Crime Does Not Pay

Centralview was where I started to school. I went back out there with Aunt Mildred and one of my grandmothers years ago. It had been torn down and was a hog farm. Probably the hogs have left now.

School was a grand adventure. I got to ride a bus, Never had ridden one, guess I had never seen one. Had oh so many new friends. Got to eat in the lunch room. You would sit down and your plate was there, all fixed for you. It was spectacular. I think it began my love of eating out. Funny how I can remember those plates on the table but not a clue as to what was on the plate.

I got my first best friend. Her name was Willowdene. I don't remember the last name. Her dad must have been the principal. They lived in a house on the school ground. I don't recall having anyone to play with since we were such a small family. Frances was to young then to be my friend. I must have had friends at Sunday School but they have faded like so much of my memory. In any event Willowdene had the dubious honor of being my first best friend.

I had the advantage of having not one but two sets of doting grandparents who would answer my heart's desire in a moment. Of course, our hearts didn't have that many desire back then. I only had yellow pencils. I think the same No. 2 pencils we get today, plus a Big Chief Tablet. Willowdene had a red pencil. I wanted a red pencil so badly, but for some reason never asked for one. I watched that pencil like a hawk. Oh it was temptation in its rawest form. I was six years of age, I did not really understand temptation then but I know now how it works. It grows, you might say festers. I began not to want just any red pencil, I wanted THAT red pencil. The pencil haunted me. I am sure I experienced lust in my heart for that red pencil. It, an object, became more important to me than my best friend. I believe that is how temptation worked then and is still how it works today. Funny how simple it is and all this time we have tried to make it a hard mystery. We should teach "temptation takes over your life and then becomes sin". If I am not mistaken, I believe the Bible may have said that before I did. If life were accompanied by a musical background, this would have been where the music would have swelled to a fever pitch. I took the pencil.

I learned something then, but only understood it when I was older.If you have stolen something and your surroundings do not change you cannot use the stolen object. I was convinced she would know it was her pencil. I had to hide it at home and could not share this glorious item with family. They would recognize it as "loot". Oh how miserable I was. I hated that pencil. Sunday school lessons kicked in and I also felt guilty. Willowdene reaped many a reward. I took her presents, I helped her with the alphabet, I would have carried her across burning coals to try to relieve some of my guilt. It didn't work. If truth be known she probably never missed the pencil or thought she had lost it. To this day it is one of those clear memories of childhood.

I never got caught so you see there is such a things as a perfect crime. But as for reaping the benefits of your sin you have to resign yourself to never again using a red pencil without remembering,

Its All Relative

You know those people who tell you that their (obscure relative) always said (whatever) and that these were words to live by, We all know them. I have tried to figure out if anyone in my family will be able to say "Beverly always said.... and I try to live by her words" I don't think I ever said anything memorable. Maybe "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" but Erma Bombeck said it first .

My grandfather always told me "Don't ever be anywhere that you would be ashamed to be if the Lord came back". Now for a young lady who was a bit rebellious, that was a guaranteed guilt trip. Many times I have silently prayed "Dear Jesus, Not Now".

But my Grandmother Prestage did say that we all have relatives that we are ashamed of and relatives that are ashamed of us. I find that to be pretty true in most families. My sister and I had a small family. We do not have a cousin. Our Mother was an only child , our Dad had one sister who had no children, Our family reunion meals were not the ones you read about in Southern Living, where food is spread out on boards under the trees. We shared a large order of fries from McDonalds.

But our Dad's sister was a prize to have and my favorite relative of all time. My sister's middle name is Mildred.

Aunt Mildred graduated from a country school in Greer County Oklahoma. She went away to Business School in the big City. She had room and board with people she met when she walked down the street and saw their sign. She and that family were friends until she died. She was beautiful and a true "Flapper". She married our Uncle Gid when she was 19 and he was nearly 42. She took good care of him til he died some 40 years later. Uncle Gid had a son, Earl, one year older than her. He came back from WWII and all of the family lived and farmed in Greer County after a brief adventure in Arizona. The first 12 years of my life were spent on that farm within shouting distance of my grandparents and Aunt Mildred, Uncle Gid and Earl. Aunt Mildred tilled the ground, kept the house, milked the cows, and all those chores that a farm wife did. She would get up, fix breakfast, make the beds and do the dishes while the men fed the cows and hogs and they would go to the fields together. They came in at dinner (not lunch) and while the men rested she fixed the big meal of the day. They again rested while she cleaned up the kitchen and this was repeated in the evening, except the meal was left over from the dinner. I still have not figured out why she felt compelled to go to college.

Somehow in between all of that she found time do her hair with "henna" a dye that turned hair a gun metal type of ugly red. (I think I may have inherited my love of hair color from her), she sewed her clothes, always the same pants and shirt, she shopped, gardened and unknown to a lot of people took care of the equivalent of share croppers' kids by buying clothes and school supplies for them. They occasionally had prison laborers work during planting time and she took care of them , found out about their families and bought shoes and Christmas presents for these children. I never knew her to attend a Church of any kind but when she passed away we had several Greer County preachers at her service. I do know that she nursed and cared for Uncle Gid with all her being. We buried him one morning in August. She and Earl went to Amarillo from the burial and when they came back that evening he was our Uncle Earl. They lived happily ever after until the day of his death.

I don't know if you can count a cousin by marriage or not. But we did have one Aunt and two Uncles. We loved them all, I think my grandmother was in error, I don't remember having a relative I was ashamed of.

Hair Color

You know I have never met a hair coloring agent that I didn't like. In fact I have been fascinated by hair coloring most of my life, or you might say by hair. My sister had long curly blond locks that everyone raved about. I on the other hand had I guess it was termed dish water blond which had not a curve in it and which I insisted on cutting at interesting angles. She was probably 4 years old or so. I would have been older, when I had just heard enough. So I cut her curls off. Up til then this was the worse thing I had ever done. My dad chased me around the house threatening me within an inch of my life. Let me digress by saying that my parents did not spank but I do remember thinking that this might be the first. I escaped with only stern warning that I was never to touch scissors again my entire lifetime. As poetic justice, she has beautiful hair to this day and I, well its still a problem.

But back to hair color. Same dad did not think you should color your hair which was enough for me to determine to do so. For some reason the style was to put a streak of color in one's hair which of course I did, but not so big that I couldn't hide it. From that day forward I have fooled with hair color and wigs and wiglets.

Wigs came into fashion when I was in my late 30s. My mother called me from the beauty shop and told me to come up on my lunch hour and look at what they had for sale I did so. Oh the wigs were gorgeous. Cost $75.00 a small fortune. I ordered one. Never made a major purchase like this without discussing it with Mate. Had about 6 weeks to figure out how to tell him. Thats when I discovered a great marriage tool, quite by accident I might add. He would be in such a good mood and I would hate to ruin it and besides I could never come up with the exact words to use, but as time got closer, we had a big fuss, I don't know about what, but it occurred to me why waste a mad. So I looked him in the eye and said, "Besides all that I bought a wig". He was so shocked that nothing further was said. Marriage Lesson: "Never waste a mad, get it all out and over with." that served me well from that day forward.

Since then I have had yellow hair, purple hair, a very pretty pinkish hair and lots of time hair with a green tinge, and what I finally settled on "Light Ash Blond". What it does is partially cover up the grey but leave you thinking you are a blond. I could never get the color I wanted most of all and that was and still is "Red". There is a lady at our church who I sit behind in Sunday School. She may never know that to this day and for many years I have felt envy in my heart for her hair (but I don't think it is the sinful kind) I was lucky enough to have a granddaughter with beautiful red hair plus she has all of that wonderful coloring that goes with the perfect red hair. She looks great in pastels and in vibrant colors. You know the kind, I am thinking Susan Hayward .

After I got over the wig, I discovered wiglets. It was nice to send my hair to the hair dresser and then pick it up. Trouble was it cut down on the coloring. You know how some women have a shoe fetish, well I had a wiglet fetish and had many of them in many colors all pinned on blank faced heads, Many times I have looked like those men you see who wear a toupe which does not match anything l that shows.

I still love coloring, its one of those you never know what you get til it dries events. In this day and time when you are old enough to know what is going to happen in relation to what you have done, its nice to have a surprise every now and then.

I Never

You know I will be 74 years old on April 16. What this means to me most of all is that there are so many things that "I never" did and that I now know I will never do. When I was young, I mean from about 13 on to 15 I spent a lot of time in the movies. The big ones then were musicals and starred Betty Grable, Betty Hutton, Alice Faye, Ann Southern, great women singers. Movies shaped the lives of all young ladies of my time. I have all my life loved music and loved to sing. I would go to the movie and stay til I knew the words to every song and most of the words to the script. What I wanted to do was have some black hose, some black high heels and sit on top of a piano and sing "Cuddle Up A Little Closer Lovey Mine". I will "never" get to do that. I can no longer wear high high heels and would not be able to get on top of the piano and if I did I wouldn't be able to get down. Again from the movies, I wanted to use a cigarette case and a long cigarette holder. l will "never" do that. Do you have any idea what cigarettes cost? Plus do you know how they smell? I will "never" be able to be a nurse in the operating room. I was intrigued with a series of books about Cherry Ames who was every kind of nurse you could be. I think I read every one of them. I can't stand the feel of rubber gloves. I will "never" get to burn my bra in protest of something, anything. I don't think they do that any more. Plus there is something that makes me think an old lady burning her bra is just sad. I was rather active in the nuclear freeze movement back in the cold war days but I "never" got to go to the Pantex plant outside of Amarillo and chain myself to their fence so that they could not move parts to the bombs that were manufactured there. Before I could do that everyone agreed with the movement. I did have a bumper sticker that said "You can't hug a child with nuclear arms". Somehow that wasn't the same.

So I will just be content with what I did get to do. I got to speak at Boston University and at Georgetown. I got to go to England and Scotland many times. I got to visit Europe and I went to the airport in Wichita Falls when John F. Kennedy was running for President and made one of those whistle stops here. I didn't get to shake his hand but I stood this close to his sister Pat Lawford. I sang with Merle Haggard. Now I guess to be honest I was sitting in the auditorium at Midwestern University when he appeared and I sang along with Merle and the audience. But hey when you are about 74 you get to tell it the way you want to,

Plus of course I have done all those things that women of my generation are supposed to talk about. I fell in love with the man I married. I had healthy children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren. I got to know and love my sister and her family and I have dear and wonderful friends. I am healthy, I never go to the doctor (if truth be told, I am convinced that is why I am healthy), I do not take a single pill, I go to a job I enjoy every day. I sit a hands length away from a woman I have known for over 50 years and worked with for most of that time and who I consider my best friend.

So I approach 74 years of age with few regrets. I wish I had talked about Jesus more, prayed more and studied more. I am trying to remedy that so I do not consider it a "never". All in all its a good life. Thank you Lord for Blessing me.

Decisions

My family thinks I make all the decisions at our house. For the most part that may be true. My mate has never liked to make day to day decisions. We eat out a lot. Other than the few times when he planned a surprise dinner or he was particularly hungry for something I do not ever recall him choosing where we were going to eat. Many times we have been driving down a highway we have never traveled and he would say for me to pick a place to eat. I would say there is a (name a chain), he would then complain that I didn't tell him to turn in time. But never once in over 50 years do i ever remember him turning around and going back. When Mate travels he travels in one direction, straight ahead.

This morning was a good example of decision making. He got up, got the paper made the coffee. I got up drank coffee read the paper and got in the shower We had a funeral to attend. I am in the shower, he knocks loudly on the door and I say "What". He says "Should I wear a sweater or a jacket?" I said "Yes". He said "Which" I said "Sweater" . Now when we were young I would have said something like well, I don't know what ever you want, or more detail like what else or you wearing, or what is the weather like. AND I may have said it with a sneer, I no longer do that Its just easier to make the decision. He is satisfied and we haven't had to have a long discussion. Personally I do not ever remember asking if I should wear an outer covering. Its a decision I'm comfortable making.

Today in Wichita Falls turned out to be a beautiful, warm sunny day. We left the funeral home, went to Sams and he said to me, "You know I'm getting warm, you think I should take the sweater off and leave it in the car when we go into Sams?" I said "Yes".

Just so you will know, this is the same Mate who when we found out our grand baby had leukemia immediately made the decision that we needed to go to California to help out til we had her in remission. The same mate who when one of our young missionaries got robbed, made the decision that we did not leave the Church building til we had enough money collected to replace what they had lost, the same mate who when he heard students were going to Colorado to work with the homeless teens and they needed sleeping bags immediately made the decision to go to the computer to find something we could afford. So if its all the same to everyone I will continue to make the important decisions and let him take care of the rest. I think they are in pretty good hands.

There is a newly wed couple at our church. I love this young man so much and am becoming just as attached to her. He said he hates to go to the store all of a sudden because of decisions. Said she sent him to the store for a pound of butter, he had to ask someone where the butter was and a couple of ladies sort of snickered at him He was standing in front of the butter. They said here it is. He said he knew that but his wife wanted a pound of butter what kind should he get. He now makes her get the butter package out, he takes a picture of it on his phone and goes to the store with that. I know why. I looked in the store today and counted 14 different kinds of butter. No wonder decision making is a major undertaking.

One More Key

Sometime, I think between 30 and 40 years ago, Jim had a key that was special. The Church at Tenth and Broad had bought a bus for the kid to use on trips. It was truly a good buy and since my dad had a filing station the kids pulled the bus into one of the bays and painted it white with Big Red Tenth and Broad Church of Christ letters. My dad never loved that bus because it seems that the over spray left him with one big mess. but thanks to some good kids and Dr. Harry Ledbetter we had a bus. That bus still runs in Nicaragua. But I digress. Using buses to pick up kids for Bible Class was becoming the popular thing to do, so we thought we would do one . Jim had a key as did many others. The plan was that you would have two couples on the bus which meant I had to go. I was not so thrilled. I had taken trips on that bus down to Possum Kingdom Lake and a couple of other places I have tried to forget. Two things about riding the bus stick out in my memory. One it had HARD seats and Two it had a BUMPY ride. I have always been into comfort. I would like to tell you that we were the ones that picked up two young ladies and their parents that first Sunday that they rode but in all honesty I do not remember. Someone else probably will. The two young ladies wanted to come because their friends had come and the parents did not want their girls going somewhere unknown to them, So they came once and then they came twice and on into infinity. To judge the worth of that key and that bus, as Paul Harvey used to say, you need to know the rest of the story. That couple was Harry and Mary Edwards.

Rambling

I bet you get those cute e-mails that tell us how this generation never knew life without TV that if you were born after such and such a year you don't remember the Beatles, you never knew life without a microwave. Those designed to show that they are ungrateful spoiled brats and we were the true Patriots, or Americans, or Pioneers or what ever they are pushing at the time the e-mail is sent. And, if truth be told we all enjoy reading them and seeing how far we have come and those older among us will say we were much better off without all the improvements. I got to thinking what I would want to give up that came along later in my life and there are some things I wish we could give up and never know existed but for the most part, I don't want to give up.......garbage disposals. My reputation as a cook. Not good. Jim tells everyone that our garbage disposal gags. I don't want to give up aluminum foil and paper towels. try to imagine life without them. I don't want to give up Post It Notes. Now that we are older we can put something on a calendar and forget where it is, but ahhh, read our bathroom mirrors. Everything from doctor's appointments to hair cut appointments and what pill to take. When we've done it we just take it off the mirror and toss it. Reading our bathroom mirror is really knowing us. I don't want to give up the blue sweetner. I am at that age when I don't really care about chemicals that go in my body. It needs all the help it can get and I like the blue stuff better than the pink or yellow stuff or organic stuff. (an excuse to up the price and make you think it is really organic when really organic is when you grow it without any chemicals and no Miracle Grow) Of course I don't think you will find a single senior citizen that would want to give up the obvious appliances that make our lives better. I was about 8 years old when we got electricity on the farm. I can testify that life is better with electricity. Then came indoor plumbing. With the winter we have had if you long for the outhouse, well something is just wrong. So don't be too quick to long for the good old days, they might not have been so good after all. But the main thing I don't want to give up is this Computer because without it I would not be connecting with you this very moment, Something to be said in favor of that. More later about what I wish we had not given up.

Keys to What?

On Monday I got a call from my husband. He had found a set of keys in the floorboard of his pickup obviously to a Toyota. You first have to realize that nothing gets in that pickup of which he is not aware. Told him to wait til I got home and we could see what we could find. Finished my day trying to think of who had been in the pickup, (no one but us) tried to recreate Sunday night when we drove the pickup to small group (no one but us) Could someone have put the keys there for safe "Kee"ping (again no one but us) Plus the one thing that always gets locked is his pickup. Not so much my car unless he is with me.

There are probably 12 keys on the key chain with a hugh ornament, stainless steel with some sort of motif on it. Nothing to identify the car key except it is a Toyota. One of the keys is one of those you get made with characters on it (Winnie the Pooh) Key ring so large and heavy that it could not go in a pocket.

Probably someone with more key experience than I have could identify what some of the keys go to.

Got to thinking about our keys. We have a car key and one to each others vehicle. We have a house key and I have an office key. Sad to think that we are in our 70s and those are the only things we can unlock.

The owner of our visiting keys is out there without means to "unlock" her world. She has keys that are outlined in rubber, that are gold, silver, and one of those really heavy Yale Lock keys (always sounds so important to have a Yale Key which should in all fairness open a Harvard Lock). Wednesday night the kids at church went out into the parking lot and pushed the panic button to no avail. Do you think that somewhere in town our visiting keys owner was wondering why her panic button kept going off.

I hope that if we ever find the owner we have a chance to discuss what all these many keys unlock.

As for us, I am pretty content with only needing a key to start the car, unlock the door to home and unlock the door to work. Long years ago we found the "Keys to the Kingdom" .

When you think of it, its really all you need in life.

Catching Up

Our daughter will fly in late Friday evening. She will fly out early Sunday morning. She will spend the day Saturday with her good friend who has some serious illness in her family. We will not see much of her but enough to catch up. Then Saturday night late, our oldest grandson will drive in from Illinois. He will stay til Thursday. He will spend a lot of time with his old friend, not as much a when he lived here but to get caught up. We haven't seen her since Christmas, him, well its been a couple of years or so. I never dreamed my family would be so spread out. one to the east everyone else to the west. I was never more than 100 miles from my family except for the short period of time my sister went to Nashville for her husband to go to school in the summer only and then to Detroit for more schooling. I thought when she left with the two children who we loved so much, that my world had ended. We didn't fly, too far to drive and one just didn't pick up the telephone and call for no reason at all, not unless there was an emergency. But she wasn't gone long enough to get behind. So we never had to catch up.

Today we don't pay for individual phone calls. we have email which we use with great regularity and even have video camera on the computer so we can see them if we wish. then of course there is facebook and twitter (although I only just discovered blogging and know nothing about twitter). If you think of it we have more communication with family now than we did when they lived with us,

Just this past week we found my husband's second cousin on facebook. No contact in perhaps 20 years, and we caught up Probably won't correspond anymore, but the important thing was we caught up. It takes a long time to get behind but not long at all to catch up.

Jericho

I find the Old Testament to be difficult. I personally think all you need to know to go to Heaven you can find in the New Testament. Last night our group studied about Joshua and the walls of Jericho, or as Veggie Tales puts it: Josh and The Big Wall. Tried to find out how far around the wall was. Its not in the Bible. For Goodness Sakes. Its not on Google. Maybe we don't need to know. We do not understand any reasoning behind what God had his people to do when they marched for seven days, one time around per day. Then to boggle the mind even more, on the seventh day they marched seven times around and then blew on horns they made out of rams horns. Then the walls fell. The one thing we know about those walls it that there were a lot of them and they were really thick and they had never been penetrated before. You know the story, the walls fell and Josh and his men marched right in. Killed every living thing except Rahab and her family. We have decided that the WHY of this part of history is to teach obedience. Its a comforting reason for us. But surely there is more to the story.........I know this though, if you are teaching the little ones it is a great story and easy to act out. We just carefully leave out the kill every living thing part. They have video games for that.

Day to Day

I am not sure why I go to work every day. Is it to keep my mind alert? Is it to give me a purpose in life? Is it to get me out of the house? Is it the money? Well, actually its all of those things put together. I was home for two days last week and spent the whole time watching movies on television, Do I want to do that every day? I'm a bit afraid. I think I would do nothing.