Preacher Little, to the left, addresses his small congregation with a firm reminder that the sky is not a-falling and that it’s high time they get a grip on the wild ride we call life. An hour later, a raucous band of Fire Ants laid siege to the squishy Peeps, and thus, the service came to an untimely end. My wise old Grandfather, or maybe it was an old-man neighbor, once opined, “Son, you can’t go traipsing about with your head aimed at the clouds, waiting for a disaster to drop from the sky. Best keep your eyes peeled to the ground, lest you unwittingly find yourself knee-deep in a nest of Fire Ants.”
While watering my landscape this morning, I heard a loud buzzing sound radiating from a Salvia bush. I part the leaves searching for this buzzing source.
Bingo, attached to a branch, is a Murder Hornet. I have a picture of the little beast on my refrigerator for identification, since I knew they were heading my way. The Farmers Almanac said they would make Texas by late spring, so the magazine was correct for once.
Why are all pandemics, poisonous foods, pharmaceuticals, and end-times monsters originating from the Asian continent, mainly China?
It’s a laundry list of evil mutants starting with Godzilla, Mothra, Son of Godzilla, King Kong fighting Godzilla, Giant Transformers, The Corona Virus, The Asian Flu, The Bat Flu, the Pig Flu, the Bird Flu, and now hornets with the face and murderous attitude of Charles Manson.
Fearing for the lives of my Bumble Bees, I spray the Murder Hornet with a substantial dose of Black Flag. It flaps its wings a few times and buzzes at me. No effect whatsoever. Okay, this mutant is chemical resistant and knows what I look like and where I live.
I retrieve my 1966 era Daisy BB Pistol from my work shed; old school tactics are now on the table.
I sneak up to the Salvia bush and spread the branches enough for a clean shot. There it sits with a Bumble Bee in its grasp, stinging the life out of the poor pollinator. I see a dozen more casualties on the ground below the plant—Satan with wings and a stinger. This monster has to go to La La Land now.
The first BB bounces off the buggers’ armor plating, putting a hole in my den window. There goes $300 bucks. Now it’s personal. The second and third shots wing the critter, and now it is insanely mad and buzzing like a chainsaw.
With only two BBs left in my pistol, I go for the kill shot to the head. I take my aim and begin to squeeze the trigger. The murderous thug-bug looks up at me with its Charles Manson eyes, and a shiver runs up my spine. ” Go ahead, kill me if you must, but I have friends that will track you down.” It’s look says it all.
I take the shot, and the invader falls to the ground, headless. The Bumble Bees, sensing victory, swoop in and finish the killer off. Payback for their fallen brethren.
I retrieve the dead hornet from the bush with a pair of Martha Stewart grilling tongs and place it on my backyard retaining wall. A few squirts of charcoal lighter fluid and a wooden match complete the deed, and the bad-ass bug is on its way to hornet Valhalla.
My wife walks up and says, ” so, you got him, good job. Look at these cute little packs of Chinese seeds that came in the mail just now.”
For my birthday a while back, my wise and thoughtful wife, Momo, gifted me a classic 1970 Underwood 310 manual typewriter. It is a wonderful present I would never have purchased, although I have yearned for one for a while now.
For some time, possibly five years or so, I have been whining and casually threatening to go “old school” with my writing and get away from this demon laptop. It’s too easy to keep on tapping and spit out a page or two of gibberish that has more words than needed and makes no sense. It’s not about speed and what your program does; it’s about the content. A typewriter makes you think before striking that key. The delete button does not exist.
Hemingway would tap for hours on end, and then if he wasn’t pleased with his effort, it went into the waste basket. Using a typewriter to transpose your thoughts to paper is a commitment, and not an easy one.
There was a typewriter in our household when I was a child. It was a large black beast of an Underwood, all pure American heavy metal, requiring a grown man and a hefty child to lift it. I would peck on it for hours and eventually come up with something legible. I never once saw my parents use it, so its presence in our home was a mystery. I heard from my older cousin, Cookie, that it was my grandmother’s when she lived in California, and she spent all of her waking hours tapping away letters and movie script ideas. It caused a good bit of drama and injury within the family, so it was banished to our household for safekeeping. My father wasn’t pleased when he would find me chicken pecking away.
My love of the machine started at an early age, and came into full blossom as a teenager in the 1960s, when I started to write stories. I took typing in high school to sharpen my skills and learn the keyboard. I studied two years of journalism, and learned to love the written word. My teacher was my mentor. She pushed me to excel. It all paid off well. When computers came about in the late 90s, I was a good typist and had no problem adapting.
I will keep you posted on how this “old school” project turns out. I typed a page on my Underwood, and my fingers are throbbing.
An old friend of mine passed a few months ago. We had been apart for years, yet he held a distinct place in my thoughts. I sometimes borrowed fragments of his vivid life for my short stories, which pleased him. His name was simply Junior. He believed a last name was of no consequence and cared little for family ties.
In 1957, he opened a coffee house in the heart of downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Although they will tell you that “The Cellar” was the first, the “Hip Hereford” came first by a full year.
Junior was born to be a cowboy. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and all the uncles and cousins wore the same boots and lived by the code of the West. There were more cowboys in his bloodline than in a John Wayne film. It should have been his fate. But then, his favorite horse, Little Bill, kicked him hard in the head. After that, he turned his back on the rugged ideals of the West. He became the owner of a coffee house club, a renaissance man, a poet, and a man who lived life like a Stetson-wearing beatnik. He said a life spent on a sweaty saddle, inhaling the stench of cattle farts, was not the life he dreamed of.
The opening night for the coffee house was Halloween 1957. Junior hires two street winos to help run the door and do odd jobs. They were reluctant to give him their birth names, so he christened them Wino 1 and Wino 2. They were good to go as long as Junior paid them and kept the booze flowing. The following is an excerpt from the unfinished story.
Around 7:15, Wino 2 informs Junior that the first performer has arrived and takes the stage for the introduction. He steps to the mic and, in that pleasant voice, says, “Ladies and gents, please welcome to the stage, Mr. Blind Jelly-roll Jackson and his nurse Carpathia.”
An ancient black man with hair as white as South Texas cotton, holding a guitar as old as himself, is helped to the stage by a prim female nurse dressed in a starched white uniform. The old man wears a red smoking jacket, a silver ascot, and black trousers. Dark sunglasses and a white cane complete his ensemble. The old fellow is as blind as Ray Charles.
The nurse gently seats the old gentleman in a chair provided by Wino 1 and lowers the large silver microphone to a height between his face and his guitar. She then stands to the side of the stage, just out of the spotlight. Blind Jelly Roll starts strumming his guitar like he’s hammering a ten-penny nail. Thick, viscous down strokes with note-bending riffs in between. His frail body rocks with every note he coaxes out of his tortured instrument. He leans into the mic and sings,
“We’s gonna have us a mess o’ greens tonight…haw..haw..haw…haw…gonna wash her down with some cold Schlitz beer..haw..haw..haw..gonna visit ma woman out on Jacksboro way…gonna get my hambone greased”. This was Texas blues at its best.
On cue, his nurse steps into the spotlight, extracts a shiny Marine Band harmonica from her pocket, and cuts loose on a sixteen-bar mouth-harp romp. Her ruby-red lips attack that “hornica” like a ten-year-old eating a Fat Stock Show Corndog. The crowd loves it. They dig it. When Blind Jelly Roll finishes his song, Wino 2 passes a small basket through the group for tips. Jelly Roll and his nurse take their kitty and depart. He’s due back at the old folk’s home before midnight.
Momo and I are gearing up for our yearly trip to the Texas Bermuda Triangle: Marfa, Fort Davis, and Alpine. Strange lights, strange people, and a weird town full of characters out of a 1950s sci-fi western movie. We love the place. So in honor of our love for this quirky village, I’m revisiting a post about our last journey into the Chihuahuan Desert, the twilight zone of Big Bend, Texas.
In the days of COVID-19, when darkness, despair, and lemming-like stupidity seemed to envelop the world, every soul, human and animal alike, found themselves confined to their homes, forbidden to roam: even the wandering Buffalo was home-bound. It was then that Momo and I made a pact to evade the restrictions and set out on a clandestine journey to the remote Chihuahuan Desert, with our sights set on the enigmatic and quirky town of Marfa, nestled in the vast expanses of big sky West Texas. We had no idea that a small blurb of a village in the middle of the desert would be so ghosted. It was eerie in an Alfred Hitchcock movie way. We did find a small burrito hut, grabbed a few, and returned to Granbury. The trip was an utterly bummerited loss.
I wrote an unkind, snarky post about our Marfa visit in my hour of exasperated, irritated, and agitated gloom. The older I get, the more the little things in life send me into a combat zone of petulant whining and unforgiveness. So we were both surprised that, having a cocktail on our patio one evening, we decided to give little ole’ Marfa a second chance. We plotted a trip that would take us into the Chihuahuan Triangle, which, from what I have read, is a dry land version of the one-off of Bermuda. Marfa, Alpine, and Fort Davis make up the Texas twilight zone. Ghostly lights in the mountains, shooting stars that stop and change directions, and strange-looking young people wearing Keep Austin Weird tee-shirts that wander the streets at night searching for live music: it’s all there.
Hotel Piasano
Being a fan of the great Texas movie “Giant,” the Hotel Piasano, where the cast stayed during the 1955-56 filming, was our only historical option. Arriving in the afternoon, the lady at the check-in desk was gracious and friendly. She gave us the “classic” room, which in the hotel language means one that had not been renovated since the 1930s. That’s fine with us; we are interested in the historical value and feel of the place. I noticed some of the rooms were the star suites, so I asked about those. The concierge told us that the Rock Hudson room is available for around half a grand a night and includes a lighted display cabinet featuring the original book of wedding photos from his make-believe marriage. We passed. The Liz Taylor suite was priced the same and included a small lighted curio cabinet showcasing a dainty Italian crystal decanter filled with her spit. Momo said no. The James Dean suite showcased his favorite toiletry in a glass cabinet, his comb, and a half-used tube of Brylcream. No, on that one, too. The concierge did say that our room is rumored to have been the one that Chill Wills occupied, so we gave it a go. She added that the entire hotel is extremely haunted, so beware of ghostly appearances and personal items being relocated.
Liz, Rock, and Houston in Marfa 1955
Considering all the warnings about ectoplasmic phenomena, we unpacked in our classic room, which includes a 1930s-style bathroom with a corner shower and a drain in the sloped tile floor. I know damn well that Chill Wills could not have got his big ole Texas boy butt into this shower. French doors opened to a private walled patio with an outside stucco fireplace. How nice is that? I could picture Chill and Dennis Hopper sharing a whiskey by the fire. We enjoyed a cocktail while observing a thunderstorm roll over the mysterious mountains.
Our dinner at Jett’s Grill was nothing to text back home: My pork chop was too pink, and Momo’s chicken surprise lived up to its name; she was surprised it tasted like cardboard and cost thirty dollars. I enjoyed a Jameson Irish Whiskey on the rocks for almost twenty dollars, and Momo had a whiskey with ginger ale for twenty-one dollars; they charged her for the ginger ale. After paying the check, we felt a bit violated. We spent the rest of our evening in the classic room, waiting for another distant thunderstorm from over the mysterious mountains.
Planet Marfa
Local Marfites at Planet Marfa enjoy a brew, and Sagebrush Sonny is seated far left.
Planet Marfa became our next foray into the Big Bend Twilight Zone. The place took up half a city block. Inside was a genuine transcendental Indian meditation TePee, a full-size school bus dedicated to dogs, a modest kitchen offering the renowned Red Barron Pizza, and a bar bustling with locals partaking in their afternoon meet-and-greet. I found myself at the bar’s edge, ready to place an order, when I noticed an elderly gentleman perched on a stool beside me. Out of a sense of camaraderie, I motioned to the bartender to pour the old man another beer, my treat. He acknowledged the gesture gratefully, and we exchanged pleasantries as we shook hands and introduced ourselves. Resembling a character straight out of a Gabby Hayes movie, he embodied the quintessential oddity one might encounter in Marfa. Sagebrush Sonny Toluse, as he called himself, had called Marfa home for nigh on sixty years, having relocated from Presidio, Texas, a town situated right on the Mexico border and reputed to be the hottest spot in Texas.
I noticed Sagebrush Sonny had a wooden peg leg where his right-side human leg would normally be. He noticed me staring and felt compelled to explain his missing appendage. He asked if we were planning to visit the desert and view the famous Marfa lights. I said yes, we intend to do that tonight. He said they were quite a sight, but he warned me not to get caught out there after midnight: bad things happen in the desert.
He said he got caught out there after midnight about thirty years ago after his truck broke down. He decided to walk to town since he was close enough to see the glow of town lights, and that’s when a large pack of mongrels set upon him. He asked me if I had ever wondered why the desert was called the Chihuahuan Desert. I had no idea, so he explained. After the atomic bomb was built, the Army needed a place to dump the nuclear waste, so they chose a spot way out there, stashed some drums of goop, and left them to the elements. Over in Mexico, a fella was breeding Chihuahua dogs, and two of them got lost in the desert; of course, they found the nuclear waste site and lapped up some of the contaminated oozes, which did some crazy things to their DNA. Doing what dogs do, they had some pups, and then the pups met up with some Coyotes and had some more pups. The dogs kept on breeding until there were three or four thousand of the critters, except they weren’t regular dogs. They were all muscled up with shark-like teeth, and some had a fifth leg that allowed them to run like a greyhound dog. The mutts were still small, like a Chihuahua, but they were mutants and mean as hell. That’s how I lost my leg. A pack of them set upon me out there in the dark. I was trying to run, dragging some of them that had hold of my dungeree’s and then they started chewing my right leg. Since they were small, they could only reach up to my knee, and that’s where they stopped eating on me. A highway patrol came along and shot a few of the stragglers and took me to the hospital over in Presidio, where the doctor amputated what was left. That’s why I have the peg leg, and they are the reason it’s called the Chihuahuan Desert. The story alone made the trip a success.
Before I kicked the smoking habit, I look better now
Old people do odd things: I know this firsthand. I’m good at it. A few months ago, the urge to gather and distribute my personal items to family and friends took hold. 2 am in the wee hours, wide awake, I wrote a list of my treasures and who might be the recipient when I assume room temperature. I found that over the years, I have accumulated more useless crap that no one would want.
My tool shed, art studio, storage shed, and junk pile will likely go to the nice folks at the local Goodwill store. The handicap shower chair and the two walkers will stay. The nice walker, the one with four wheels, a handbrake, and a seat, will likely be my new ride. Some guys get a Corvette; I get a souped-up walker. My friend Mooch says he can add a battery-powered motor to make the baby run 30 MPH.
A few weeks back, I bought back one of my acoustic guitars that I sold to Mooch when Momo and I moved to Georgetown, Texas in 2008. It’s a real beaut: a Gibson-made Epiphone E J160 e. Only fifty of them were made in Bozeman, Montana, likely by some of the Yellowstone Dutton family. Now, I have one guitar for each of my three grandchildren, of whom two play guitar.
Us’un humans collect things throughout our lives; it’s our nature. At the time, we might have needed them, but eventually, the things become useless “things” taking up space.
Momo and I are taking a road trip in mid-April. Back to Marfa and Fort Davis, Texas, the Big Bend Chihuahuan Desert. God’s country, big sky and brilliant stars. Marfa is our go-to escape. The town is full of eccentric street-rat crazy folks, and we enjoy interacting with them. I plan to interview a few while sitting at the bar in Planet Marfa, where most of them congregate nightly to swap lies and tell tall tales. I fit right in, my kind of folks, and I need fodder for my stories and yarns. I may fill my pickup full of “things” and give them to the characters I meet. Folks like free stuff and can give the things to their friends down the line.
My grandfather, in 1917-18, served in the Army and the war to end all wars: World War 1. He fought in the mud and bacteria filled trenches in France: wounded twice and gassed once. He killed Germans in close hand to hand combat with a bayonet and a knife, never forgetting the look on the faces. He lost friends in vicious battles. There was no time to grieve or pay respects. That would come later in life.
Looking back through my childhood relationship with him, he likely suffered from what we now call PTSD. My Grandmother said he was a different man after that war, and at times, not a good one.
He refused to talk about the fighting and killing until I was around ten-years-old, and he was dying from Lymphoma cancer. His doctors at the VA Hospital said it was caused by the gassing he received in the war. He knew that I might someday go to war, so he wanted to let me know it was not like the movies.
We sat for a many hours one afternoon a few weeks before his passing. His descriptions of battle and the things he had done for his own survival was beyond anything I could imagine. I was young, and war to me was black and white movies. James Cagney in “The Fighting 69th,” or John Wayne and a host of others playing army, like my neighborhood friends and I did. No one really died, and when shot, there was no blood or screaming.
The last few days of his life were spent in and out of reality, reliving those battles as he lay in a veteran’s hospital in Dallas. My father, a veteran himself, was the recipient of my grandfathers last horrors. Those days my father sat by his bed, listening to the nightmare his father had carried for all those years, had a profound effect on him.
John Henry Strawn made sure I knew what real honor and duty were about. It followed him for a lifetime.
Chapter 19: The continuing saga of the Strawn family and the challenges of living in Texas during the 1930s and 1940s.
Johnny Strawn around 1948, Fort Wort,h Texas
My grandfather, John Henry, walked to his job at the furniture shop. Years ago, the same place had closed down, driven by the Depression, forcing him to move his family to California for work. Now, twelve years later, he has taken giant steps back, from a good job in Los Angeles to once more building furniture for an hour’s wage. Defeat weighs heavily in his heart. Middle age has come, and the future is murky. So, doing what men do, he keeps walking, counting his steps to nowhere. There are many to blame, but he alone bears the burden of his failures.
The iced ground crunches under his shoes. The cold goes to his bones. His jacket is no match for this weather. He favors the feel of the ground beneath his feet over the Ford sedan in the garage, which is idle most of the time and now a home for mice and other wandering critters.
After the upsetting homecoming with his father, Johnny walked a few blocks to the small neighborhood grocery store to call his best friend, Dick Hickman. His father remained firm in his decision about the telephone, vowing to never have one in the house. The old man viewed the contraption as a rattlesnake in a bag. Lousy news reached him in time enough; no reason to expedite misery.
Two sisters from Germany ran the store, always open, even when the ice storm howled outside. They preferred work to idleness; a dollar was worth more than knitting by the stove. They missed their homeland, but not the darkness that had settled under Hitler’s shadow. Johnny walked in and felt the warmth; they had known him since he was a boy. Following a few hearty hugs and cheek kisses, he was offered a mug of coffee, hot and strong with bourbon and a hint of cinnamon, a taste of what once was.
Dick and Johnny had forged a bond on the playground one morning; Dick was trapped by older boys, their intentions were dark, and Dick knew he was in for a ruckus. Johnny, a full head smaller than Dick, added his small fist for ammunition. A few busted lips and a bloody nose ended the altercation, and the boys would be bound for life by bloody noses and skint knuckles.
Dicks mother, a woman of stern Christian resolve, lived simply, her heart full of faith. Father Hickman was a ghost of a man, suddenly appearing from nowhere, then off again to somewhere. Mother Hickman, as she was called, gave what little extra money they had to Preacher J. Frank Norris, the charismatic leader of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Nice clothes were a luxury during the Depression, and most children at R. Vickery’s school wore hand-me-downs or worse. Dick wore the yellow welfare pants distributed by the Salvation Army, a sign that his folks were poor. Mother Hickman saw nice clothing as a sign of waste, except when it came to her Sunday fashions. Johnny had a pair of those detestable canvas pants but refused to wear them; the old dungarees with patches did just fine.
Both boys felt the weight of loss when the Strawn family left for the promised land. They exchanged a few postcards during the years in California. Nevertheless, they adhered to the unspoken rule that young men did not write to one another. This was a relic of manly notions of the time. A line or two every six months was enough. Both joined the Navy around the same time, meeting briefly in Pearl Harbor. Then came the seriousness of war. Young sailors, they carried on.
Dick arrived at the two sisters’ store to fetch Johnny. His transportation was a rattle-trap Cushman motor scooter. It refused to stop on the icy street. The scooter slid on its side into the curb and threw Dick off of the beast. The ride to Dick’s apartment was a jolt, far worse than the taxi. Johnny vowed to buy a car when the weather cleared, maybe one for his buddy, too. He held a tidy wad of cash from Hawaii.
A brotherly deal was struck. Johnny would share Dick’s large apartment on Galveston Street, splitting the rent and bills evenly. They were friends again, but now men, and they had different thoughts, dreams, and needs. Dick was courting a young woman from Oklahoma and doing a miserable job of it. Still, marriage lingered in the air, heavy like the rich aroma of brewing coffee, the kind they both drank too much of. Dick took his poison with cream and sugar; Johnny preferred his black and strong.
Johnny’s goal was to play music for a living, and this was the right city to make that happen. He joined the musicians’ union and sent a message to Bob Wills that he was back in Fort Worth.
Wills was now the celebrated band leader of the western swing band, The Texas Playboys. He remembered that meeting at the radio show in Bakersfield, California, long ago. The boy stood out. It was no small feat because Wills was the finest fiddle player in country music.
Bob Wills was not a man known for kindness. He could be brash and indifferent to fans and bandmates alike. Yet, for Johnny, he made an exception. Bob took the young man under his wing, becoming a mentor to my father. A few calls were made, and the boot was in the door. Johnny secured auditions at some of Fort Worth’s best clubs, and each went well. Bob invited him to rehearse with the Playboys. It was there he met men who would soon be legends in country music. A few years later, he would find himself in that circle.
I celebrated my birthday a while back, and my sister gifted me with an Ancestry.com account. For years, I have been curious about where my family roots sprouted from and who they really are. I knew about the crazy aunts and rowdy cowboys in old Fort Worth, but was interested in the other gray ghosts from the family’s past.
When the kit arrived, I spat into the tube and sent it away. A few weeks later, I received the results via email. It was not what I had expected.
I look like an Indian, and my mother looked Indian, as did my grandmother, who was an American Indian of some importance. She grew up on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma, making Buffalo hide clothing and sleeping in a tepee. She was also more than friends with the famous Chief Quanah Parker. My mother told me that Grandmother and Quanah walked in the misty moonlight by the shores of Lake Minga-Minga more than once. So who is to question that? Ancestry.com, of course. They say I am a full-bore European from bonny Scotland. Not one mention of my Native American genealogy. Furious with the outcome, I call Ancestry and give them a piece of my mind.
I ranted a bit about this and that and how wrong they are. Then, the kind lady told me that Native American heritage is almost impossible to confirm because the tribal councils refuse to comply with DNA testing and release records. She assured me I was an Indian and could go on acting like one if it pleased me. I am better now.
I am pleased to let my family and friends know that I am still related to Belle Starr, Chief Quanah Parker, Chief Grey Squirrel, and Dancing Rain Doe. Our Cherokee heritage is intact, and our war bonnets fly in the wind.
The best part is that as a kid playing cowboys and Indians, I always played Tonto and can now prove I was a real Indian. As Chief Dan George once said, “May the wings of Eagles carry you to a peaceful land full of fat game and cold beer.” Kemosabe.
On Ash Wednesday, I made a somewhat firm decision to give up my beloved Cheetos for Lent. Last year, it was Ding Dongs and Pepsi Cola, and I wound up eating Twinkies and Dr. Pepper after three days, when I fell off the Lent wagon. At least, I stuck with my original plan.
On my way to see Father Frank, my priest at OurLady of Perpetual Repentance, I stopped by Walmart for one last Cheetos fix. Standing in line at the checkout, I noticed shoppers with a tiny ink cross on their forehead. Odd. Then, I saw the lady behind me sported a small “Pokemon” sticker on her forehead. She noticed I was staring like a goon and said, “our priest ran out of palm ashes, and this was all he had left. It’s the blessing that counts.” Well, she had a point. When the Holy Father runs out of blessed stuff, he has to make do with available products.
I headed over to the church, finishing my bag of Cheetos and hiding it under the seat like a teenager does a beer can in the family car.
Two blocks from the church, the traffic was hardly moving, and I think business must be brisk for the good Father.
As I inched closer, I saw Father Frank standing at the curb, giving his blessing to the car’s occupants, leaning through the windows, and marking their foreheads. The next car up followed the same protocol. He ran cars through the line like a good day at McDonalds. Then it dawned on me: Father Frank was offering take-out Lent blessings to our flock. What a novel idea, so 2025.
I pulled up to his curbside church and rolled down my window. The multi-tasking Priest handed me a pamphlet with a prayer, crossed himself, and touched my forehead. ” Go in Peace, my son,” he muttered and gave me the peace sign. “Sorry about running out of ash,” he said.
” Back at, you, Father,” I responded and drove away.
When I arrived home, my wife asked me where I had been for so long. I explained the trip to Walmart, the Cheetos binge, and then Father Frank’s take-out Lent blessing and such, thus the extended time frame. She was staring at me like a goon when she asked, ” did you find anything at the garage sale?”
” What garage sale?” I replied.
She reached up to my forehead and pulled off a small round orange sticker with $1.00 written on it.
The good Father has to make do with what he has available. It’s the blessing that counts. Right?
Notes From The Cactus Patch 