by Kathy Brasby | Aug 7, 2015 | Stories
There were no ordinary days with our youngest at age five.
I was fixing dinner one evening when he wandered into the kitchen.
“What’s that?” he asked, studying the pan on the stove.
“Hamburger patties.”
He tilted his head. “Can I call it sook?”
“Those are still hamburger patties.”
But for dinner that night we had sook on a bun.
Another day we went shopping. He carried five pennies into the store and laid them on a shelf. As we were leaving, he discovered his loss and we had to backtrack in search of his loot. We searched long and hard but could only find four pennies.
“We need to go.” I finally laid the law down.
He went, with a long face. “I’m going to miss that penny.”
Not long after that, he came to me with eyes drooping and mouth downturned. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Uh-oh.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but I can’t fly.”
How did he figure that out?
We were eating breakfast when he announced over scrambled eggs, “Do you know what a Gurgler is?”
I had to admit my ignorance.
“They’re a machine that sucks down people and things.”
“Yuck,” I said.
“I hate to tell you this but if you meet one, you’ll die.”
“Oh, no!”
“But it’s OK because they live on the other side of the world.”
“Good.”
“Mom,” he said. “They’re on the movies.” He rolled his eyes while I wondered what movies he’d been watching.
He liked to help me bake so one day we stirred up a batch of muffins using a whisk to mix. Soon the batter stiffened and he lifted the whisk with the muffin ingredients clumped onto it. “Look! I have a lunk!”
He ate the lunk, too, after it baked.
Then came the day when he rushed into the kitchen, his arms flailing and his face red and hot. “Mom! Betsy says I’ll get wigworms if I drink my potty!”
I still can’t get that scenario figured out.
But I’ll bet it wasn’t an ordinary day, either.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 4, 2015 | Stories
Our pool table resided in the basement, piled high with boxes of outgrown clothes and books to be donated.
I listed the pool table for sale. That way the boxes could go away.
A young man showed up with his buddy.
I had asked $35 for the pool table even though I paid $25 at a yard sale. It was a slate top pool table and connoisseurs liked that idea.
So this young man examined the slate and did a verbal fist pump. “Slate! I can sell this table anywhere for $200.”
I smiled. I just wanted it out of my basement and wouldn’t mind getting my $25 back.
“Would you take $30 for it?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, I need to come back with a pickup. Could you hold it for me?”
“If you pay today.”
He studied the table and his buddy. Perhaps the $200 loomed before him. “I wonder if we can get it home now.”
So they jumped into the project. I found all the pool balls, including two hiding under the workbench, which I carried to their dented and rusty old station wagon.
I wondered what the plan was but they didn’t have time for a plan. They bustled around like a hen with newly hatched chicks.
Then they grabbed an end of the table and began pushing. The air was blue and the guys sweating before they and the table emerged from the house.
Grunting and groaning like a mama pig in labor, they hoisted the pool table onto the top of car.
“We’re good now,” the new buyer assured me.
They tied the table onto the top of the car, running the ropes through the open windows, and then stood for a long moment with their hands on the handle. I’d like to think they were reformulating a new plan. If shimmying through the open windows counted as a new plan, they had one.
They had a plan for big bucks but, after watching their first steps, I think my $30 sale was safer than their $200 dream.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 31, 2015 | Stories
“I do not understand superstitious people,” declared Carole as she shuffled paperwork on the desk beside mine.
This topic had emerged unbidden from her mind and I looked up from my keyboard. “What do you mean?
“I am amazed at people who trust in horse shoes or are worried about walking under ladders,” she said. “It makes no sense at all.”
“So you’re not superstitious?”
She gave a quick snort. “Of course not. Those things are ridiculous. Think about it. A broken mirror gets you seven years of bad luck. A black cat walks across your path and you’ve got more bad luck. Why not just change paths when you see it? Huh? How about that?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” I really wanted to get back to work.
“Well, it’s totally idiotic,” she said. “All of it. Think about those athletes who don’t change their socks while they are winning. Or scared to death for the whole day on Friday the thirteenth. Did you know some people say that sleeping on a table is bad luck. Crazy, huh?”
“Sleeping on a table might cause a sore back, I suppose” I turned my eyes back to my screen. I had work to do.
“What?” she said, leaning across her desk. “I suppose you’re superstitious.”
“No. I don’t pay any attention to it.” I placed my fingers on the keyboard, ready to begin again.
“Me, either. Except salt, of course.”
“Salt?” She had my attention now. “What about salt?” I said.
“You know. When you spill salt, you have to throw it over your shoulder. You know.”
Well, I didn’t know. But I felt so much better knowing that she wasn’t superstitious.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 28, 2015 | Stories
This ugly house had all sorts of surprises. The good ones included finding hardwood floors under the tattered carpet. The bad ones included finding the ceiling collapsed on the floor in the basement bathroom.
Ugly houses are often that way, with surprises at every turn.
Where the paint was chipped, we found pea green underneath. Who’d paint their living room that color? I mean all the walls, not just an accent wall.
As a contrast, the hallway was painted Pepto-Bismol pink.
Surprise!
You get the idea.
The dining room had a small storage door about four feet above the floor which I assumed was a coat closet. I know you’re ahead of me on this one so you already know it wasn’t a coat closet.
Inside was a small chamber with three stairs starting at the front and rising to the back, neatly wrapped in fresh carpet like a furry Christmas gift. No ribbon.
The problem was the stairs filled the compartment, ending at the top.
I’ve seen stairs that were steeper than climbing a 14,000’ mountain. I’ve seen stairs where the paint had long worn away by many trudging feet. I’ve seen stairs that wound around a pole from basement to loft.
But I had never before seen this: the stairway to nowhere.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 24, 2015 | Stories
We were looking for a church home. Our five-year-old son was looking for heaven.Which he found at the church we visited.
It had many children to play with plus a huge box of donuts sitting on a table, free for the taking. This was his definition of heaven.
When the service began, he joined us but, before the second song, he headed to the back. His father followed and found him in the bathroom, heaving his breakfast.
“Are you OK?” my husband asked.
He was. He washed his face, straightened his shoulders, and nodded.
“What happened? Are you sick?”
Our son shook his head. “No, I ate too many donuts.”
“How many did you eat?”
“Seven.”
His father laughed. “Wow.” And then he seized the parenting moment. “So did you learn anything from this little episode?”
“Yep,” he said. “Stop at six.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 21, 2015 | Stories
Buying an old house is a little like the first vacation after you get married: you’re not really sure what you’ll discover there.
But that hasn’t slowed my husband and me. I am referring to buying old houses. Our first vacation is so far behind us that we can actually laugh about all those expectations.
Because my husband is a construction genius, we like the ugly houses that we can either renovate and flip or remodel and rent out.
We bought the house on Beaver Avenue through an eviction/foreclosure. The contents of the house had been hauled out to the garage with the door left open. The idea was that people could rummage through the stuff and take what they wanted.
In the six months before the house was sold to us, nobody went through the stuff. Not only do we live in a small town, we live in a pretty honest small town.
That meant that the garage contents were ours. Yippee. If the previous tenants didn’t want them and the neighbors wouldn’t loot them, we knew we’d find some real treasures.
So we began the sorting process.
Would you believe we found a tattered wedding album and an x-ray among the treasures?
It was like an archeological dig but without the little brushes and tomb curses. As the slave labor (OK, they were our kids but that’s what they called themselves) dug their way through the pile, they picked up a scent.
“Maybe it’s a body,” said the boy. He was always good for a new explosion or creative bloodshed.
His sister wasn’t intimidated. “Hope it’s on your side,” she said.
They tossed aside more trash and dug deeper into the garage. The smell morphed into a definite stink.
When it crossed over from stink to stench, they bailed.
That’s what mothers are for, right?
So I donned mask and gloves for the final exploration. Some yo-yo (and I’m being really nice here) had pulled a frozen turkey out of the freezer at the eviction, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and left it in a trash can at the back of the garage. For six months.
Buying an old house isn’t a vacation after all. It might be about tomb curses, though.
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