His name was Gene.

 It was a long time ago, but it still haunts me.  I had divorced my first husband, and my second when I met him.  I owned a restaurant on Fourth Street in Hutch at the time.  I had dated my soon to be third husband, but discarded him as a lost cause when I met Gene.  He lived in a small town up near Kansas City.  He loved to dance.  He had a sense of humor.  He loved my kids and most importantly, he loved me.  He worked with my sister's husband and that was the downfall.  He and his wife were in the middle of an amicable divorce and I was all set to become Mrs. Happy Wife when fate intervened in the shape of my sister.  

He stopped calling.  He changed his phone number.  Communications back then were not the convenient little texts and stuff that they are now.  So, I gave up on Gene.  I started dating Charlie.  I never for a minute forgot Gene.  My sister told me he had gone back to his wife.  But one night as I was alone after closing the cafe, there was a knock on the window.  There he was.  He came in and I made us coffee.  It was a very strained conversation as he explained that he had gone back and he and his wife, although not happy, were comfortable in a marriage of convenience.  It was then that he explained that my sister had called him and told him that I had married Charlie and we were very happy so he should just move on.  She was married to his friend and co-worker, so why should he doubt her?

Maybe because she had lied?  Now it was too late.  Time had passed and while he still loved me and I him there was his wife to consider.  And Charlie.  He just wanted to see me one more time and tell me that while he was not happy, he and his wife were comfortable in their marriage of convenience.  And of course, there were grandkids now.....   I knew I would never forget him, and I was right.  Here I am 50 years later and I can see him as clearly as that night in Lou's Kitchen on 4th street.

I confronted Josephine and she explained that she did what was best for me.  Water under the bridge.  There is no going back, is there?

I do not think of what might have been, although it does pop into my mind from time to time.  My sister is gone and I am sure he is also.  I came to Colorado and have now been here fifty years.  I do think of the time we spent together and that will probably never stop as long as there is breathe in my body.  I will remember how we danced and laughed.  The last time I danced it was with him.  I woke up in the night last night remembering him and I can not see that ever stopping.

I never really forgave Josephine for her duplicity, but we never spoke of it.  It was a betrayal and a betrayal by any other name is still a betrayal.  

I have had a good life in Colorado.  I spent 20 years with a wonderful man whom I loved and he loved me in return.  I would not give that up for all the dreams I had.  

So rest in peace, my sister.  Rest in peace Gene.  When it is all said and done and the nails pounded in the coffin, it is all just a memory of what happened on our way to our destiny.

Good night sweet prince.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness!

 At least that is what momma always told us.  Now back in the day that she preached that, we did not have running hot and cold water.  We never actually had any running water in the house.  We had an electric pump out by the horse tank.  Horses need a lot of water.  Since their water needed to be clean, we were not allowed to play in the horse tank no matter how hot it was.  Of course, I was terrified of those big horses with their big, yellow teeth.   There was no way in the world that I would let them come near me.  Of course, my dad was not the best fence builder, so it was not unusual to find they had escaped.  That meant we had to go find them and lead them home.  "We" was usually Jake and I.  I digress.

Summers in Kansas are very hot!   Very hot and usually very dry, but occasionally we did get a rain.  When that happened, Strong Street was usually flooded.  Since we had an old car that was only used to go to Grandma's house, we walked everywhere.  Now you should know that barefeet in the mud is one of the small pleasures we had.  A mud puddle was meant to be walked through barefooted!  I think that might have been a law back then.

Now, you should know that bare feet and cool water in a mud puddle is not the only joy of my childhood!  When the mudpuddle began to dry up, we did not walk in it.  We waited patiently for it to dry up and when it did there was a whole new joy!  When it was completely dry, it formed a crust.  The crust then turned into a curled- up crust and we could step on the curls and feel them crumble beneath our feet.  Oh, my vision of heaven contains a lot of mudpuddles!  Of course, this was the bane of my mother's existence!  Before we came in the house we had to go to the pump and wash our feet.  "You are not getting in that bed with those filthy feet!"

So, Jake and I would take turns pumping for the smaller kids and each other.  Bonding was different back there on Strong Street than it was on Avenue A in Hutchinson.  When we moved to the big city with running water, we were afraid to use it.  We did not want to "wear it out" or "use it all up".  We did like to set in the bathtub with no water on hot days and watch the little red haired boy who worked at the film developing place across the alley.  Forgot the name of it, but the boy's name was Tommy and my little sister, Mary ending up marrying him!  Sadly, they are both gone now.  There is  nobody left but Donna and I.  

Funny how that works, isn't it?

It makes me sad.

 As life goes on, so does my memory, which is actually a good thing until it wakes me up in the middle of the night.  Last night I woke up remembering my oldest sister and, of course, Nickerson, Kansas.  I was 15 years old and my sister, Josephine was pregnant.  She had a little girl who was 3 or 4 as I recall.  Her husband was at work in the oil field.  As I recall his shifts were 24 on and 24 off, but that could be just something that came into my head, because I never really paid much attention.

On this particular day I had been sent to stay with her to keep an eye on her daughter, who shall remain nameless for this story.  I liked the little girl so it was no problem to entertain her.  Josephine was another matter.  She stayed in bed and appeared to be in some sort of distress, but how was I to know what was actually happening?  I had no idea where babies came from and was not interested in learning about the birds and the bees at this point in my life.  I was there to entertain my niece, and that was what I was doing.  But Josephine had other ideas.

She called me into the bedroom and told me to take her daughter, my niece, and go get help because the baby was coming.  I grabbed my niece and ran next door to the preachers house.  He called the grocery store and told his wife, who was a nurse, to come home right now.  He assured me it was all under control and that I should take my niece and go to my house where mother was and send her to Josephine.

It was only 3 blocks, but it seemed like it was miles.  I carried my niece most of the way which was not easy as she was heavy for me.  But we made it.  Mom left on foot because we had no car.  To make a long story short, the baby was stillborn.  It was a little boy.  

The next day, Jack Lamb, the mortician, brought a tiny coffin to the house.  He brought it in and set it on the coffee table.  He opened the lid to show us a very tiny little boy wrapped in a soft blue blanket.  His little hand was positioned to hold the blanket closed and I would have thought he was only sleeping had I not known.  That was so sad and a picture in my mind that will never fade.  

Since that time, I have attended many funerals, but I always see that tiny baby in my mind.  I went to visit the Nickerson cemetery several years back and visited the tiny grave of Baby Boy.  He did not have a name, but he will never be forgotten.  Although he never breathed a breath on this side of the veil, he still lives in my mind and my heart.  65 years later he is still in my mind holding his blanket together under his tiny chin.

Some memories never die.

Update on my trash service.

 Service?  That word is not in the vocabulary of the people who work for/own/ or drive for C & C Disposal.  My trash remains sercured in the back yard, but makes a daily trip to the front just in case they decide that I am worthy of having my trash picked up.  Better Business Bureau has not received my complaint yet.  

We used to have a newspaper and if we still did I could write a letter to the editor.  Maybe there is some way I can do that online.  Maybe I will call the health department today.  Since I have little faith in anyone doing anything for me I do not look forward to doing anything about this today.

So I am just going to leave this here and go get another cup of coffee.  But do this for me.... if you have a trash company that actually picks up your trash, give me a call.  I pay my bill on time and try to do all the things they ask, like not put dead animals and such in the bin.  I am just a little old lady who wants to get rid of her trash and not having much luck!  If I was even 5 years younger I would start a trash company and I would use my little Honda for the truck.  Sure would be better than the company now who just blows old ladies off and goes on their way.

Today I am going to do nothing about the trash situation, because I am tired and old and C & C Disposal does not give a big rats ass!!!  Maybe when the gray wagon comes to haul me out to the crematorium someone will notice my mountain of trash and give my estate a ticket for littering.

Oh, for crying out loud! Just do your job.

 I am having a very hard time believing that my life has completely changed and that Covid is to blame.  Prime example would be my trash service, or rather lack of it.  I got my bill.  I picked up the phone and called the office and paid my bill.  I know if I do not pay when I get the bill that I will do the procrastination thing and end up receiving a friendly reminder.  Most of my bills are on level pay with an automatic deduction from my bank account.  This one is one I need to pay every 3 months, so I paid it.

Next week I did not have much trash and so I am not sure if it was picked up or not.  Week 2 and no trash pickup.  So I called the office.  "Oh for sure!  So sorry!  Shall I send a special truck out?"  I did not think that was necessary.

Week three and the trash is now up over the top and the neighbor cats are having a field day!  So once more I called the woman  who is now my sounding board for frustrated old ladies who are spending a lot of time on the back burner!  

Of course she checked and they must have just missed me quite by  accident.  Could I just load it into the car and bring it out to the yard?  This struck me as rather ludicrous to say the very least!  I am 80 years old and drive a Honda Fit!  I am doing damn good to get a bag of groceries in it!  Trash is heavy and this is now beginning to smell like garbage.  I do not want to touch it, let alone load it in my car and haul it somewhere that I do not know where it is.  She assured me that this time my trash would be picked up next Thursday as scheduled.  Or Friday if it snowed, which of course it did.

By this time, the dumpster was overflowing, so I had wrapped it with a rubber rope and taken it to my back door to deter the 8 cats that live next door and love to forage.  So, I pulled it to the front yard for the trash man on Thursday.  It set on the front parking all Thursday night.  I did not untie the rope.  I thought I would run out when the man arrived.  

Friday morning dawned and my hopes soared.  Friday night I dejectedly drug that damn thing back to the back yard! Saturday we repeated the scenario.  Today is Sunday.  Tomorrow is Monday.  My trash day is Thursday.  I am beginning to see a pattern here.  Had I not paid my bill, they would tell me my trash would not be picked up because I did not pay.  So...... now what?

I will call out there tomorrow and she will tell me how sorry she is, but you know what?  Sorry doesn't cut it.  Society has rules and one of them is that we pay our bills on time.  I did that and here I set a month later with the same damn trash that I had when I paid my trash bill!  

So, do you have any idea how I can get all that trash in my car to haul it across town?  Will the secretary come to my car and unload it for me?  Or better yet maybe I can just take the tote up to South Road and leave it there.  Someone will see their name on the side and report it as abandoned.  Course that does not do anything about the 3 months of service that I have paid for, does it?

I will call the company Monday and the lady will be very sorry, but you know what, sister?  Sorry isn't going to cut it this time.  I am 80 years old and tired of being screwed with.  Every bill I have is on auto pay so I do not have to screw with people who do not give a damn about whether my trash gets hauled off or not!  You are not the only trash company in town so here is the deal....  I am going to send you a copy of this blog and then Monday morning I am going to call you, cancel by service and demand my money back.  Then I am going to call the Better Business Bureau and tout you as the worst trash service in town.

If you are so busy that you can not service your customers, you sure do not need any new ones!

Ok, now it is getting personal!

 Time to vote and that is what I do.  It is my right.  It is my duty.  You have the same right and the same duty.  I respect that.  I used to love to stand in line and wait my turn at the polls.  I would visit with people in my precinct that I had not seen since the last time I voted.  Course that is all changed.

Now, I get my ballot in the mail and fill it out at my kitchen table.  I then put a stamp on it and walk it back down to the mail box.  Or throw it on the dash board of the car and drop it in the ballot box behind the "used to be bank" building on 8th and Main.  Never had to worry about poll hours or anything that way.  

Now we have a faction in this country that wants to change the voting laws and the way the electorate works.  There has got to be a way to keep the poor, the minorities, the "less equal then us" from being able to cast their ballot without it becoming a hardship!  No mail in ballots, no early voting

I also used to watch the news faithfully to see what was going on in the world.  Occasionally there was something on there that made me feel good, like the time that the rescuers saved those boy scouts who were lost in a cave some where overseas.  A place I never heard of, I think.  Those days are gone.

Now it is politics.  "Them versus us".  It seems that my world pretty much went to hell 3 or 4 years ago.  Respect for government has pretty well gone out the window.  Did it start when the world watched on live feed as a white policeman knelt on a black man's neck until he died? Did it culminate when a band of thugs breached security at the nations capitol and destroyed a piece of history?  And then when we were most vulnerable I watched the television screen show a little red "x" leave Wuhan,  China, travel across an ocean to Seattle, Washington and then cut catacorner down to Florida to begin spreading something called the "Corona Virus" in our country.  

It was then that we scrambled to find a vaccination to contain it and our mortality rate began to sky rocket.  It was then that a faction of America rebelled and refused to wear a mask or be vaccinated because "they" had "rights" that I do not have.  Death rates began to spiral from a pandemic that parts of our society dub a "government conspiracy" to circumvent their rights.  What the hell?

Where is my America?  You know, the one where we cared about each other?  Where are the lines for immunization where we all lined up to fight mumps, red measles, polio, diphtheria.....?  We quit flying the Confederate flag for a reason.  We used to be considerate of other people.  We used to say "excuse me" and "sorry".  A tear running down someones cheek used to invoke sympathy.

Where in the hell did MY America go?  Where is the compassion and common sense?  Maybe I am just a dreamer to think that this country can survive if we all pull together.

It just ain't happening, is it?

Pecan pie and a thief in the walk in.

 

Somebody said something about a pecan pie over on facebook and I immediately remembered back to my days at the Red Carpet Restaurant and the boss's venture into the bakery on south main.  The bakery was in trouble so Bob leased it at t very low price.  Mother had a husband who had a grown son who needed a job (Dammit! I forgot his name, but maybe it will come to me.  The son, not the husband.  His name was George.)  Seems like I had an in with Bob so George asked me if I could talk to Bob and get (I will just call him dipshot for short until I remember his name.) Dipshot hired .  So I did.  Course Bob let me know that I would be responsible if Dipshot screwed up.

I would close the resturant kitchen at 10 o'clock and head by the house to pick up Dipshot and take him with me and we would head to south main to bag the bread that had been baked earlier.  First we had to slice it and then bag it and twist tie it shut. This usually only took a couple hours.  Then Bob decided to add pies to the line.  So cases of pies were delivered to the Restaurant.  I baked these while I was working and returned them to the case which was then taken to south main and sent out to the stores. 

Now Dipshot was not the brightest bulb in the box and honesty did not run deep through his soul!  I was however, mildly surprised when I opened the refrigerator in my kitchen at home and found 6 freshly baked Pecan Pies. Upon closer investigation, I determined that they were from the stock in the walk-in at work.  The fact that there was a piece gone out of one led me to believe that perhaps Dipshot had releived the boss of a case of pies.  A conversation with him later in the day proved I was correct.  I had a thief in my house!  This did not set well with me.

He, of course, promised that this was a one time thing and he would never do that again.  My mind, however, knew that "once a thief, always a thief".    I explained to him that we were going to take the pies back and he could just explain to Bob what he had done.  Of course, he swore he would never do something like this again if I just let this one slide.  Confessing  to the boss was not an option that interested him.  However, being the purist I am, I could not let this go unpunished.

I loaded the pies in the car, retreived my house key from him and bade him a fond farewell.  He had been a friend for a time, but honesty is paramount in my world.  So I drove to the restaurant and explained to Bob what had transpired.  I put the pies back in the walk in.  My heart was heavy at the loss of what had happened, but Bob never brought it up again.

I do not know what ever became of Dipshot, but the last I knew he was living in Western Kansas with his sister.  I lost my brother many years before and for a while I was happy that I had a replacement.  But you know what?  No one could ever replace Jake!  Jake was one of a kind and all of us kids were raised to be honest and respectable people.  And there was something else momma always said that rang true in this experience!

Don't let the fox guard the chicken house!  That woman was always right on!

Peace.