November 15 years ago: my, how time flies!

 

 Several days late, I know, but here are three senryu in honor of Veteran’s Day:

 

the little girl

and her doll

among the veterans

crisp autumn winds ~
praise all veterans who fought
for our freedom

visit to vets’ home
the child asking
Where are the snacks?

 

How time flies. Especially in retrospect.  Please share in a reminiscence of one morning when we lived in Arkadelphia. Billy (grandson) was ten years old.

 

“Monday Morning, November 13, 2000”---At 5:35, the alarm sounded. I punched the snooze button and continued my dream.

At 5:45, I did the same—unusual, because I generally rise and shut off the alarm. At the third buzz, I sat up, killed the alarm, donned the green socks I threw off last night, and the old purple fleece robe I’d worn forever.

 

Yesterday’s schedule left no time to read the Sunday paper except for a quick scan of the obits. Warming up stale coffee, lacing it with diet Pepsi from last night’s return trip from Benton in the driving rain, I began my journal entry.

 

 Forty minutes later--at 6:40—the timer beeped. With it still sounding, I carried it to Billy’s sleeping place on the floor between my bed and the closet. I nudged his leg with my foot. “Time to wake up. Five more minutes,” I said.

 

At the second ring, I pulled all the covers off him. He smiled behind closed eyes. “I’m sleepy. Give me five more minutes.” No wonder: he’d spent all Sunday afternoon at Austin King’s rescheduled birthday party, and after the second trip to Benton for choir practice, it was ten p.m. before he’d gotten to bed.

 

He came to breakfast wrapped in a light quilt. Though he has plenty of pajamas, he chose to sleep without a shirt. He saved his soggy cereal “for tomorrow. I like soggy.” He did eat half a banana.

 

He dressed, but the sandals came off when he discovered how cold it was outside. Neighbor Jesse’s outgrown, low-cut rubber boots fit the bill.

 

Ritalin, teeth-brushing, rubber bands on braces—this was Billy’s toilette. “Can I turn on TV?”

 

“No, get your bedding out of my room; I need to get into the closet today.”

Done. “Can I go outside?”

“No, pick up your dirty clothes, bring them in here, and close the drawers— what if someone came to look at renting the house when we move?”

Done, but not without grumbling. “Can I go outside?”

 

“Yes.” Two minutes remained until 7:25, the time I set to leave home—getting ahead of the school traffic, but not too early for school personnel, who are on site by 7:30.

 

He took his backpack outside, dropped it in the recycling box and picked up a short-handled racket and a tennis ball. 

 

Gathering my walking gear, keys and purse, I exited and locked the house.

 

At my car door, I saw a bed sheet on the floor of the carport. “Billy! Come here and pick this up!” It was part of the covers he took in the car for the early morning drive to Benton yesterday. (I was music director at SUMC. Church in the morning; choir rehearsal in the evening.)

“How did this get here?” he asked--a rhetorical question.

“Drop it on the steps.” He did and entered the car.

We backed out, and saw Byron, our neighbor, tractoring two mattresses to the curb for today’s “big items” pickup. He gave us a thumbs-up. When we’d driven to the Y at Henderson, Billy piped up.

“I forgot my backpack!”

 

Oh, did I explode. “Drat it, Billy.” I spun the car around and gunned back up 15^th Street. I hadn’t reminded him. No, he didn’t say that, I did—to myself. Just how much micromanaging must I do?

 

I tore up gravel on our driveway. “You know how much I hate traffic,” I used as my excuse for such a show of anger.

 

I needn’t have rushed. Nor gotten angry. But when a grandmother raises a child, sometimes it happens.

 

Thanks for sharing the trip down memory lane. Billy now lives in Arkadelphia, works at Cracker Barrel and Game Stop, pays a car payment and rent each month. Has completed six years-plus of college hours. We’ve come a long way together.

A bit of nostalgia if you don’t mind

from Google Images

 

 

                 From last Monday till this one, I brainstormed, researched, took notes, wrote possible scenarios and then two chapters of The Sequel to my novel, A Journey of Choice. Was I tired! Spent! But I needed a subject for a different project. Where would I find it? In this mess I call an office? 

                Serendipitously, while going through sheets of old paper looking for some to print on the back—I found. . . I found . . . an orange sheet to which a yellowed newspaper article was clipped. The date was October 8, 2000.

The article was the “Arkansas Traveler” column by Charles Allbright. The headline read, “Last (but not least) names,” and the first words of the article were PAT LASTER TAUGHT SCHOOL 27 years . . . .

Even 13 years ago, I was keeping a log of names. 

Here, without permission from either Mr. Allbright or the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette bigwigs, I’ll reprint it as it was.

“Pat Laster taught school 27 years, then one day found herself running wild-eyed out of her classroom, never to return. The devil helped her do it.

“'I’d endured all the L. and A. I could take.' Lip and Attitude, from parents. A few each semester can engage the world’s most hopeful profession in ongoing dogfight.

“Pat Laster believes that J. Gatling is not catching the same from parents in Morrilton. She loves J.’s autumnal ritual of studying the names of his new students in Morrilton High. Then sharing them, as lyrics for a hopeful tomorrow.

“'I hope Mr. G. can keep it up longer.'

“So. How go Pat Laster’s days?

“'In the quiet of my mornings with only the fan’s whir and the calico’s purr, I take names, too. Mostly from the obituaries in newspapers.' Special names? None can be more special. Names of those who died. Their loved ones. Their pallbearers. Their preachers. Most are at the far end of Mr. Gatling’s life songs.

“And what will Pat Laster do with her houseful of special names? Why, put them in her novel, of course. Maybe employing the begat format. Or Faulkner’s stream of consciousness. Somebody said Requiem for a Nun went 42 pages before encountering its first period. No, no, not your antebellum kind of period. The punctuation mark that ends a sentence. We will be checking this for truth. For one thing, we love the book. For another, true or untrue, where will you find a better example of a mind’s running dolefully amok?

“With deepest respect, Pat Laster enters names from the newspapers in her journal. These are Arkansas names:

“Orbin. Drue. Chane. Dyka. Chelese. Phala. Waldine. Dibrell. Bobara. Destine. Lucchese. Delta. Dakota. Homerleen. Vileras. Duard. Dax. Malderine. Timber. Nela. Delbra. Kendyl. Reck. Lapria. Shanny. Odd.

“It never occurred to B. F. Allbright that his name was, well, unusual. Brice Fount. Get outta here. We once asked his mother, Grandma Allbright, where’d that combination of names come from. Grandma was then in her 97^th year, not in full possession of her communicating skills. She was in absolute possession of a mouthful of Rooster snuff. It could have been three weeks later when she answered:

“'Why’nt you go ask his daddy?'

A challenge. His daddy died when Brice Fount was 7. Took pneumonia, Thomas Finley Allbright did, trying to save his school from being destroyed by fire. But it was gone. So was he. Up in Valley Springs, near Harrison, you’ll find a stone building identified as Allbright Hall. The granddad we never knew.

“Not bragging here. Just pointing out, not everybody with this family name was a lightweight columnist.

“But back to Pat Laster and her collection of names in Arkadelphia.

“The surnames are likewise interesting: Box. Roach. Strain. Kindsfather. Thesaurus. Hum. Peeks. Bear. Sink. Cotton. Fang. Jobs. Said. Smellback. Hamlet. Pouncey. Bottoms. Boatenhammer. Winbush. Carrier. Grooms. Looms. Lawman. Woodring. Battle. France. Johndroe. Whitehouse. Swindle. Hutchcraft.”

Pat, here. I was amazed to re-read this. Charles Allbright—I think—is still around, and reading about him is, well, nostalgic. Well worth the effort to look him up.