Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
Here is yet another picture of all my siblings (plus 2 honorary siblings) long before I was even a thought. Clockwise, beginning with Mom holding Rob; Julie Crane; my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless; Ron; Wendy Crane; Mercedes/BT. If I had been available on Earth to be in the pic, I would have been the one wearing a Church Bow Tie o’ the Day. As if you didn’t already know that.
Last week I decided that until Miss Tiffany at Great Clips can cut my head hairs, TIE O’ THE DAY will host “Hairs Thursday” posts. They will feature my ever-growing, in-need-of-a-cut, pandemic hairs. But when I came upon this slide o’ Easter “bonnets” atop these kids’ noggins, I couldn’t pass it up. The head gear is as swell as anything my head hairs are doing right now.
My brother, Ron, is wearing the Easter grass nest. I’m not sure who the other kid is. Might be a Wankier boy or Ralph McCall. I think his hat is supposed to be a blooming Spring flower. Both head coverings are tied onto their little boy heads with bows. This head-covering Easter tradition is one that I somehow totally missed. But I think we should bring it back into vogue.
If you’re from my hometown of Deltabama, UT, you probably know some of the folks in these slides. You won’t see Dad anywhere because he must have been the official photographer.
I can’t find any ties or bow ties on anybody, but Mom’s cat sunglasses at Hoover Dam certainly qualify as Sunglasses o’ the Day. Check out her wild pants too. From left to right: Helen Barney, Mom, Peggy and Grant Crane. There’s no date on the slide, but I’m guessing they visited Hoover Dam together in the early 60’s.
The other two pix were taken in our living room, long before I was born—probably the mid-50’s. Again, Dad was the official photographer. I imagine Mom catered the affair. The dinner party must have been a celebration, but I can’t tell exactly what that might have been. The fashion is snappy, eh? I can identify most of the guests: Mom is in the middle of the second slide, wearing red and her apron. Also at her table are Helen and Joe Barney. At the next table, you can see Peggy and Grant Crane, and—I think—Donna and Clark Cox. Glen Gardner is sitting in the chair under the lamp, and his first wife, Irma, is to Peggy’s right. I don’t remember the names of the other couple, but I do remember them.
My fave thing about the third slide is how Peggy Crane has thrown back her head, overcome with laughter.
I just realized something. Mom is the only one in the pix who is still alive. Our family is lucky. I might have to break in to the care center to see her soon.
I was born an only child, with four siblings. My oldest sibling (Mercedes/BT) is 15 years older than me. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless is 13 years older. I have no recollection of them even living at home when I was a child. By the time I was beyond my toddlerhood and into a full-blown childhood, Ron and Rob, who are 10 and 6 years older than yours truly, were teenagers—which means they were never home. And then they were out building their own adult lives. I was home alone, sibling-wise, for most of my growing up. My nature is that of a lone wolf, so having the run of the house to myself suited me just fine. It was as if my parents had their family, and then I sort of wandered in from the Pre-existence and made myself at home.
Bow Tie o’ the Day in these pictures is the bow tied on my hoodie. Note my cork gun is present in one pic, so there’s no question of my paternity. The pup you see there is the family dog, whose name was actually Dumb Dumb—which is weird because the word “dumb” was kind of a swear word in our house. You could not call anyone “dumb.” No matter how dumb they were.😉
My oldest bro, Ron, once again sports our Tie o’ the Day. I must also give a bigly shout-out to his swingin’ Sport Coat o’ the Day, which I have coveted my whole life. Rob dandied up in the hip red dickey under his dress shirt.
It’s Sunday, folks. Be grateful for your church clothes.
You know the sort of day I’m writing about. Your bib apron is fastened to you with a Bow Tie o’ the Day on your back. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve played too hard. You’re so exhausted you collapse into a sudden sleep on the rug between the living room and the kitchen—still clutching your melting ice cream cone. Yup. That kind of day. 😂
FYI This is one of my sisters. TIE O’ THE DAY is pretty sure the star of this slide is my firstborn sibling, Mercedes/BT. It was taken in the early 50’s.
Giving Mom a hug has been on my mind all day, so slides of her are what y’all get here. I know that if you’ve met Mom, you adore her, so that works out well for all of us.
In the first picture, my brother Ron shows up in his Bow Tie o’ the Day again. It’s a dapper outfit. I think the baby Mom’s holding in one of the photos is my brother, Rob. The picture of Mom eating on the porch in her slippers is a gem, but my personal fave photo here is of Mom fishing in her curlers. That’s one thing I’ve never done in my life. I must put it on my Bucket List. Note to self: Buy curlers and fishing pole.
This is one of my favorite photos of my mother. She looks so pretty, despite clearly being under the weather. She wrestled with her own depression demons, at a time when nobody talked about such things. Still, she never gave up on getting through the storm. Notice that she’s reading her scriptures.
TIE O’ THE DAY has only one thing to say this morning, and I’m yelling it in my head: IT HAS BEEN 122 DAYS SINCE I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HUG MY MOM, AND I DON’T LIKE IT ONE BIT! I understand the reasons it has to be so, and I’m grateful Millard Care and Rehab keeps her so very safe and entertained. But understanding why something has to be the way it is does not make it any easier for me to not hug my mother for 122 days in a row. A hug over the phone is just not the real thing.
I’m sharing this washed-out slide before it completely fades away. It’s a swell photo, but I had to make a DIY Bow Tie o’ the Day before it qualified to be in a post. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN) probably also wishes to Remain Faceless, but too bad for her. The crowds demand to see my SWWTRN occasionally, especially when she shows up in a slide taken in 1967. We were both such flower children at the time! She is thirteen years older than I am, but we have always been tight. We “get” each other’s wit. And I have always been in awe of my SWWTRN’s resilience, relentlessness, and quiet generosity. Those are three of her best qualities, and striving to emulate her example of those characteristics is often what keeps me going.
FYI Yup, my SWWTRN is wearing a wiglet. Wiglets used to be the thing, back in the time of hippies. I guess. I dunno.
BTW We always snapped our photos across the alley in my grandparents’ yard—with their luscious foliage as background. No matter how hard Mom worked to bring forth a beautiful garden for us, our yard grew only a smattering of pitiful flowers and towering weeds.
I apologize that this slide is of such poor quality. It is over 65 years old, so I’m lucky to even have it. The dapper little lad is my oldest brother, Ron. Look hard and you’ll see he’s sporting Bow Tie o’ the Day. It’s a family thing.
I owe Ron bigly for giving me some of my cool. Ron taught me how to play basketball. He taught me how to golf. Ron dressed with flair, fedoras and all. I learned some of my snarkiness from him too. Ron even baptized me.
And he gave me a name. Not a church blessing name. But a name that has stuck for more than five decades—at least, between us. He nicknamed me “Queenie.” I don’t know why he chose that name for me, but I suspect it was likely because—as the baby of the family—I was spoiled by my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, and so on. My wish was their command, I’m sure.
I was called Queenie so frequently while Ron still lived at home, that one day I came home from elementary school and found that Mom had renovated my bedroom door. This is a photo of the actual door, which still hangs in its original place at Mom’s old house in Delta. One day, the “Queenie’s Castle” door will live with me, where it belongs. It will perhaps become the door to The Tie Room, here in my current castle. That would be groovy, eh?
No matter where the castle door is, I will always be Ron’s Queenie. He’s my big brother. And he’s my friend.