It was because of the many westerns we watched on TV that my brothers and I clamored for the whiskey challenge.
Our father loved the western genre. Bonanza. Gunsmoke. Annie Oakley. Bat Masterson. Maverick.
You get the idea.
I was 13 when we moved to the farm where my parents would make their home for nearly the rest of their lives. Our neighbors gave my folks a bottle of whisky as a going-away gift.
My parents didn’t drink whiskey. For more years than I’d like to admit to, I wondered why on earth the neighbors did that.
I did finally figure it out. Welcome to gag gifts.
But as a 13-year-old, I saw that bottle as an opportunity.
“We want to try it,” I told Mom. My brothers at 11 and 8 both agreed. We’d seen the saloon settings in the westerns. We wanted in on the excitement.
Mom finally agreed.
She pulled out three Dixie paper cups, the ones with the yellow flowers on the outside that you’d usually use to rinse your teeth after brushing.
Mom set those three cups on the counter just like the bartenders in the westerns did.
I wanted to compliment her on her bartending skills but something held me back. Probably the anticipation of this exciting re-enactment.
Mom poured the dark liquid into each cup.
“There you go,” she said.
There we were. We’d seen how to drink whiskey. The cowboys swirled the drink in their shot glass and then tossed it into their throat like ice water to a parched throat.
We knew how to do that.
We swirled our drinks, opened our mouths and tossed that whiskey in.
Cowboys in our westerns didn’t gag on whiskey. They didn’t cough and pant, trying to get the foul taste out of their mouths. They didn’t run for the faucet and guzzle cold water until the burn faded.
Cowboys didn’t but we sure did.
I never checked my mom’s response that day but I’ll bet she was smirking.
Today begins a new series on my blog, one that will share stories and poignant moments about that special time of life: when our parents reach elderly.
I will continue my short stories on Tuesdays but plan to publish a “Seasons” story each Friday.
Names will be changed and, in some cases, stories may be blended to protect identities.
Don’t expect the aches and pains reports but stories of victory, stories of endurance, stories of humor.
Check back next Friday for the first Seasons story.
Great ideas and I do this dance which sometimes is as smooth as a three-step waltz and sometimes as clunky as mashing your partner’s toes with barn boots.
The problem of how to light the candles may have sparked a clunky dance but see what you think.
I was a small-town newspaper editor in need of a special photo for our Christmas issue. This was way before you could buy photos online and way before I had a budget to buy stock photos.
I found some elegant Christmas candles and placed them in a classic formation with a draped fabric behind. Then I set up my camera on a tripod and worked out all the angles.
Everything was going great until it was time to light the candles for the shoot.
I was at the office at 8 pm in a town where all the stores closed at 6 pm. And I didn’t want to drive clear across town to my house to get some matches.
There had to be another solution.
My car was parked 10 steps from my office door. And it had a cigarette lighter in it. I had plenty of paper in a newspaper office.
Time for a great idea.
I settled myself in the front seat of the car, pushed in the lighter, and started rolling a sheet of newspaper into a long tube which ought to ignite when the lighter was glowing red. I mean, that lit cigarettes, didn’t it?
With the tube burning, I could light the extra candle in my pocket, take it back inside, and we were ready to do this Christmas spread.
See what I mean about great ideas?
I had never used the lighter before and I had no idea how long to wait for it to pop out. It did pop out, right?
I leaned down closer to be sure things were cooking around the lighter. At that moment, the plug didn’t just pooch out of its socket, it flew into the back seat.
It zinged past my ear and bounced off the upholstery. For a crazy second, I wondered if I could just light the candle from the little fire that might ignite in the back seat.
But by the time I found the lighter, the red tip had cooled to black.
I held the lighter in one hand, my rolled piece of paper in the other, studying the situation and waiting for another great idea.
My younger brother was a high school wrestler, which made for an interesting lesson in the folly of letting siblings mature.
His first practice of the season came shortly before my visit home from college. We hadn’t seen each other in a little while and he wanted to get me caught up on things. I could tell he was jazzed about wrestling. And I wanted to re-connect, too.
“Here’s a new move I learned,” he said. We were standing in the middle of the living room with a new carpet on the floor, a good thing as it turned out. “Watch.”
Watch wasn’t really the right term. Stand still and do nothing was a better term because he put one hand behind my neck, one behind my knee, and, whoosh, had me flat on my back.
“Pinned! Just like that. And it’s really easy,” he said. He had enough maturity, at least, to help me get back on my feet without first pressing his knee into my clavicle.
I wasn’t a wimp in the athletic department. I played basketball, softball, tennis, and flag football. I rode horses and faced thundering cattle. I was no fragile piece of china. But I hadn’t ever learned a wrestling move.
There are times when a polite retreat is wise. But I was a college student. Wisdom was like a tree in the mist. Sometimes I saw it, sometimes I didn’t.
I did want to be an attentive sister so I hung in there. “It worked pretty well.” I rubbed my shoulder where I had landed.
He grinned and I wondered when my tow-headed little brother had turned into this six-foot tower of muscle. “I’ll show you how easy.”
“Um, OK.” Remember the part about wise? Not so here.
He shook out his shoulders. “Easy to do. First you grab my neck.”
Yeah, OK, I got that. I had done that a few other times in his young life. Well, maybe not the back side of his neck, though. I tried to do it his way this time. We had matured, of course.
“Then you grab my knee,” he said.
I leaned down to replicate his move. Suddenly the walls of the room swirled around me and, with a thump, I was on my back again.
He grinned, dusting his hands off. “That is how you counteract it!
I knew things were going to get a little sticky when I uncovered an ink refill for a printer that I don’t remember owning. I had to crack open my archive box and I was finding interesting treasures.
pochette CD.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Archive box” sounds fancy, doesn’t it?
My archive box is a plastic box with lid that contains CDs from programs I’ve installed. What a great idea, I thought when I got it. All my CDs were safely stored in one place and protected from dust and stuff.
I don’t know why the ink refill was in the box. The printer must not have lasted long enough to even earn a refill.
I don’t visit my archive box much but my computer crashed and I was re-installing programs.
But opening that box was like a trip down memory lane but without the warm fuzzy emotions. What I felt was confusion.
For example, I uncovered a CD with a big black question mark scrawled on the label.
What in the world? Who labels their CD with a question mark?
Me, obviously.
Although nobody accuses me of being well-organized (well, someone did once but that was before they saw my desk), I took some pride on my box as a shred of planning.
Every program CD went into that box after installation.
I am proud to say that there were no 5 1/4 inch floppies in there. Using my system, that’s a miracle.
So I started flipping through CD jewel boxes for programs to reinstall.
I found programs that won’t run on anything newer than Windows 98. I found programs for pre-schoolers. (Our youngest is 17.) I found a CD from our classical music days.
I’d like to blame this on the kids but they never open the box. They just run the programs and don’t mess with the details.
Wonder where they learned that?
I’m sure there’s a major life lesson in all this. Something about staying organized but those lessons tend to roll off me like tumbleweeds crossing the prairie.
Sometimes simple is better. So here’s what I learned: I’m cleaning out the box.
Download a copy of my newest story, Escape, and join my group of newsletter friends to receive the latest news, updates, and resources. You can unsubscribe at any time.
