The Awful, Terrible (Start to my) Day

• Stumbled out of bed, walked across room and stepped on the dog who had decided to get out of his bed and sleep on the floor.



• In the shower, dropped the soap, banged head on "product" rack as I bent to retrieve it. Very little blood.



• Eyedrop in eye. No, missed eye, stained clean shirt.



• Slopped coffee onto counter. At least I didn't spill it on my shirt-- like I did the day before.



• Computer locked up before all the email was in the inbox. Just the first of probably five times today.



• Frost all over the windows of the car. Scrapeity, scrape, scrape, scrape.



• Stepped on pebble in front of post office, twisted ankle.



• Mail? Junk, junk, bill, junk, bill, bill, junk, junk. Magazine BBBH reads. I don't.



• Good news! Home safely with no car accidents.



• Raisin bran with banana. Oops, milk is blinky. Fortunately, discovered this before I put it on cereal. Eat "dry" breakfast, wash down with coffee.

It's nine-thirty now. Have you had enough of my day?

Auction!

Saturday we had the last CCF meeting of the year. This one is different. Instead of camping somewhere in Indiana for four days, we meet in a sort of central location (Marion, this year) and have a pitch-in dinner, or pot-luck if you are from those parts. The food is always fantastic, for everyone brings her, or his, best.

After we eat, there is an auction, for we have all brought a bunch of white elephants which are sold to raise funds for the activities of the group. I have been to four or five of these now, and it seems to me that some have a collection of items which they buy and resell the next year, rotating these around from home to home. But it is for a good cause. And a good time, as the saying goes, is had by all.

My best purchase was a baggie containing six chunks of homemade peanut butter fudge. I did a stint at "crying the sale" and a pretty poor job of it I did, too, notwithstanding my enthusiasm and strong-arm sales tactics. Oh, it must be that I was stuck with trying to sell the least desirable items!

The best part is visiting with friends, some of whom we saw a month ago at a camp-out, and some of whom we haven't seen in a good while. Most we will not see again until April, or even May if we don't get back from Texas in time for the April outing.

Sixty and Counting Down

November First. There are exactly sixty days left in 2011, and in those sixty days will be crammed:

Daylight "savings" time is over. Rejoice! 11-6

Municipal and off-year elections. Be sure to vote. Politics is local. 11-8

Veterans' Day: Remember those who served. I plan to be on the courthouse square at 11:00 A.M 11-11

Thanksgiving. Don't forget to praise and thank the Lord for blessings everyday, but celebrate on this Thursday. 11-24

Black Friday: For those of you who care, and aren't smart enough to stay in bed, well, the stores will be open way too early. 11-25

Pearl Harbor Day: It is important to remember our history. 12-7

Advent: Pay attention to the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Winter: The official calendar beginning of winter, no matter what weather we've had so far. 12-22

Christmas: Many people's favorite holiday. For some, as a celebration of Jesus's birth; for some the getting-and-giving of gifts; for some, just the "getting." And yes, for some a time to put on the "Grinch suit" and rain on everyone's parade. Christmas: you have to love it; something for everyone. 12-25

Boxing Day 12-26

New Year's Eve: Closing out another year, a year we hope has been joyous and satisfying, even if difficulties have been encountered along the way. Be thankful for your blessings, and be careful how you celebrate. 12-31

It's going to be an exciting sixty days!
(Print out and enter your own special days and celebrations, stick on refrigerator.)

Halloween

Last year, I posted what I still consider to be the world's funniest Halloween cartoon. This year, we'll all stay home and eat pumpkin pie!

"Everybody Ought to Go to Sunday School"

Sunday morning, 9:10. We exit the parsonage via the front door, down the steps and turn left. We walk half-block to Walnut Street, turn right. From here it is a two-block walk to the church at the corner of Walnut and St. Vrain. It is imperative that we arrive by nine-twenty, so that we can smilingly greet the people as they arrive for Sunday school. There will be two services this morning, for Sunday school begins with a mini-worship service, mirroring almost exactly the routine that will be followed later in the "real" service. The Sunday School Superintendent conducts this service. He says an "invocation" then announces the hymn to be sung. (Hymn sung.) Then he calls on someone to "lead in prayer." (All kneel, someone prays. Maybe everyone prays.) Announcements are made and we are "dismissed" to our Sunday school classes. My teacher is Tom Frase, big Tom Frase, whose hands could envelop my head and still have room between them for (another) coconut.

Tom once sent his son, Hershel, to the store to buy a pair of work gloves for him. The proprietor asked the boy how big the man's hands were. Hershel grasped all four of the fingers on his left hand in his right hand and said, "One of Dad's fingers is this big." the storekeeper said, "Sonny, we don't have gloves for elephants." The really funny part of this tale is that Tom's fingers really were that big.

Anyway, back to Sunday school. The class consisted of, give or take on any given Sunday, about nine boys aged ten to twelve. And a more riotous bunch of boys would you seldom find in Sunday school, which may account for the "assignment" of Tom to shepherd the class.

Wow! Here it is 10:20 already and the bell is ringing, calling all classes to reassemble in the sanctuary. The superintendent rehearses briefly any highlights worth mentioning ("Sister Bland's class had four visitors this morning. Be sure to make them welcome," etc., etc.). Then he prays a dismissal prayer, whereupon the minister (that would be Dad) and the pianist immediately take their places and we swing directly into the Sunday Morning Worship Service.

And we sing.

And we pray.

And we sing.

And Dad preaches.

And we pray.
Amen.

We go home.
(But we will be back at 6:20 for two more services, even if we are also back at 2:30 for a "special" service, which, thankfully, doesn't happen all that often.)

Red Hen, Red Cow

The lad is carrying two pails as he walks alongside his dad, footsteps crunch, crunching in the gravel as they walk. One pail is the milk bucket, the other the near-gallon lard can for collecting eggs. Daddy insists that this is the day the boy will "learn to milk the cow."

When they get to the chicken coop, the boy sets the milk pail down and goes in to collect the eggs. For the most part, this is an easy job. Forget the squawking, the feathers flying around-- pft! pft!-- and the dust the birds kick up. Just go to the nests and gently lift the eggs and place them carefully in the bucket. But of course Old Broody will not get off the nest, and when the youngster attempts to reach beneath her, a quick and painful peck on the wrist encourages quick retreat. David steps out of the enclosure with his bucket of treasure and Dad says, "Did you get Old Broody's eggs?" "She wouldn't let me have them." "Get in there and throw her off the nest." You see where this is going-- caught between the mad dad and the angry hen. "Pkawt! pkawt!" That was not a hen. So back into the coop, grabbed the hen and threw her across the house.

Now we take the pail and enter the milking stall, where the "little Jersey" patiently awaits the relief she so richly deserves. She places her head in the stanchion, the boy gets the stool and places the bucket beneath the cow, all the time thinking, "There's no way I'm going to milk her." David sits on the stool and tentatively reaches for a teat. The tail whips around the back of the boy's head. He flinches and complains loudly. "Get your head up in her flank. Don't let her push you around." The boy obeys, reaches again for a teat. A bit of fumbling around with no visible result, unless one counts an increasingly impatient cow and ever more impatient "instructor." Finally the mentor gets down and demonstrates the proper finger motions, starts a stream. The boy again fumbles around with the resulting trickle further irritating both animal and parent.

"Get away from her," says the parent, "I'll do it myself." And he did.

The Neighborhood

Again, nostalgia, memories, boyhood. The "map" drawn from memory is the neighborhood into which we moved the summer I turned ten. We lived in the house marked "16" second house west of Bristol School where I enrolled that fall as a fifth grader. Out the back door, down the alley, over the wall, and there I was, in prison. I have written about some of my experiences at Bristol here and here.

One year after this move, we moved one block north to the residence marked "17." It was about the same time that the Buttram family bought the store on the corner. They were from Chicago, and thus a whole other kind of people from any I had previously known. Nice people, you understand, just from a different land. They had a girl about my age, and a boy a year or so younger. This was the store where a dime would buy an RC cola and a bag of Planter's naked, salted peanuts, which, after a couple of swigs on the bottle, one poured into the RC. Nom-nom. Of course, you drank it in the store, else you needed two cents for bottle deposit. Incidentally, a good stroll through the neighborhood and a bit beyond would often yield enough bottles (five) to purchase the pop and peanuts.

While we were doing kid stuff in the environs, Dad was engaged as the president of the school marked "1" on the map. It was during his tenure that the huge old house labelled "7" was moved a block down the hill and relocated next to the house we occupied for two years. We finally moved to house number 15 where we lived until Dad left the position.

The next episode will take us to the immediate vicinity of the cowshed and chicken coop (12) directly below the irrigation canal.

(So that you don't have to toggle back and forth, I plan to reproduce this map occasionally for easy reference.

Wait. Where's the Duck?

.........Mallard Fillmore.......