Self, buy a bling-y Tiara o’ the Day to match my bejeweled necklace Tie o’ the Day. ASAP!
Note To Self
Speaking Of Back To School
When I went to Head Start, the bus picked me up right in front of my house and took me to the school in Hinckley. This slide shows me getting on the bus to go off to my first day in the public school system. I was not yet 4. Note that our dog, Dumb Dumb, escorted me to the bus—before reverting to dogness and sniffing the bus tire for evidence of other mutts.
Mr. Farnsworth, the Hinckley principal, does our Tie o’ the Day honors. Mrs. Flora Wood was my Head Start teacher, but I was convinced she was really Mae West. I was positive all that glamour and wit could not come out of some regular lady from Millard County. I slipped up a few times and called her Mrs. West. It didn’t faze Mrs. Wood one bit.
Class photo—Back row: Shelly Shields, Darren Hathaway (?), Kim Draper, Tom Ashby, Virginia Christensen, ??, Sherry Winkle (?), Mrs. Beverly Eliason. Front row: Mr. Gail Farnsworth, Donna Harris, Scott Larsen, Phyllis Christensen, Wee me, Preston Eliason, Ruben Lazaro, Vanda Dalton, Mrs. Flora Wood.
BTW I cannot convey to y’all how much I loved the jacket I was wearing in my class picture. I still want it.
Pandemic Weird Date Nights Don’t Kill People
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Suzanne and I haven’t been venturing out like we normally have in the past. We’ve enjoyed spending more time at home, but we knew it was time to get out of the casa for a Weird Date Night. A Pandemic Weird Date Night, in fact. But what does one do for a Weird Date in a pandemic? I don’t know what y’all would do, but about a month ago I told Suzanne that for our next Weird Date Night, we were going to take a Concealed Firearm Permit class—which we did last night. It’s not the most romantic thing to do, but see how happy we were to be learning about gun laws.
That might not seem like a “weird” thing to do to those of you who know me and my gun-y family. We had guns coming out the rafters. A gun here, a gun there, here a gun, there a gun, everywhere a gun, gun. My family hunted and fished and hunted some more. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that my dad killed a coyote every darn morning of his life before heading to Top’s Cafe for his morning cup o’ Joe.
Suzanne, on the other hand, had never shot a gun in her life before I took her target shooting with a quaint .22 rifle, in Millard County in the 80’s. She’s never shot a gun since. And I myself did not carry the hunting bug into my adulthood. I killed pheasants and rabbits and a deer in my teens, then I was done with the whole thing. I have no problems with ethical gun use and hunting. Guns just weren’t my thing. I haven’t owned a gun as an adult until very recently.
I’ve been around, folks. I lived in the Washington, D. C. area for 8 years in the 90’s. I taught in inner city Baltimore schools at a time when Baltimore was the murder capitol of the country. I have traveled bigly. And I have never felt the stirring need to own—let alone carry—a gun. Until now.
Why the change of mind? Two reasons: toilet paper and face masks. In short, there are some absolute nuts out there, boys and girls. Fisticuffs are flying over toilet paper. There are people throwing punches over the wearin’ o’ face masks. FACE MASKS, PEOPLE! We are so spoiled we are starting a grumbling civil war over a tiny piece of material and a few inches of elastic. If face masks are the biggest threat to American freedom in our current culture, we are in a heckuva lot more trouble than we can even imagine. If warring about face masks is the thing most worthy of our time in a pandemic, I dare say we have too much time on our hands—and we aren’t using it wisely.
Some of us have lost perspective. Being inconvenienced by wearing a face mask to keep your possibly infectious breath and spittle from flying into another person’s personal space is not equivalent to losing a Constitutional right. To say it is the same, trivializes our hard-fought-for Constitutional rights. Every Constitutional right is made possible only by what I will call our “Constitutional responsibilities” to our fellow Americans. That’s my sermon, and I’m sticking to it.
Trust me—I haven’t lost perspective. I know what’s truly important. Honeycomb Bow Tie o’ the Day is what’s important. I’ll wear it on my face if I have to.
Another Pandemic Hairs Thursday
For Pandemic Hairs Thursday, I chose a Bolo Tie o’ the Day—by way of my t-shirt. Go ahead and feel blessed that your hairs surely look better than my pandemic locks.
A Pandemic Weird Date Night post is up next.
The Good, The Bad, The Plastic
Bow Tie o’ the Day presents The Garden of Eden, as created in plastic on a styrofoam base—by my grandmother, Zola Wright. She made this wonder in the mid-70’s. As you can see, decades of dust have settled upon it. It is so precarious and fragile at this point that any attempt to clean it properly would surely destroy it. Please note Satan’s pitchfork, and the tempting gold snake in the tree behind Adam. Don’t miss the fig leaf coverage of Adam’s and Eve’s private parts. The orange critter at Eve’s feet is a poodle. I don’t know why it’s there, but I guess my grandmother knew everyone should have a dog—even Adam and Eve.
FYI It has been beyond forever since I have designed a Weird Date Night to write about, but that will change this evening. We have Weird Pandemic Date Night plans, which y’all can read about tomorrow. No 2nd post today, cuz I’ll be busy elsewhere.
Everybody Needs A Superhero
I know y’all depend on me for fashion tips, and I take your trust in me very seriously. 😉 My fashion lecture today has to do with superheroes. More often than not, you must be your own superhero. You have the ability to save yourself far better than any other human being. It’s just how it is. You are in charge of you, and you’re usually the bigliest reason you got into whatever pickle you find yourself in, in the first place. Thus, you must become your own superhero.
To be a superhero to yourself, you don’t necessarily need a special name. But you do need a snappy costume. You need to create a style for the superhero you truly are, and it’s not that difficult.
First, no matter what costume you assemble, it must include some reference to at least one already existing comic book superhero. Here, you see my costume includes a Batman wood Bow Tie o’ the Day and my Batman socks.
Second, you must wear a tie of some ilk. Of course, of course, of course you must.
Third, to be an official superhero even to yourself, you must wear a cape. And in these photos, I’m wearing three capes at once. My Batman socks have their own capes. Look closely, and you will see the sock capes hang out over the back of my cowboy boots. The socks’ flowing capes make a superhero fashion statement even when I’ve still got my boots on.
And finally, choose a mask designed to scream out to onlookers KAPOW! ZAP! or BOOM!, or whatever powerful comic book word suits you. Have you got that? Your costume must include: a reference to an existing superhero; neckwear; a cape; and a mask. Add whatever else you think you might need. It’s a breeze.
There is no denying that today I have created an original superhero costume that will forever be identified with only me—at least until I drum up a different original one. Now, you must create your own stylish alter-ego, with whom you can rescue yourself from all harm. Go forth, my secretly superhero friends! You’ve got this.
Mom’s Dad
This slide shows y’all my gussied up, earring-wearin’ Mom with her beloved dad, LeRoy Anderson. The slide isn’t dated, but I’m guessing this was snapped in the mid-50’s. I gave Grandpa a blue Bow Tie o’ the Day in honor of his rabid love of BYU football. If a BYU football game was being broadcast on tv, Grandpa heard and saw nothing else. Grandma could slip him a plate of her yummy food while the game was on, but that was all the interaction he could muster while watching the game.
By the time I was born, Grandpa’s hearing was already kaput. To talk to Grandpa meant I had to yell. He was always glad to see me, and he plied me with pink mints from his shirt pocket. But I don’t recall ever really having a serious conversation with him.
I do have a very specific memory of riding with Grandpa in his tractor at his farm when I was around 5 or 6. I remember he drove us in the tractor from one end of the field and to the other, and back again, over and over, until the tractor had covered every row. I don’t remember what machinery Grandpa had hitched to the tractor, so I don’t remember exactly what he was accomplishing. But I can still vividly see the grasshoppers leaping high—right and left in front of us, to either side of the tractor as we drove. Even then, I felt like I was in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, and Grandpa was Moses, parting The Grasshopper Sea as we made safe passage across it.
Li’l Miss Elton John
My X-mas robe is tied at the neck with a Bow Tie o’ the Day, of course. Here I am, at a pudgy 2 years old, with a toy piano from Santa. Although Elton John was not yet on the U.S. music scene at the time, I was surely channeling him in some parallel universe. By the time I was 10, I was dressing up in the most outlandish Elton-esque attire I could find, and lip-syncing and acting out Elton John songs for anyone who would stop to watch me pretend to sing and play a piano. I even had platform sneakers to wear for my renditions of “Pinball Wizard.” I also had my own pinball machine, so I could create the full effect.
We have tons of family pix with my four siblings doing things together—minus me, cuz I hadn’t been born yet. The five of us did actually do at least one thing as a complete five-some, sibling set. However, somehow the five of us were having so much fun doing the bigly thing together that nobody thought to snap a photo of the event. At least, I have never seen such a photo.
It was October of 1975, and all five of us went to the very first Elton John concert in Salt Lake City. Mercedes/BT, my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless, and Ron brought their spouses along. Rob brought a girlfriend. My SWWTRN and my sister-in-law were both hugely, enormously, bigly pregnant. Watching them each “boogie for two” for the duration of the concert was a riot. I was 11 and took my trusty Bic pen and a notebook to the concert. I felt it was my duty to report every minute of the concert to my friends who were Elton John fans, but who weren’t attending the show—like Georgia Grayson and Penny Porter. My brother, Ron, saw me writing furiously once the concert started. He asked what I was doing. I explained, and I told him that part of my having a fab time at the concert included my scribbling notes about it for posterity. He laughed, but he didn’t bug me about it anymore. I still remember jotting down the fact that “Your Song” was Elton John’s opening number that night. It’s a terribly tender pop composition. It’s a pop classic.
What I Did To Celebrate The 24th
To celebrate Pioneer Day, I grabbed my red hankie Face Mask o’ the Day and paired it with my deer-and-birds-etched-into-wood Bow Tie o’ the Day. I trekked to Cabela’s. I dragged Suzanne with me to stare at the store’s stuffed bear up high in the fake tree, and to find a stuffed coyote to remind me of Dad. We have no bigly vacations scheduled for the near future, so Cabela’s seemed like a good enough choice as any for an afternoon getaway. There was plenty of hand sanitizer throughout the store, and most folks were wearing masks and social-distancing.
I have discovered a secret positive about mask-wearing. Since the wearin’ o’ the masks began, I have not had to deal with the bad breath of anyone who engages me in conversation. If the masks do nothing else (and they do plenty), their ability to keep other people’s stinky breath from attacking me is reason enough for me to almost wish we all had to wear masks forever. 😜
Merry 72nd Anniversary To My Parents!
72 years ago today, on July 26, 1948, my Mom and Dad got hitched in the Manti Temple. Here they are a year or so later, escaping to a beach while on a bee trip in California—with baby Betty Rae, their firstborn. Dad makes that diaper bag, or whatever it is strapped across his chest, look downright sexy in this slide. He passed away a few months shy of their 60th Anniversary.
My parents did marriage the wrong way right from the start. They got married too young—just a few weeks after graduating from Delta High School. Dad was barely 18 and Mom was still 17. They hadn’t really dated anybody else. They had kids way too young, and they had too many of them. And then they did an extraordinary thing: they paid attention to each other for decades. They constantly nurtured their relationship and managed to stay in love until forever.