I remember when I was 5—before I was even a student at the long-gone Delta Elementary School on Main Street—I fell in love with a single word. Mom had been doing some painting around the house, and I overheard her say to somebody, “Blah, blah, blah, TURPENTINE, blah, blah, blah.” And then I overheard her say to someone on the phone, “Yadda, yadda, yadda, TURPENTINE, yadda, yadda, yadda.” I remember saying TURPENTINE myself, over and over until I could pronounce it like a pro. What was this word that skipped so jauntily through my lips? It was downright fun to say. When I asked Mom about the word, she explained what it was and what she used it for. I saw the cupboard where she kept the can of turpentine (and other paint-related stuff), and I would occasionally open the cupboard door and stand there staring at the magic can o’ turpentine. I’d look at the word and try to memorize how it was spelled. Mostly, I repeated the word to myself—well…repeatedly for days and probably weeks. Much to the annoyance of my family and pals. The word itself sounded like a catchy song lyric to me. It felt like singing to say it out loud. To me, TURPENTINE is the first word I have memory of collecting for future use. It was, in a sense, the moment I became a writer. I was hopelessly in love with this word, and I knew I always would be.
Writing is what I do every day. Sometimes slinging words together even keeps me up all night. Words are my most valuable tools. A writer is what I am. Specifically, I am a poet (mostly). I can tell you this: poets are odd. A real poet will gleefully give up eating dinner for a week to save up enough money just to buy a newer, thicker thesaurus. Yes, back in my struggling college/grad school student days, I somewhat regularly skipped meals in order to have the necessary funds to acquire books. And I would not be surprised if I find my literary self skipping meals again—just to prove I still can. The darnedest things tickle a poet’s fancy.
With that in mind, don’t tell anyone about these photos I’m letting you see. The photos show me looking at the literary equivalent of a naughty magazine. Not the content, just the form. This is poetry porn. I bought this book of poetry by C.D. Williams, and when I saw it had a centerfold, I fell in love yet again. Poetry centerfolds are my new obsession. Now that you’ve seen the centerfold, I must hide this poetry porn somewhere Suzanne will not be able to find it. I told you poets were odd, right? 😮🤣😂📓🗒✒️✏️🖍
BTW Tie o’ the Day is covered in fancy bound notebooks and various writing instruments. This tie says, “The writer is in!”
Howdy! My Bow Tie o’ the Day is the one Collette gave me at brunch on Saturday. It adds a perfectly suave effect here. I call this fashion style “suave rodeo” style. If you ever happen to run across a shirt this incredibly cool, buy it. That’s an order. You won’t regret it. It doesn’t matter that the shirt sellers didn’t have one in my size—I still knew I had to buy it. Perhaps one day I’ll grow into it. It doesn’t really matter to me, though: I am going to wear this shirt way too often, just to see others be jealous of me that I own it and they don’t. I am going to have scads of fun wearing it, no matter how it fits me. This shirt specimen is inexplicably enchanting, in a vintage sort of way. It is Roy Rogers-esque in its aura.
I think I had a lunchbox (w/thermos) in the early 70’s which looked similar to this shirt. I remember carrying it around on my banana-seat, one-speed Schwinn— as I rode in and out of dirt ditches, between alfalfa farms and bee yards, and across the dangerously bustling city streets of Delta, UT in the hippie 70’s. I wish I had saved that lunchbox. It’s a good thing I bought the shirt, so it can remind me of my hokey lunchbox whenever I wear it. I do have my Saddle Purse and cowboy boots that can go with my cowboy-covered shirt. Now, I think I’m goin’ on the hunt for a new cap-gun and holster to wear with it. I’ll also need a new cowboy hat, some spurs, chaps, a stick horse, a wad of chewin’ tabacky, and a sidekick to do all the real work for me. Oh, and I must not forget: I need a leather, string-tied bag, to hold all the gold nuggets I find waiting for me in the closest creek. Yup, I think that’s pretty much everything it takes to be an authentic cowboy. 🤠
[As a favor to a pal who requested it, I am re-posting this post from 2019. Enjoy it again, or for the first time in case you missed it when it originally showed up here.]
Hey! Look what I rescued. It’s my ties-themed 100 oz. mini-keg, which was my go-to sip cup for a couple of years after I bought it. Although it cracked inside last year, I never had the heart to throw it out. Its flex straw had a slight crack in it too, and the lid doesn’t fit tightly either, but its tie graphics are too perfect for me. 7-11 doesn’t sell the tie design “cup” anymore, so I can’t go buy another one. What’s a girl to do with a cracked 100 oz. ties mini-keg? For the last year it’s been mocking me by sitting in the garage whining out its jealousy of my new, differently designed mini-keg. I was about to finally toss the battered, cracked mini-keg over the weekend. And then I had a genius idea I can’t believe I didn’t think of last year: DUCT TAPE. I’ll tape the inside cracks and let you know how it works out.
As I searched for the duct tape, Tie o’ the Day and I were contemplating the weirdities of my life. I don’t care who you are or how straight-laced and “normal” your life has been, you’ve likely found yourself in surreal situations here and there—when you wonder how you got into the predicament and how you’ll ever get out of it. You didn’t set out to be in the situation. The scenario is so outlandish you couldn’t have purposely concocted it if you had wanted to. And you’re positive no one will believe you when you tell them the story.
Because I am I, I have a zillion of ’em. Because I am I, everyone knows my improbable tales really occurred. I call these odd goings-on My Greatest Hits. One of My Greatest Hits is courtesy of the 7-11 in Takoma Park, MD, in the mid-90’s. It doesn’t star a 7-11 mini keg, just a 7-11 Super Big Gulp cup.
Interstate 95 is the main N-S route on the East Coast. The traffic usually runs at a pretty good clip. I used to drive it every school day morning from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore’s inner city where I taught middle school. My drive to work usually took about 35 minutes.
But one morning, when I was just about to exit the freeway and head into West Baltimore, all lanes of the I-95 traffic going my way came to a halt. That was rare for that particular area of the freeway. Rarer still, an hour later no vehicle had moved a centimeter. Something bigly was surely shutting down the road. (It ended up being a many-car accident.) By that time, I had been sitting in the car for more than an hour. For me, that’s venturing into MUST PEE NOW territory. I had finished my Super Big Gulp of Diet Coke, and I needed to get rid of it. And I don’t mean I needed to throw away the cup. A half-hour later, all drivers were still sitting in the precise same place we first were stopped. I was beyond desperate. I had no choice except to do what I had to do.
As a middle school teacher at the time, I learned to always have back-up clean clothing in the car. Out of nowhere, middle schoolers can create unheard of messes, and it’s not uncommon for those messes to end up on the teacher—whether you were anywhere near ground zero or not. It’s nice to have clean clothes to step into. Anyhoo… That day, in an attempt to make myself invisible in my car for a minute, I used my spare clothes to cover my front, side windows. I pulled down the visors. With my empty Super Big Gulp cup, I strategically did what had to be done. The contortionist skills I learned as a teenage mooner came in quite handy. Mission accomplished. Almost.
I extremely carefully got my pants back where they belonged. I opened my door and emptied the cup, which I didn’t want to keep in the car, but I don’t litter. I “baby wiped” my hands. (It was the pre- hand sanitizer era.) Although we drivers had all been stuck going nowhere on I-95 for almost two hours, I felt much better.
As I took my back-up clothes down from the windows, I heard a knock. I was sure it was a cop who would soon give me a ticket for Public Urination or Public Indecency or some such charge that would put me on the Sex Offender Registry. But it wasn’t a cop. It was a soccer mom from the van behind me. She asked, “Can I borrow that cup? I gotta go too.” I said, “No, you may not borrow it. You must keep it. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, keep it. Take these Wet Wipes too.”
I kid you not. As time passed and the cars still didn’t move for a small slice of forever, Soccer Mom was not the last person to use my cup. I watched my Super Big Gulp cup and the wipes travel up, down, and across a handful of the halted lanes as we sat parked on I-95 whittling away our time in the pre- affordable cell phone era. The cup that almost ranneth over had a somewhat bonding effect on those who were there that day. That cup was the founder of a different kind of Relief Society. Those of us who got relief became friends for life on that commute, even though we didn’t talk to each other and we would never see each other again. We shared a moment. We shared a cup.
I do not know who finally ended up with the Super Big Gulp cup and baby wipes.
BTW Speaking of my Delta, teenage mooning career, I once mooned a worker at the Taco Time drive-up window while driving and wearing overalls. Now that is a true and rare skill set. (Yes, young-un’s, Delta once had a Taco Time. And an A & W and an Arctic Circle.)
[In yet another repeat TIE O’ THE DAY post from March 2019, my scary hairs are again the star o’ the show. I need my hairs cut and I’m trying to decide whether I’m shaving it again or growing it out.]
Colonel Sanders Tie o’ the Day helped me re-think my baseball caps. Do I really need them, or can I get by with this glued-up visor hairdo? I dunno. My hairs visor seems to be keeping the sun out of my eyes so far today. If I got rid of my hats, I could free up their space in the Tie Room, so I could house more bow ties. But alas! I love my hat collection too, so that’s not gonna happen. There’s somehow room in the Tie Room Resort for all things that wander in.
Small towns are like that, even though we tend to think of them as narrow-minded. A small town will generally set a place for you at its table. Trust me, you will find narrow-minded people anywhere you go. You will find jerks everywhere you go, as well. And if you act like a jerk in a small town, be prepared to lose that place at the table you were so kindly given—as you would deserve to. But most people realize nobody’s perfect, and they’ve got plenty of their own issues to work on. A lot of “mind your own biscuits” combined with even more of “love your neighbor” goes a long way toward allowing you to live like a mature human being among other grown-ups.
[Here’s another hairy repeat post from March of 2019. I hope it makes you laugh.]
As I considered what to make my hairdo do today, I started to think about how snazzy mustaches can be. I decided I’d try to create one on my forehead with my head hairs. Here’s my stab at a Fu Manchu. You can see my mustache-styling skills are quite limited. I can’t even do a Fu Manchu that looks right. The important thing is that I tried. Just for y’all, I tried.
My ‘stache makes as much sense as my Prince-Albert-in-a-Can Bow Tie o’ the Day. I mean, these young whippersnappers nowadays have no clue about the old routine of prank-calling a store that sold tobacco and asking: “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” And when told YES, saying “Well, you better let him out.” I have to do a lot of explaining when I wear this piece. And the young wonderers still don’t find it amusing. And that gets me to thinking about how much more isolated Delta was when I was a kid. Oh, it was the same 140 miles from SLC, but without cell phones, texting, and the internet, your mind was near-completely soaked in the confines of Delta and its offshoots. A phone prank and toilet-papering a house was about the funniest crap you could pull without causing a town civil war.
Don’t think for a minute that Delta was boring back in the day. There was plenty to do: for example, sliding down the flumes easily morphed into cliff jumping; tubing down the Sevier River could end up planting you at the reservoir for a swim and a bonfire; throwing a couch in the back of a truck (Yes, we rode in the back of trucks.) often ended at an Oak City canyon party—complete with a campfire and s’mores.
Like most kids, I was allowed to ride my bike everywhere from the age of zero. (Slight exaggeration.) I was allowed to play on the railroad tracks. The tracks were pretty much my front yard, and we lived on the wrong side of them, too. I was taught the rules, and then set free to explore. Of course, being bored in Delta was your choice. Some people were, and I felt sorry for them.
Delta was also packed with characters who had made their individual lives a little iconic by their bigly, unique actions. For example, there were Bernell and Blanche Ferry (son and mother) whose accidental antics included the time Blanche fell out of their old truck’s passenger door as Bernell rounded the corner to turn onto Main Street. She rolled like a roly-poly into the gutter, stood up, and waited for Bernell to go around the block and come back to pick her up again. That’s right: he did not stop for her immediately when she fell out and tumbled to the road. He went around the whole block, obeying traffic laws. When he finally got back around to where Blanche stood waiting and stopped, she hopped in the truck, and off they went on their merry way—as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The scene looked like they were following a script—like they had done this a million times before.Their timing was impeccable. I felt privileged to observe the entire event. I’m still in awe of that old woman’s flexibility and seriously unbreakable bones.
[Here’s a much-requested Valentine repeat post. Enjoy.]
Tie o’ the Day is content to hang in the background, while Mom stars in this morning’s pix. These are evidence of Mom’s alluring ways. Dad was born into a beekeeping family, and bees were his thing. He was crazy for bees from the minute he could toddle. Based on that fact, I have no doubt Dad thought the photo of Mom dressed up in beekeeper attire was the sexiest of these two pictures. Mom does have nice legs though.
Dad’s family lived in Delta. Mom was from Oak City, a small town about 15 miles away. In Oak City, at that time, the kids went to school there until high school, then the Oak City-ites rode the bus to Delta High School every day. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other until that came to pass.
But they had sort of met once before high school. One summer day, Dad and his pals happened to be at the Oak City swimming pool when Mom was there with her friends. Mom was standing by the edge of the pool when Dad walked by and rudely pushed her in.
Mom was ticked off, turned to her gal pals, and said, “Ignernt Delta boys!”
Dad smiled, turned to his friends, and said, “I’m gonna marry that girl.”
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I spent some time at Farmington Health Center this morning. My dermatologist wrote me prescription to get a set of lung x-rays. In trying to diagnose my mysterious skin rash, my doc’s thinking it could be related to a weird thing in one of my lungs that showed up in all the CT scans I had leading up to my pancreas surgery. Based on what I understand from reading the radiologist’s findings about my x-rays today, my lungs appear to be healthy and probably not involved with the rash on my torso. Of course, the dermatologist will have the last word about the whole thing at my next appointment.
In my whole life, I have never had any trouble breathing, that’s for sure. I’ve never had pneumonia, or bronchitis, or asthma, or a collapsed lung. I can huff and puff with the meanest of bigly bad wolves. But based on my half dozen CT scans over the last year, one of my lungs has what looks to be a little patch of scar tissue where the lung is stuck to itself. I’m pretty sure I know where it came from, and I blame Bob Lyman—my kidhood neighbor from across the street. I don’t remember how it all came to pass, but when I was almost 8—and about to be baptized—Bob (who was 10) and I were playing in his backyard. Somehow I had lifted a pack of smokes from a carton in a family member’s fridge, and Bob was determined to assist me in smoking my first cigarette. I wanted to have the experience of smoking at least one cigarette in my life, so I could know what it was like. Moreover, it was very important to me that I smoke it before I was baptized, so the sin of smoking (and stealing) could be cleansed from my soul immediately upon completion of my baptism. I had thought out the whole thing, and I had decided it was a perfectly efficient and reasonable way to proceed with committing this sin.
Anyhoo… Bob found some matches in his garage, and he lit up first—carefully explaining and demonstrating exactly what I should do in order to smoke correctly. I practiced various ways to hold the cigarette in my fingers, and how to pose to look cool while sinning in this manner. Finally, I lit the match, then lit my cigarette—sucking in as hard as I could. I did it, step by step, exactly how Bob instructed me. Except. Except he didn’t tell me to not swallow all the smoke I sucked in. I think I figured you took the smoke in and it effortlessly just kind of made its way out of your mouth and nose while you talked. That’s how it had always looked to me when I observed smokers. Clearly, my powers of observation were not very developed when I was 7.
Well, I started coughing and choking and writhing around on the grass in Bob Lyman’s back yard, while Bob rushed around the corner of the house to get the hose. He turned the water on full-blast. He heroically stuck the hose in my mouth—hellbent on saving my life. I don’t know which felt worse: the smoke or the water. I am convinced this is how I likely scarred up a wee spot on my lung. Heck, it might have been the tip of the hose itself that did the damage to my lung, because I swear Bob stuck that green hose down my throat all the way into my stomach. I remember rolling on the ground for what felt like forever. The coughing and choking gradually lessened as I slowly made my way to the edge of Bob’s front lawn. I told him he didn’t need to follow me home because I had no idea what punishment awaited me, and I didn’t want him pulled into the brouhaha I was certain was going to be coming in my direction. I wanted to be baptized right then and there, but that was not to be. When I felt like I had pulled myself out of the state of discombobulation I had gotten myself into, I slinked across the road to the sidewalk in front of my house. I was trying not to throw up, and I was hoping I didn’t smell as stinky as I knew I did. I was also sopping wet from the hose, which I hoped no one would notice.
I tried to act casual when I opened the front door and nonchalantly strolled in. Dad was in his chair reading The Salt Lake Tribune, and Mom was cooking in the kitchen. I said my howdies to them, then I sprawled out on the living room carpet in front of the television. My head was throbbing and I soon fell asleep, coughing intermittently as I slept, I’m sure. When I woke up a few hours later, I was still oh-so miserable and I told Mom and Dad I was going to bed early. I remember it was still light outside.
Mom and Dad just let me go to my room. No questions, no punishment. Between my ashtray odor, and my coughing, and the grim expression on my face from the moment I came in the house, I have no doubt they pieced together the gist of what I had put myself through. I imagine they figured my transgression had rightly turned against me, and it was punishment enough to make a lasting point. They never said a word to me about that day. My parents knew that in my case, most of the time “less is more” was the best method to effectively parent me. I was a fast learner. My baptism couldn’t come soon enough for me and the soggy cigarette smoke polluting my spritely spirit. 🚬
Argyle Tie o’ the Day and I usually have a nice view of the mountains, from morn until night. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of a mountain in the mornings for days. It’s the ever-dreaded inversion time of year up in these parts. Even after the worst of the haze burns off mid-day, the skies are generally grayer than their usual winter-gray or blue. I take all this air muck as a personal insult. You see, I was born of the sky. The sky is my spirit animal, so to speak. And not just any sky. I was born of the Utah, west desert sky that makes you feel like you’re living in a snow globe. There, the sky begins at your feet and doesn’t really end anywhere. I get sky-withdrawal when the inversion comes to town.
When I lived in Virginia and Maryland, I knew it would be a temporary relocation. I knew I could not live long without bigly sky. For all the beauty and sights and things to do in the D.C.-area, there was just not enough blue sky for my taste. Too many trees, too. The most at home I felt back there was, oddly, at the beach in Delaware or New Jersey—where water and sky met, and together created the illusion of the never-ending bigly sky of my kidhood and young adulthood.
When I left Maryland for the last time, there was no question where I would move to begin to figure out a new life. When I came back home, it wasn’t to Delta itself that I was headed. It wasn’t necessarily to my mostly-Delta family I decided to return. The fact that my hometown and my family were there was added blessing. No, I was broken, so I went to the sky I knew. I bought a truck and I drove and thought, and drove and thought under that bigly sky. I did my best thinking under that sky, as I always had, while traveling on washboard gravel roads between farms.
When I was a child, I had driven those same roads on my bicycle and composed my first poems as I pumped—getting off my bike when necessary, to sit alongside ditch banks covered in asparagus, where I could write down every kid-profound word I’d strung together into whatever I thought was surely poetry and my fate. After I was done writing a kidhood masterpiece in my tiny notebook, I’d fill the pockets of my overalls with as much fresh-picked asparagus for Mom as I could carry—careful to not crush it as I peddled home to supper.
I’m still experimenting with the limits of my golf pants. This total look is eye-catching, I do believe. I’m eagerly awaiting a delivery of new golf pants, but until then, here’s more of the one pair I already own. My Arkansas cowboy boots add a powerful vibe to my attire, and the bright paisley shirt is the cherry on top of my relgalia. The colors and squares of Tie o’ the Day semi-subtly echo the plaid pants.
The pose I’m offering up harks back to Delta High School’s storied and legendary wrestling program. I cannot speak for how it is now, but when I was in high school, you could not escape the long arms of the wrestling program. Region Championships and State Championships were standard for DHS. If a wrestling competition was in town, that’s where everybody was. Remember: this was back when there were only 5 channels on television, and cell phones had not yet been born. If you wanted to watch something happening live, or just hang with a friend, you showed up at the wrestles.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning valuable wrestling lessons from all the matches I watched. Years later, when I was teaching in an all-Black, west Baltimore middle school, I was regularly witness to near-daily physical fights. Most teachers—male and female—were hesitant to attempt to break up fights, opting instead to wait for the school police officer to show up with pepper spray and handcuffs. And I understood why nobody wanted to jump in. It was risky business for any adult, especially for a short white girl from Utah. But I was never comfortable merely standing by during a melee, and I quickly learned that I had skills I had heretofore been unaware of. Wrestling seemed to be in my blood. Somehow, I knew wrestling holds. I could slither into the middle of a fracas and skillfully take a fighting kid down. Eventually, students called me the White Coyote. I still don’t know if it was meant as a compliment or disrespect, or both. But the word “coyote” reminded me of Dad, so I was always fine with the name.
One day last week, we headed to Delta to spend some time with Mom at Millard Care and Rehab. For the trip, I donned my Santa-hatted scottie dog Bow Tie o’ the Day. I wore a Christmas-camo Face Mask o’ the Day as well.
Mom was in fine form while we were there. Her humor remains intact, as does her feistiness. The details of her stories change or sometimes get completely lost, but the gist of each story still comes through loud and clear. She is, as always, a ball of fun and generosity. As Suzanne and Skitter and I were leaving her, we walked Mom to the care center’s beauty shop, so she could get her hair done. I mask-kissed Mom and told her I loved her, and I thanked her for everything. I thanked her for my whole life. As I turned to leave her, she said to me, “You’re a good daughter.” And, like the smart-ass she taught me to be, I said, “Well, I’ve always tried to stay out of jail for you as much as I could.” She winked at me and she thanked me for that. We left each other laugh-crying—just as it should be.
