What a great morning! As I tooled along the back roads on my way to work I cracked the window open for some fresh air. The scent of the wild roses was overpowering, and although it was a little chilly I opened the sunroof and the windows to capture as much of the perfumed air as possible. It was fabulous!
They say that smells conjure up memories and emotions. I thought back to when my folks, on some warm evenings, would pile us in the car and take us for a ride [my parents liked to go for rides]. On those warm evenings as they drove us through the countryside, the ditch alongside the paved road would be filled with mounds of white wild roses, and the sweet fragrance would waft through the windows as we sat and scanned the scenery for something out of the ordainary. What peaceful, simpler, less stressful times those were.
Some of the best things in life are free.
Showing posts with label Family Tales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Tales. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Playing Hide 'n Seek
My father was a builder and he had the typical tools of the trade, the main one being a big brown FORD van. He used this to lug all of his builder’s paraphernalia around from project to project. It was a manly van, no frills, no amenities, no radio, no A/C, not even a flat floor in the back, just a steering wheel with two front seats. Dad laid a piece of ¾” plywood down in the back so one could walk on a flat surface and not break a leg by tripping over the ribs [I don’t know what you call these pieces of the structure] and it was probably easier on the myriad of tools he kept in there as well.
Of course after a few years of wear and tear the plywood was chewed up and falling apart, so dad and my brother [who was working for him during this particular summer] simply laid another sheet of plywood over the disintegrating one and piled the tools back inside when they were done. Why even bother taking out the underlying mess, just cover it up…must be a guy thing, because it drove me nuts.
Anyway, my sister and I love to garden, and as a result there's always a lot of yard waste to dispose of, but unfortunately where we live we have to haul it by our own means to the town dump. At least twice during the summer months, we would take all the tools out of dad’s van and fill it to capacity with branches, clippings, weeds and leaves. We’d make several trips and heave a sigh of relief when it was over.
During one of our clean ups that summer mom noticed a big stack of firewood that had begun to decompose; she told us to dispose of the logs “while we were at it”. So, my sister and I put on our heavy leather gloves, moved that stack of wood piece by piece to the back of the van, and after several trips to the dump we had reclaimed a lot of space in one of the side yards. It looked great!
Fast forward to three days later, when my brother went out to the van in the driveway and opened the rear doors to get out a saw. There sitting on top of the pile of tools staring at him was a snake [It must have been inside one of the rotting logs we had thrown in there the day before. I'm sure we jostled it and it hid under the plywood.] Well they startled each other, the snake slid under the plywood floor and my big burly brother slammed the doors closed, forgetting all about the saw he’d wanted to use.
My brother was traumatized!! Going near that vehicle from that point on proved to be pure torture for him. All his mind kept focusing on was the fact that a snake was loose and it might slither on him or something. Dad said he tried to find the serpent, but I don’t think he searched very hard, because I couldn’t imagine what he’d do with it if he had found it. Dad wasn’t fond of wild creatures. So all summer long they both drove around in that thing keeping a wary eye for squirming movement. Could you imagine what would have happened if that thing had popped out while they were driving on the highway?? It would have been a disaster!
It was probably the only time in his life my brother was ever happy to return to school after a long summer vacation. It meant two things to him, 1) he wouldn’t need to go into the snake pit any longer, and 2) winter was coming and there was no way the snake could make it through the frigid months in that uninsulated tin can.
Poor guy hates snakes with a passion to this day.
Sigh. I wonder if we still have the big rubber snake at home, that would be fun to get out this summer to see if it would float in the pool.
Of course after a few years of wear and tear the plywood was chewed up and falling apart, so dad and my brother [who was working for him during this particular summer] simply laid another sheet of plywood over the disintegrating one and piled the tools back inside when they were done. Why even bother taking out the underlying mess, just cover it up…must be a guy thing, because it drove me nuts.
Anyway, my sister and I love to garden, and as a result there's always a lot of yard waste to dispose of, but unfortunately where we live we have to haul it by our own means to the town dump. At least twice during the summer months, we would take all the tools out of dad’s van and fill it to capacity with branches, clippings, weeds and leaves. We’d make several trips and heave a sigh of relief when it was over.
During one of our clean ups that summer mom noticed a big stack of firewood that had begun to decompose; she told us to dispose of the logs “while we were at it”. So, my sister and I put on our heavy leather gloves, moved that stack of wood piece by piece to the back of the van, and after several trips to the dump we had reclaimed a lot of space in one of the side yards. It looked great!
Fast forward to three days later, when my brother went out to the van in the driveway and opened the rear doors to get out a saw. There sitting on top of the pile of tools staring at him was a snake [It must have been inside one of the rotting logs we had thrown in there the day before. I'm sure we jostled it and it hid under the plywood.] Well they startled each other, the snake slid under the plywood floor and my big burly brother slammed the doors closed, forgetting all about the saw he’d wanted to use.
My brother was traumatized!! Going near that vehicle from that point on proved to be pure torture for him. All his mind kept focusing on was the fact that a snake was loose and it might slither on him or something. Dad said he tried to find the serpent, but I don’t think he searched very hard, because I couldn’t imagine what he’d do with it if he had found it. Dad wasn’t fond of wild creatures. So all summer long they both drove around in that thing keeping a wary eye for squirming movement. Could you imagine what would have happened if that thing had popped out while they were driving on the highway?? It would have been a disaster!
It was probably the only time in his life my brother was ever happy to return to school after a long summer vacation. It meant two things to him, 1) he wouldn’t need to go into the snake pit any longer, and 2) winter was coming and there was no way the snake could make it through the frigid months in that uninsulated tin can.
Poor guy hates snakes with a passion to this day.
Sigh. I wonder if we still have the big rubber snake at home, that would be fun to get out this summer to see if it would float in the pool.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Another juicy one...
Don’t mean to belabor the topic of one of my previous posts, but wouldn’t you know it? After mentioning the pear episode during dinner one evening my sister took great delight in sneaking back to the grocery store to hunt down more of these bizarre butts! Unbeknownst to me she found one, snuck it home and set it on top of the pile of ripening fruit on the counter to surprise me. And she waited…
And she waited…
And she waited…
Until one afternoon over the weekend [Mother’s day actually] I innocently reached for a pear and true to form looked at it before washing it. It gave me a start when I saw that tell-tale crease, and my mind wondered how probable it could be that there were two of these out there and that both ended up in our house. Then I realized my sister was watching me intently, and looked up to find her laughing at the puzzled look on my face.
She laughed…
And then she, mom and Silly laughed…
And then we all laughed!
Silly was standing there chuckling, and he started to sing “fat bottomed pears…” and asked me if I had read his comment to my post. Of course I had, but I didn’t realize it was from the song by Queen, “Fat Bottomed Girls”… And I thought, hmm, I’d never heard this one, I wondered why that was, because I grew up listening to Queen’s music playing on the radio.
So I went off and searched the web for the lyrics to see what they were about, all I can say is poor little boy, if they were based on his experience. But the modified chorus really did fit the pear!! Gave me quite a chuckle actually when I understood it [note to all, I'm slow...thankfully it was still humorous after it was explained]! LOL!
“Oh you gonna let it all hang out
Fat bottomed pears
you make the rocking world go round yeah
Fat bottomed pears
you make the rocking world go round…”
Oh by the way, I couldn’t eat this pear either.
CD
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
A Prince and a Pauper
Lately I've been following a blog named "Tales of Wild Boomba". This gal is fabulous, her posts are highly entertaining. In her latest ‘tale’ she writes a tribute to her loveable Uncle Marvin and his behavior in the account of her wedding. Uncle Marvin brought to mind the quirky relatives in my family tree; my favorite [tongue in cheek] is my aunt’s husband, Prince Richard (PR). Unbeknownst to him I call him that, because he's got a regal air about himself, similar to that displayed by monarchs. He believes he is in charge of the world, but is insulated from reality by walls of his own self importance, not unlike the cold stone walls of Buckingham Palace barricading the royals from the masses.
He and my aunt are missionaries and have had opportunities to live in various countries around the world over the years. One of these faraway places was Nairobi, Kenya. Now one of my personal goals has been to visit the three A's [Africa, Australia and Alaska], but I never really thought there’d be an opportunity to bring any of these visits to fruition. That is until PR sent me an e-mail stating that British Airways was having a sale on their airfare, they were lonely for family, so we were to come and visit. And of course my sister and I bought tickets, got inoculated, went shopping for items auntie and PR couldn't get in Africa, packed huge duffle bags with $100's of dollars worth of food & clothing, and then my sister and I flew off to the dark continent.
We were there for three weeks, and what an experience it was! PR and auntie took us in to the bush to visit with African citizens, tour several game reserves, we flew up to Marsabit on a DC-3 [highest elevation in the world that elephants live...how they got there no one knows], visited the Rift Valley Hospital and were invited into several of the nurses' homes, toured Karen Kenya where 'Out of Africa' was filmed, visited open air Maasai markets, flew out to the Keekorock Lodge on the Maasai Mara for a week, and the list goes on and on. We had a jam packed itinerary; we were out and about every waking moment!
What you need to keep tucked in the back of your mind is that where ever we went I always paid the bill. Whether it was for lunch, dinner, groceries, or even entrance fees to a game park, I paid. I didn't have a lot of money [and my sister had far less at that time], but knowing that they were missionaries I would always offer to pay, and without missing a beat PR always let me. My thought was that it was the least I could do, because they probably didn’t have two dimes to rub together. PR kept a little mini notebook in his jacket pocket and would jot down all the money he would spend, and later I found out it was so we would be able to “true up” who owed what to whom. Of course when w went over the list near the end of the visit I gave him money to cover the odds and ends I hadn’t already paid for.
Unfortunately my generous attitude was squelched on the last day of our visit when I realized it wasn’t that PR didn’t have money to pay [even for his own part of the costs incurred], it was that he was extremely tight with sharing his money. You see I handed him $200 to cover anything my sister or I might have forgotten to pay for, he went over to a built in desk, opened a secret compartment and added the two C-notes to a 3" or so diameter roll of 100 dollar bills. I know they were all 100’s, because he unrolled it and proudly showed it to me. There were thousands there [I estimate around 15 to 20 thousand]. He explained to me that this was their emergency fund should they need to buy something, go on vacation, fly back to the US or even escape the country in the instance of some political upheaval. I was dumbfounded that all the while he had cried poverty and he had a bank roll right in his living room. I didn’t say a word; I simply finished packing and focused on leaving.
Needless to say I was glad to get home, so much so that when we walked through customs and out of the airport into the parking garage, I got down on my hands and knees to kiss the pavement [true fact], and would have had my father not dragged me up to keep me from putting my mouth on that gum and oil coated surface. There is no country in the world like the USA, I am thankful for it, I am grateful to God for it, I am very proud to be an American!
So, all was a memory until a few months down the road when mom and dad received a phone call from Kenya. It seems that there was a $100 per person charge for the DC-3 plane ride up to Marsabit that he had forgotten to add to the tally [that mini notebook I mentioned] and was asking that I send him $200 to reimburse him for my sister’s and my fare. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t applied that $200 I had given him, and wondered how could he overlook the fact that in that tally sheet I had paid for myself, my sister, my aunt and him every time! The word that came to mind was…well I can’t put it into words. Quite disgusted I sent him $200 just to have it all over and done with. Dad thought I did the right thing; he always helped you to rise above the circumstances and not get mired down with any bitterness.
Three years later, my aunt and PR left Kenya and moved to Peru for a three year assignment.
When he and auntie went off to Peru they sold their home in the States and invested it, thinking that it would appreciate much more than a piece of real estate would in that amount of time. And so they went off leaving their son in charge of their accounts during their absence in hope of returning to a much bigger nest egg. Unfortunately when they returned home they found that cousin “Biff” hadn’t been as good a steward as his dad had hoped, because he had spent every last dime that was in the accounts. I honestly felt very bad for their misfortune [and do to this day], but I couldn’t help think back to how unyielding PR was to part with his money and thought that although he held onto it tightly, he ended up losing it. Kind of like everything in life, the more you put a choke hold onto something, the more likely it is that it will slip away out of your grasp
CD
He and my aunt are missionaries and have had opportunities to live in various countries around the world over the years. One of these faraway places was Nairobi, Kenya. Now one of my personal goals has been to visit the three A's [Africa, Australia and Alaska], but I never really thought there’d be an opportunity to bring any of these visits to fruition. That is until PR sent me an e-mail stating that British Airways was having a sale on their airfare, they were lonely for family, so we were to come and visit. And of course my sister and I bought tickets, got inoculated, went shopping for items auntie and PR couldn't get in Africa, packed huge duffle bags with $100's of dollars worth of food & clothing, and then my sister and I flew off to the dark continent.
We were there for three weeks, and what an experience it was! PR and auntie took us in to the bush to visit with African citizens, tour several game reserves, we flew up to Marsabit on a DC-3 [highest elevation in the world that elephants live...how they got there no one knows], visited the Rift Valley Hospital and were invited into several of the nurses' homes, toured Karen Kenya where 'Out of Africa' was filmed, visited open air Maasai markets, flew out to the Keekorock Lodge on the Maasai Mara for a week, and the list goes on and on. We had a jam packed itinerary; we were out and about every waking moment!
What you need to keep tucked in the back of your mind is that where ever we went I always paid the bill. Whether it was for lunch, dinner, groceries, or even entrance fees to a game park, I paid. I didn't have a lot of money [and my sister had far less at that time], but knowing that they were missionaries I would always offer to pay, and without missing a beat PR always let me. My thought was that it was the least I could do, because they probably didn’t have two dimes to rub together. PR kept a little mini notebook in his jacket pocket and would jot down all the money he would spend, and later I found out it was so we would be able to “true up” who owed what to whom. Of course when w went over the list near the end of the visit I gave him money to cover the odds and ends I hadn’t already paid for.
Unfortunately my generous attitude was squelched on the last day of our visit when I realized it wasn’t that PR didn’t have money to pay [even for his own part of the costs incurred], it was that he was extremely tight with sharing his money. You see I handed him $200 to cover anything my sister or I might have forgotten to pay for, he went over to a built in desk, opened a secret compartment and added the two C-notes to a 3" or so diameter roll of 100 dollar bills. I know they were all 100’s, because he unrolled it and proudly showed it to me. There were thousands there [I estimate around 15 to 20 thousand]. He explained to me that this was their emergency fund should they need to buy something, go on vacation, fly back to the US or even escape the country in the instance of some political upheaval. I was dumbfounded that all the while he had cried poverty and he had a bank roll right in his living room. I didn’t say a word; I simply finished packing and focused on leaving.
Needless to say I was glad to get home, so much so that when we walked through customs and out of the airport into the parking garage, I got down on my hands and knees to kiss the pavement [true fact], and would have had my father not dragged me up to keep me from putting my mouth on that gum and oil coated surface. There is no country in the world like the USA, I am thankful for it, I am grateful to God for it, I am very proud to be an American!
So, all was a memory until a few months down the road when mom and dad received a phone call from Kenya. It seems that there was a $100 per person charge for the DC-3 plane ride up to Marsabit that he had forgotten to add to the tally [that mini notebook I mentioned] and was asking that I send him $200 to reimburse him for my sister’s and my fare. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t applied that $200 I had given him, and wondered how could he overlook the fact that in that tally sheet I had paid for myself, my sister, my aunt and him every time! The word that came to mind was…well I can’t put it into words. Quite disgusted I sent him $200 just to have it all over and done with. Dad thought I did the right thing; he always helped you to rise above the circumstances and not get mired down with any bitterness.
Three years later, my aunt and PR left Kenya and moved to Peru for a three year assignment.
When he and auntie went off to Peru they sold their home in the States and invested it, thinking that it would appreciate much more than a piece of real estate would in that amount of time. And so they went off leaving their son in charge of their accounts during their absence in hope of returning to a much bigger nest egg. Unfortunately when they returned home they found that cousin “Biff” hadn’t been as good a steward as his dad had hoped, because he had spent every last dime that was in the accounts. I honestly felt very bad for their misfortune [and do to this day], but I couldn’t help think back to how unyielding PR was to part with his money and thought that although he held onto it tightly, he ended up losing it. Kind of like everything in life, the more you put a choke hold onto something, the more likely it is that it will slip away out of your grasp
CD
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