Stupid or eternally optimistic?

My mother always told me that one sign of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over in the same way and expecting a different result.  I would like to go on record as saying she may have been right about that.  Now I do not like the word "stupidity", but I do not know a better word for that action.  Oh, I know!  I can call it "eternally optimistic!"  That sounds a whole lot better, now doesn't it?

My neighbors goats are eternally optimistic.  They are the ones  that will not stay home and like to come graze on my bushes.  Every morning they are in my yard, usually in the car port.  I hit the panic button on the car and all four of them go into a dead panic trying to run over each other getting away from the car.  They then stand in the drive way looking dumbfounded and wondering where that sound came from .  Seeing nothing, they then wander into another neighbors yard to graze on her grass.

Soon the eternally optimistic neighbors (now awakened by my car alarm blasting) wander out to herd the goats back into the pen.  They actually have 3 different pens, none of which will hold an animal prisoner.  And yet each time they close the gate, they think the goats are secured.  I have actually watched them stand in the middle of the pen and look around.  Were I so inclined I could go over and show them the gaping holes they walk through, but I am not.  It is easier for me to honk the horn, knowing that the goats will never figure it out.

I suppose that in my journey from puberty to old age I have done a few stupid things, but rest assured there was only one real stupid thing that I did over and over in the same way expecting different results.  That was my habit of marrying men who were addicted to alcohol and expecting them to work and take care of me.  It was not until I met Kenny that I realized I really had something to offer a man besides my paycheck.  And we lived happily ever after.

Now I realize I probably could go buy a roll of fencing, take it over next door and show them how to build a fence, but I am not going to do that.  If I still had the nice lawn I had years ago and the beautiful rose bushes I took such good care of, it might be different, but I don't.  So I will set here and hit the panic button and watch the eternally optimistic goats wonder what is going on and the eternally optimistic neighbors herd them back into the semblance of a pen.

Life sucks.

2014-07-28

If you are watching this on your cell phone, you need to click on the date that appears.  The picture does not always work like you think.


I did not realize that I made this video 6 years ago.  This is the stations of the cross in San Luis.  The dog in the picture joined me at the bottom of the walk and stayed with me all the way up and all the way down.  Two years ago I met my son in Taos, New Mexico.  When I came back, I drove the back way and came out in San Luis.  I stopped on the edge of town to take a picture of the chapel up on the hill.  When I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by a big dog which stood by me while I took pictures.  I can not help but wonder if the dog was the embodiment of some one I had known before.

Maybe when my friend, Irene comes this year, her and I can go visit this.  Her mom lived in this area and I think the one shot I have of the field down the side is where Annie grew up.  Small world, huh?

Willie, Woolsworth, and the Blue Waltz Perfume.

Probably, the second "real love" of my life after Corky, the dancing fool, was a guy named Willie.  Back in those days, newspapers required a "typesetter" and that was what Willie did.  It did not require much expertise, but I was just as proud of him as if I had good sense.  Work was a necessary evil back in those days.  No work, no pay, no money for beer and beer was very important back then.

Willie was not a handsome man.  He was not tall.  He was not overly bright, but he loved me, so I of course loved him.  He was a short, stocky little bundle of muscles who was feared by all.  His reddish hair gave him a temper, or so they said.  Seems he liked to fight and when someone likes to do something they are usually very good at it.  It was rumored that he might be a little off in the head, but who cared?  Not me, that was for sure. 

Willie and I never had an actual physical relationship, but I loved him anyway.  In Hutchinson, back in the day, it was expected that anyone with a car would be dragging Main on Friday and Saturday night.  That was what you did.  You started on Sherman and Main and drove North to 30th, circled back to Sherman.  Bumper to bumper.  If you were cool, you parked and laid on the hood of your vehicle and watched.  Not sure being cool had as much to do with it as just not having anything else to do.

Willie did not have a car, but his friend Jimmie did.  Jimmie also had a wife waiting at home and a couple kids, but that was cool.  Jimmie was a family man and would have to leave us early.  We then walked home.  Since I lived on West A  Jimmie would drop us there, and Willie would then walk to his house which was on the East end of Sherman.

Back in the day we had 2 stores called "five and dimes."  They were precursors to Family Dollar, Dollar General and stores like that.  Variety stores and you could find about anything you needed within their walls.  The first was Kresses and the other was Woolsworth.  I had asked Willie once what his favorite perfume was and he told me it was "Blue Waltz".  The only place it was sold was at Kress, so the first spare nickle I had, I set off to purchase the elixir that would make Willie mine.

Blue Waltz Perfume came in a little heart shaped bottle that was about an inch and a half tall and a  little over an inch wide. The bottle was clear, but the perfume, as I recall was a very light tan.  It had a fragrance like none other.  It was actually a very light, cloying smell, for want of a better word.   I do not know what that word means, but it sure fit that perfume!  I dabbed it behind my ears, in my hair, and any place else my finger happened to find. 

Now it is only fair to tell you at this point that I do not remember what ever happened between Willie and I all those years ago, but suffice it to say, it could not have been anything too important or I would have remembered.  What I do recall is the Blue Waltz Perfume and I can close my eyes and see that little bottle.  I am sure I bought it for a nickle and only used it when I was seeing Willie and that is all I remember.  It was not long after that I met Duane, and Willie was history.  The Blue Waltz Perfume was not nearly as popular with Duane as it was with Willie so it set on the shelf forgotten. 

I do think about that tiny little bottle from time to time and wonder what ever became of Willie.  I am sure he sobered up and married someone, and maybe had a couple kids.  They would have been cute little burgers with his red hair and blue eyes.  But maybe not.  I had kids of my own and never once thought about naming one of them Willie. 

It is kind of funny how life works.  Willie and the Blue Waltz perfume were a small part of my circle of life, but here I am sixty some years later and the clearest memory of that part of my life is not Willie, or the dragging Main, or anything else.  The undying love was out the window and the vision I see when I close my eyes is that of a tiny glass bottle with the words "Blue Waltz Perfume"  in tiny letters across the front of the bottle.

Funny how that works.

Ala man left and a dotsey doe!

What ever goes on in my head at night when I am sound asleep is more than I can guess but I would sure love to figure it out.  Today I woke up thinking about a box of cards up on the shelf in the closet that Kenny received when we had his retirement party.  That coupled with this song click here.  He was a trucker and while he was not over the road, he was out of town a lot.  I have chased him all over Colorado, New Mexico and Utah since I went to visit him where he was hauling for one company or another.  We bought a park model trailer which was his home away from home.  With that he had his home away from home.  He cooked for himself and kept his little trailer very neat and clean and even made his bed!  Sure saw a lot of country and I met  a lot of very nice people.  But I digress.

When Kenny and I started dating back in 1982 we were both fresh out of failed marriages.  We had known each other while married to previous mates, to we were not strangers.  Most of our time was spent commiserating about how we had both been wronged.  Now, that common bond will only keep people together for so long.

I love to dance and back home dancing in bars was common practice and the next dance was just one beer away and a new dance partner always ready.  Not so in Colorado.  Kenny did not dance and had not one bone in his body that knew what music was, but he decided we should take square dance lessons at the City Park.  Seems his friends, Johnny and Betty were square dancers.  You know I am game for damn near anything, so off we went.  Once a week without fail.  I even bought a black and white checkered square dancing dress.  Lots of crinoline under skirts held it out.  This was fun!  Granted it was not the same as the western swing, rock and roll, and waltzing that I was used to, but it would suffice.

Learning to square dance had been fun, but when the lessons ended, so did our dancing.  I tried to work with Kenny at home and teach him to dance, but the man had not one ounce of rhythm any where in his body, so that was given up as a lost cause.  Now anyone can tell you, in order for a relationship to thrive the participants in said relationship need to have some sort of common bond.

His kids were grown and gone.  I had 2 left at home.  My kids did not need a step father since they had their own father.  Since we were both a little leery of the wedding ring scenario, we decided that we would just "shack up" and see how it went.  We decided that if we could survive together for one year that we would cross the "wedded bliss" bridge at that point.  So he found and bought this house out here on the Mesa, and Kenny Mercer and Lou Seeger set up house keeping.

I had spent my whole life fishing as had Kenny, but with one difference.  He liked to fish out of a boat.  I was terrified of water and neither one of us could swim  (still can't).  I had always fished from the bank of the river.  A real fisherman will know the difference styles of fishing are as different as night and day.  His tackle box was full of lures and stuff like that: mine was worms and bobbers.  Getting that man to set on a creek bank and wait for his line to dance was just not happening, so I made the sacrifice and crawled in his little 15 foot aluminum boat and we cast out into the Clear Creek Reservoir over by some place near Alamosa.

One year later we were still together.  We had started a new business called Ken Mercer Trucking and were doing well.  The drive line needed repaired on December 23, 1983, but the shop was closed.  It was 15 degrees below zero and his words to me were, "Let's just get this shittin mess over with."  We drove to Canon City, got a license and were untied in Holy Matrimony on the 5th floor of an assisted living facility by a retired minister and witnessed by his bed ridden wife and a stranger in the hall.

And we lived happily ever after until his death in 2003.

What good is a hog head without a hog?

I woke up with Kathy Matea and this song on my mind this morning, fixed Bret his "to go sandwich" and then turned on the computer.  Now how my little mind made the leap to an old dish called "scrapple" I do not know.  What I do know is I used to do quilting for an older lady and she had put together a cookbook of old recipes.  Now if there is one thing I like, it is food.  And I dearly love to try to replicate the old dishes the older folks used to make.  My mother could make as a four course meal out of a spider web, an apple and 3 pounds of imagination.  Times were sure rough back then, but like my husband told my mother one time, "You can never tell by looking at her today that she EVER missed a meal." 

I can recall back in my Nickerson days, that dad always had a pig or two in the pen.  When the time was right the old iron 3 legged pot would be filled with water and a fire built under it.  The pig would be caught, trussed and tied to the tripod which stood over the 3 legged pot and it's throat would be slit.  When it had "bled out" it would be lowered into to the boiling water and then taken back out and gutted.  It was then moved to a very big table and everyone had a job.  Sometimes us kids were "allowed" to scrape the outer skin to remove the hair. 

I think the meat was taken into town to the locker plant when it was wrapped.  We had only a small icebox back then so there was no storage at the house.  The skin, feet, and head remained behind.  The black kettle was cleaned and the fat cut into small pieces and thrown into the pot.  The fire was stoked back up and the fat was rendered giving us lard.  When the fat was rendered there were crisp skin pieces left that were called "cracklings".  To my way of thinking that was the very best part.  The best ones were the ones that bubbled from the heat.  Those were especially crispy.  Cracklings were used to flavor beans, cornbread, and of course for eating.  The ears and the tail were pickled as were the feet.  The jowls were salted and put in the cellar to age into bacon.

But the head!  The head was put back into the 3 legged kettle, which was now scoured clean.  It was covered with water and a fire built under it.  The lid was in place and it was left to simmer all night.
The next day it was allowed to cool until it could be removed from the kettle.  The skin was discarded (that means the dogs got it) and the eyeballs, brain, and everything else except the meat was fed to the dogs.  This left mother with the water it was cooked in and the few bits of meat that had escaped . 

With all the stock now clean she  now stoked up the fire and threw in sage, salt, onion, a bay leaf or 2 and corn meal equal to the stock.  This required a lot of stirring so it did not stick.   In due time it was pronounced "done" and the "scrapple" was now dipped into loaf pans and moved to the lower part of the root cellar and allowed to cool.  When it was cool it was wrapped and taken to the "ice box".  That stuff would keep forever.  Mother would slice it in one inch slices and brown it in very hot lard.  It was served with maple syrup and it was the best food in the whole world.

Mother went to the Salt City Business College in Hutchinson and got an office job in Hutchinson.  Of course, we moved to Hutchinson down on A Avenue.  When we left Nickerson, mother took one look at the 3-legged iron cook kettle and never looked back.  She now had running water, gas heat, indoor plumbing and electricity that was in every room of the house.  The old coal oil lamp was left on the table.  The door was closed, but not locked because we had years ago lost the skeleton key.  We were city folk now.


Today I miss my mother, but there is not a day goes by that I do not.

Center Beauty College and several state boards.

Many years ago there was a thriving Beauty College down town.  It was run by a man named Frank Shultz  who was a friend of my first husband.  He was also a sponsor for AA, if that has any bearing.  A very nice man.  By the time I moved to Pueblo, my former husband had gone back to Western Kansas.  Now the part that is relevant here is that my daughter Dona  moved out here and wanted to go to beauty school.  Of course she picked Center Beauty College since her dad recommended it because he was friends with Frank.  So off she went.

Now I do not remember all about her schooling, but there came a time when I could help.  That was in the form of being a "model."  A model, in this case is someone who the student works on to hone thier skills.  So I went once a week so she could work on my hair and nails.  I got facials.  Manicures.  Pedicures.  And free haircuts.  I actually had well defined eyebrows. Life was good!

And. as with all good things, it came to an end.  The end was when we loaded into the car and drove up to where the State Boards were to be held.  Seems like it was in the 29th Street shopping center.  All went well and in due time she received her license.  I went back to being the good little housewife and bookkeeper.  But I got bored and I received a call from the Beauty College.  Seema a guy named Dana needed a model.  So off I went.  Dana was a very nice man and I began seeing him every week and then we went to State Boards.  It went very well, and we parted ways.  I went back to the home life.  And then I received a phone call from the Beauty College and off I went again.

I am here to tell you, this one did not go well at all.  I have blocked this boys name from my brain as the only means of survival.  From the very first day that he shampooed my hair with water alternating from freezing cold to scalding hot, to the manicure that left me with bleeding cuticles, to the burn marks on my scalp line from the curling iron.  It was not pretty and I did not have a good feeling about the upcoming boards, but a promise is a promise and off we went.  The haircut was the only event that did not leave me bleeding or burned.  The haircut involved removing at least one inch of hair and this particular haircut left me with no 2 hairs on my head the same length.

The permanent curler pulled every hair so tight I was worried my hair would leave my body.  After that he needed to style my hair with the curling iron.  More burn marks.  The facial was almost more than I could endure, but we soon moved on to the "application of makeup and eye makeup."  Oh dear God, let me forget!  When I looked in the mirror and saw racoon eyes looking back, I nearly died.  I have a light tan complexion, but he liked the really light make up so that is the route we went.  I looked much like the Dracula victim after Dracula had drained her.  The only color on my face was the black eyeliner, the black mascara, and a 3 x3  inch  light green color on my top eyelid.  His final act was to glue an artificial fingernail on my right index finger.  He stood back and dutifully waited  for the judge.  I did my best not to scream from the pain of the burns on my scalp and to not burst into tears.

The judge started on my hair.  She checked to make sure he had removed an inch at least.  She checked my burn marks, noting that I might want to put something on them when I got home.  She struggled to keep a straight face when she checked my makeup.  I knew and she knew there was no way in the world this kid was going to pass.  With a solemn face she told me to hold up the finger with the artificial nail.  It chose at that exact moment to fall into my lap! She made her final notation and moved away.

Richard! (I just remembered his name!)  Richard looked at me and said, "Well, I think that went really well! I would like to take you out to eat for being my model."  Dear God in heaven would have struck me dead had I walked into a public place with the clown makeup on my face.  I thanked him for the offer, but told him I really needed to get home as my husband would be waiting supper for me.  (I did not tell him that Kenny was out of town, but there was no sense breaking his heart.)  So we parted company and never seen him again.  I did learn that he had failed his state boards and was not going to try again.  Thank God!

I am not sure Center Beauty College is still in business.  I do know Frank passed several years back, so I am assuming not.  In the meantime, I just set here with my hair needing cut and hoping I can make a trip to Lakin where Dona Marie has her shop.  

Life goes on!

Black Lives Matter. Indian Lives Matter. Hispanic Lives Matter. Where does it end?

I shared a post on facebook.  Poor little ignorant me.  It showed a picture of people; men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanic, all kinds of people.  It said "All lives matter."  It was soon pointed out to me that I was the racist in this occasion.  WHAT?  You have got to be kidding.  How is that racist?  Don't all lives matter?  Apparently not.  So here is my reasoning:

I am white.  I am privileged.  I accept that.  I think my life matters.  I do NOT, however, think my life matters more than yours.  I have white friends.  I also have friends who are not white.  Does one of their lives matter more than another life?  I think not.

I have got to admit, that when someone called me out as using white privilege's I was very hurt.  I could not then, nor can I make the connection now.  I have seen the meme that explains to me in cartoon pictures that the blacks are discriminated against and need our help, as white people, to stand with them in thier struggle.  Got that.  Have had that for a long time.  The same happened with Gays.  Same happened with Vietnamese.  Same happened with equal rights for women.  Same happened with equal pay.  My life has been spent fighting for rights of humans, animals and I even helped sandbag when Midtown was in danger of flooding.  

You know, after all these years, I am ready to throw in the towel.  I realize that right now, at this point in time Blacks have priority, but isn't there a way to stand with the Blacks AND the Indeginous tribes whose lands have been stolen by OUR government and thier women disappearing?  Don't they matter?  Don't the kids locked in cages on our southern border deserve part of our attention?  Or are we so single minded that we can not think about more than one thing at a time?

To me this is the equivalent of having 2 fires on the stove.  Do you just put out the one that is bigger or work on them both at the same time?  Or when an army is engaged in war, do they only fight the enemy they see or do they work on another flank as well?

I am going to say this to whoever wants to listen:  What ever color your skin is, I care about you.  If these means I am exerting my "white privilege"  so be it.  This is all I am going to say about this matter and you can either take me or leave me, and that  my friend is your choice.