Daughters

Today discovered some very precious memories.  When my daughter was in college she found some cartoon cards with cats dressed up like cowboys and saloon girls.  My daughter and I are estranged.  She married a man who wanted our family out of her life.  We are.

I was taking pictures down in the guest room, rearranging for shutters to be hung.  It is decorated with cowboy things, rodeo posters and western things acquired over the years.  Four of those pictures were those cartoon cat pictures.  As I was taking them down, I remembered they were note cards with notes my daughter had sent me while she was in college.  What an incredible find.  As I took them apart I found a part of my life I had lost.



The first card she told me where she had found them....at an art fair.  They had reminded her of our crazy cats at the time.  (We always imagined those silly cats had a secret “people like” thought process.)  She said she had enjoyed the art fair and that this one of Miss Pearl and Shorty was her favorite.

In the second card she told me about the new phone she had gotten and some of the features it had.  This was when we had just started using cell phones and none of them were “smart”. She thought the new phone would help her with her job.  Plus, it had emergency features that included for $5.00 a month having her car unlocked at no charge....which back then was a pretty common occurrence.












On the third card she talked about a job she had gotten at the Fountainhead.  She is a professional writer and this was one of her first writing jobs, so she was very excited about it.  She thanked us for the new snow skis and said that all of her friends thought they were really pretty.
                                                   

The last note was short.  She was very busy but just wanted to say hi. She signed it, “I love you.” I had forgetten how special a short note can be, even if there is really nothing to say.  I touched the ink, looked at her handwriting, and remembered a time when she wanted to be a part of our lives.  I will treasure those notes....forever and always.  

Easter Chickens

A friend recently sent me an email that contained pictures of colored Easter Chicks.    In the 1950s each Easter season the grocery stores would sell colored Easter chicks.  My grandmother had chickens at her farm.  I loved getting the eggs and going to the chicken yard.

I was probably four years old when the neighbors next door got two of the colored Easter chicks for their kids. My dad  agreed that I could have one, but not one of the colored ones, because they might not be healthy.  He and I went to the feed store and picked out a chick, running wildly in the pen with probably 100 others.

I guess they had read me a book with a chick name Eggbert in it so that is what I decided to name him...then there was the egg laying incident, she became Eggberta.  The neighbor's two kids and myself had thoroughly spoiled these birds.  They were used to being carried around, petted and now expected and demanded attention.  

After one of the neighbor’s birds started crowing their parents and mine decided it was time for the three birds to go to my grandparents dairy farm in Oklahoma....a short 8 hour drive from our house.   After they were all delivered, the neighbor’s birds assimilated into chicken yard life pretty well, but not so for Eggberta.  She, it seemed felt too good for the chicken yard.  Her feelings became known when she terrorized the other chickens, chased them, pecked them and then started standing in the doorway of the chicken house, allowing no one into the nesting boxes to lay eggs.  Since my grandmother sold her eggs this was not going fly.

Grannie had planned to kill Eggberta for dinner, but since she had such a willful personality, decided to put it off for awhile.  She let Egberta have the run of her backyard, instead of being in the chicken yard, which she loved.  At least at first.  Then one afternoon Papa came in from milking and left the door to the screened porch open while he was changing clothes.  Eggberta walked right in and found it to be to her liking.  Her favorite place to sit was on top of the long deep freezer on the porch, which was warm, with a slight vibration when the motor ran.  However, after that first afternoon she started laying her eggs while on the freezer....and since the top was rounded, they rolled right off and crashed onto the floor of the screened porch.  This pushed Grannie’s patience to the very limits.  Papa said it was time to eat Eggberta, but Grannie said she had never had to eat a chicken with a name.

After few days one of Grannie’s cousins showed up.  They had agreed to take Eggberta and eat her since they did not know her name and did not know her...period.  Once again Eggberta was loaded into the car, this time off to slaughter. After she had been gone a few days, the cousin called Grannie.  She asked, “Was this chicken a pet?  She has the most peculiar personality and keeps running into the house every chance she gets.”  Finally Grannie fessed up and told her the story of Eggberta.  Her cousin, it turned out didn’t mind having a pet chicken.  Her freezer was in the garage and it didn’t have a rounded top.  She put Eggberta’s nesting box on the freezer.  Each time Eggberta layed an egg she ran to the back door, and started banging the screen with her beak.  When someone came out and got it, she would go on her way scratching and pecking.   She lived a long life and, as my grandfather told the story, “Died of old age."

Hanging Baskets

Our neighborhood has a 1920s style to it...Vintage...Vintage Township actually. For the first two years we lived here, I looked out at the old fashioned lamp posts thinking how nice it would be if there was a way to hang baskets of flowers on them.  Then last summer my neighbor Rick, told me he would get the hanging brackets from another lamp post in the neighborhood and put it on my post..which he did. I had beautiful flowers blooming and drooping from the baskets all summer.

A week or two ago I took the long dead baskets down, and replanted them for another season of blooms.  Today they had started to bloom and it was the day to hang them.  I got the ladder and carried it around to the front.  As I was opening it a huge gust of wind came up and almost sent the ladder over on top of me.  I reposistioned it, firmer on the ground, placed one of the hanging pots on the painter’s shelf and started up the ladder.....just as I got to the top, one of Lubbock’s  50 mph gusts whipped around the corner.  I had just gotten the basket in my hand when the wind ripped it from me, and grabbed the ladder from under my feet.  I grasped at the air as my arms went around the top of the lamppost, my legs wrapping around it what seemed like three times.  I could see the toppled ladder and all I could think about was whether to slide down...or to just drop to the ground.  “Hey Jan!!”  I looked around.  There sat Matt in his car at the stop sign.  “Are you really thinking about hanging those baskets in this wind?”  I smiled, and looked down at the baskets in the wagon.

“Well yeah I had been sort of thinking about it....the wind is pretty high though.....maybe I will wait until this afternoon now that I think about it. How are Betsy and the kids?

“Oh they are fine....how’s Jim?’'

“Good, good.”

“ You take care...and let the wind die down before you get up on that ladder.!!

“ Will do Matt, will do.”