" labored in the fields to feed him and that homeless people slept under bridges because they had no where else to go.  He learned that "soup kitchens"  feed hungry people and missions feed hungry souls.  He learned that a little kindness goes a long way and just because you think one way, does not mean everyone else does.

I hope we can "come together"  after Trump, but right now my soul is tattered by a man that hates gays, women, Obama, immigrants, and apparently everyone that is not him.  I did not make this up.  He said it.  He was very clear about the blacks.  I know the day is coming when he is going to have to tell his supporters that there is not going to be a wall built between us and Mexico and I fear civil unrest when that day comes.  What can we do?

It beats hell out of me!

My annual power lunch!

 What a wonderful group of people I had assembled at my table yesterday noon!  Starting on the left is Shirley Bagby, my dear friend who moved here from Kansas City this summer.  Then Paul Gilbert my long time friend from where ever I found the little fellow.  They are talking horse talk.  Shirley used to go on lots of trail rides and Paul just bought a horse named "Speeders".  On Paul's left and standing in the background is Sister Nancy Crafton who runs Los Pobres.  The lady with the white hair is Nancy Williams, my dear friend who entices me for Bacon once a week.  On her left (and you can not see her at all  (Well, maybe her hair and 2 inches of her forehead.) is sweet little Jolene Hausman, my volunteer coordinator at hospice.  In the plaid shirt is Sister Barbara , followed by Sandy Roybal (?) who is the nurse at Los Pobres.  The empty chair is mine.

And this is Pastor Faye Gallegos who has been my dear friend since she was pastor at Christ Church longer ago than I can remember.

Once a year I like to gather like minded people together and sort of network, if you get my drift.  This year Pastor Faye brought a very special gift to be given to Los Pobres.  I forgot the horses name, but Faye's daughter bought it many years ago and cherished it. She finally decided she would like it to go to a special home and have a special owner.  Sister Nancy and Pastor Faye came up with the perfect home for the little ball of fur.  He (or she as the need arises) shall be the new entertainment for the little kids that go to Los Pobres with their parents.  While the parent(s) are talking to Sister or seeing the nurse or case worker, the children can ride across the desert or along the river or wherever they choose!  Sister has been wanting something like this for a very long time and Pastor Faye and her daughter Patty made her wish come true.

Daisy bids a fond farewell to the little rocking horse.

Well, the chicken and noodles are put away, the people have all left and the house is back empty.  This year is going to be memory very soon.  If you are a like minded person and would like to attend the next one, contact me.  We meet new friends and renew old acquaintances.  Just a day for us!

Jolene made us lovely cookies, but unfortunately  I kept them all for myself! Life sucks that way.  I am trying to post a picture of them, but that is not happening either!  Oh, wait!  There it is!  They are chocolate covered Oreos, just in case you wondered!!

Yep, I am marching onward.

Woke up his morning and had a serious thought.  Probably not my first one, but this one seemed a little morbid even to me!  My Happy Birthday is coming and while that is a cause for celebration it is also a very sobering thought.  Remember when we were young and and our birthday came and it was a milestone?   For me it was great!  When I was young that meant I took 8 or whatever number of pennies to church and stood in front of the kids and dropped the pennies one at a time into the candle bank on the table.  As each penny dropped the kids all counted;  "One!" "Two!"  Little did it matter that I had started out with pennies and I was going home with nothing.  For a few minutes I had been the center of the room.  Everyone had looked at me and sang the birthday song to me!  For a few minutes everyone was happy that I was born. 
But as I grew older the symbolism changed.  Thirteen meant I was not a teenager.  Then sweet sixteen and I never really knew what that signified.  Eighteen was the legal age of consent and shortly thereafter I married for the first time.  By my twenty-first birthday I had started my family.  By 30 I was a single mother with 5 kids.  What had started out as marking milestones was now becoming more of a habit.  The cakes got bigger and the candles got hotter.  By the time I reached 40 I was settled into what would become my middle age with my husband that would prove to be my last.  We lived a very comfortable life.  The kids left home and we adopted a grandson. 
My 60th birthday found me a widow with a pre-teen son.  It was at this time that I began toying with the idea of a "bucket list".  Now be aware that I said "toying with the idea."  An old woman with a teenage son does not have time to entertain many ideas at all.  First get him through school and out into the world and then figure out my life.  That proved almost an insurmountable task, but now it is finished.  He has a home and a new son and needless to say, a woman to replace me.  So here I set contemplating my birthday.
Let's take stock of the situation.  I have no goals set on the horizon.   I guess I do though.  Take this  morning.  It is a blessing.  I woke up, stood upright and am taking nourishment.  I have my day planned.  I am going to go buy Ziploc bags to bag up 25 pounds of  flour that was given to me to take to Los Pobres.  I am going to make a batch of cinnamon rolls to give away.  This afternoon I have a  lady  to set with so her daughter can catch a break.  I digressed there for a moment.  Back to the birthday thing.
I guess what I am trying to convey here is that when I was young and my life stretched out on an endless path before me, birthdays were important.  Now they are not.  At some point they stopped being celebrations and became more of mileposts on the way to the grave.  Every time I add a year to my age, I get closer to not having another birthday.  The good Lord in his wisdom gave us only so many years.  Some he did not give so many, but some he gave a lot.  I am afraid I am one of those to which he has given a whole lot.  I see my life behind me and I look ahead.  I see no hope of a quiet peaceful death any time soon.  The body keeps functioning and the mind keeps working and the grass keeps growing.  And I keep mowing it. 
I wish life had come with an instruction book.  But if it had, would I have read it?  If I had read it, would I have followed the instructions? I knew on some level that my first husband was going to be a mistake.  But I forged ahead.  Had I not, I would not have all my children.  I can not imagine my life without my kids.  And my grandkids.  And my great grandkids.  I have made lots of mistakes, but there is no getting the toothpaste back in the tube, as my mother used to say.  Sorry is a word that is over used because in my life "sorry" just doesn't even touch it.  But here I am, alive and well.  One of my kids tells me "What doesn't kill you makes you strong."  I expect I am one strong bitch by this time.
So, I will mark another year down the tubes and prepare for another to come.  That is how we do it here on earth.  Some day the good Lord may see fit to reach down and tap me on the shoulder.  When that happens I am going to listen this time.  And my kids will stand at my memorial and say nice things about me.  Maybe.  At least I hope so.
I remember how overwhelmed I was the day we buried my mother.  That was a lot of years ago, but the loneliness is still there.  Kids just have a special bond with their mother.  My kids  will be no different.  I hope they can take comfort in knowing that I loved them all.  I loved everyone the same; not one more than the other.  Each one was special in a special way.   At the risk of becoming morbid, I need to wind this up and go bake something.
So Happy Birthday to me!  Another one in the books as we used to say after a catering job or when one of my wedding cakes went out the door.  Enjoy this day.  Enjoy your next day.  Love your family and love your friends.  Do a good deed along the way and smile at someone on the street.  You have today.  Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.  There is no tomorrow. 

My corner of the world is getting smaller.

I woke up this morning in my little bed and lay there for a minute to think about the day ahead.  First I thought about all the shootings and the riots and it made me very sad.  I thought back to when God first made this earth and how perfect it was.  He just wanted companionship and Adam and Eve gave him that, but in typical fashion, they wanted more.  Or at least Eve did.  From the apple to Cain and Able was just a short hop and from there to now it has been all down hill.  Brad and Angelina are divorcing and if I click enough keys I can get all the dirt on that but I really don't care.  Oklahoma is arresting a police officer, but it does not change anything.  The man is still dead whether or not it was intentional or just an honest mistake, his life is gone.

The "Indigenous Tribes" are trying to stop a pipeline.  I can remember when they were Indians and they lived on reservations that were theirs given to them by our Government in exchange for all the rest of the whole United States that they thought was theirs.  What happened to that?  Oh, we needed oil.  Now I remember.  Fossil fuel is what makes our world turn.  We can get wind and solar power, but that is too clean and we will always have wind and sun, or so we think.  What I want to know is why it is only the people on the reservation trying to save our planet?  Why aren't all of us outraged that our government is completely ignoring the fact that this is THEIR land and not ours.  We only have this one earth and unless someone knows something I don't, we need to preserve it and water is just pretty necessary in that equation.

Wars are raging around the world and I have no idea why.  Wait, yes I do.  War is a matter of one person or nation imposing their will and beliefs on another person or nation.  Both sides think they are right.  For some reason our great land seems to think it is our business.  Babies are being aborted and children die from child abuse here in our country on a daily basis.  Animals are mistreated and left on chains to suffer in the back yard of a master who has no heart.  Homeless people beg for a crumb and a blanket to stave off the cold while our city fathers burn their cardboard shacks. 

Where are our peacekeepers?  Where are our Mother Teresa's?  Where are our people who care about our brothers and sisters?  Why is skin color even an issue?  Why is an accent even an issue?  Who is right and who is wrong and what difference does it make in the grand scheme of things?  But wait!  There is hope!

I remember somewhere in the far recesses of my mind a glimpse of news that a huge asteroid or something like that is hurling through space and will most assuredly crash into our dear mother earth.
Think about that!  Will it knock us out of our orbit and send us flying through space with no gravity to keep us implanted on our Terra firma?  It could happen and then would the size of your bank account make a difference?  Would your opinions matter?  Could your friends save you?  Can your fancy BMW go fast enough to save you from the apocalypse that is sure to follow?  Just some thoughts this morning.

Welcome to my world!

The bike lanes are going away!!!

Well, at least they are going away on Fifth street.  I must confess that before I leave the house and drift towards town, I say a prayer to the great white father that I encounter no bikes in town.  The streets are so screwed up with lines going here and there and bikes going both ways on one way streets and cars parked in the middle of the street that it is almost impossible to get from point A to point B without killing someone.  I waited for a car to go the other day after the light had changed and I finally figured out that I was parked.  And no where did I see a bicycle.  At no time in the last 3 years of becoming a cyclist friendly city have I even seen a bike in the lanes designed for them.   Oh, I have seen them on the sidewalk and I have seen them dart across traffic to get to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, but at no time have I seen a cyclist with their little helmets riding in the bike lanes.  Those people are rarer then the Dodo bird which was declared extinct many, many years ago. And do you want to know why?  I will tell you.

Many moons ago when I was a mere child I learned to ride a bike.  And I learned to ride a bike in traffic.  I did not learn to ride on the sidewalk because that was designed for people to walk on, hence the term side walk meant walk on the side. Side walk.  Not side ride.  It was a very simple concept.  If I was riding on the right side of the road the same as a car was driving on the right side of the road I was assured if a car wanted to pass me, the car could speed up and zip out around me.   Anything on wheels follows this rule.  When walking I walk on the left facing traffic.  I can step off the road that way and avoid getting ran over.  Simple concept.  Walk facing traffic and when driving or riding go with the flow.

In this manner I have survived 74 years without a scratch.  It is my opinion that it would have been much simpler and a whole lot cheaper to require a license on a bike and require the owner to pass a test.  Motorcyclists have to and the only difference there is that the motorcycle has a motor and the bike does not.

I understand that their are places where bikes are a major means of transportation and I think had the city fathers just studied how it was done that a lot of frustrations could have been avoided and the city would have saved a lot of money on paint.  My theory on this is that it was not broken so why did they have to fix it?

It is all becoming a blur to me!

It seems it was only yesterday that I was poking in the soil to see signs of life in Mother Earth.  The next day we were in the middle of a stretch of 100 degree days.  This morning I am wondering if I should have unhooked the hoses last night so they would not freeze.  Oh, and some where during the intervening days I recall mowing and cutting weeds and cleaning the goose house and planting seeds and wondering where they went after they came up because the garden was shoulder high in weeds last time I looked.  Spring and Summer are a complete blur. 
I meant to take a vacation and go back to Kansas, but I must have forgotten, because it did not happen.  I meant to go on several hikes, like the Manitou Incline and up Tower Trail in Beulah to get seeds from the Sage plant, but I think it is too cold up there now.  I know it is pretty chilly when I go out in the mornings and I have that dew on my car windows.  Leaves are starting to fall in the yard and spiders are making their way in through the cracks.  Where did the summer go? 
I recall one of those pattern books with the  cute little sayings that can be embroidered in cross stitch.  I actually made several of them and God only knows where they went. I could use them now.  The first one was "When you are over the hill, you pick up speed."  That is the truth if I ever told it.  Seems like some where in the far recesses of my mind I was a kid and the days crept by as slow as molasses on a cold day.  I do not recall summer or winter affecting me as far as the creature comforts of warm and cold.  I do recall walking home from school behind my older brother and sister who broke a trail through the snow.  And I recall sleeping on the floor at school because we could not get through the snow.  It must have been very cold.  I remember those damned itchy wool blankets we slept under.  I recall jumping in the creek or horse tank or a mud puddle when it was summer, so I must have been hot. 
I remember the hayloft and how hot it was up there in the summer.  Sometimes if the hay was just a little damp the pile would start smoldering and the hay would have to be pitched out on the ground to save the barn.  I also remember how warm it was in the winter.  Course I also remember the mice and the cat. There was invariably a litter of kittens which would grow up to eat the baby mice.  Also spiders.  Damned spiders were every where.  Black Widows were the scariest.  We learned early to recognize the web of the Black Widow.  It was shiny and if I touched it with a stick it would crackle.  Sent chills through my bones.  And I could always see the Widow somewhere with her round marble body, shiny black.  Sometimes I could see her dead husband trapped in her web.  She killed him after they bred and that is why she was called a black widow.  There was one that lived behind the door into the chicken house.  Very scary.
(Why does everything always revert back to Nickerson, Kansas and my childhood?)
The other thing I cross stitched was one that said "Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."  That was my mantra for many years until I decided that I had not really lost my mind, just sometimes I let it go on vacation without me!  I have been told that I should write my life story and I gave that a lot of thought, but that will not happen and here is why...
When I set down to start to write my mind wanders off.  I started to write about how fall is in the air and I had beautiful pictures in my mind, but then I started thinking about how the city fathers have now decided to remove those stupid bike lanes down on Fifth Street.  This started me thinking of how I learned to ride a bike in Nickerson, Kansas and that made me remember school there in the big two story brick building. 
I usually call this "digressing", but I guess if the truth be known, it is just the old adage "All roads lead home."  And I take great comfort in that.

I didn't understand what I was voting for that time.

I take my voting very seriously.  When I get the little booklet from the League of Women's Voters, I devour every word.  I talk to people and weigh the pros and cons.  If I am not clear what it is about, I am going to find out, you can bet your sweet bippie on that!  When the question of legalizing marijuana came to the ballot, I was very sure that I wanted a yes vote on that.  I would have been more excited had they made the legal age 25, just because by the time someone is 25 they are pretty sure what they want out of life.

I have seen what the synthetic heroine and crack cocaine and meth has done to our kids and I did not want that to continue.  The argument that Marijuana is a gateway drug is a crock.  I have seen first hand kids go straight for the meth and other drugs simply because they are very cheap and very, very easy to purchase.  My hope was that by legalizing marijuana some of that would slow down, but I don't think that is happening.  I have never done an illegal drug in my life and do not intend to start, but I can tell you this, I have dealt with kids smoking pot and they do not behave at all like those who have been doing the illegal drugs.  Ever see a kid that is so zoned out they have no idea where they are or what they are doing?  That is not marijuana!  Marijuana seems to make kids a little spacey, but it does not make them stand on a street corner staring off into outer space and drooling all  over themselves.  Most of the marijuana smokers I run into are happy little people and I would just assume they were having a really good day if it weren't for that little whiff I get that is akin to a skunk passing by outside.

I see in the Chieftain that Hasan is funding a study on marijuana and I will certainly be glad when that is done and we can see the scientific evidence of the benefits of marijuana.  Years ago I had back problems and took more pain pills than I can remember.  I recall going to work more often than not with a fog in my brain and I could hover up near the ceiling and watch myself slaving over a hot grill and smoking french fry baskets.  It is a wonder I survived that! I had back surgery and as with any surgery, more pain pills.  Today I have spasms in my back and when that happens I reach for my bottle of marijuana pain cream that I bought legally in Blende.  I do not take any pain pills and I have been told that I would not be able to pass a drug test as there is pcp or thc or something like that in my system, but I do know I do not feel it and I am clear headed, just no pain.  I refuse to take pain pills so if legal sale of marijuana goes away in Pueblo City and County I am just going to have to go back to being unable to function.

I could go on about what good the tax dollars have done for our economy along with our low unemployment rate, but I think that speaks for itself.  I just wanted to give my opinion as a human being.

The wisdom of one younger and wiser than me.

  This is Hammer, me and my daughter Debbie.  If you look at us, it appears that she is a clone of me.  Spitting image of her mother!  And the interesting part of the whole thing is we think a lot alike and seem to have the same reasoning power.

I was talking to her the other day and I commented that she had the same reasoning powers that I did and she must have inherited them from me.  At that point she told me that many years ago she had come across a paper that someone had written and that the basic rules on that sheet of paper had kept her on a steady course for her life.  She read them to me and they sounded like something might have writtem back in my early life..We do not know who wrote them, but I would love to share with all of you.  She said her copy was covered with fly poop, grease spots and water marks, but she could still read it and agreed to send it to me.  Today it arrived in my mailbox and I copied it for you.  

RULES FOR BEING HUMAN        

Author unknown

1.      1.  You will receive a body.  You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.       2.   You will learn lessons.  You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life.  Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons.  You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3.        3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of trial and error:  experimentation.  The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately works.

4.        4.  lesson is repeated until learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

5.       5.  Learning lessons does not end.  There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons.  If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.        6.  “THERE” is no better than “HERE”.  When you’re “THERE” has become a “HERE, you will simply obtain another “THERE” that will again look better than “HERE”.

7.       7.  Others are merely mirrors of you.  You cannot love or hate something about another person unless is reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

8.       8.  What you make of your life is up to you.  You have all the tools and resources you need.  What you do with them is up to you.  The choice is yours.

9.      9.   Your answers lie inside you.  The answers to life’s questions lie inside you.  All you need do is look, listen and trust.

     10.  You will forget all this.

     11.   You can remember it whenever you want or need to.

      So thank you to Debbie Keisel for sending this to me so I can share it with others.  Who knows, we may make the world a better place if we try hard enough!

Keep right except to pass and do not pass in an intersection on a country road.

A couple days ago I was coming home down South Road and driving my usual 40 MPH in the 35 MPH speed zone.  Actually my speedometer is off by a couple digits, so I was driving about 38MPH.  There is a stop sign on 25th Lane and 27th Lane has a "widow maker" dip.  See out here this is how we control water. The dip is so water on the road has a way to get off the road so my car does not flood out.  I slow down so my car does not bounce.

Let me tell you about the history on this dip.  Our mailbox is on the North side of the road.  It is about 1/2 a city block from the dip.  When we first moved out here and the dip was new we lost our mailbox 2 times because people neglected to slow for the dip, became airborne and wiped out our mailbox.  The dip is clearly marked so over the years people have learned to slow down at that corner.  They also have the added attraction of seeing long black marks where brakes are applied very quickly by drivers who wake up at the last minute.  Back to my experience.

So I am driving home and stopped at 25th Lane.  A red car was behind me.  It also stopped and caught up with me very quickly.  I knew the dip was coming so I tapped the brake to slow.  Red car whipped out around me and romped on the gas.  When it hit that dip, it became airborne and then came down very hard on the road.  I heard the crash when the bottom of the car hit the pavement.  The car continued forward out of control and swerving from side to side.  By the time it got to Scalese's house it was finally under control.

Now my dear little Bret hit a dip in Pueblo West once and raised his radiator 2 inches.  He was only going 7 mph.  (snicker, snicker!)  This car was probably doing 55 when it hit the dip.  Wonder what it did to that radiator!!  I do not know exactly why I shared this with you, but I must have had a reason.  I wish I had a dash camera and I could have shown it to you.  Might make you want to drive a little more carefully out here.  I do know I just watched this video.  

CLICK HERE

I know they have this law here in Colorado, but no one pays attention to it.  Do we still have traffic enforcement?  I pass more on the right then I do on the left.  In all fairness lots of these drivers are on the phone and not really noticing what I am doing, or what they are doing either for that matter.

I could be wrong , but I think if you are going to be herding a 2000 pound vehicle down a public road you really ought to be aware of your surroundings.  I have niece's that like to text going down the road.  Real important stuff isn't it?  I do not do that because I am old and I can remember when the phone was hooked on the wall and if someone called and I did not answer they just figured I was not home.  Imagine that!  Now I call someone and Lord only knows where they are located.  They could even be in my back seat.

I guess what I am trying to tell/ask/beg people to do is this.  When you crawl in your car, leave you other obligations on the seat or in your pocket and pay attention to driving.  In a perfect world all the cars are going the same place at the same speed, but inevitably someone colors outside the lines.  In a perfect world the only fatality would be the driver with the phone in thier hand, but life does not work that way and I have come too far to be a statistic because someone else heard a phone ring, or heard a text come in, or missed that sign about "DIP".

The road to hell is paved with good intentions!

You never really know a person...

Once upon a time I was visiting with  a very wise man.  We were discussing a friend we had in common.  OK, it happened to be an ex husband of mine who had done something exceptionally stupid and I said, "Why I thought I knew him better than that!"  To which he replied, "You never know anyone.  You only know of them.  You only know what they let you see."  Good point!

I recall standing at the grave of my mothers last husband and her saying, "Who was that man?"  He had presented himself as a lonely widower with a son and a daughter and no other relation in the world.  The funeral had been well attended by brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and a former parole officer. She never knew him.

So this morning at 4:15 AM when the eyelids opened for the day, I thought of this and I wondered, "Who do I have in this world that I really know? "  I came up with nobody.   So I took this thought to the next level and asked myself, "Who am I?  Does anyone really know me?'  Once more I came up with a negative answer.

I know some of you out there think you know me, but do you?  I may not be who you think I am.  I present a face to the public and a face to my friends that may not reveal the depths of my soul.  I appear to be very well adjusted, compassionate, caring, honest, giving, kind and so many other things, but you know little about the person who lives in this body.  I have lots of friends, but do I?  What is a friend?  When I am lonely, who do I turn to for companionship?  Who do I trust with  my deepest secrets?  When the dark abyss of the deepest recesses of my mind cry out for comfort, who do I reach for?  When I am sinking in despair at the long road ahead, who reaches to lift me up?

When your phone rings and I am on the other end and I ask, "Whatcha' doing?"  Is this really what I mean or am I saying "I am so lonely I can not think straight.  I am sinking in depression.  Save me!"   The sad part of life is that no matter how transparent people seem to be, they are not.

I have learned that depression is depression.  It comes.  It stays.  It lifts and it leaves, but it comes back.  How is depression lived with every day?  I do not know, but I do know it is fairly common in this day and age.  I read one article that said, "Depression is like a big black dog that is always there and when he lays on you, you can not get him off and you can not move."  I guess that sort of explained it for me.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that we should always make the effort to be kind to each other because we never know what is going on in another person's life and mind.  Watching a baby at play may make someone happy, but it may make someone sad.  A cheery, "Good morning!" may make one person feel special, and make the next one think you are nuts.  So what is the answer?  I do not have it, for all my years of experience.

My advice?  Keep plugging away.  All that glitters is not gold.  Everything that goes up, must come down.  Let a smile be your umbrella.  And most importantly,

You cannot sprinkle showers of happiness on other people without getting a few drops on yourself!

The good old days are alive and well in Florence, Colorado.

When we went fishing the other day in Florence at the Founders Park, we happened to stumble upon this little artifact.  For those of you who have grown up with tiled floors and enameled fixtures in your bathroom, you are in for a rude awakening.  This is what is known as an outhouse.  The out house is a little house behind the big house where you lived.  We have come a long ways since these days and I did not even dream there were still such things around.  Here is living proof.

This is the floor of said outhouse.  Now be aware that beneath this floor is a very messy pit where human waste is/was collected.  I do not know if this is a working outhouse and I did not step inside and peer down the hole so I can not even venture a guess.  No, I am curious, but not that curious!

The wood looks old and weathered enough to make me think this is the authentic outhouse, but since there was no sign of a homestead any where near here, I think it was placed here more as a piece of history.

And there you nave the bench upon which one perched to do one's business.  I myself would be scared to assume that position since I am deathly afraid of spiders and I am pretty sure this would be a perfect place for one to lurk.  Probably a very large family of the arachnids could be located under that bench.

So, kiddies, what do you think?  I do know that visiting this little building the other day sort of knocked my longing for the good old days right in the keester.  I long for the tranquility that came with the life we lived back then such as no ringing phone, no blaring television,  no interstate outside my door, but I have become quite accustomed to running water, both hot and cold, and the gentle swish of water when I flip the chrome handle of my pretty white commode.   I can stand for hours under the hot shower and never miss that aluminum tub on Saturday nights.

Yep, I have become a slave to modern conveniences.  And so it goes.

I thought I was the adult here!! My mistake.

Yesterday I drove myself to Florence to go fishing with Bret, Amanda and the baby.  As you can see Bret and I were busy with the fine art of casting and Amanda was documenting our outing.  Now you all know what happened here!  This innocent little baby of 6 tender months, is the worlds youngest photobomber!!  And he looks so harmless!  I can see what he is thinking.  "Oh, they are busy catching my dinner and mommy wants a picture!  Pick me, mommy!  Pick me."

Course about as soon as he jacked up the picture of mother and son in a bonding adventure, he went to sleep!

The scenery was fantastic.  Here is a picture of the fish Bret caught.  Now that is one big fish!

Here is mine that I did not catch!

The restrooms we used and the one we did not!

Amanda is in charge of packing and unpacking the car loaded with things to make the little Jiraiya's life most comfortable.  Bret and my job was to eat chicken apparently.

Kind of a water fall here.  We were at the Florence Water Park.

  I got home about 3:00 and the miles per gallon on the dash reported in at 49.7.  Can't get much better than that!

Life is Good!