Elementary School: Before We Took the Blinders Off

Yesterday I registered for the September-October session of "Life Writing." It'll be my fifth time taking this class, and I can hardly wait to get started again. It's been difficult coming up with blog post ideas this summer, so I'm hoping that the assignment of specific topics in class will reawaken my writing muse.

In looking through my class notebook, I realized that I haven't shared with you my story on the subject of elementary school. You may recognize one or two incidents from earlier blog posts, but this was the first time I put it all down chronologically, grade by grade.

Depending on your age, parts of my story may closely mirror parts of yours. Please let me know if they do.

**********

The playground at the rear of Phelps Elementary School was five blocks west and one block south of the house my grandparents shared with us in Springfield, Missouri. Sometimes I switched up the route, placing the southward jog earlier in the journey, but I almost never walked the extra distance required to enter the front of the building. I started school there in September of 1948. The youngest student in my class, I wouldn’t turn six until the day after Thanksgiving.

Phelps School.

Photo courtesy of the Springfield-Greene County Library District.

Mother told me years later that she had walked to school with me every day of my first week in first grade, taking the most direct path to help me learn the way. The second week she walked a few steps behind, letting me take the lead. The third week, she said, she walked half a block behind me and carried a switch to keep me from turning around and heading back home. Fortunately, my opinion of school improved; it was soon my favorite place to be.

All the teachers at Phelps were women. So was the principal. The only man in the building was the janitor. All of the staff and all the students were Caucasian, most of us with surnames that originated in the British Isles. Nearly all of us were Protestant, predominantly Baptist. If any of my schoolmates were Catholic or Jewish, I wasn’t aware of it; we hardly ever compared notes about religion. A boy named Tony Robertson and I were the only two students in my class whose parents were divorced.

We started each day at Phelps by placing our right hands over our hearts and reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance,” changing our recitation in fifth grade when the words “under God” were added to it. In an era that was largely peaceful, we filed outdoors two-by-two for fire drills and occasionally practiced ducking under our desks in case the Russians bombed Springfield.

During the Christmas season the entire student body sat around an enormous tree in the main hall and sang Christmas carols. Once a week the music teacher rolled a piano into our classroom and taught us to sing “Oh, Susannah,” “The Erie Canal,” “The Marine’s Hymn,” “America the Beautiful” and other traditional songs. We also sang “Dixie” without giving a single thought to its history or its lyrics.

In art class we dabbled in poster paints, clay, and papier-mâché on brightly patterned oil cloth brought from home to protect our lift-top desks. The distinctive smell of the oil cloth was a favorite scent, as was the minty aroma of the white paste we used for art projects. Each February we decorated shoeboxes and cigar boxes with red and white crepe paper and passed out Valentines, but only to the kids we liked.

We joined after-school organizations that encouraged good citizenship and taught us important life skills, such as how to make Rice Krispie Marshmallow Treats. In second grade I was a Blue Bird. Instead of progressing to become a Campfire Girl, I dropped out and later switched to the Girl Scouts. No matter how many friends I made among the students, it was the teachers who meant the most to me.

Me, wearing brand-new Girl Scout uniform - 5th grade - 1953.

In this photo I was facing our house. The buildings behind me were

part of what was then Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

My first-grade teacher was Miss Davis. (We called them all “Miss,” though many of them were married.) Miss Davis was a grandmotherly woman with a kind face and fluffy silver hair. Wanting to learn the names of all those children I’d never met, I concentrated each morning as Miss Davis called the roll, beginning with Jimmie Paul Allen, on to me and then Jane Kay Burke in the B’s, and on through the alphabet as far as Edward Lee Wheeler. To this day, if I think of a child who was in my first grade class, I usually remember his or her middle name.

I took learning seriously and was apparently distressed when it didn’t go fast enough to suit me. Miss Davis once reported to Mother that she’d found me crying because I didn’t know how to spell elephant. She showed me how that day. Writing and arithmetic were fun, but it was reading that excited me. We whipped through the books about Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff and I wanted more, more, more. In April of 1949, near the end of first grade, I read for myself the newspaper article about Kathy Fiscus, a three-year-old California girl who fell into a well and died while the nation waited and prayed for her rescue. That’s my first memory of being deeply moved by something I’d read.

Second grade is a bit of a blur. I remember that my teacher was Miss Hutchinson, a perky young woman with a blonde pixie haircut, and I remember having a boyfriend, Bruce Crane (Alan Bruce Crane), a crush that carried over from first grade. Bruce was the son of our postman, and I liked him off and on all through grade school.

Compared to the other grades, third grade was the pits. Miss Butler stood only about half a head higher than her students and was as big around as she was tall. She couldn’t reach her feet to tie her shoes, so she’d show up each day wearing slippers and appoint one of us children to assist her into her work shoes. She was never without her wooden stick--one I now recognize as a conductor’s baton--and didn’t hesitate to use it. Miss Butler rarely smiled. What she did do, for which I’ll forever be grateful, was read to us every afternoon from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder that year and received a handwritten answer from her. I wish I knew what happened to that letter.

Miss McDonald taught fourth grade. She was tall and slim, with collar-length brown hair parted and swept to one side. She liked the theater and directed our class in two plays we presented to the whole school. The first was a Christmas pageant in which I played the non-speaking role of the innkeeper’s wife, and the second was Blue Willow, an adaptation of the Doris Gates book about the daughter of an impoverished migrant worker and the Blue Willow plate that was her prized possession.

By fourth grade I was riding my bike to school. Local ordinances prohibited bicycles on sidewalks, so I rode in the street, near the curb. One day, returning to school after I’d gone home for lunch, I saw a man come out of a house half a block away and get into his car, which was parked in my path. He didn’t start the car immediately, so I continued riding until I was about a car-length behind him, then stopped to wait until he drove away. I expected the man to drive forward, but he didn’t; he suddenly began backing up to turn onto a side street. I jumped off my bike but didn’t have time to pull it out of the way before he ran over it. The man leaped from his car and appeared to be horrified at such a close call. He tried to talk to me, but he was a stranger, so I left the broken bicycle in the street and ran all the way to school.

The lunch hour hadn’t ended yet. I ran past all the children on the playground and up the stairs to Miss McDonald’s empty classroom. She found me there minutes later, scared and shaken. As I tearfully explained to her what had happened, the principal arrived. The man had followed me to school, bicycle in his open trunk, to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I guess the principal had spoken with him and then gone from classroom to classroom in search of a child in distress. After a brief telephone conference with my mother, who was at work, it was decided that the principal would accompany me home to the comforting arms of Mammaw, my grandmother. The stranger who’d run over my bike drove us there.

Miss Challis was my fifth grade teacher. She lived close enough to us that I could ride my new bicycle (a gift from you-know-who) to visit her at home sometimes. The worst day of my elementary school career was the day of our fifth grade Halloween party. I don’t remember what my costume was supposed to be, but I recall teetering across the playground in Mother’s high heels and seeing Jim Burns, a big, strapping sixth-grader, punching on my fifth-grade classmate, Jimmie Allen. Jimmie was the smallest boy in every grade; I was a head taller than he was. I wobbled over to where they were and turned to face big Jim. I must have said some variation of the line about picking on “somebody your own size,” because that’s what he did. He socked me right in the stomach. I remember sitting in the playground dirt next to Jimmie and looking at my outstretched legs, the toes of Mother’s shoes pointing skyward as I sucked in big gulps of air.

By the time I’d recovered and made it upstairs to Miss Challis’s room, the temperature had begun to drop sharply and a light rain was falling. When the last of the jack-o-lantern-shaped cookies had been consumed and the dismissal bell rang, the rain had turned to sleet, and the air was so cold that the sleet was sticking to the ground. I didn’t know that Mammaw had driven to school to pick me up because of the nasty weather. She waited for me to come out the back of the building the way I always did, but I, not wanting to get fresh playground mud on Mother’s shoes, had gone out the front door. Mammaw and I missed each other. I trekked all the way home in those floppy high heels. Every few yards I’d have to stop and balance on the slick sidewalk to hitch up the borrowed nylon stockings that kept slipping out of their loose garters and falling to my ankles. The wet, droopy nylons were sheer misery.

In sixth grade I was in Miss Engleking’s class in the same classroom that Miss Butler had used when I was in third grade. Miss Engleking, tall and stout with tight, iron-gray curls, permitted no nonsense. When a boy named Luther annoyed the boy in front of him, John, by repeatedly thumping him on the head, Miss Engleking allowed John to choose the largest book he could find--an enormous dictionary--and give Luther one good whack over the head with it.

One day well into the school year Miss Engleking confronted me in the lunchroom as I passed the teachers’ table: “Someone told me you were singing a song about me being fat, and I’d like to hear it.” I hemmed and hawed, saying that I didn’t really remember what I’d been singing, that it was just something silly I’d been making up on the spot. “I want you to sing it,” Miss Engleking demanded. “Here. Now. Loud.” I did sing it, my head bowed, voice cracking in shame and embarrassment. When I finished, Miss Engleking surprised me. She laughed, and then she encouraged me. She told me the song was “very clever” and that I should write more to develop my writing skills. Then she added one more bit of advice: “Next time try to write something that will make someone feel good.”

We learned so much in the safe cocoon of elementary school. We had no idea how much more there was that we needed to know--or that we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to learn it.

Hitting Too Close to Home

The Google Map screen capture at left is an aerial view of the area where I live. (Road numbers and names have been obscured to preserve privacy.) The curvy white line running vertically down the center of the map is the road that runs right in front of my house. It was only last Friday that I wrote these words about that same stretch of pavement: "I was not about to stop like a sitting duck on that narrow, two-lane, curvy, high-speed road."

I didn't mention that the road has no shoulders except in a few spots, that in most places along its length the edges drop off into deep ditches. Nor did I mention that most of the land on the western side of the road is swampy and tree covered, that this route is a lovely, scenic drive until peak traffic times turn it into a literal hell on wheels.

Many commuters traveling to and from Baton Rouge avoid the main highways and use this rural road as a shortcut. Bumper to bumper, they exceed the speed limit, which, at 55-miles-per-hour, is already too high. They ignore the no-passing stripes in the center of the road. They're thinking about getting to work or getting home, they're fiddling with their radios, they're using their cell phones ("Do you want me to pick up something for dinner?"), and they're not paying attention. Some of them are drinking. More than once a beer bottle has landed in our front yard, having been tossed out the window of a passing pickup truck.

See the red spot on the green map above? At right is a closer view (obviously taken in winter) of that same spot. The dark slash you see crossing under the road is a bayou. The light tan areas that appear to be wide shoulders alongside the road are actually the deep slopes of embankments.

My daughter got off work early yesterday afternoon, passed this particular spot on her way home, and noticed some children fishing in the bayou at the bottom of the embankment. As soon as she arrived home, she picked me up and drove me to retrieve my car from the tire shop. She came home from there the same way she had come from work a short while earlier. (I came by a different route.) When she approached this bayou overpass again, she found traffic at a standstill. She could see that an SUV had driven off the road and into the bayou, and she saw someone giving CPR to a child. No emergency vehicles had arrived at the scene yet. Because of heavy traffic conditions, it would be a while before they did.

Later, at home, we could hear sirens passing our house for what seemed like an hour. Finally, we read on the internet, state police closed our road in both directions. Still later, on a televised newscast, we learned that the SUV, driven by an apparently unimpaired middle-aged woman, had run off the road and plowed into two children, their father and two of his friends, all of whom had been fishing peacefully a moment earlier. Both children died at the scene of the accident. The three men were transported to the hospital with injuries that turned out not to be severe. The driver, her seatbelt secured, her vehicle stopped by a tree from sinking into the bayou, suffered only minor injuries.

What a tragedy! Our community mourns this morning with the families involved in this terrible, surely preventable occurrence. What are the odds of someone losing control of a vehicle in the one spot on a five-mile stretch of road where people stood unprotected and unaware in her aberrant path? A broad combination of factors contributed to this accident;  a change in any one of them might have prevented it.

Reducing the speed limit on this road would be one good place to start.

Baseball Bats Don't Vandalize; Knuckleheads Do!

It's been a little over six years since I last wrote about my mailbox getting bashed in, most likely by teenaged males seeking recreation. I'd replaced the box a few days before I wrote that post. Since then I've replaced it four more times. This afternoon I'll be doing it again for the fifth time in six years.

Each of the first couple of replacements was stronger, sturdier and more expensive than its immediate predecessor, and the steel frame of each one eventually crumpled up as easily as the others had. It stands to reason. If a fine automobile were struck by a baseball bat or a tire iron in the hands of a redneck boy hanging out the window of his buddy's pickup truck, the car would sustain significant damage. Why would I expect a mailbox to hold up any better?

Mailbox vandalism is so common it has its own Wikipedia page and its own news article on the United States Postal Service website. That's strangely reassuring. The first few times it happened I took it personally; it left me with a creepy, vulnerable feeling. Now it doesn't. Now it just makes me want to pinch some yahoos' heads off.

My mailbox sits next to two others on a structure that looks like a tall, wooden hitching post. A fourth box, attached to a metal post of its own, stands right in line with the other three. I have to admit that I understand why four mailboxes in a row, all at the same height, would make an attractive target for young males bent on destruction. It's all about the challenge; I get that. What I'll never understand is why some boys are so doggone stupid.

The mailbox I bought today is a hard-plastic one, the cheapest kind available at one of the big-box home improvement stores. The neighbor in front of me turned me on to this kind about three years ago when several of us had to get replacements at the same time after someone's night of ridiculous madcap adventure. The plastic ones are more resilient; they don't dent like the steel ones do. And if they do get cracked--or if the door gets broken off and thrown on the ground like mine and a next-door neighbor's did the other day--they're less costly to replace. The one I bought today is my third one of this style.

So, my neighbors and I have learned how to reduce the cost associated with repetitive acts of vandalism, and I'm less stressed when it happens than I used to be. There's still the matter of the inconvenience:  the trip to town to buy a new mailbox, the time involved in taking the damaged box down and attaching the new one securely while traffic whizzes by, the day(s) when there's no mail delivery because there's no usable mailbox. It's annoying as all get out.

I live in a nice, safe, semi-rural area where a mailbox-bashing spree every year or so is the height of crime. That makes me lucky, I know. And I love my house. It isn't fancy, but it suits me, and coming home to it always feels great. If I could change one thing, I'd have a--no, wait, make that two things. First, I'd add another bathroom. Then (second thing) I'd want a mailbox like the kind they have in my sister's East Texas neighborhood:

Try to bash that, bozos!

Beside the Still Waters

See these pots drying on my kitchen counter? They were freshly scrubbed, but not because I'd cooked in them.

Yesterday morning as I sat here at the computer reading other people's blogs, my next-door neighbor called. "Is your water pressure low?" she asked. I had no idea, but I went to check on it while she waited and reported back to her that yes, it was low. Not much more than a trickle, in fact. She said she'd call the water company, then call me back.

Knowing I badly needed a shower before heading off to the writing class, I dug out my three largest pots, set them one by one in the bathtub, and slowly filled them all with water. I had bottled water to drink, so I figured I'd use two pots for bathing and save one for flushing. I'd make do if I had to.

It took a while for my neighbor to make contact with a human at the water company, but once she did, she called again and told me that someone had accidentally cut a main water line about a mile from here. The woman at the water company had told her, "They're working on it, but we don't know how long it will take to fix it."

I hung up the phone and headed to the bathtub while my potted water was still warm. I turned on the shower, mostly out of curiosity, and discovered there was enough water trickling out of it to wet down my body so I could soap it up and enough to rinse the soap off if I was very, very patient. I took a chance and shampooed my hair, but there wasn't enough water pressure coming from the shower nozzle to get a clean rinse, so I dipped a big plastic glass into my largest pot, many times, and poured it over my head until my hair was squeaky clean.

I've been reading lots of historical fiction lately in which characters struggled every single day to carry water from the nearest creek. That was their only option. Nowhere in any of those books was it written that even one of those characters felt as virtuous as I did yesterday about bathing in a small amount of water. I felt like a hardy pioneer woman.

If I'd had a mule and a wagon, I might have tried to get to class that way.

Gotcha!

This pretty little pooch is named Buddy. He belongs to my next-door neighbor on the left. Buddy's mom installed a doggy door for him so he can go out into their large, fenced-in backyard and back into the house whenever he chooses, except when the doggy door is locked. I have a feeling someone forgot to lock it day before yesterday. That's when I looked outside to check on my big dogs, Levi and Gimpy, and saw them both doing their "this-is-not-right-oh-this-is-so-wrong" dance, pacing with small steps in a tight circle.

I walked outside to see what was up and there was Buddy, prancing in the driveway of my other next-door neighbor, the one on my right. Levi and Gimpy were correct: Buddy had no business being there. I called his name, and he glanced over his shoulder at me, then turned and walked around the side of the house where I couldn't see him anymore.

I've frequently compared the road in front of our houses to the dangerous one in Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and I knew I'd never forgive myself if I minded my own business and Buddy wandered out onto that road. I darted back into the house, grabbed a leash, and ran out the front door, intending to lure Buddy close enough to catch him and walk him home.

As I hurried down my own driveway, my path was intercepted by Buddy, who was nonchalantly heading toward home. As he trotted leisurely across his own front yard, I followed him every step of the way, intent on discovering how he'd escaped the yard. The obvious answer was that an entire section of fence was missing on the far side of the neighbor's yard, no doubt having been taken down a day or two earlier to accommodate work being done in her backyard. I stopped right there, but Buddy turned and jogged alongside the house, then, with one final glance in my direction, disappeared around the back corner.

My neighbor wasn't home, but her daughter's car was in the driveway, so I knocked on the door to let someone know Buddy had been running loose. Nobody answered the first knock, so I knocked again, harder this time, and after a few seconds the door was opened. The neighbor's daughter eyed me curiously, as if she were wondering why in the world I'd pounded on the door. So did Buddy, who had let himself back in and sat right there at her feet.

That dog must think I'm really stupid.

I know that I shall never see...

...a hawk on that persimmon tree.

Recently, the barking of my two big dogs alerted me to a tree-removal crew in my next-door neighbor's backyard. Off and on throughout the morning, I watched them work to take down a large oak tree. It was a fascinating, carefully choreographed process: one man in the bucket of a crane, several others on the ground, working with chainsaws and ropes to lower sawed-off branches and huge segments of tree trunk safely to the ground.

If you click this image to enlarge it, you'll see that

the white spot just above the center of the photo

is a man working from the bucket of a crane. 

That tree grew on the far side of my neighbor's house, so, even though its higher branches were visible to me, I never paid particular attention to the tree itself. The same cannot be said for the tall, spindly persimmon tree that grew farther back in the same backyard. The persimmon tree was a focal point of my daily nature watch.

The persimmon tree in question is the tall tree on the left side of this photo.

I must have well over a hundred pictures of that persimmon tree. In winter and summer both it provided photographic opportunities: cloud formations behind it and birds flying onto and away from its branches. Birds of prey seemed to consider the top of that tree an ideal spot for waiting and watching, for scoping out meals in nearby yards, and I delighted in watching and photographing those magnificent birds.

I felt nothing more than curiosity when the men took down the oak tree that day. It took them several hours to do it, and, when they were finished with the oak tree, I assumed their work was done. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I looked out only minutes later and saw the persimmon tree lying on the ground.

The pile of green at the center of this photo is the felled persimmon tree.

Today there's hardly any evidence that the tree ever existed.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I cried when I saw that the persimmon tree had been cut down. Not that it was ever any of my business, but my neighbor later mentioned why she'd had the two trees removed, and her reason is a good, sound one. I didn't tell her what I've just told you--that I felt sad (still do) about the loss of the persimmon tree. There's no reason to make her feel uneasy about doing something she had every right to do, and besides, I feel a little silly about discovering I'd become emotionally attached to a tree.

I will miss it, though. Just probably not as much as this guy:

Mississippi Kite on uppermost branch of persimmon tree.

**********

Since I've only written one blog entry between now and last Saturday, it seems too soon to post another Saturday Song Selection. Eh...who cares? There's one song that's perfect for today's topic, so I'm going to post it anyway. It's a lovely version of a children's song, and the photos in the video are gorgeous.

The song is "Tree Song" by Evie Tornquist Karlsson.

Thanks to Barry Desaine for posting the video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Under the Same Sky that Hangs Over Me

One-a-Day Redux
Day Eight:  Your Sky

The sky above Southeast Louisiana isn't as big as the skies over some parts of the country. Here, hovering over ancient oaks and young pecan trees, the sky is a cloud-studded, pale-blue band, much like the one at at the top of a child's drawing. One difference between our sky and that of the beginner's art is that the sun in our sky isn't yellow with visible rays. Here, the mid-afternoon sun is a white-hot ball, bleaching out the blue around it and leaving its circumference ill defined.

From where I sit the horizon seems fairly close, but even the swath of sky that I can see stretches far enough to cover a wide variety of human conditions. At the same time it hangs over me, cool and comfortable in my little house, it covers a small child in a seedy, travel-trailer park not too far away, a child who's been hungry too long and can't wake his drugged-out mother. While my sky sails above middle-aged parents and their nearly grown sons splashing happily in the family's backyard pool, it hovers heavily over the tattered roof of a rundown house with its doors and windows opened wide. Inside, an old man sits fanning himself, hoping for some rain to cool things down, wishing he knew someone he could call who would take him someplace where there's air-conditioning.  Down the road in a different direction, clouds drift slowly over a mansion owned by a Baton Rouge doctor--a house so large and glassy it looks more like a Persian-rug showroom than a home--and also over the tiny, stained-wood cabin next door to the mansion. The man inside the cabin was once a sound technician for a famous musical group, but that was years ago, way back before he went blind.

There are hard-working people under my sky and other people who are unable to work or desperate to find it. There are rich people, poor ones, and everything in between. There are retired folks, like me, and young couples just beginning their lives together, some of whom think they'll be able to live on love. There are people of different ethnic backgrounds, different (or no) religions, different political views. Across that spectrum there are happy people and sad ones, kind, loving people and hate-filled, angry ones.

I don't even know most of these people, but I know they're nearby. I imagine there are people just like them under your sky, too.

On My Mind: Love and Money

I've spent much of the last two days sorting through seven-and-a-half-years' worth of blog posts to print those I think would be of most interest to one of my favorite people in the world, my lovely stepmother, Liane. Liane is 88 years old now, and an age-related illness restricts many of her daily activities. This would be troublesome for anyone, but it's worse for Liane than it would be for me, because she's been very active until the last year or so. But she likes to read, and maybe I can help out with that. I don't know if the kind of writing I do will appeal to her particular taste, but I'll send it to her and we'll see.

<><><><><><><>

My Uncle Olan passed away Sunday night or early Monday morning, I don't know which. Of my dad's eight siblings, Olan, I believe, was closest to him in temperament. Those two probably sowed more wild oats than all the others put together and left behind the most tales to be told. If they're together now, I'm sure God and St. Peter are both keeping an eye on them, making sure they don't start some kind of shenanigans. I have to admit, though, it would be fun to watch.

<><><><><><><>

The fence along one side of my backyard is leaning. It has half a dozen broken posts, rusted through at ground level where the water stands deepest through the rainy months. I talked to my neighbor about it because the repair people would have to do the work on her side of the fence, even though the fence is technically on my property. She sent me a Facebook message Sunday evening saying not to worry about the fence, that her father had looked at it and she, her dad, and her brother can fix it. Now, those are good neighbors! I'll pay for the materials, but this will save me quite a bit.

<><><><><><><>

I've received notices in the mail that both my homeowner's insurance and auto insurance policies will be canceled as of their policy expiration dates in August. The insurer I've had since 1997 has decided to no longer issue those types of policies in Louisiana. One hurricane too many, I suppose. Anyway, I'll begin the search for new coverage in the next day or two and hope that other insurers don't get greedy when they recognize the glut of displaced policyholders in the same situation I'm in.

<><><><><><><>

I put my office reorganization project on hold when I had company last Friday and haven't managed to return to it yet. I'll get back on it any day now and finish the job. When I was going through all that stuff earlier last week, though, I did set aside one thing to show you. This is the receipt for my very first computer:

It had an astounding 1 MB of RAM--and (I think I remember) a 40 MB hard drive, but I still can't believe it cost that much all the way back in 1989. That was way more than a month's pay. Looking at the price on this receipt made me recall that my first microwave, a Christmas gift from my husband in 1975, cost nearly $400. I guess one good thing about electronics is the way their prices drop once they're no longer the hottest new item on the market.

The Road Home

The image above shows the view I have when I'm headed south, about halfway home from an eight-mile-round-trip grocery shopping expedition. This beautiful stretch of rural road has a hill on one side and a swamp on the other. The folks who make their homes in this unincorporated area reside in every kind of dwelling from mobile homes to modest houses like mine to mansions. The road is curvy, and the drive is fun, especially when afternoon shadows stripe the asphalt and turn the sun into a dizzying strobe light.

It's impossible to make this drive and hold on to a bad mood, even if the store was out of my favorite peanut-butter protein bars and tomato-basil whole-wheat crackers.

**********

P.S. There's a new post up today at Audrey's Ambition: "The Year 1933."

Maybe Today I'll Do the Laundry

It's warm today but a little cloudy. If it rains, I might be forced to do some housework. Aaaaaaand, wouldn't you know it? As soon as I typed that first sentence, the sun came out. Okay, then, God, I got your message, and I thank you very much. Another play day it is.

Yesterday started out the same way. I took my Doodle boys and my camera outside early. While Levi and Gimpy played, I checked up on Mother Nature to see how she's coming along with spring. A couple of crows were already inspecting the pecan tree that stands right behind my back fence. I'm sure they were as pleased as I was to see those branches beginning to leaf out finally.

My next-door neighbor's grapevine has new leaves, too. I love the perfection of these baby leaves, every feature of the fully grown version already there in miniature.

The clover didn't need inspection. It's been thriving for weeks now, patches of it sprinkled on every yard I can see from my own. I know it's considered a weed, but I think it's pretty anyway.

The lawn-maintenance man showed up mid-morning, effectively banishing me and my allergies from the yard for the rest of the day, so I worked (played) a bit more on the blog dedicated to my late Grandma Audrey. When Audrey was 70 (the same age I am now), she participated in a project to preserve the songs of the Ozarks, a collection that is available on the internet, and yesterday I posted links to her songs in the sidebar of Audrey's Ambition. I think her descendants will get a big kick out of hearing Grandma's voice. As for the rest of you, I know Grandma sang in the church choir for a number of years, but I would . . . um . . . respectfully suggest that by the time she was 70, she was better at writing than at singing.

Once the song-links were ready, I ate lunch and read for a while (finally finished that long, long book about World War I and started a new, user-friendly, mystery novel), then committed to a messy afternoon of painting. The second session of the Acrylics Exploration class starts later this week, so I needed to work on the last project from the first session. I turned my iTunes up loud and painted all afternoon. At the bottom of the next photo is my version of three overripe peaches on a plate:

As usual, I see plenty of room for improvement, but I'm so proud that my knife has straight edges that I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead.

********

While I've been writing this post, my next-door neighbor has been getting her lawn mowed, so it looks like another indoor afternoon after all. Okay. Laundry it is. First load (dark clothes) coming up.

Maybe

This is one of those days when everything just feels right. As it should be. Copacetic. The bills have been paid, tax forms submitted, groceries purchased, blogs scoured for spam, spam comments deleted. No homework is due until Monday. There's housework to do, but no pressure to do it. Nobody's coming over. Heck, I dragged out the vacuum cleaner long enough ago that there's a fine coating of dust on it now. To increase my motivation to use it, I parked it right in front of the kitchen stove, where it would be in my way. I've since cooked a pot of chili around it. I might vacuum today and I might not.

The only piece of business I had hoped to conduct today is to register for a follow-up class to the art course I've been taking. It's an add-on course, not in the catalog, so the only way to register is by telephone. I made that call earlier this morning, but the girl who answered the phone identified herself as a student worker and said she couldn't take my information because she didn't want to "mess anything up." Bless her heart. I applaud her honesty. Maybe she'll follow through on her promise to have someone call me back, and I can check that off my list.

Gimpy and Levi are sleeping soundly nearby. Outside the air is full of birdsong, and there are squirrels--so many more squirrels than usual--running all over the place. I wonder why they're making themselves so conspicuous today. Maybe they know something I don't know. Maybe the redtail hawks that live in the trees behind my back fence are away today, perhaps at a swooping-and-diving seminar.

It's gray outside again, but that's perfect for a day like today. It's almost like a thank-you note from God or Mother Nature: "We know you've been busy, so today is a special gift for you. Stay indoors. Kick back. Read a book. You deserve it." Maybe that's exactly what I'll do. I'm just self-indulgent (and living in denial) enough to believe I do deserve it. So maybe I'll read for the rest of the day. And maybe I'll take a nap.

Green Things

Louisiana's semitropical climate means the scenery around here never looks totally dead in the winter. Drab, yes, but not dead. Spring weather usually comes early for us, but this year it's been lagging. A lot of trees that would normally be budding by now are still bare, like this one in my neighbor's yard:

The good news is that bare trees are exceptions. Our world is turning green again. I can't think of anything I find more invigorating than the varied green hues of nature. Those vivid colors make me feel as if, having been long deprived of oxygen, I've suddenly regained the ability to inhale full, rich breaths. I'd be inclined to write that off as imagination, except that leaves really do give off oxygen, so maybe there's more to it than that.

I love the way the morning light shines on this tree behind my back fence, making its leaves glisten like shards of stained glass:

In the late afternoon the sun shines from the opposite direction, lighting up the front lawn and the low-hanging branches of our live-oak tree:

Across the road and a little farther north, where the little patch of woods thins out,
the afternoon sun backlights the trees and casts long shadows across newly green grass:

Of course, the trees and the grass aren't the only green things showing a sudden burst of life:

The lizards are flourishing. As I write this, a big one like the one in the picture is in my house. I opened the backdoor, Levi stepped out, saw the lizard, and made a grab for it. The lizard made a fake-out move, then ran between Levi's legs and through the open door, where it promptly darted behind a row of heavy bookcases.

I don't mind these creatures at all when they're outside where they belong, but they make me nervous when they come inside. I'm hoping this one will stay where it is and watch for an opportunity to make its way outside again. I have goosebumps from just thinking about what could happen if it decides to explore my house. If you never see another post here, you'll know it jumped on me.

Facebook Win!

In a conversation yesterday I made a statement that I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. Last night I was reminded of one of the things I love about it.

Driving home from picking up dinner, I turned off of an extremely busy highway onto the narrow, two-lane road that leads to my street. It was very dark. My headlights picked up a black dog, barely visible, just as I passed it. It was walking at the edge of the road, heading toward the busy highway I'd just left, and my heart sank. I thought it was this dog:

This one is a neighbor's dog. She stays with me and my boys sometimes when her mom goes out of town. She's the only dog in the neighborhood that's turned out to roam on her own several times each day. That's always concerned me, but I tell myself it's none of my business.

Last night I made it my business. The minute I walked in the house, I called the neighbor. "Is Jelly Bean home?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "She's already in her bed."

Phew! I was relieved. I ate my dinner but was still worried about the black dog I'd seen on the busy road. I knew there was no safe way to go back and try to pick it up in that kind of traffic.

Half an hour later I checked Facebook. Because I have "liked" the FB page of the neighborhood veterinarian, posts on that page show up on my newsfeed. The first post I saw was this one, posted by a neighbor, obviously, but one I don't know:

This boy just roamed into my yard. He's very sweet, super skinny and limping. I can't keep him. Please share. I live in [name of area] and can be reached at [telephone number].

Way to go, Social Media!

Skywatch

The sun has been shining all day today. What a refreshing change! I must say that whatever has been going on in the atmosphere has made for some lovely skies this winter:

Looking toward the southeast from my yard - 1/4/13 - 7:25 AM

Looking toward the southeast - 1/8/13 - 6:56 AM

Looking toward the south - 1/10/13 - 5:26 PM

Looking west  - 2/23/13 - 5:42 PM

Looking northwest - 2/23/13 - 5:43 PM

Looking northwest - 2/26/13 - 5:37 PM

The labels on these photos probably don't mean much to you. Would it make a difference if I told you that once I started labeling them, I got confused and had to stop and draw a map of my house with little arrows and compass points around it?

We aim to please.

Involuntary Confinement

A neighbor around the corner whose deep backyard extends all the way across mine must have bought himself a new gun. Twice in the last couple of weeks I've heard shots being fired and looked out to see him having target practice. This afternoon I heard gunfire coming from a different direction, either across the road that runs in front of my house or  across the side street, near the corner. Apparently another neighbor is practicing to use deadly force if necessary.

I've read about the rush to buy guns in light of pending legislation. Although I think it's stupid for someone who never thought they needed a gun before to run out and buy one now "just in case," I respect their right to give in to their Fox-News-induced fears and buy a weapon to protect themselves.

I also understand that I live outside the limits of an incorporated city and that, without the restrictions of city ordinances, people in my neighborhood are as free to fire their guns as they are to shoot off their fireworks, which I'm also not crazy about. If they're going to have guns, I guess it's a good thing that they're working to improve their aim, but the sound of gunshots in the neighborhood still scares me.

I've mentioned here before that my little sister was shot by a ricocheting bullet fired by a neighbor who was aiming at a squirrel up in a tree. Fortunately, that neighbor was far enough away that the only damage to my sister was a big red welt on her neck. Unless my current neighbors are crack shots--and I have no way of knowing if they are or not--I'm concerned about the possibility of a bullet going astray. One bullet. That's all it takes.

So go ahead. Knock yourself out playing with your guns. Levi and Gimpy and I will stay in the house until you finish.

Lovely, Indeed, but Not So Dark and Deep

One-a-Day Photo Challenge

Day Twenty-Eight:  Light

Across the road from my house stands a tangle of trees and vines that appears deceptively dense at nighttime and during most of the daylight hours. In late afternoon, however, for a few magic moments, the sun angles its rays into the clearing on the other side of the narrow patch of woods and lights it from behind, making it glow like a Tiffany lamp.

It's easy to imagine barefoot young girls, wearing flowing white dresses and floral crowns with pastel ribbon streamers, joining hands and dancing in just such a clearing as this one, when the light is exactly like this. I know they must do it the minute I turn off my camera and turn my back.

Picture Me Smiling

After having a bad cold that seemed to hang on forever, I was glad to see the weather warm up enough that I could get outside and try out my new camera. One day last week I took it along when I drove to the post office. The main road along that route is under construction, so I knew there'd be plenty of opportunities to stop and snap photos out the car window.

I suspect that the first ten shots were magnificent. We'll never know, unfortunately, because I had failed to remove the lens cap. Instead, here are a few others from that short trip:

 (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

As you can see, Louisiana is still mostly green.

I thought this one was pretty (after I cropped the construction

equipment out of it).

This is one of the gorgeous "Seven Oaks" near the entrance of 

the neighborhood that's named for them.

Another tree, this one draped with moss, outside the same neighborhood.

Apparently, the road work has kept the mowers away for awhile.

You know, of course, that I had to try out the camera as soon as I got it, even if I didn't feel like leaving the house. So, here are a few earlier shots I took while standing in my own backyard:

Levi and Gimpy have been very patient with my
following them around with the camera. They're good dogs.

This is my next-door neighbor's grapevine, hanging over my fence.

This tree rises high above the same neighbor's house.
(The grackles are back!)

I've saved the best shot for last, a clear example of why I wanted a more powerful zoom lens:

I happened to glance out the window just in time to watch a huge,
well-camouflaged bird land in this little tree in the same neighbor's yard.
It's a young red-tailed hawk (no rust-colored tail feathers yet).
If you want a better look at this beautiful creature, there's a
closeup on my photoblog today.

Now I need to take the camera someplace spectacularly scenic and see what it can do. Who wants to go with me?

We've had so much rain here in the past couple of weeks that the ground is soggy. That translates into dogs with muddy paws, which, due to Gimpy's semi-confinement, hasn't been as big a problem as it might have been.

It's been a good time for me to stay indoors, too. The genealogy project I've been working on was completed just this morning, so I probably would have been at the computer even if the weather had been nice.

If the forecasters are right, there'll be plenty of sunshine to enjoy in the next seven days--although those high temperatures predicted next Sunday and Monday are scary. Today is only the first day of summer, and I wouldn't have expected 100-degree temperatures until at least next month. Still, I'll take my book and my dog-boys outside as often as I can.

The beautiful sunflower that grew under my bird feeder last month has gone from looking like this. . .

. . .to looking like this:

It's still pretty in a different, weird kind of way, don't you think?

My gardenia bush doesn't have nearly as many blooms on it as it did a couple months ago, either. Thank goodness there are pretty things to see in the neighbors' yards. A neighbor on one side has this gorgeous crape myrtle:

The neighbor behind me grows beautiful canna lilies:

And the vibrant greens of another neighbor's pecan tree shade the dogs' favorite corner of the back yard:

For shade on my patio, I rely mostly on a big umbrella. Wait. . .what's that dark spot I'm seeing, and why is Levi watching it so closely?

Hmm. Let me zoom in really close. . .

Oh, it's one of those little guys. If you don't have tree frogs in your part of the country, let me introduce you to one of the tiny creatures that share my back yard. I adore them.

Wish you could sit out there with me. We'd drink something cool and really get to know each other.