Category: Delta

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The Wearin’ O’ The Bell-bottoms

Bow Tie o’ the Day presents this yearbook photo from 1979—for the grand purpose of making people chuckle at my white bell-bottoms. Inducing laughter is about the best thing that bell-bottoms can do. They aren’t sexy. They effortlessly get caught in bike chains. They aren’t practical. But they consistently evoke laughter. I have no idea what made us think they looked spiffy back in the 70’s. Bad fashion trends can creep up on even the most stylish of us. Thank the heavens most of us wise up to crappy fashions sooner, rather than later. This photo is proof, however, that even someone as style-conscious as I am can be duped into attempting to wear clothing that is oh-so regrettable. Seriously, my white bell-bottom pant-legs are wide enough to be used as sails on a bigly sailboat.

BTW This photo of the Freshman class officers was taken on Delta’s infamous Main Street—in front of the long-gone movie theatre (across from Curley’s, to the south). I was the class president. The rest of the class officers: Tauna Louder, Brenda Lowder, and Janet Eliason.

Also housed in the theatre building was The Burger Box and The Spaghetti Place(?). I also seem to remember a gathering room where kids could play pool, air hockey, foosball, pinball, and similar games downstairs in the same building; but I can’t remember what that establishment was called. Note the marquee advertisement for the Desert Drive-In, which was located west of the overpass. All of the businesses I listed here were owned and run by the Jack and Irene Grayson family.

Unfortunately for all who saw me in those days, I probably often wore my white bell-bottoms when I patronized these places of business.🤡

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I Finally Found My ’81 Yearbook

Here’s another rare photo of me not wearing a tie of some sort. In my opinion, I do not resemble myself at all. A day without my wearing a Tie o’ the Day is like a day without wearing my soul. Fortunately, I don’t have neckwear-less days anymore. I also don’t go by my middle name anymore.

Anyhoo… This is my last yearbook photo of the Delta High School chapter o’ my life. I was a Junior (Class o’ 82) who would be graduating with that year’s Seniors (Class o’ 81). Does that mean I was a Jenior or a Sunior?

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Class o’ 81 And 82

Tassels o’ the Day!

Many folks are posting their high school Senior photos this spring, in honor of 2020 graduates who might not be able to participate in traditional graduation ceremonies because we are in the midst of COVID-19. I can’t produce my Senior picture because I never had one taken. I graduated from Delta High School after my Junior year. Although I stepped through the bigly “D” and officially graduated from DHS with the Class of 1981, I will forever belong to the DHS Class of 1982.

Or did I truly graduate? Soon after graduation, I heard a rumor that someone at DHS snooped through my school file (my permanent record?), only to “discover”—according to the burglar—that I hadn’t earned enough credits to have graduated. “Oh, really, my fine little criminal? Counting credits under the cover of office darkness is not your strong suit.” 😈

I suppose that qualifies as my first brush with “fake news” about what amounts to myself and my own beeswax. It was not, however, my last brush with other peoples’ real jealousy of my accomplishments—however teensy or bigly those accomplishments might be. 🤓

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Another Gorgeous Babe

Thanks to whoever it is at Millard Care and Rehabilitation in Delta who snapped this shot of Mom and her bigly butterfly. It looks like she had a fine time crafting what I like to think of as a butterfly-style Bow Tie o’ the Day. Hey, you know darn well I’d find a way to wear this with a clashing shirt. (Thanks for taking the other shots too.)

MCR’s up-to-date Facebook page provides us welcome assurance that our loved ones who reside there are busy and happy, even though we aren’t allowed to personally visit them while COVID-19 lurks about. We know that with the lockdown in place, the folks at MCR are taking extra care to keep the residents safe and engaged in activities.

I cannot praise those who work at MCR nearly enough for all they do for their residents. When we first moved Mom in about 18 months ago, my siblings and I weren’t completely sure we were making the best decision for her. We were all a bit apprehensive about if she would really like living in “the care center.” But Mom began to thrive there almost immediately, and it reassured us we had made the right decision for her. In those first months, I received texts from some of her caregivers, updating me on her well-being. A few weeks after Mom moved in, a caregiver texted me to say Mom was missing my late dad horribly, so I posted a bunch of pix and stories about Dad over the next few days— which the caregiver made sure to read to and show to Mom daily. It seemed to help Mom out of her Dad-funk.

Because of the dedicated caregivers who work at MCR, Mom’s adjustment to her new, last home was easier on Mom than it was on us. Mom says the MCR food is tasty. The facility’s schedule is always full of field trips, games, parties, musical programs, and crafts. Mom didn’t answer her phone one day, and I found out later it was because she was on a trampoline. Another time she didn’t answer because she was getting her Temple Recommend.

Thanks again, MCR. Mom loves you, as do we. Keep posting the pix! Skitter and I will be down to see you all after the lockdown ends.

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I Missed My Chance

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I simply could not believe what we saw on a shelf at DICK’S MARKET while we were there shopping over the weekend. (FYI I was not shopping for toilet paper, or water, or hand sanitizer.) When we saw this product, we were stunned to realize that we coulda been bazillionaires when we had the house in Delta. We coulda turned the tumbleweed ranch which was our yard and surrounding property into this wisp of a product. We could have marketed little poof balls of our own organically grown tumbleweeds! Instead, we just burned the poor things year-round for a couple of decades. Those weeds multiplied and replenished the earth of Millard County, including my own corner property, as if somebody was being paid a bounty for each new tumbleweed that sprouted forth out of the ground. All that money never came to pass, and all those tumbleweeds went up in smoke—making me a cold-blooded tumbleweed killer, and leaving me with no bigly fortune for all of my effort. Ah, the lost possibilities. Ah, the coins which coulda been a’jinglin’ in my pocket.

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I Keep Finding Pix

Bow Tie o’ the Day wonders if we’ll ever run out of long-forgotten snapshots. We’re glad we keep finding them. I am particularly amazed I still run onto old pictures since most of my pre-1999 photos were kidnapped and taken to Texas with an ex, where they have lived for the last 20 years. I am currently in hostage negotiations to get them back, if they still even exist. They will be a treasure trove, for sure.

This is a yearbook photo from Delta Jr. High. Apparently, this is the 7th and 8th Grade Student Council from 1977. Seated, from left to right: Karen Dafoe, Lisa Hardy, Georgia Grayson, ME. Standing, from left to right, Gordon Jeffery, Joel Finlinson, Kipp Oppenheimer, Chris Brown, Richard Jacobson, Susan Redd, Wayne Dafoe.

I don’t remember actually doing anything in Jr. High Student Council, except meeting once a month and pretending we ran the school. We did learn how to conduct meetings, make motions, and second the motions made by others. It made us feel like we were important. Mostly, we had a good time being out of class for an hour. It was like sluffing, with permission.

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And I’m Still Counting

A few days ago, I checked in with myself. I was feeling kinda crabby, so I figured it was time to seriously ponder how blessed I really am. I started counting my blessings, and I discovered I have so many blessings that I had to take a few days off from writing TIE O’ THE DAY posts, because I have never counted that high before and it made me dizzy. That is I— discombobulated by my wealth of blessings.

My list o’ blessings begins with my mom, Big Helen. These photos were taken on my front porch in Delta. Mom would walk across the property line between us to porch. “Porch” is a verb too. Mom would sit and rule the world from the Porch at least a couple of times a day, weather permitting. Porching with Mom was a blessing of time well spent. I learned so much about her and her perspectives on her own life, as well as her take on the world. I hope she likes what she learned about me.

We told stories, joked, passed along nice gossip, and laughed. Once, we laughed so loudly and animatedly, a UPS truck stopped in my driveway. The driver— who we didn’t know— got out to ask if Mom needed help. “I sure do need help,” she said while laughing even harder, then she invited him to porch with us. Of course, the concerned UPS dude had packages to deliver, so he opted out of our invitation to porch. But he left with a bigly smile on his face.

Everyone was welcome on the Porch. A few people were officially invited to sit with us there, and they all declared their visit to be the best porching they’d ever done. They all left laughing.

The last year Mom lived in her house happened to be the last year I owned my Delta house. I was in Delta most of that year, on Mom duty. I had become the official designated driver for Mom and Peggy for their daily drinking (Pepsi) and driving. The old girls gradually became less interested in going on their routine leisurely drives around the county, so the three of us did most of our daily drinking on the porch. Two or three months before I sold my house, Mom wasn’t able to porch with us most days, so it was just Peggy and I on the porch. Porching alone with Peggy is one of my magical blessings too. We laughed, cried, and learned a lot about each other. Peggy told me things about the history of Hinckley that I’m sure Hinckley would rather I not know.

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We Were All Daredevils

Tie o’ the Day is one of my bigly, fat ties. It is as wide as the Missouri River. Well, it’s 5 inches at its widest point. As bigly as Tie is, my hat is too small for my noggin. It is one of the hats Suzanne crocheted for wee kid heads. I’ll be good and not stretch it out of its usefulness just to fit my head for a TIE O’ THE DAY snapshot.

Despite my asparagus adventure which found me biking home from Sugarville after dark— and despite my two falls from the same tree when I was a kid, I was not a reckless sprite. And I was not left to run all over creation, completely unsupervised. I was simply an imaginative kid in Delta, UT in the 60’s and the 70’s. That period of time was my “back in the day.”

Many of you were there, as well. It was a time of no seat belts; no car seats; no bike helmets; and no flashing lights and automatic arms at railroad crossings.

We did have lawn darts; full gun racks in trucks; and cigarette vending machines at Top’s and the Rancher. We played dodge ball. Our water park was the flumes.

It might have been a less safe time in some ways, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it. However, when I look back at my kidhood exploits, I am amazed at the shenanigans we all survived. Think about it: What “dangerous” kidhood/teenhood adventures did you manage to survive? What do you wish your kids or grandkids could do, but is no longer possible?

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Because Falling Out Of A Tree Once Isn’t Enough

Bow Tie o’ the Day is here to say I’ve had a hankering to go fishing. I found this PRADA fishing jacket in the pages of VOGUE magazine, and as soon as I can save the $2,130. for the jacket and the $690. for the shirt, I’m definitely planning a fishing trip. The ad doesn’t say how much the boots cost, so I’ll save up an extra thousand bucks just to be sure I can afford them. Not.

Anyhoo… Without setting out to do it, I made a second “snow” angel in the earth below the tree “house,” later on during the same summer I made the infamous Tumbleweed Angel (see previous post). I was probably 6 or 7 that year. I was up in the tree sitting on the piece of wood we called a treehouse, reading WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS for the dozenth time— boo hoo-ing about the tragedies befalling the Redbone Coonhounds, Old Dan and Little Ann. I’m sure it was the bucket of tears in my crying eyes that caused me to fall back and away from the tree. For the second time.

My body wafted from the tree house, down to the vacant lot below it— where I landed in a kind of backflop. A cloud of dust rose from the ground and surrounded me. The tumbleweeds that caught me in my previous post weren’t there anymore. The vacant lot had recently been cleared and tilled. I hit nothing but overturned dirt clods. I lay flat on my back, in an indention created by my weight pushing the soft clods into the ground under me. The wind got knocked out of me in a bigly way. I thought the dust might even be smoke. It felt like I would never take a breath again. As I lay there trying to breathe, my arms flailed. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was making yet another incredible, unbelievable “snow” angel, which I will forever refer to as The Clod Angel. I was completely unharmed by my fall from the tree. Again.

Clearly, I’m protected by angels of my own making.

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Experiments In Gravity

FYI Apparently, purses are “in” this year. How do I know? Because VOGUE says so. I do like that the purse handle works as a sort of bow tie.

As Skitter took me and Bow Tie o’ the Day out for my morning walk today, we enjoyed seeing the thick white snow. We ignored the yellow spots of snow dotting the neighborhood yards, close to the sidewalk. I had a brief idea about using Skitter to create a snow dog-angel in a particularly beautiful patch of snow, and then take a TIE O’ THE DAY photo. But my internal voice of reason came to Skitter’s rescue, reminding me that Skitter would be scared by being embedded into the snow to be a snow dog-angel. And honestly, I didn’t really want to lie down in the cold snow by myself. So we walked on, and I thought about some of the snow angels I remember making.

The best “snow” angel I ever made was not made in the snow, nor was it made on purpose. I unintentionally created it when I fell from our treehouse once when I was a kid. Our “treehouse” was a single piece of wood nailed to a high tree limb which hung out over the vacant lot next door. The lot was a dense tumbleweed farm at times. When I fell out, it was into tall dry tumbleweeds. It was as if the weeds held up their arms to catch me and break my fall. I landed atop a clump of weeds, flat on my back, and gradually fell through their snapping limbs to the ground.

No harm, no foul. I brushed myself off and climbed back up in the treehouse, where I looked down to where I had fallen, and I could see where I had left a perfect outline of my body in the grouping of weeds, smooshed down to the ground. I must have been flailing my arms as I fell flat through the weeds though, cuz the impression in that bunch of tumbleweeds looked exactly like a snow angel.

Who says there’s nothing to do in Delta, UT?!