Category: Family

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Christmas Is Right Around The Corner

Here are some past X-mas Neckwear o’ the Day photos. Guess what I want for Christmas this year? A hug from Mom. Yeah, I’m 56 and my needle is stuck on the “hug from Mom” record again.

I called Mom this afternoon, and she’s just as chipper as ever. Mom’s always upbeat. It makes me jealous. Almost every time I call her, she is in the middle of doing something or talking to someone. Today, she’s on the hunt for pine nuts from out west. I have no doubt she will wrangle someone in town into sneaking some in to her despite the lockdown. Mom’s got pull. She’s like her very own Mafia boss. She’s THE MOMFATHER. And what The Momfather wants, The Momfather gets!

I kinda feel like I’m interrupting Mom’s routine when I call, but calls from the family are also part of her routine at MCR—especially since we can’t visit her during the lovely COVID-19 era. She says she sleeps well there, and she feels safe. As her family, we couldn’t possibly ask for her to be in a better spot. She always reassures us that she’s content right where she is. She says she’s quite content even though she and the other MCR residents can’t sit by each other at meals or go on their field trips right now.

Mom’s gonna be 90 at the end of September. She deserves to relax, and so that’s what she does. She’s very busy relaxing, all the livelong day.

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Can Anyone Guess Mom’s Fave Color?

This slide is from 1969. I’m the one mugging for the camera. Mom is outfitted in orange-and-green plaid and her curlers as she bathes her first grandchild, Jeff Tucker, on our kitchen table. My brother, Rob, grins on. I like that Mom is inadvertently giving a shout-out to Tupperware—demonstrating yet another of the product’s practical uses: as a bathtub for bambinos.

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can reasonably speculate that orange might be Mom’s favorite color. Mom wore a lot of orange outfits. Our kitchen cupboards (seen here) wore a thick coat of orange. Our living room carpet was orange too. And here’s a secret Mom was proud of: Although our living room walls may have appeared to be a normal off-white, they were not. Mom made sure Shine Church at the lumber yard added a drop or two of orange into the paint when he mixed it. I could never see any hint of orange on our walls, but Mom was adamant it was visible. And she was sure it added both elegance and hipness to our living room walls. I vaguely remember she had a set of orange sconces in the hall at one time. Mom had a knack for making our simple house truly remarkable.

Two of the things I learned from Mom’s decor sensibility are as follows: 1. Orange goes with everything. 2. A room isn’t complete without at least one sconce on one of its walls.

BTW It occurs to me that although Dad was a bigly fan of purple and lavender hues, his hunting-whatever-is-in-season also made orange one of his fave colors too. He spent a lot of time wearing orange. And camo. Don’t get me started on the camo, which is probably the official “color” of the Wright clan.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Every Sunday Should Be Easter Sunday—For The Fancy Clothes Alone.

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.

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Hairs Thursday, Sort Of

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.

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Friends O’ My Folks

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.

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Well, If It Ain’t The Goose Whisperers!

I can forgive Dad for not wearing a Tie o’ the Day to go goose hunting. Dad is the taller dude on the left. His hunting buddy is Joe Barney. They were friends from practically the minute they were born, and it shook Dad horribly when Joe died far too soon. This slide is undated, but a safe bet would be that it was snapped in the mid-50’s.

See how Dad and Joe apparently mesmerized the geese into letting the mighty hunters tromp right into their little geese gaggle. Golly! It’s as if the geese practically leapt up into Dad’s and Joe’s hands. See how the geese look exactly alike. If I still hunted, this is how I’d do it. But I’d be wearing a bow tie while I hunted. One of my camo bow ties, of course.