Wall Decor'

            Do you often find yourself at a standstill when it comes to deciding what to hang on your walls?  We are so fortunate to have a menagerie of choices at our disposal.  Between mirrors, botanical pictures, oil paintings, tapestries, floral arrangements, clocks, wrought iron and family photo’s it is so easy to understand that making a choice is one of the hardest things to do.   Even as a practiced decorator I often question myself. What do I put there?  Is the scale too large or is it too small?  Do I have too much on the wall or not enough?  Then finding that special piece for that one particular area sometimes can take a long time.  Unless something just really “Wow’s me“, I can get discouraged.   I even have made purchases, hung them on the wall and said to myself, oh no, you really got that one wrong! 

 The media advertises multitudes of art.  I must commend there are some extraordinarily talented people out there.  They can really put out some beautiful things.  But there again, some of it is just plain junk.   At those times, I think “What were they thinking”?  Obviously they were not.  Home Furnishings is just like fashion; it’s either a hit or miss.  Over the years, I have seen a few hits and some misses.  Myself, I love theatrics and if it doesn’t carry some sort of punch, then I toss the idea.  I have found some great ideas that are worth sharing.   I do recognize there are those out there who appreciate subtleties and I highly value their opinions so I have included some of those as well.  Like I said I’m into theatrics and that’s just my taste.  I like things that catch the eye and say immediately “What a knockout ” and that also includes what clothes I buy! So the next time you’re out looking for that special somethin’ somethin’, I hope you find that special something that knocks your socks off!

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a raindance...

How to stop church gossip..

Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business.  Several members did not approve of her extra-curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.  She made a mistake, however, when she accused Frank, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one afternoon.  She emphatically told Frank (along with several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing!  Frank, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away.  He did not explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing. 

Later that evening, Frank quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house ... walked home .... and left it there all night.   (You gotta love Frank!)

Get Your Pumpkins ON!

If you haven't already started, it's not too late. Cooler temperatures evoke that fall feeling in everyone. Check out the cool photo's for decorating with pumpkins. As I often say, once a decorator, always a decorator. At least I'm writing about it!

How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?  ~ 

If anyone knows the answer to the above mentioned questions, please feel free to comment.

My Little Muse...

It's always darkest before the dawn.  So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.  ~

Past Sins

          Fall signifies different things for different people.  Most individuals I know are chomping at the bit for cooler temperatures and the turning of leaves.  Myself, I love the profusion of scarecrows and pumpkins that adorn front porches, crock pot meals, and at last, yes, football.  I’m not an avid football watcher and I know that is a sin in the south.  I just like all the things associated with it.  Football is a season.  There are those who believe  there should be a mandate to change the order of this time by just omitting the word “fall” from the obvious four seasons and let the new order be, spring, summer, winter, and football.  This is not just a southern trait.  People throughout the U.S. would probably pass an amendment to the constitution to show their support of this national obsession.  Football has been a part of all forty-one falls I have been blessed to partake in.  I truly never remember a fall without it and it would be a felony to say that I had; at least in my house, or even the state I live in.

Football comes in many forms.  We have pee wee, youth, middle school, high school, college, and the NFL.  I know I didn’t need to name them all but I had nothing else better to do.  No, that’s not true.  There are several things I think of when I think of football. First and foremost my son plays and with all his practices and then Saturday games, my brain is not allowed to go into sleep mode where his division is concerned.  As college football begins, I automatically think of the University my father attended and then of our college rivalry which is where my husband attended.  I now live in a house divided.

  Often I like to filter through my past.  I do enjoy remembering when I was a cheerleader for a season and how I didn’t like it.  Then my mind flows further into the library files of football homecomings past and those I attended.  Those thoughts tend to guide me to memories of bon fires, marching bands, drum solos, homecoming queens, Pep rallies, sign painting parties, floats, boosters, and finally, those large white mums.  As a girl, mums were a big part of homecoming.  I’m sure mums would not have figured into the imagination of most everyone else’s “football” equation but I can picture those large mum corsages girls wore each homecoming.   Those mum corsages had more ribbons and paraphernalia on them and they were almost the size of each girl’s heads.   I remember our local grocery store’s floral department had those sought after mums on display weeks prior to the game. 

“Place your order now!”   The sign would read.  The order forms indicated you could add a tiny cow bell, a small gold football, or a small megaphone for one dollar each.  The mums could also be personalized.  Not only could you have the high school’s name personalized in glitter on one twelve foot long ribbon, but you could add the year and include your name and your homecoming dates name.   

Remembering those mums and all those ribbons is bittersweet for me.  Every fall I have mums scattered on my front porch and when I enter the local garden shop I am drawn to them.  But the smell always inevitably evokes a chain of events to link me to those mum corsages.  I have a lot of wonderful football memories I have accumulated these last twenty-three years since I graduated high school.  Although, I have one memory from my high school years that continues to still haunt me.  It’s not a happy memory and every fall I still feel that pang of guilt which I trust God must still be punishing me for by not allowing that memory to fade from my mind.

When I started junior high school this was when I had my first “true” football experience.  The junior high school and high school where I attended were basically joined together.  Homecoming week was always full of so much excitement.  I don’t believe the entire student body studied anything other than football for the entire week.    I remember the scent of testosterone from the football locker room, filled the air with such intensity that the power of it made everyone feel invincible.  Everyone was so high on their own endorphins there was no way we could have focused on anything other than winning that Friday night.

 In seventh grade I learned nature’s order of things.  I studied the rituals of the courting process and how man’s animalistic instincts came into the decision making of who asked who to this extremely major event in my hometown.  The following year, my eighth grade year, I, like every other girl, prayed reverently someone would ask me to homecoming.   I remember as every day passed and the date of homecoming grew closer the ultimate gripping fear of not being asked became unbearable.  Oh, the shame, everyone would know the following Monday that I was left out.  The sensation of being excluded from this ritual overwhelmed me with such distress I remember thinking I must be one hideous creature.  All the beautiful girls had already been asked by someone.   I was not worthy of being asked. 

What a little idiot I was.  I can say that now looking back at how ridiculous I behaved while alone in my room waiting for that stupid phone to ring, or sitting in class after class waiting for that tap on the shoulder, being passed a folded note, then secretly unfolding it ever so slowly and reading the note behind a book.  Reading those words I had painfully obsessed over for weeks penciled in on those ruled lines. 

“Will you go with me to homecoming?  Circle one. Yes or No.    Signed Joe Blankety Blank”.

Unfortunately, the phone never rang and the note was never passed.    I had not had the luxury of shopping for a new outfit.  There was no need.  I wasn’t going with anyone so I wasn’t going to the game at all.  I would be labeled as a misfit; the odd one out.  Then  I was met with something I was unprepared for.    I was stopped in the hallway after my second period class and formally asked by a tall dark headed young man if I would go to homecoming with him.  As far as I was concerned I had won the golden ticket.  I still admire the direct, polite, gentlemanly respectful way that young man asked me for a date.  It is with those manners I will encourage and instruct my own son to behave when he is old enough to do so.  I was asked!!!  My wish had been granted.  No more star gazing for me!   

As the day progressed, word spread of my upcoming date with Joe Blankety Blank, as it often does in high school.  Cliché’s such as like a wild fire would apply.   Silent snickers behind hands, pointed fingers, and peals of laughter followed me from history and to English.  I skipped lunch to avoid the gossip.   I spent my lunch period hiding in the bathroom stalls, ultimately regretting the decision I was about to make (I simply couldn’t go now that everyone was “talking”).  I know without any hesitation, teenagers are some of the most vicious and most vile creatures God ever created and that is being somewhat lenient.   Having been one and having one of my very own, confirms this. What was ultimately worse was my reaction to their behavior.   I allowed it to affect my judgment, my morals and the way my momma raised me.  Listening to the exchanges of those living organisms propelled me into a group which I will categorize as morally unforgiveable.  

The dictionary partially characterizes an idiot as a person of profound mental retardation.   I accept that assessment of me during that period of my life.  I was not retarded by behaved as though I was. 

The next day was homecoming.  I feigned sickness to my mother who did not believe me and sent me to school as she should have.  She had suspected what was up given the number of phone calls I was receiving and she had in good conscious eavesdropped on those phone calls.  She proceeded to tell me how I had shamed her by even discussing with my friends the final verdict before telling my “date” of my decision.  Inside, I was ashamed.   I hurt at the thought of it.  Throughout the day I had every opportunity to tell that very nice young man, I had changed my mine and I wasn’t going to go with him.   But I chickened out.  There is not a bad word out there I haven’t already said about myself unless it’s in a different language.  All the English versions, yes I have called myself every one of those because of this self-inflected problem.

  I am cringing now as I type this final act regarding one of the most remorseful scenes of my life.  About an hour after I arrived home from school the day of homecoming, the phone started to ring continuously.  I refused to answer it.  I knew it was him.  After about the thousandth time, my mother answered and handed me the phone.  I ran to my room.  I wasn’t even gracious enough to tell him no.  I ignored him.  My mother told the young man to call back in five minutes but that my father would be driving me to the game.  I remember my bedroom door being yanked off the hinges by my 5’5, 120 pound mother and thrown into the yard behind our house, I know not really but she was that angry.  Oh, my Lord to say she was "just mad"  that’s being on the lite side.  I don't think there is a word in the dictionary that could describe how she felt but to say she was formidably outraged is a start.  She forcibly made me sit by the phone and wait for him to call.  She told me to tell him my Dad was driving me to the game and I would be waiting for him at the gate promptly at 7:00.  I sat there and waited, and waited and finally the phone did ring.  It was about thirty minutes later.  My mother answered the phone and shoved it in my face.  I spoke oddly and voiced a faint hello. 

The voice on the other end spoke and asked me if I was still going with him to the game.  I hung up the phone without even responding.  The phone did not ring again.  I did go to the game though.  My father powerfully put my sorry butt in the car and drove me to the football game.  He didn’t pay for my ticket either.  He bought and paid for himself a ticket and went in and watched the game while I stood at the gate waiting for a boy who I knew would never come.  I had humiliated him and that was enough.

I thought the worst was over and by Sunday had prepared myself for the following Monday at school.  This young man was in my math class and I knew I would have to face him but I would just pretend the entire incidence did not occur.

I remember walking towards the school and the young man met me and stopped me in the parking lot.  I started to speak and he stopped me by just putting up his hand.  He reached down to his backpack and pulled out a plastic corsage box with one of those coveted football mums.  He then shoved it in my hands and walked away.  I can never say there has been a time when I have ever felt lower because of the utmost cruelty at which I behaved. 

My husband knows of this story and his response was he would have shoved the mum down my throat.  It is no more than I would have deserved honestly.  This saga does have a somewhat happy ending.  This young man and I managed to mend our feelings of that horrible incident and he forgave me.  We were friends, close friends actually, throughout the rest of high school.  If you’re asking yourself the question, why?  Maybe you should ask him.  My belief is he had more moral fiber about himself than anyone else I know.  To forgive someone for something which seems almost unforgiveable says a lot about a person’s character.  On a different side, God does have a way of dealing with cruel people such as me; never being allowed to forget your past sins.

My Muse...

When you become senile, you won't know it.

15 Books

I was sent a Note on FB about 15 books I have read that made an impact.

Here's the note:

 Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends chose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note.)


These are the books I've enjoyed reading over the years and would read again and again.  Of course, there are far more than 15 but it would put you to sleep if I listed more.


1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
2.  The Firm
3.  The Hobbit
4.  Lord of the Rings 1- 3
5.  The Flame of New Orleans
6.  Joy in the Morning
7.  Where the Lillies Bloom
8.  Gone With the Wind
9.  Absolute Power
10.  Scarlett
11.  Divinci Code
12.  Flowers for Algernon
13.  Heidi
14.  The Secret Garden
15.  All Over But the Shoutin' - by Rick Bragg

Amusing...

I have made this letter longer because I haven't had time to make it shorter.~

Quote for Today..

“The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.” ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

Myrtle's First Tatoo

  Endless summer hydrangeas are the chameleon shrub.   The shaggy Mophead flowers shows off monstrous blooms in bursts of colors that range from strong luscious blues to magenta pinks.   When it rains, the petals will manage to catch and hold tiny raindrops in perfect suspension.  Another wondrous thing about these shrubs is the color of the blooms can be changed by adjusting the amount of aluminum to the soil surrounding it; thus dubbed the chameleon shrub.  I know this because I am experimenting with my own.   I had been planning on working in my garden today. I consider myself to be a very passionate gardener.  It’s therapy for me.  When I garden, my grandmother often comes to mind.  She was an enthusiastic gardener herself.  I tend to plant a lot of the same things as she did her garden.  Hydrangeas being one of them.  I have taken root samples and bulbs from her garden and transplanted them to my own.  She has been gone now ten years.   Her memory is still close for me.

      There are many stories to share about her but the one I’m thinking of today involves her first trip to the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.  But here’s a little background on my grandmother to start.   She was Maw, Maw Ray to me and Miz. Myrtle to her family and friends.  She was born in August of 1908, raised in Birmingham, Alabama and the oldest of eight children.   With the growing trend of flappers and the social vigor of the roaring twenties being her role model she was basically a rebel.   At fifteen, she felt she should express her individuality and to spite her father, she cut off her hair.  Prior to her pruning job, her hair had been to her waist.  Afterwards, it was to her ears.  Her father, himself a barber, needless to say was not amused.

Myrtle’s early life was basically simple but ideal while growing up.   She had always lived in “Birmingham’s Downtown District”.  But in her sixteenth year, tragedy struck her family.  In the winter of 1924 at age 43, her father died of respiratory failure.  At the time of his death, the family was told this great line in a very slow, but dramatic way by an aging physician.  I can see the performance in my mind as if it were on stage today.  A stooped over physician bent double from osteoporosis, white tuffs of hair protruding out behind his ears stood while waving his arms to the heaven’s,  delivered this line with the fluidity that only a southern gentleman could. 

“I am so deeply sorry to inform you but Mr. Jones has passed.  He has died from acute exposure to hair inhalation.”

Remember, I did say my great-grandfather was a barber.  To this day, I can’t say I have ever heard of anyone since dying from acute hair inhalation, but I could be wrong.   

  After the death of her husband, my great-grandmother closed up the barber shop, sold most of her belongings and moved her very young family to a small community in Oneonta, Alabama to live with her parents.   Her children, ages three to sixteen, still grieving from their father’s death, were told they would have to work the fields in order to survive.  With Myrtle being the oldest of eight, it is easy to imagine the pressure on her.  To add a little more insight; my great-grandmother was only 33 and having so many children, marrying again was probably not an option.  

 When her father died, Myrtle’s simple, ideal world had ended.   She had to move in with relatives who were dirt poor and now she was expected to farm for a living.  Oh, how she hated living on the farm.  She hated everything about farming.    She hated helping with all those children.  Who could blame her?  Her world changed in a moment.  She was seized by the back of the neck out of a lifestyle most would consider to be simply refined and thrust into a void with no possibility of escape.

Myrtle resolved to find a way out and eventually did get away from that farm.  Back to Birmingham she went and she moved in with her two Aunts, Vinnie and Genie.  She had lots of possibilities but love managed to bar the way.  It wasn’t long before she was assaulted by a sinful temptation; the lure of a very good looking young man. Yes, she married that good looking young man and then had four children and 5 years later found her way back to the farm she had hated so much.  How tragic is that? 

 But time to move on with the story.  Despite her many living arrangements, my grandmother always lived within a relatively short driving distance from her family.   But one day around 1965, all of that changed.  The youngest of her four children, Ann, announced she and her family were moving.  I am pretty certain Ann dreaded telling her family her news.   Lord, I do know the earth trembled that day.  That one particular day came with the news Ann’s husband had a new job and it was to be in Atlanta, Georgia.  Oh heaven has been overthrown and hell now reigneth over the earth.  One of her children was going to move one state over. 

As Myrtle moved into her geriatric years she could actually rain down fire and brimstone.  Those who don’t believe such a power exists should ask many of my family members who will bear witness that indeed it does.  And you never crossed that woman.  She was never wrong, never had been wrong, and never would be wrong.   One could never say she was missing a backbone.  It’s pretty certain she invented it and informed God hers was to be made of iron.  

Myrtle never missed church. Never.  She was always telling everyone she encountered they should find a church and make of point of attending.  She would bear witness in elevators, grocery stores, and even in front of parking meters. She was relentless in her pursuit of finding out if you attended church.  She was out to save the world all by herself.  If an individual replied to her, “Yes ma’am, I attend church, every Sunday as a matter of fact”.  According to her, you obviously didn’t go enough.   If an individual attended church every given day of the week, even if a person slept in the pews or underneath the pulpit, it still wouldn’t have been enough to appease Myrtle.  She was a devout Christian.  She was always on her toes when it came to what was wrong in your life and she had no qualms about telling you about it.  She would tell you how to solve it and when she expected you to rectify it. 

When her daughter Ann humbly told her mother of her husband’s transfer, Myrtle gave her youngest daughter a verbal lashing equivalent to no other.  

“How can you abandon your family and move away to Gawd knows where!  So you think you can just pack up and waltz yourself clear across the state line and life will be wonderful.   I can’t believe that good-for-nothing husband you married has convinced you to move clear across country away from your family.   He thinks he can buy you out of anything, doesn’t he?   I told you not to get involved with that family. But no, you wouldn’t listen to me.   We’ll never hear from you.  I know it.   You must have just lost your ever loving mind that’s all I can say”.


         My mother used to say that last comment to me growing up; ever loving mind.  I do believe I have used it on my own children as well, but what’s an ever loving mind and how do you lose it?

 I would actually hate to have been my Uncle at the time.  I’m sure if words would have been weapons he would have died from stab wounds from an ice pick.   I am almost one hundred percent certain she picked away at the very core of him.  But they moved anyway.

My Aunt and Uncle were probably settled in about a month before Myrtle went to that wicked, corrupt City of Atlanta to rescue her grandbabies and bring them back to Alabama.  It has been told Myrtle expected to find them living in a rotted, rat infested, house next door to a sewage treatment plant.    Over time, and I mean a long time, my grandmother came to accept that her youngest child would always live in Georgia and there was nothing she could do about it.

Myrtle was also one who was very particular about her attire and the way people would regard her appearance.   She was very pristine with her dress code.  She did evolve over time but as it took man millions of years, so did it take Myrtle.  It was something instilled in her and took a hammer and chisel to remove; one layer at a time.  The 60’s definitely broke fashion trends with Go, Go boots, false eyelashes, crazy psychedelic prints, five inch wide ties and in the late 60’s early 70’s, The Hippie Movement.  This definitely broke Myrtle’s Law.   Myrtle did not follow this fashion trend; often opposed it openly.   Imagine a debate between Myrtle, the mild mannered, bible wheeling Christian lady from Alabama and those who promoted free love.   I would have sold tickets, made a fortune and would now be settled into retirement.

 Over the years my grandparents made the journey to Georgia several times.  During one summer visit, the plan was for everyone to tour the Omni International complex/hotel in downtown Atlanta.  My Uncle tried to explain to my grandparents that the Omni had an indoor ice skating rink, restaurants, and a multi-screen movie theater.  His attempt to entice his mother-in-law into having a good time seemed like it was going to work.  In truth, he was praying it would.  Myrtle in her faultless blonde bouffant wearing a chic blue pantsuit with matching scarf journeyed out with her family for an early lunch.  They had lunch at a picturesque little restaurant which surprisingly to Myrtle and to the others, she thoroughly enjoyed herself.  After lunch, they proceeded to the Omni.  Now today I live in Atlanta and there are those times when I feel a little squeamish about visiting certain areas.  It was decided by some omnipotent God on that specific day Myrtle was to be introduced formally to the country’s new dress code.  As I remember this account, my cousin Scott said they were about to turn into a parking deck next to the Omni and then Uncle Jerry was forced to stop at a traffic light.  People were going to and from the Omni and were in such multitudes, traffic was at a standstill.  People paraded by in a multitude of scantly costumes.  Other’s decorated in a multitude of getups congregated on the sidewalks.   Myrtle was given the front passenger seat with Uncle Jerry driving and the rest of the brood was in the back seat.   At first the family thought they were about to escape a day without any preaching but soon found out they were mistaken.  Myrtle took one glance at her surroundings and began one of her lengthy sermons.

 “Dear Lord Almighty above.   Jerry, I know you have completely lost your ever loving mind, bringing us all here.  Oh Dear Lord, the end of the world is coming!  You mark my words.  It’s right here before us! The Bible is being fulfilled right here in front of us right now this very minute!  It’s the end of the time!  The last days!  And I want you to look.  Look right there standing on the sidewalk. That is Satan in the flesh it most certainly is.  In that, that get up”!

About that time, my cousin Scott and everyone else in the car happened to look to the right passenger side window as Myrtle was still laboring on with her evangelization.  The man she had deemed “Satan” strode up to the car window opened up his shirt and leaned the front of his chest against the front passenger side window.  He had two large eyes tattooed around each nipple.  Needless to say Myrtle had a conniption fit that day and never did get to see the Omni.

I must confess there are more than a few similarities that I share with my grandmother.   Similar in our love of gardening, our desire to go against the grain, and our determination to always win, no matter what the cause.  Yes, I am indeed her offspring, yet not a blood relative.  Myrtle lived to the age of 92 and although she never quite had another encounter as she did that one  particular day, she did travel many more times to visit her daughter Ann and in her own way developed a love for my adopted home of Georgia.

Hey did you ever hear the joke about the turtle, a pumpkin and a little too much alcohol?

 A picture is worth a thousand words!!

Just a quote I enjoy...

If you can't annoy someone, there's little point in writing."

Sleep on it...

Hope you enjoy the photo.  It's of Little River Canyon in Alabama.

Well I had my first post yesterday.  I was pleased with the work I put into the story in about the hour it took me to write it.  After sleeping on it, I reviewed it this morning and noticed a few errors I missed but overall I liked it.  But time to get serious now.  I'm Blogging and working on my book so it will go back and forth.  I've already got new stuff jamming my brain this morning.... Time to get busy..

Four year olds, Hippies, Convertibles and Birds Don't Mix!

As I write this, I find myself searching for the right words to define my profession.  As of today, I am a storyteller.  And since I have regarded myself the “Southern Songbird", I feel my first blog must serenade you with a true story about a songbird. 

I grew up in a lazy little town on the east side of Birmingham, Alabama.  When I was four my family moved to a community called Center Point.  My parents wanted several things.  First they wanted a larger house.  It was apparent that they needed a larger house in which to house all my toys I had accumulated in the four years I had been alive.  They were running out of cabinets, closets, cupboards, and out-buildings to put them in.  So they decided instead of adding on to their existing house, it would be simpler to just move.  Secondly, they felt that I needed to be close to a college.  When they decided close, they meant “real” close.  The local community college was 1.3 miles from my house.  It was definitely a short walking distance on those days when I didn’t have gas money to fuel my car and just had to “hoof” it.  Finally the last reason to move was because my mother wanted a garage.  This being very important to her, they found and moved into a house that would hold all my paraphernalia, be close to a college, and have a garage.  Sounded like a winning combination.

               After we had settled into our new home we had got to know all of our neighbors pretty well.  The neighbors adjacent to our house had two older teenage boys.  One of the boys had recently gotten a new car; a convertible Mustang.  It was pretty too; sky metallic blue with white leather seats.  Oh you got to be kidding; just letting me near a car with white seats should have sent off sirens.  But it just so happened one day my mom was in a mess and needed a babysitter.  Of all people, she called the teenage boy with the convertible.  His name now escapes me but  just for fun I’ll call him John.

“Oh yes, Mrs. Gann I’ll gladly watch your little angel”.  He must have been dead broke and needed gas money for his new car.  And there was no angel’s halo even close to my head.  I was the menace of the neighborhood and gladly wore the title proudly.  I don’t know what she offered to pay him but it must have been enough to entice him to entertain me for a few hours. 

               It was early fall I remember but it wasn’t necessarily cool.  She had donned me in a navy and white dotted Swiss dress with a white cardigan sweater.  I remember looking down at my white ruffled socks and my black patent shoes thinking I must be going to church because momma just didn’t dress me this way unless it was something special.  But being a gentle, southern woman, my mother to this very day undoubtedly believes that even if you were going to make mud pies, you always looked your best.  So after I am dressed to go to preaching, she marched me across the street and left me with that long haired hippie. 

I had met John a few times and he always seemed nice.  He seemed to be about the tallest young man I had ever seen.  I thought he was as tall and skinny as a willow tree.  Undoubtedly, all adults are like trees to children.    I remember shuffling my feet back and forth across his carpet not really wanting to even look at John.  I guess he figured I was about to cry so he had to quickly decided how he was going to entertain me.  The ultimate decision was to go do errands in that blue car of his.  My spirit quickly picked up.  He didn’t bother to open the door on the passenger side, he just picked me up and plopped me into the front passenger seat.  Now remember this was the 70’s and no laws about kids and seatbelts in the front but I survived.  I remember I couldn’t see out the window, I just stared straight at the dash.  When he roared up the engine and took off I felt like I was flying.  He took the curves relatively fast and we drove up and down really steep hills that gave my stomach a flip.  We turned onto the main parkway and he told me he was going to take me to the Spinning Wheel for ice cream.  Well I couldn’t have been happier.  Well, remember what I said about those seats being white.  Just let your imagination run a little bit. 

After I got my ice cream John said he needed to stop at a local nursery.  After we arrived at the nursery, John picked me out of the car just the way he had plopped me in.  I remember having my ice cream in my hand and I was walking behind John and my black patent shoes were making crunching sounds on the pea gravel that the nursery had spread along paths.  We were walking through trees and shrubs and something caught my eye quickly.  I guess being four years old and close to the ground it seems that it would have been automatic that I would have seen it.

A gray and white feather peaked out at me from under a cedar tree.   I had stopped in my tracks not noticing that my ice cream was dripping all down my hand.  I was more interested in the feather.   It was then that I noticed the feather belonged to a dead bird.  I remember I was so distraught that I dropped my ice cream and picked up the bird.  I heard little birds above my head and realized that it must have been the baby bird’s mother so I took the bird and ran to John.  Tears were streaming down my face.  I knew the bird was dead but I don’t know what I expected John to do, but I felt he should try to help.  John immediately knocked it out of my hands and yelled at me.

“Don’t touch that bird.”    I knew the bird was dead and then John had just yelled at me.  I was in shock I suppose.  I remember snubbing and hiccoughing at that poor lifeless bird.  After his sudden outburst, I guess John thought he shouldn’t have reacted so aggressively so he bent down and began to wipe away my tears. 

“There now, I’m sorry.  But birds carry disease and I just don’t want you handling it.”

“But it’s dead and it has babies”.  I cried softly on his shoulder.

I guess John had an epiphany and decided the last thing he needed to do was to return me to my mother all covered in ice cream and feathers and dirt with my face pink from bawling my eyes out over a dead bird he had commanded I drop.

But John redeemed himself in my eyes.  We went inside the nursery and I remember there being a water spigot on the side of the building.  John washed my hands and talked to me and told me that he was sorry and that he promised he would talk to the nursery owner about the bird.  He then took me and plopped me back in the car.  I was still softly crying, I had lost my ice cream, found a dead bird, gotten yelled at, washed off with a hose and now sitting in the convertible with a damp dress and wet socks in my Sunday black patent shoes.

Soon John came back to the car with a box.  He sat down beside me and gripped the steering wheel and told me he had talked to the nursery owner and they were going to take care of the baby birds.  I then in garbled English asked him, “What about the mommy bird?  Who’s going to bury her”?

“We are”. 

So John drove home and he plucked me out the car and went and got a shovel.  

“My yard or yours?” he asked.

“I think your yard.”

“I think your right.”  He said.

          We buried that little bird in the back yard of John’s house on a hillside.   John put a rock to mark the place he buried it.  He said I could place flowers there if I wanted to.  I picked some blooming weeds and placed it on its little grave.  It’s still there I suppose but I haven't looked for it in many years.   Some things just stick with you even 37 years later.  The memory of the songbird that no longer sings stuck with me.