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When You Gotta Go…

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This is was not their picnic, but you get the idea.  No bathroom in sight.

Mother has always been pretty ditzy.  We will only suspect her mind is going if she ever becomes organized.  In the early days of their marriage, she and Daddy went on  a picnic with Aunt Mary and Uncle Willie, long before the days of nice parks with conveniences like pavilions, picnic tables and rest facilities.  They just drove down a country road till they found a quiet spot under a big shade tree and spread their quilt on the ground for a nice picnic.  Not surprisingly, after lunch, the men decided to stroll to a small grove of trees to “look around.”

Apparently, there was a lot to see, because they took their time.  Meanwhile, back at the picnic site under the lone shade tree, all that coffee and lemonade was starting to percolate through Aunt Mary.  In desperation, she realized she couldn’t wait for her chance to stroll to the trees and “look around.”  There was nothing to hide behind, so she had to rough it.

“I’m gonna have to go,” she told Mother.  “We haven’t seen a car the whole time we’ve been out here.  I’ll squat on this side of the car where the men can’t see me. You keep a watch out for traffic so I can stand up real quick if I need to.”

Anxious to be helpful, Mother assured Aunt Mary she would.  After all, by now, she had to go, too.

Aunt Mary reminded Mother, “Now watch for a car.”  She set about her business, hidden from the view of the men.

It must have been a great relief, because once she maneuvered herself into the awkward squatting position, she stayed there a while, in no hurry to get up.  Aunt Mary was a woman of generous proportions.  Meanwhile, Mother stared off to the West, forgetting traffic went both ways.

As Aunt Mary sighed with relief, a car buzzed by from the East, honking and waving. “There goes one!”  Mother offered helpfully.

Picasso’s Sneakers

My son got me again. He slipped his new school shoes out, getting them mud-caked the afternoon before the first day of fifth-grade classes.  I didn’t’the notice it until late in the afternoon. As we were indulging ourselves in poverty at the time, they were the only decent pair he had To wear to school.  Hurriedly, I threw them in the washer, then got ready to toss them in the dryer, thinking the day was saved.  The damned dryer died.  No matter. I’ve always felt appliances should be multifunctional.n I put the wet shoes on the middle rack of the oven, intending to turn it to two hundred degrees, set the timer for ten minutes, then turned it off.

Out of habit, I set it to three fifty. Everything could still have worked out if the phone hadn’t rung just as I was about to set the timer.

I am a busy woman.  I went about my business until I simultaneously smelled rubber burning and heard the smoke detector go off.  Though the shoes didn’t actually catch fire, the soles were dripping between the wires of the oven rack as plastic burned on the oven bottom.  They looked like high-heels by Picasso. I tried to snatch the melting sneakers out of the oven, burning my hand.  Thinking I might get away just cutting off the drips, I got my butcher knife, prepared to do the deed, when I noticed the shoes had curled up like horseshoes.

There was nothing for it, but to make a flying trip to the shoe store for a second pair.  I vainly hoped I might make it back home before Bud got in from working late.  We did procure another pair of replacement shoes, in the exact style.  I still cherished the hope Bud would never have to know.  He can be unreasonable when I explain about why I tried to dry shoes in the oven.  Fortunately, for the sake of my soul, I didn’t have to lie.  Bud had gotten home, smelled burning shoe soles, and tracked the smell to the melted sneakers hidden in the trash.  I do hate a suspicious man!  He complained even more than when I put my rolls in the dishwasher to rise, since it was so warm and moist in there.  I’d always done that without problems till I forgot and turned it on before taking them out.  Like I said, appliances really should be multifunctional.

Not a Small Matter!

Grandma young adult0007dentures by mail 1gum diseasefamily6Grandma was born in 1896. Very progressive, she employed higher standards of hygiene I do today, possibly because she’d barely survived typhoid in her mid-forties. Like me, washed her hands frequently as she cooked, but she scalded instead of merely rinsing her dishes, and boiled her whites, linens, and towels when doing her laundry with home-made lye soap in a huge cast-iron washpot outdoors until she got a washing machine. Continue reading →