by Kathy Brasby | Nov 11, 2014 | Hope
There’s a place for tending to baby bunnies and there’s a place of driving home the victory.
Victory is mostly the point in the world of college football.
My mother was no big fan of college football when her teenagers discovered the game on TV. So she busied herself with popping popcorn and baking chocolate cookies that were served while still warm and gooey.
But when she placed the cookies on the coffee table in our living room, she settled herself into a chair to watch the game.
“Who’s playing?” she asked.
“UCLA and Stanford,” my brother said, reaching for a cookie without missing a moment of the game.
“Who’s winning?”
“Stanford is up by four points.”
Mom smiled and nestled into the chair. “Go, UCLA!”
I grabbed a cookie, too, wishing she’d brought hot chocolate as well. “Why are you rooting for UCLA?”
“Because they’re behind. I feel sorry for the underdog.”
Before long, the UCLA quarterback fired a pass into the end zone.
“UCLA is winning now, Mom,” my brother said.
“Go, Stanford,” Mom replied. To our puzzled looks, she shrugged. “I feel sorry for the losing team.”
And then Stanford scored. Mom switched teams again.
The game was winding down and UCLA trailed by four. “I’m still rooting for UCLA,” Mom told us. “Poor guys. They’re losing.”
And then, in a flurry of color and motion, the game was over and players were leaping and slapping each other.
“What just happened?” Mom asked.
My brother scooped up the last bits of popcorn. “UCLA scored on the last play of the game. Your team won, Mom!”
“What?” She stared at the screen. “Football is so strange.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 2, 2014 | Hope
I remember the Christmas where Mom found the perfect gift for Dad. It was so perfect that he got two of: the one Mom bought and the one he bought five days before Christmas.
As Mom put it, “He can just have two of them then.”
She wasn’t smiling when she said it.
That was Dad’s MO: when he needed something, he bought it.
Buying gifts for Dad was always a challenge. He didn’t care about fun gifts. He wanted practical. For a while, we rotated gifts between wallets and pocket knives because he was sure to lose one between birthdays.
But my husband stumbled on an even more perfect gift.
Matt assured me that he would take of Dad’s Christmas gift one year after he found cases of antifreeze on sale at the parts store.
He didn’t even bother to wrap the case. He popped on a bow, wrote Dad’s name on the cardboard and let Dad cut it open. With a gift pocket knife, I suspect.
Dad was thrilled.
At a case of antifreeze.
It is no wonder that I never scored a great gift for Dad.
And the best part of the antifreeze? Matt then shared how great a price he’d gotten on the case. Dad couldn’t have asked for anything better.
That was the year I quit buying gifts for Dad. I was obviously clueless.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 12, 2014 | Hope
Some jobs just don’t fit some people.
Chuck’s crew had one of those projects where the construction happened on one side of a canal and the electrical power was on the other side.
So Chuck was handed the 100-foot extension cord and instructed to get it hooked into the electrical outlet.
Chuck threw himself into the task, which involved unrolling the cord and dragging it across the ground to a small foot bridge. Then he dragged the remainder of the cord to the outlet.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew assembled scaffolding, laid out tools, and inventoried the building materials.
Then Chuck came back to his foreman.
“All set?” the foreman said.
“I need an adapter,” Chuck answered.
The foreman narrowed his eyes. “An adapter?”
Chuck held up the end of the extension cord. “Yeah. I’ve got female to female over there at the outlet and I need an adapter.”
“I suppose you have male to male at this end?” the foreman replied.
“I haven’t looked yet.”
Chuck didn’t last long at that job.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 25, 2014 | Hope
I’ve compiled some of my short stories about country life into a new eBook, The Overconfident Milk Truck and More Short stories. Click here to see the eBook site.
The Overconfident Milk Truck is available in a ton of eBook formats, including epub and Mobi. You can read on your Kindle or any mobile device by using an epub reader.
These stories should be a fast read, perfect for those times when you want a quick bit of fun. Please check out the link. You can download a sample free. Thanks for taking a look!
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by Kathy Brasby | May 6, 2014 | Hope
All four of us kids were huddled around our old propane heater holding mugs of hot chocolate and surveying the snow outside. Yesterday’s blizzard had dumped a thick mat of snow that filled ditches and hid sidewalks.
It had also forced the school buses to stay in the garage and so we were enjoying this white wonderland.
Our farm house sat at the top of a hill and we could see into the valley. The county road that ran past our house dipped into the valley and then rose to the top of the next hill.
The storm had filled the valley with heavy snow so that the road wasn’t visible for a quarter mile.
While we sipped our hot chocolate, we saw a milk truck lumber to a stop at the top of the next hill. This was a large semi tractor-trailer considering his options.
“Don’t do it,” my mother said.
“Go for it!” said one brother.
“He won’t go,” said the other.
The truck rocked forward and back for a bit with indecision and then took a step back before barreling down the hill.
An explosion of white filled the air.
“He won’t make it,” said my mother.
As the snow filtered back into the valley, we could see the truck. Snow covered the hood and packed tight against the doors. The truck hadn’t gotten a quarter of the way through the valley’s snowpack.
Dad trekked down in his tractor. Unlike over-confident milk trucks, tractors can go about anywhere. They managed to tow the truck backwards and Dad reported that the snow was like concrete around the engine.
On the farm, you learn many things in childhood. One of the bigger ones was one of the simpler: when in doubt, listen to Mom.
And don’t plow into snowfields.
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by Kathy Brasby | Apr 29, 2014 | Hope
In the stone age of mountain skiing was the T-bar and there it should stay.
A T-Bar Lift consisted of a steel rope looped over a series of wheels. A bar hung down from this steel cable with a horizontal cross piece at the bottom. Think of the idea of an upside-down T.
The cable ran up the mountain and skiers were expected to rest against the horizontal piece which would push them up the mountain.
Two skiers could go up the same T-Bar and that’s where my problem began.
My college roommate and I were out for a day of skiing at a small ski area that featured several T-Bar lifts. No problem. We weren’t beginners anymore.
We glided up the mountain together several times before things went a bit haywire.
As we were sliding over the snow, my roommate developed problems. Her skis caught and she weaved from left to right to left, bucking the T-Bar with her wild maneuvering. I clung to my balance until she lost hers.
It was over then. The T-Bar heaved skyward, pitching me into the air.
I landed on my back with the end of my ski hooked over the horizontal bar. Up the hill I went, dragged by the now-calm T-Bar.
I jerked my leg like a fish trying to shed a hook and, after a couple of eons, kicked myself free from the lift and roll into the deep powder alongside the lift track.
I could no longer see my skis under the powder. I rolled and kicked until I worked my way onto the ski run itself. Hard-packed snow never looked so good.
Sweat ran down my shoulder blades as I stood for a few minutes to let my heart rate drop under 200.
And then my roommate slushed up beside me. After falling off the T-Bar, she’d skied to the bottom, caught another ride, and beat me to the top.
She ran her eyes from my snow-caked boots to my powdered cap and shook her head.
“What on earth happened to you?”
T-Bars… you can keep them.
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