by Kathy Brasby | Sep 16, 2019 | Family, Humor, Stories
In those carefree BK (Before Kids) days, I imagined baking cute birthday cakes for future kids. My mom used to make little train cakes with gumdrop windows. The train cars perched on licorice rails with a green coconut base. So cute. I knew it was in my blood.
I bought a puppy cake mold before I had kids. My first cake using that mold was a pile of crumbs that I shaped like the foothills of Colorado. Drizzling icing on top was supposed to mimic snow. I hoped nobody would notice because I didn’t have time to bake another cake.
One first-birthday cake was supposed to be a bright soccer ball but looked more like an egg that had fallen from the second floor.
Before Pinterest Fails were a thing, my cakes were trailblazing the way.
As some of the kids got older, they didn’t ask me for cake decorating advice. They invested time in 4-H cake decorating units. Kids can be wise sometimes.
One daughter learned how to decorate a one-layer cake for her first project.
She baked her show cake the afternoon before it had to be entered at the county fair. When the edge of the cake wouldn’t release from the pan, she solved the problem by cutting away the perimeter.
Most of the entered cakes were 8” round, but hers was more of a 5” lumpy. She slathered on icing, but it was like trying to hide Mount Everest under an ice cream cone. No champion ribbon that year.
Another daughter was the creative sort who felt stifled by the rules for the unit. When she was required to form a mat of frosting stars, she didn’t understand why the cake couldn’t show through. It would be like hiding the tuba in the marching band.
No blue ribbon that year, either.
Our son, at age 10, signed up to learn cake decorating and even went to a workshop where he and 25 girls learned the fine art of placing dots of frosting on waxed paper. This, of course, made no sense to him until he licked clean the frosting after the workshop.
We found out later that he signed up so that he could be in charge of the family birthday cakes. He figured if he’d finished cake decorating, I’d let him make the cakes.
Maybe to up his game with the frosting. Many family birthday cakes had a finger lick on the side before we got to the candles.
I never caught him in the act, but I suspect this had been a goal for his life since he was four.
His show cake came together on a hot summer day with frosting that needed a lot more sugar than he put in the bowl. Imagine a lava flow sliding across his design.
The lava-icing flow continued until he got the cake to the fairgrounds. His frosting border was supposed to be a circle but resembled the outline of Texas.
No blue ribbon that time either.
But his father bought back the cake, took it home, and served it to our family. Oh, yeah, everybody ate a piece.
We haven’t had any cute train cakes in our house, but one good thing has come from all this cake-decorating training: along as there is plenty of frosting, our family is content with a pile of cake crumbs.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 9, 2019 | Family, Humor, Travel
This story is true. I know this because the person who told it to me heard it from somebody who might have been part of the story. Or not. You know how that goes.
But it’s a good tale so it ought to be true. This is the influence of the internet on our lives, by the way.
This account took place in the early 1970s when polyester pantsuits were becoming the rage.
A pastoral conference was held on the border between Texas and Mexico. Three pastors from Iowa took their wives to the seminar. The men went to the day’s meetings, and their wives went shopping in the border town of Mexico.
In those days, beautiful leather goods and silver jewelry could be purchased even in a pastor’s salary. The women wandered from booth to booth on the downtown streets.
While shopping, the wives found themselves along with several other women swept up by police and thrown into the local jail.
It seems that prostitutes in the early 1970s in this little town had also embraced polyester pantsuits, which was, of course, what the Iowa wives were wearing. Looking stylish and all that.
So the pastors’ wives looked like the local prostitutes.
The police were doing a routine roundup. The prostitutes went through this often. They all had their license for their business and soon were all released with a small fine.
And there sat the Iowa women with no prostitute licenses. If you’ve ever bathed a cat, you have an idea what their mood was. Fangs could have been bared, but the police were playing cards in the other room.
No license, no release.
So the women cooled their heels in the Mexican jail all day.
When their husbands finally got out of the day’s conference, they had to do some searching to figure out where their wives were. But they eventually traveled into the little border town.
“Get us out of here!” their wives said, all nice like that cat with soap in its eyes.
So the pastors went to talk to the police chief. He was firm: no license, no release.
There was probably help through the US Embassy or some other US agency, but it was already night.
“We can’t stay in this jail all night,” the wives said. Their narrow eyes warned the husbands of dire future repercussions. The men needed no imagination to understand.
The husbands agreed. This jail was no place for their stylish wives. Offers of money to the police chief were spurned. He was a law-abiding police chief. No bribes allowed.
So the husbands huddled. Surely their conference had strengthened their problem-solving abilities. Three heads ought to be able to figure out a solution. They brainstormed frantically above the growls coming from the jail cell.
The men came to a solution and made a pact: no one could know, especially their wives.
And that’s how three pastors from Iowa bought Mexican prostitution licenses for their stylish pantsuit-wearing wives.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 2, 2019 | Country life, Humor
If you’ve come along on some of my blog adventures, you know I live on a hobby farm with goats. Well, other living beings, too, but this story is about goats.
Remember Rocket, the confused male goat? If not, go check out his story. Rocket has fantastic (code for odd) stories, and I have another of his adventures to share.
Goat romance is a precious thing. Rocket was a classic romantic who spent a lot of time alone, pining for his girlfriend. Now the girlfriend varied from week to week, but Rocket was always ready.
Rocket’s place ran parallel to a small pasture where two does – goat ladies – lived. One day I noticed that one of the does, Lulu, tiptoed along the fence line in shy come-hither steps like a young girl hoping the star athlete would see her. She was ready to meet Rocket.
The other doe, Maybelle, was oblivious. Her afternoon snack held more interest than did a male caller. She ignored Rocket.
I did mention that Rocket was always ready for romance, right?
I opened the gate and Rocket roared into the pasture, legs churning in a blur like Roadrunner cruising the desert where Wile E. Coyote schemed.
Rocket had more hormones than brains. And his pick up line was about as sophisticated as Blinkie the Clown.
Chanting “Hey, good lookin'” as he flew into the pasture, he focused his loving gaze on Maybelle. Not Lulu. Wrong girl.
When a female goat is not in the mood, a hormone-fueled buck is as attractive as roadkill. Dead gym socks smelled better.
Maybelle saw Rocket hurtling toward her and took off like a jet. Her legs were whirling faster than the back tires of a quarter-mile drag racer. I wondered if she’d need a parachute to get stopped. If she ever stopped.
I watched the pair bolt around the perimeter of the pasture, legs spinning. Rocket’s head was up as he sang melodies to the beauty of his new girlfriend.
Maybelle’s head was down; she had no time for nonsense. Kentucky Derby winners might not have been able to catch Maybelle as she circled the pasture.
Meanwhile, Miss Lulu waited by the pasture gate for her handsome hero. She sent little air kisses to Rocket and twirled her tail like a string of pearls. Cute red hearts floated above her head like balloons at a Valentine’s day party. Red confetti filled the air.
As the racing pair headed down the backstretch, their path took them past Miss Lulu who by now was flashing her lashes and tossing her hair like Marilyn Monroe.
I did not know a thundering buck could make a 180-degree correction without turning inside out, but Rocket did it.
Suddenly, he was bringing roses and chocolate to Miss Lulu. Their foreheads touched like sweet kisses. Violin music began to play.
Meanwhile, Maybelle’s parachute must have worked. She leaned against a fence post, heaving for air while her life passed before her eyes.
If I ever get a racehorse, I might consider calling it Rocket. But I actually think Maybelle might be a better choice.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 27, 2019 | House rehab, Humor, Stories
I am beginning to embrace the unique vibes of retro nerds. Retro isn’t necessarily my jam but you gotta try new things, right?
Besides, those sweet people are passionate about their favorite retro item, and I might be able to use them. Er, learn from them, of course.
I’m talking about CRT TV nerds. For the rest of this post, TV equals CRT TV so don’t be thinking of today’s refined thin TVs.
My sister, Ann, and I do some property management, so occasionally we get to empty out a house that was abandoned by a tenant. This doesn’t happen much, but we have cleaned out a lot of junk over the years.
Junk including those TVs. It almost seems required to leave old TVs behind.
When tenants move out under less than great circumstances, they leave behind TVs like crumbs or mouse droppings.
One house had four TVs left behind, ranging in size from 16” to 60”. Do you know that a 60” TV can weigh over 250 pounds? How on earth do tenants get those into basements? The narrower the stairs, the more TVs in the basement.
I assume they bought beer for the entire fraternity.
We lugged all four TVs out of the basement with help from two high school boys who overestimated their muscles. They needed a fraternity, too.
Perched on my pickup bed, the TVs looked kinda like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear on my pickup bed.
I am told that there are nerds who love old TVs. Playing games like Super Mario All-Stars is fantastic on a old TV. Watching VHS is also a rush, too, I guess.
Woohoo.
We didn’t know any retro nerds, though. We considered leaving the TVs on my pickup bed until someone stole them, but that was only one of we. The other considers our town’s people way too honest for that. Or too smart.
So we went to Plan B. We could haul them to the county landfill.
Off we went with the TVs and a few other choice items: a table with a broken leg, a floor lamp that didn’t work, half a couch.
The attendant at the landfill gate directed us to the area for broken furniture and then to the building for electronics. Um, who was there to help us? Nobody.
So we had a 250-pound VW Bug TV and just my sister and me to unload it. One of us wanted to use leverage to push it off the pickup bed. Nope. The other we said we had to unload it gently or we’d have broken glass everywhere.
So we broke out all our load straps and wrapped them around the TV. Then Ann found a plastic stand and pushed it into place behind the pickup bed. We planned to lower the TV onto the stand and then onto the floor.
She was in charge of guiding the TV onto the stand. My job was to release the straps bit by bit. Quit laughing. This is a serious story.
We managed to get the TV to the plastic stand. The TV settled on the stand, which immediately collapsed.
The TV crashed to the floor. Huh. No broken glass.
No wonder those retro nerds loved these TVs. They’re indestructible.
“Are we going to leave it there?” Ann said, studying the crashed TV.
“Unless you know a CRT nerd, we’re out of here,” said the other we. I won that time.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 20, 2019 | Humor, Stories, Travel
Our family has had some fantastic travel opportunities over the years, including spending a week in Cuba. Imagine that we took two teenagers and loads of video equipment into Cuba and didn’t lose anything. Although you could debate that.
All week we had seen El Morro lighthouse and castle across the harbor from Havana, and finally, we found time to visit.
El Moro Lighthouse, Havana, Cuba
From our hotel, we hailed a government-approved taxi which drove us in a cute little Russian car to the parking lot of El Morro. The uniformed driver promised to return in two hours to take us back to the hotel.
Promised. No problemo.
The tour went great. The hosts inside were friendly and helpful.
We bought a few trinkets and then headed out to the parking lot to wait for our promised taxi driver.
We knew the chances of him returning weren’t great, but we’re polite Americans, so we waited.
Three young Cuban men approached us. “Do you want souvenirs?” They pulled out a silver coin. “See? Che Guevara.”
“Not interested.”
So the three men stepped away. I suppose stretching your neck and looking far down the street is probably a universal signal. They quickly figured out we were waiting for a car.
“Do you need a ride? We have a car. Cheap ride. Only $10.”
We’d paid $6 for the taxi ride over so my husband wasn’t paying $10 to these guys. They tried to negotiate but finally agreed on $6.
The windows of the driver’s car were all down, and the driver rushed ahead to open the door. We thought he was helpful.
He was but only because there were no outside handles. I know, I know. Red lights should have been flashing in our brains.
We climbed in and buckled up. There were no liners on the door panels, and we could see all the rods running to locks and windows. We kept our hands to ourselves.
The little car scooted down the highway and then dropped into a tunnel under the harbor. As the car began to descend, the driver pushed in the clutch and turned off the engine. We coasted to the other end of the tunnel.
I’ll bet he saved a tenth of a gallon of gas with that trick.
He started the engine once gravity threatened to stall him, downshifted, and sailed right through a stop sign.
In Cuba, taxi drivers needed special permits to serve foreigners. Our driver had no taxi permit and no permit to take us anywhere. I think his idea was, once you break one law, you might as well break a bunch.
I don’t know what the speed limit was. It seemed irrelevant to our driver. Might as well break another law. We did stay on all four wheels.
He cruised up to our hotel, double-parked in the narrow street, and shut off the engine again. Another tenth of a gallon saved and another law broken.
He jumped out to open our doors because apparently, the inside latches on the doors needed a secret twist before they’d open.
We paid him. In that country, he may have just made half a month’s wages.
We’d just taken an unlicensed taxi ride with an illegal driver in a foreign country and we lived on.
But I gotta be honest. We came away with our possessions and our teenagers, but I think we left our minds somewhere on that lighthouse.
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