Liz's Cafe in Bessemer is where I met Delores.

My God!  I do not remember how many years ago it was that I worked there!  I was divorcing husband #3, working days for husband #3, and going to school nights at National College and working on a degree in Accounting.  OK.  It must have been about 1981 or 1982 that I graduated, so it must have been about 1980.  I could not make ends meet on an office managers salary, and I was attending school from 6 PM-9PM,  so that left little time for a part time job.  Liz's was a booming little cafe in Bessemer on the corner of Evans and something.   I think Dorothy and Frank were managing it at that time.  They needed a waitress from 12 midnight to 5:00 AM.  That worked perfectly for me.

The kids were asleep when I left and asleep when I came home.  I slept when I stopped and existed for the weekends when I could sleep until noon.  A schedule like that is not for everyone and I could not have continued indefinitely,  but it worked for a while.  Back to Delores.

Delores was an illegal immigrant who washed dishes in the kitchen.  She did not speak a word of English and did not come out of the kitchen for fear of being seen.  There was also another lady there in the kitchen and her name was Mary.  Mary was born here, so she was legal.  Delores, Mary and I became good friends at work.  When I wanted to converse with Delores the 3 of us would set down and Mary would be in the middle.  I would speak in English, Mary would interpret to Delores language and then interpret the answer back into English for me.  Mary was good!  Sometimes she would screw up and then we all three would laugh like a bunch of loons.  Now here is the moral of this story:

I never knew where Delores lived.  I never met her family.  She only existed in that corner booth for a few moments early in the morning.  She lived in the shadows and when the sun came up she was gone.  I often wonder about her and I can see her in my mind.  She will be forever young.  What I do not understand and never will, is why it has to be that way.  I do not know where she came from and I do not know where she went.  For some reason, I think she returned to Mexico.  I can still see her in my mind.  Delores lived in fear that she would be "caught and deported."  Why she was not here legally, I never knew.  That was a long time ago.

The point I am making is this;  She worked hard.  She spent her money in our country to exist and sent money home to her mother in Mexico.  Is that bad?  She had come here for some reason and her life touched mine, but it did not end there.  That was almost 40 years ago and I am still involved in the shadowy world of illegal immigrants, or maybe they are not illegal.  I think they are here legally, but afraid none the less.  I make regular trips east of town to visit my little friends that live out there.  I do not ask for citizenship papers.  I don't care.  They are my friends.  They live in the shadows and work in secret. 

Now we have kids locked up and parents looking for them.  And we have a caravan headed for our borders containing lord only knows how many men, women and children fleeing from drug cartels that are sacking their homes and killing the residents, raping the women, beating innocent children to death and more atrocities.  They are seeking asylum in our country.  And how do we respond?  They will be met at the border by OUR National Guard and turned back.  These guardsmen are under orders to shoot them if they try to enter.  WTF?

I am sorry, is this MY America?  My Grandfather came to this country 120 years ago when he was 9 years old.  I am a third generation immigrant.  When my grandfather came here he was just one of the huge family of Johann Haas.  Germans.  They came with Bibles in their hands and a fire in their bellies.  They walked the hall at Ellis Island.  They could have been from Mexico, just as easy.  I am proud of my ancestry and had they crossed the Rio Grande in the middle of the night, I would still be proud of them.  This is America for crying out loud!

I pray that when I stand before the throne of Christ and he judges me that he will not hold the behavior of my government against me.  I am not sure what I should be doing.  I can not change the course this country is taking with walls and tent cities for helpless children who have been separated from their parents.  I can not stop my government from trading bullets for rocks, but I can make my voice heard.  At least I think I can make my voice heard.  How long will it be that even my voice will be silenced?  How long will it be before we will be watching the parade and putting our right hand in the air and saying "Heil!"

Our country is divided on everything and the elite are lining up and Armageddon is on the horizon. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Our government is made up of a bunch of selfish aristocrats who will draw a paycheck for the rest of their lives.  Until we can get our government under control, we are doomed.  It gives credence to the adage, "You can send an honest politician to Washington, but you can not get him/her back." 

  I am sorry that so many do not grasp the reality of what is happening. 
 

Finally I am in touch with real time!

Set all my clocks back one hour last night before I went to bed and I woke up at a decent hour and felt like I was back in the real world.   It is 6:00 AM and I have been up over an hour and now the sun is coming up.  When I go to pick up baby at 7:00 AM the sun will be fully up and the geese will be out looking for whatever it is geese look for all day.  Why can't we just leave the damn clock alone?

An old Indian Chief said it best when he said, "A white man is the only one who thinks he can cut a foot off the bottom of the blanket and sew it on the top of the blanket and thinks he has a longer blanket. "  Hit the old nail on the head there.

We still have the same amount of daylight hours as we did yesterday, the only difference is the daylight starts a little earlier which means kids go to school when the sun is up and get home as it is going down.  To me it means I can let the geese out before I pick up baby and start my day and that eliminates having to make a trip back out here to let the geese out before I start my town stuff.  I can just stay in town and  "gitter done!"  It also means I can close them up while the news is on and I don't have to miss crucial questions on Jeopardy!

So, now life is good here on the farm and shall stay that way until the powers that be deem it necessary for me to go back to the other time which I do not know which time is the time it should really be the real time.  Is this daylight savings time, or was the one we just ended the daylight savings time.  The government should understand that all of us are getting older and while change is inevitable, some things should be left alone.  My little mind is having enough trouble understanding what day it is anyway, without having to remember that while Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, I do not know what time I am on.  Is my time and Arizona time the same now or were we on the same time yesterday?  It is a very good thing that I do not have to conduct a lot of business with anyone in Arizona.  I do have friends there and I could ask them what time it is.  Maybe I will go do that now!  Then  I am off to pick up baby on this Sunday morning, which I do not usually do, but there you go.  No problem for someone who does not even know what day it is anyway!

So, Merry Thanksgiving to you, or Happy Birthday, whatever day it is and whatever time it is in your world! 

And she never left his side.

This morning at 7:00 AM I was setting in a parking lot at 4th and Abriendo waiting for my son to arrive with my grandson.  53 years ago at the same exact time I was setting in a motel room with my husband, waiting to go to McPherson Hospital, in McPherson, Kansas to see my brother, Jake.  Jake had been in an accident the day before and mom had called to tell us to come.  We left the kids with Duane's sister.  Debbie was 3 years old, Patty was barely  2, Dona was 1 year old the day before, and Sam was 26 days old.  His sister was a brave woman.

We had arrived in McPherson late the night before and gone to the hospital.  My brother was propped against pillows and covered with a sheet across his body.  He did not even look hurt.  He did, however, continually kick his right leg and emit a moan.  Mother said that the doctor told her he was trying to stomp on the brake.  The last thing he would have seen was the side of a loaded gravel truck as Johnny ran the stop sign.  Johnny was down the hall in the same condition as Jake.  There was no hope for either one of them.  There was too much damage; too many broken bones to set, and to many internal injuries to even assess them all.  At the moment Johnny's last name eludes me, but it will come as all the memories of that time visit me from time to time.

This was my brother who had set with me beside a car battery and a radio listening to the Grand Ole' Opry from Nashville, Tennessee.  This was my brother who had written all the letters from Aschaffenburg, Germany when I was 15 years old.  This was my brother who dared to tell my husband, "You hadn't ought to hit her like that."  Of course that just got him some of the same.  This was my brother who had a new baby 6 months old and had been attending church.  This was Uncle Jake to my kids.  This was a broken human being that did not even know I was there.  And my mother set beside him holding his hand.

She talked of emptying the other bedroom at the house and setting it up as a room for Jake, just in case he lived and could come home.  She knew how severe the brain damage was and that he would be a vegetable and would need constant care.  She would quit working and stay home and take care of him.  For the first time in my life, I saw a mother's love in action.  A mother who would give up everything for her child.  My father had died only 8 months earlier.  His passing had made no impact on me, but seeing my brother so small and helpless was about to be my undoing.  So we stayed a little longer and then mother sent us back to Hutchinson to rent a motel room.  We would be back in the morning and she could call if anything changed.

We rented a little rat hole room and called and gave her the number.  In only 4 short hours the phone rang with the news.  "Jake is gone.  I will see you at the house."  I can not go into what went on in that motel room when I hung up the phone.  There are some memories that are so terrible they can not be erased and some hurts so deep that they will never heal.  I will just say that Duane was very upset and took the loss of my brother very personally.

So for 53 years I relive the Halloween of my brothers death.  My husband and I were married on October 30, 196?,  Dona was born October 30, 1964.

Guess what I am trying to say, is today is a bad day in my year.  Probably going to survive once more, but just be patient with me today.  Halloween pretty much sucks for me, but it passes.  Every year it passes.

So, life is mostly good.

Now I realize my mistake!

Fifty years later, I see my mistake!  Well, it is way to late in the game to correct it, but I can look back on it and laugh.  Trust me, there are not a lot of mistakes that are not funny, but this one is.

Let me set the scene.  I had divorced my first husband and my 5 kids and I were living in the 5th street house.  I was working at the Red Carpet Restaurant.  I was dating a long legged guitar picker who was in a band that played around the county.  He was not the brightest bulb in the box, but he was a warm body and while he still lived with his mother and father,  he was a step up from nobody.

Christmas came and of course gifts were exchanged.   He arrived with his arms full from himself, his mom and his sister.  By the time the unwrapping was over, all the tags were lost.  I do not remember what all was in the pile, but I did know the tags were lost.  So here I set with 3 pairs of sturdy cotton underwear, a pair of electric scissors, and a new Bible and a study guide and tags that said, mom, sister and boyfriend..

 No clues.  All three gifts could be referred to as they.  The scissors were pink, the underwear were white, and the Bible and Study guide were black.    I was sure his sister had given me the Bible.  Which left him giving me cotton underwear which made sense because I needed new underwear and had remarked that I would buy some just as soon as I got my Christmas bonus.  He did not remember who sent what, so when I called his mom to thank her for the gift I was vague.

"Oh, thank you so much.  How did you know exactly what I needed?"
"Well, I thought they would come in handy.  I hope they are the right color.  They had several choices."
"Of course!  That is always a safe choice."
"They looked pretty durable so I got those."

For some reason, by the time the conversation reached this point, I decided she had given me the electric scissors.  I would go with that.
 

Then she said, "Well, I hope you make good use of them."
"Yes, I think I will use them tonight!"
"Good idea!"

Looking back, I could have said, "Listen, your dipwad son lost the tags and I have no idea what you gave me, but I am sure it is nice whatever it is, because I know you bought all three and just put their names on the tags."  But I didn't say that, did I?  Hell, no.

I was always a little sad, that she never became my mother-in-law, because I think I could have grown to like her.  But it was not to be.  It was a few weeks later I saw his sister and she asked how the scissors cut.  Aha!  She sent me the scissors.  That meant his mom gave me the Bible.  Since I could not keep my finger off that phone I called her to tell her how much I was enjoying her gift and how confident I was since I was using them every day.  She seemed a little strange after that conversation for some reason.  I thought she would be pleased that I was studying the Bible.

And then I decided to actually wear a pair of my new underwear.  When I opened the box and took out the top pair a gift tag fell out.  It said simply "Delores"  (or what ever her name was).  And then I remembered our conversations.  They took on a whole new meaning.

Our friendship seemed a little strange after that.  Not long after that the guitar picker wandered off in search of some big boobed woman with no kids and who liked to set it the bar and listen to him twang away on his guitar.  I moved on, but that Christmas has always lived in the back of my mind.  It is nothing I talk about but it still pops up in memory every now and then.  I am sure his mom is no longer alive so I can write about it now.  He may still be around, but who knows?  The whole thing is just one of those things that transpired and then was gone.  It was important at the time, and in hindsight was really nothing at all.

Just goes to show you that sometimes what really wasn't stays in memory and becomes just that, a memory.

Happy Birthday Delbert Leroy Bartholomew!

DELBERT LEROY BARTHOLOMEW

10/5/1937-10/31/1965

Some where I have a picture of my brother Jake in his Khaki pants and shirt.  Lord only knows where that is in this computer.  So this one will have to do.  In this picture, I am the only one left.  I worshipped my big brother; my big sister, not so much.  Jake was my hero.  I would like to say he was a lot of things, but he wasn't.  

This picture was taken before he sneaked up and goosed the horse which kicked him in the face leaving him with a scar he carried to his grave at the age of 29.  He ran away to the Army as soon as he could forge a birth certificate that would get him in with mothers signature.  He went to Aschaffenburg (sp) Germany where he and one of his friends managed to wreck a motorcycle and get sent home without a dishonorable discharge.  I was 15 when he came home. He fell in love and may or may not have married the girl, but they did have a son.  I fell in love and began my family and we sort of drifted apart.  Then he fell in love and may or may not have married that girl, but he did sire another son.  

To make a long story short, Jake was in a wreck on October 29, 1965.  He died on Halloween.  Dona Marie was one year old and Sam was 3 weeks.  Somewhere out there in this big world my brother left 2 sons the youngest being 9 months old when Jake died.  I have often thought of trying to find them, but I am sure they have lives that would just  be better left as they are.

So, if I seem a little flaky in October, just bear with me.  It will all sort itself out someday.

Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.

Words from my mother.  And taken as a sentence sound kind of cryptic, but explained by my mother, they made perfect sense.  Most of us are giving people and will share what we have with those who have less, or those who are in need.  At least I like to think that is the case.

Most of you also know that I would give you the shirt right off my back if I thought you needed it and I like to think you would return the favor and I am sure you would!  So what is this all about anyway?  What does it have to do with not letting one hand know what the other hand is doing?  I will tell you.  It has come to my attention that some people are watching their hands a little to closely and maybe not letting go of what they give to another.  I do not want to become one of those people.  As an example, if I meet a man on the street and he is cold, I will give him my coat.  At that point I will walk away.  I could hide around the corner to see if he maybe sells it and then goes and buys a beer, but I would never do that.  I have given it to him and it is his to do with as he sees fit.  Ideally, he will use it to keep warm which was my original intent.

Maybe he has a friend who needs the coat more than he does.  Maybe he will wad it up and set on it so he does not get in the mud.  Who knows the fate of the coat at this point.  What I am trying to say is that as Christians we are often moved to do things and give things.  When this happens, we must let them go, and walk away.  I recently learned of an instance where someone had given something and it was sold.  The giver was hurt that this had happened.  Oft times when gifts are given to charities they are then sold and the cash used for other things, like gas bills, groceries, or medicine.  Maybe school supplies for migrant children.  Maybe that shawl you knitted and gave to the nursing home and pictured a little old lady keeping warm on a cold night ended up in a silent auction.  Or maybe the director took it across town to someone who was freezing because the heat was turned off in their apartment.  Or maybe someone who did not need it at all, sold it and did go buy beer with it! 

I guess what I am trying to say is this:  If you give it away, then give it away.  Let it go.  We have to do our part in trying to make the world a better place, but we can not do it all.  If you give something to someone, it is not yours to control.  Let it go.  And if you think that person abused your gift, then next time give to someone  that you think will do better with your offerings.  You could go to the person who offended you and talk to them.  "I gave you such and such and I think it went to some place I did not intend it to go."  Let them tell you what happened, but you should know that discussing it with anyone who will listen is only casting doubt on yourself.  And that is where the not letting one hand know what the other is doing comes into play. 

Take your gift.  Lay it on the alter, or place it in someone else's hand and walk away.  It is not yours anymore.  Your heart is not burdened with worldly goods.  Forget about it and move on to the next person who is in need and you will be wiser for it.

Just some thoughts this morning.

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: Grocery shopping has sure changed from 1950's.

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: Grocery shopping has sure changed from 1950's.: Back when I was 12 years old Flemings grocery store  and Berridge IGA (?) had contests.  IGA was for a trip to St. Louis and when you bough...