Month: December 2016

Best Christmas Chuckles for Your Sunday

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

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Two Roads Part 3

It is questionable whether Aunt Lottie was really mean or just a harried woman with a houseful near to bursting when she had to take responsibility for Neeley.  It couldn’t have been an easy time for her, Uncle Jep or the grieving child.  Having Uncle Jep take Neeley’s side against her, hardened Aunt Lottie further.  She often hissed at her, “I’ll tend to you later!”

Neeley’s attempts to avoid Aunt Lottie were hopeless since she had to work along side her while enduring jabs about “yore sorry mama.”  While living with Ma,she never gave Cassie a lot of thought, but now the oppressive shadow of Aunt Lottie’s contempt for her mother was a heavy burden for a young child.  It was very confusing to mourn Ma knowing she had a mother “out there somewhere.”  Why didn’t she live with her mother?  Uncle Jep changed the subject when she asked him.

Cassie took Neeley for a few weeks or months when she had a stable home.  She’d remarried and had two boys, so Neeley did get to spend some time with her mother and two young brothers.  These times meant the world to Neeley since her attention-hungry little brothers adored her.  On her arrival, her mother showered her with love and affection before eventually succumbing to a mood swing and becoming neglectful of herself and the children.  Eventually, there would be a violent fight with her husband and the children would be dispatched to various relatives with a domestic split.  Neeley always landed back at Uncle Jep’s, the odd child out once again.

Neeley was becoming a young Amazon, over six feet tall and powerfully built.  With the hard life she faced, she’d need her strength to be able to hold her own.  Neeley never spent enough time in school to be a good student. At the age of sixteen, she realized she was pregnant.  No knight in shining armor showed up to marry her.  Soon after her baby was born, she married Eddie Malone, a twenty-six-year-old divorced man who was a friend of Uncle Jep.  Love was never mentioned, but there was the promise of a home.  She hadn’t had a home since she was nine.

 

 

Kathleen’s Cuthand Christmas, Excerpt from Everything Smells Just Like Poke Salad

Excerpt from my book Everything Smells Just Like Poke Salad.  To purchase book, please click on link of book cover to right.  I would be grateful for a review.

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

We don’t have the money.” I’d heard that so many times I knew not to ask for candy, bright rubber balls, or coloring books at Miss Lonie’s store. If Daddy had a few cents to spare, he’d fill three small brown paper bags with candy for us…..peppermint sticks, gumballs, bubble gum, lollipops. Kits and BB Bats were five for a penny. A few cents

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Two Roads Part 2

On the last day of her old life, Ma sent nine-year-old Neeley to the store with some butter and eggs to trade for baking soda and needles. As she left the store with her penny candy and Ma’s things, she saw smoke hanging over the trees.  To her horror, when she topped the ridge, flames were leaping in the field between their house and Uncle Jep’s.  She fairly flew the last few hundred yards, calling for Ma at the top of her lungs.  Tearing into the front room, she found Ma slumped in the rocker, her arm hanging limp at her side with spittle running out the corner of her mouth.  She shook Ma, then pulled her arm with no response.  Desperate to rouse Ma for escape, she dashed her with a dipper full of water.   Ma didn’t wake up!

Threatened by the approaching fire, she realized she had to get Uncle Jep.  Racing barefoot toward his house, she skirted the actively burning areas, arriving to find him and Aunt Lottie gone.  Desperately, she headed toward the nearest neighbor’s place, only to meet neighbors rushing to help put out the fire.  Crying, she told them of Ma’s troubles.  Most went on to fight the fire, but Mr. Jones and Mr. Bilieu went to check on Ma.  Mr. Bilieu took Neeley to his house for his wife to tend her burned feet.  They got Dr Crisp out to see Ma.  He came later to check on Neeley bringing sad news.  Ma was dead.

Uncle Jep came for her. She had to deal with the agony of her burned feet along with the greater pain of losing Ma and her home.  Uncle Jep loved and welcomed her, but Aunt Lottie had the burden of her care.  The overworked mother of four was quick with the switch and criticism.  It was not an easy transition for the grieving girl going from darling grandchild to “another mouth to feed.”  The farm wife already had more work and worry than she could handle before Neeley was foisted on her.  It was not a good situation for any of them.

 

Most Awful Christmas Ever

Reblog of previous Christmas post.

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

One year, the Awful’s made sure their parents had the most awful Christmas ever.  Like the rest of us, they couldn’t wait for Christmas.  As always, they starting finding their presents about a week before Christmas.  Every day one of them showed up with something new.  One day, Froggy had a brand new basketball.  The next day, Jamey had

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Two Roads Part 1

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Image from vintage postcard “Itchy, Scratchy Romance in the Hay”

Lloyd Wright wasn’t  the first boy Cassie Merrill had let go that far, just the one Ma  caught her with.  Right off, Ma sent Jep running for the preacher. Lloyd’s hateful old mama raged, swearing Cassie had trapped her boy and yelling she’d heard plenty about her “wild streak” long before Lloyd took up with her.  No matter. They had to stay with her till they could do better.  Resentful at the forced marriage, Lloyd and Cassie battled from the first with Mama Wright putting her two cents’ worth in every chance she got. After the baby’s birth, things settled down and Mama felt hopeful when she saw how Cassie doted on the baby girl.  Then, just like a candle extinguished, she lost interest in the baby.  Cassie’s raging hormones kicked in.  Four months after Baby Neeley’s birth, Cassie dropped the her off with her own mother and took off with the first of many boyfriends.  It was four years before she got back to see her little girl.  Neeley grew up calling Grandma Merrill, “Ma.” Cassie was simply “Cassie”, a sporadic visitor who passed through from time to time and visited for a few days.  Of course, Neeley knew Cassie was her real mother, but she had Ma.  Her father wasn’t in her life.

Neeley’s days were full with chores, school, and working along beside Ma.  She fed the chickens, gathered eggs, helped Ma in the garden, churned, and all the other things little girls growing up in the early nineteenth century did.  She and Ma needed each other.  In the evenings, Ma sat in her rocker and crocheted or did mending while Neeley played  at her feet.  Neeley could hem and crochet a few simple stitches by the time her ninth birthday rolled around.  With her black hair and strikingly blue eyes, she looked nothing like Cassie.  Ma hoped Cassie’s wildness had passed her over, too.

So far, Neeley was a docile, loving  child, content to spend her time playing quietly or following Ma at work, nothing like her wild mama.  Long before Cassie had reached her age, she was a trial.  She’d climb on top of the house to tell a lie when she could’ve stood on the ground and told the truth.  Ma couldn’t make Cassie stay in school and finally just gave up, hoping she’d at least learn enough housekeeping to be a decent wife.  Though Cassie would grudgingly work along with Ma, the minute she turned her back the girl was gone.  Cassie’s rages and temper made life a misery.  By the time she was fourteen, she slipped out her window regularly to meet boys.  Her mother initially felt some hope when Cassie seemed to be a loving mother until the day Cassie dropped Neeley off for a “few days” that turned out to be forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t brain today, I have the dumb

Reblog from Bluebird of Bitterness

The Great Doll Funeral

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

Vintage baby doll

Rocky and the Great Doll Funeral

The same Christmas I got Rocky the Rocking Horse, the best Christmas present of my young life, and Monkey, my sidekick(until I left him outside for the dogs to chew up),  I got a big hard, plastic baby-doll with molded hair.  It came with a bottle, was dressed in pajamas and had exactly one diaper. That diaper was history once Mother demonstrated its amazing ability to pee its diaper. It made me mad when I saw the baby doll, anyhow, since I’d told Mother, “I don’t want a doll.  I hate dolls.”  The wet diaper was the last straw.  I pitched it into the bowels of the toy box to keep company with Tinker Toys, broken crayons, and last year’s despised doll.

Before Christmas this year when Mother asked what I wanted, my list included a live pony, cowboy boots, pistols and holsters and a real…

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Bedazzled by Teresa Karlinski | The Sunday’s of Advent | Advent Calendar 2016

Reblogged Tess’s story from Solveig Werner.

Solveig's avatarSolveig Werner


3rd Sunday of Advent | Day 11 | Advent Calendar

Bedazzled by Teresa Karlinski

Dolores studied the bedraggled excuse for a tree. Branches drooped instead of bouncing proud and wide. What once passed for needles, the sparse boughs presented bristles and wire. The bottom limbs collapsed tired and spent, sweeping the floor like broken wings. She had not bothered decorating for years, yet Dolores dragged the box out of the garage a week before Christmas as if driven. Husband long dead and children and grandchildren scattered over the map, she had no one with whom to celebrate. A hand to her cheek, she paused, lost in forgotten memories. What had come over her? Why had she hung on to this sorry fake? What did it matter? No one would see it but her. You’re a disaster. If it wasn’t so much trouble taking you down again, I’d trash you now.

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