Month: May 2018

Thank You

 

Thank you

Guest Blogger: Linda Bethea — Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life

Originally posted on Art by Rob Goldstein: My first guest blog was a 2015 post by Linda Bethea of Nutstrok. Sally Cronin of Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life thought it deserved a re-post, so here it is. The original post begins below this drawing by Linda’s Mother, Kathleen Swain. The Forever Mom…

via Guest Blogger: Linda Bethea — Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life

It Couldn’t Be Helped Part 4

Mother had guests visiting from out of town.  They’d been out to lunch and she’d be showing them the sites all afternoon.  Her guests were geriatric; not quite the spry youthful specimen she was.  A gracious hostess, she made sure all their stops weren’t too rigorous or demanding, since some of them faced physical challenges.  She decided a visit to the State Exhibit Museum was in order late in the afternoon, the visit made more enticing since there was no admission.  They strolled the gardens for an hour or more.  The roses, clematis, and lilies were a vision  with their gentle scent perfuming the summer air.  It could have gone on forever but they still wanted to tour the museum before it closed for the day!  Upon climbing the steps and rattling the door, they found it locked up tight.  Mother was offended.   “But the sign says 8:00 to 4:00 seven days a week, except for holidays! It’s not a holiday!  I’m going to call and talk to SOMEBODY tomorrow!”

It occurred to one of the party to check their watch.  “It’s 4:45!  No wonder they’re closed!  We’d better get out of here before we get locked in!”

Rushing to the gate as fast as four septugenarians could, they found themselves locked inside the museum grounds for the night.

This was before cell phones.  The four of them stood at the locked gate waving and gesturing until they finally caught the attention of a passerby who alerted the fire department of their dilemma, once he got control of his laughter.  Eventually, the firemen put a ladder over the fence, rescuing the four.  Even though Mother has always been afraid of heights, she was the first to scurry over the fence, fearful a news crew might happen by.  The firemen saved the day and had a fine time in the bargain.  The foursome all learned some useful new skills, and a fine time was had by all!

Mother had been vaguely i

Doggonit, Give Me Some Directions that Make Sense

            I’m not good with directions.  In fact, I’d have to improve considerably to even be bad.  Useless terms like left, right, North, South, East, and West annoy me.  If people actually expect me to get somewhere, they need to be more specific.  “Turn off the interstate at exit 5.  Go the opposite direction you’ve been going and go three streets past Brookshire’s.   Drive just a minute or so and you’ll see a restaurant with the big cow in the parking lot.  Don’t turn there.  Drive to the next red light and turn on the street that turns between the WaWa and that hardware store with the inflatable lumberjack.  Watch for the ugly house with the silk flowers in the bucket of that tacky wishing well.  Pass it up, but now you need to start driving pretty slow.  You’ll see a big, old white house with a deep porch and all those ferns, kind of like the one Grandma lived in at Houston, the one where the woman living upstairs tossed her dirty mop water out on my head when I was sitting on the sidewalk playing. Boy, did Grandma have something to say to her!  Remember, it was just across the street from that big, old funeral home.   I just love those old houses, but I’ll bet they are expensive to heat.  About six houses down on the other side, there’s a little, blue house. I believe it used to be gray. If you look hard, you’ll see an old rusted out 1950 GMC like Aunt Ada and Uncle Junior used to drive, up on blocks way off to the side of the shed.  Remember how they used to toodle around with all those mean boys bouncing like popcorn in the back?  Anyway, our house is the yellow one with the big shade trees just across from it.  You can’t miss it. There’s a bottle tree out front.”

            Now I can’t miss with those directions.

It Couldn’t Be Helped Part 3

Mother is sensitive about her height.  For some reason, people feel free asking her how tall she is.  She dodges the issue by returning with a question,  either, “How much do you weigh?”  or “How much money do you have?”  By the way, she is not tall.  Most of her grandchildren pass her up by the time they are ten or eleven.  I was with her on a recent visit to her doctor when the nurse asked her height.

Mother feloniously claimed five foot two inches.  Realizing she was getting nowhere, the nurse took her to measure.  She was busted.

Compounding the issue of her slight build, is her squeaky voice.  She sounds just like Minnie Mouse.  The minute a caller hears her voice, they say, “Oh, hello Mrs. Swain.”  She’d never be able to make crank calls.

Mother was at loose ends one Sunday in June after church so decided to visit The American Rose Center.  As it was already hot that day, she donned her comfortable clothes:  cut off blue jean shorts, (neatly hemmed, starched, and ironed since “her mama raised her right!”) pink gingham shirt, tennis shoes and pink socks that perfectly matched her shirt.  She topped her ensemble off with a big straw sun hat.  She knew she looked cute!

She strolled around for an hour or so, admiring the lovely roses, when she noticed a gathering at a small rustic building.  Thinking there was a “program” of some sort, she decided to check it and cool off for a bit.  Based on the attendance, the program promised to be a good one.  The music was beautiful.  She had to go all the way to the front row to get a seat.  It was a hot day, but she was surprised to see so many hats.  Somehow, she failed to notice the wedding party standing before the altar.

Just about the time she got settled, the organist started playing the “Wedding March.”  It dawned on her that she had crashed a wedding as the usher escorted the groom’s mother to her seat.   Panicked to realize she occupied the seat intended for the bride’s mother, she fled back down the aisle to the giggling of the wedding guests where she was forced to make her way around the mother of the bride on the arm of the usher.  I can only imagine the confusion of the bride as Mother excused herself on the way out.

That was the most unfriendly family she’d ever met.

 

Kathleen Holdaway and Bill Swain June 29, 1946 on the day of their marriage.

 

Gallery

Four-Legged Hero is Honored – #WATWB

I love this story.

Dan Antion's avatarNo Facilities

This is Memorial Day weekend in the States, a time when we stop to pay tribute to the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. Memorial Day is not a day to honor veterans, but when thinking about the men and women who have fallen, it’s hard to ignore those who serve today.

As I was searching the news yesterday, I stumbled across a story about Sgt. Stubby, a service dog from World War One, whose interesting and unlikely military career began in New Haven, Connecticut. Sgt. Stubby is going to be honored this weekend:

“Pvt. J. Robert Conroy befriended the stray pup in New Haven as the 102nd Infantry Regiment trained on the Yale University campus in the summer of 1917. Conroy smuggled Stubby aboard a troop ship to France and hid him in the coal hold.

The war had been raging for…

View original post 390 more words

It Couldn’t Be Helped Part 2

Daddy should have been a polygamist the way he laid out work for Mother.  His list might start, “Take the power saw by the shop in Springhill (22 miles away) on your way to the tractor place in Magnolia (24 miles beyond Springhill) pick up a magneto.  It ought to look like this.  (He’d dangle two broken pieces)  Mother wouldn’t have known a magneto from a mosquito.  On your way home, stop at Rusty’s and get some  catfish to fry tonight.  Eric is coming over after work to help me and I told him you’d fry him up some catfish.  Oh yeah, don’t forget to stop at the feed store in Cotton Valley and get a hundred pounds of grain.  That red cow is looking poor and I want to fatten her up.”

The entire round of errands was more than one hundred miles. Mother would do what she had to at the house, grab her two preschoolers and start her day.  Of course, she still had to “fry fish for Eric” at the end of this little jaunt.  Mother was a “good wife” and would never told Daddy to take care of his own business.  He was completely demanding and thought she was lucky to be married to him.  Add Mother’s regular routine to this and it was a mess.

Well, on the proud occasion of my brother Bill’s high school graduation, he was miraculously gifted with a suit. The whole family was thrilled.  My parents had been worried for months how they would come up with the necessary graduation suit.  A regular suit would have really stretched their budget, but Bill was tall, more than six feet-four inches.  West Brothers wasn’t going to be much help.  About two weeks before graduation, a box came in the mail, a beautiful blue suit.  It came with long, long unhemmed pants.  All the pants needed was hemming to make them perfect-the answer to a prayer.  Immediately, Daddy pronounced, “Kathleen, you’ve got to get busy right now and get those pants hemmed.”

“I’ll get it done, but not right now. I’m cooking supper.”  Daddy liked his food.  He couldn’t argue with that.

The next night at exactly the same time, “Kathleen, did you get those pants hemmed today?”

“No. Connie was sick and I had to take her to the doctor.  She threw up the rest of the day.  I didn’t get anything done.”

Now he was clearly not pleased. “Well, you better get it done tomorrow.  Graduation is only a week and a half off.”

Mother was mad now. “I know that as well as you do.  And I know he has to have a suit.  I would have done it today if Connie hadn’t gotten sick!”

Disaster fell that night. Granny Long died.  Mother had to help at the house and cook food for the funeral.  Mother and Daddy had to “sit” a shift with the body at the home that night, when they were asked if Billy could be a pall bearer.  “Of course,” said Daddy.  “It would be an honor.”

”Oh no! He’ll have to have a suit and I didn’t get it hemmed!”  thought Mother. It was after 2:00 A.M. when they got home.  The funeral was at 10:00 A.M. It never even occurred to Daddy the suit was not hemmed and pressed just like he’d delegated days ago.

“Come Hell or High Water” breakfast was the first order of the day.  Mother wasn’t about to mention the suit before she had to.   By the time Daddy was out of the way, Bill learned he’d been pressed into service as a pall-bearer. With a yet-to-be hemmed suit, tensions were high.  Every minute counted.  Mother told him to try the pants on so she could measure them for a hem.  Furious as only a hormone-ridden seventeen-year-old pantsless pall-bearer can be, he held them in front of himself and snarled, “Just cut them here.”

Sick of the attitude, Mother didn’t notice he was bending as he pointed. She cut.  He ran for the shower while she hemmed and pressed faster than I’d ever seen her move, glad to have dodged a bullet.

Minutes later, he strode down to hall where we all were waiting, Daddy included. Complete with jacket, tie, cufflinks, and beautifully shined dress shoes he made an entrance.  His new suit pants ended four inches below his knees, revealing six inches of hairy, white leg above his black socks.  He looked like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence.  His expression was unreadable.  There would be no saving his beautiful suit.  I was sure somebody would have to die!  Mother looked from him to Daddy and pronounced, “Well, it couldn’t be helped!”  We all exploded and laughed so long and hard a tragedy was averted.  Billy went back and put on his old black dress pants to do his pall bearer duty.  I don’t remember what happened to the graduation suit.  I guess it didn’t matter that much after all.

It Couldn’t Be Helped

L

The picture above captures a frequent expression of Mother’s, usually after she has just opened her mouth and put her foot in it.

I am doing a post on crazy things my mother has said and done.  Mother was always a delightful ditz.  With a demanding husband and five wild kids it’s a wonder any thing ever went right.  After a fiasco, she’d often say, “It couldn’t be helped.”  She’s just turned ninety and is a real dynamo.  She goes to the gym twice a week, has a yard full of flowers, still drives, and is very active in her church, community, and the matriarch of a large family.  We all love telling the stories of her crazy escapades.

1.  She left her lights on, ran her car battery down, and asked a nice young police officer to “jack her off.”  She wasn’t arrested.

2.She doesn’t like it when someone asks how tall she is, so replies either, “How much do you weigh?  or How much money do you have?”  By the way, she is not tall.

3.  She once crashed  a wedding in cut off blue jeans, sitting in the first row on the bride’s side.  The family was not friendly.

4.  She was once locked in a museum and had to be rescued by the fire department, climbing over the fence on their ladder.

5.  She was locked in Windsor Castle. More on that later.

6.  She rolled up a car window up on a camel’s lip.  These things happen.

7.  She made change in the offering plate at church and came out twenty dollars ahead.

8.  She lost her bra at church one Sunday.  She never could explain that!

9,  When two intruders broke in her house, she made one of them help her into her robe before she would talk to them.  She gave them eleven dollars, telling them, “That’s enough!” They thanked her when they left, telling her to “have a nice day.”  She told the police officers later, “They were polite and had been raised right.”  Go figure.

10.  She threatened a rapist in her own living room.

11. She won’t say “Bull.”  That sounds crude.  She substitutes “male cow.”

I still don’t have the nerve to say “damn” in front of her.  God knows she tried to raise me right.

I decided to flesh these delightful stories after first clarifying.  Mother’s mind is not going.  Lots of these stories go back many years.  She’s a delight to be around and keeps family and friends in stitches, most often without meaning to.

#1.  “Officer can you jack me off?”

Mother is prissy to the point of being prudish, exchewing vulgar terms such as “butt” and “pee.”Dern” is as bad as it gets, except for one time I heard her say “Damn”  when she raised up under and open cabinet door. Life presents challenges for a kid growing up with such a restrictive vocabulary.  I have to admit, however, she may have had a closed-head injury when she said it.

Any way, Mother made her way to the local mall for lunch and an afternoon of shopping with her frinnds.  Much later she returned to her car and found a dead battery, courtesy of the lights she’d left on.  I suspect she may have said “Dern!”

Donning her best poor stranded woman look, she flagged down a Police Officer, asking if he could jack her off using her best Minnie Mouse squeak.  Maybe he ihad a grandma, but she didn’t get arrested.  (To be continued)  Note link to youtube channel below to see her.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0HAKC-qt-tJu7qWJLNgSYg

Open and Closed

Bud is mostly reasonable, but does have his moods.  One morning he got up and made me coffee while I dressed for work, which was a real treat.  I always got the kids’ breakfast on the table before turning it over to him to get them fed, dressed and on the bus.  He didn’t go to work till later in the morning so our paths didn’t cross in the morning that often.  Of course I didn’t have much time to drink it, so he fixed me a cup to go as I headed out the door before five a.m.  I grabbed my badge, coffee, bag, and  lunch and keys out of the fridge.  The only way I could remember my lunch was if it was with my keys.  Bud fussed, but it made perfect sense to me.  He didn’t have to get the kids off for a while so he settled back in his recliner to watch the news and probably catch a snooze.

I found it distracting to have Bud up and about as I left for work, so I was a little distracted as I hit the garage door remote.  The door had a little glitch where it sometimes edged back down a few inches instead of engaging at the top.  This was one of those mornings.  Bud had kept meaning to fix it, but you know how that goes.  I made one last check on things before starting my vehicle.  Backing up, I was rewarded with a whump and a nauseating schreech as I connected with the garage door.  Apparently, it had learned its lesson, because it returned to the correct position just as Bud burst out the back door, gesticulating and shouting!  He looked like he was foul mood so I hurried on my way, not bothering to stop and find out what he thought of the situation since he didn’t look like his morning was going well.  I never have understood why some people have to be grouchy in the mornings.

I called his job later in the morning to find out how much damage I’d done.  One of his buddies answered the phone eager to talk to me.  “Hey, I heard you backed into the closed garage door!”

”Yeah, but it wasn’t my fault.  Bud was supposed to fix it.”

”Yeah, he’s gone to get some parts now.  Do you want me to ask him to call you when he gets back?” He laughed.

”No, not really.  He was in a bad mood when I left this morning.”