Sunday, November 16, 2014

Hi everyone!

My current desktop photo is me standing with my beautiful cousin Stephanie in front of Bagnell Dam.

 

Stephanie’s mother Lorraine and I are first cousins, born in the same year to sisters Marie and Dorothy.

 That makes Steph-and correct me if I’m wrong!-that makes Steph and me first cousins once removed. Meaning one generation removed. My children and Steph are second cousins, right?

And that is a short genealogy of the family.

Steph has traveled all over the world. She’s been to places I’ll probably never go and she has seen some fabulous vistas that I’ll never see. The drawback to not being a world traveler.

“I think I get my adventurous spirit from your mom,” Steph told me during the course of our visit, “because my mom’s not adventurous at all and Gram wasn’t adventurous either and your mom has traveled a lot.”

I smiled, thinking of the family lines and said, “It could be! You come from the same blood.”

Steph is a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor for Guide Dogs For The Blind and part of her job is field support to the people-and dogs-that have graduated from their program. And that is why she was in the area. I am so pleased that Stephanie took the time to stop and visit with me and Mike. We may be related but I had never met this lovely young lady before.

Steph is just about a month older than my oldest son and once I started my family, I didn’t get back to her part of the country for the next twenty years or so. By the time I did, Stephanie was gone off to college or had already moved to California where she presently lives with her husband Spencer and dog Pete.

And before I go any further, I want to point out that I used the word ‘lovely’ very deliberately here. It means beautiful and pleasing; delightful; caring. All of those things describe the woman I met this past week. Oh! And we can add polite to that list too. This poor girl missed lunch and never said a word to me about it! I could have offered her a sandwich or something but did I do that? No!

I am just sure that all of my relatives are either rolling over in their grave or tisking under their breath! You never went to their houses without being offered food! I am ashamed of myself and sorry I let the tradition down.

But in my defense, you have to remember that I am me!

Not much of a defense is it?

It isn’t that it wasn’t in my heart to offer Stephanie a meal, it’s that I thought, since she wouldn’t be here until 3:30 in the afternoon, that she would have stopped some place on the road and had lunch.

Assumptions hardly ever turn out good for me.

I really wanted to take Steph to Ha Ha Tonka State Park to see the castle ruins but considering our schedule, there wasn’t time. However, it gives me the opportunity to show you this vintage photo.

 It was taken there, at the park, many years ago. Mike is standing in the back with my first-born, Christopher. My mother, standing front and center, is flanked by Kat, my daughter, on the right (as you look at the photo) and Chris’s first wife, Angie, mother of my handsome grandson Cody, is on the left. All three beautiful women-then and now!

“We can take her to Wilmore Lodge and drive around The Dam,” Mike said. He always comes up with great ideas!

I gave Steph our address for the GPS (global positioning satellite) never thinking twice about it. When she got here I got a text from her, “Are we meeting at Wok & Roll?” I smiled when I read that. Of course she wouldn’t have known how to find us when she got here. We live in a parking lot, above a business and even if she had known all that, the gate at the bottom of my stairwell is kept locked. She couldn’t have gotten to my door to knock on it anyway, even if she had known where it was!

But anyway, there I was, anxiously awaiting Steph’s arrival when Mike called me on the phone. “You want to come down and sit with us?” he asked.

Mike and Gary, our maintenance man, were sitting out back enjoying the sunshine from the last nice day we’ve had since then! But I didn’t know it was to be our last nice day for a while. Not then anyway.

“Sure!” I said thinking I’d take the girls out to pee, get that out of the way, and besides it would help to kill the time until Steph got here. So when she texted me, “Are we meeting at Wok & Roll?” I was already downstairs. Mike and I walked around front to meet Steph and I have to tell you. I loved her right off. She hugs you!

“Peg, what’s the big deal about that?” you ask.

Sometimes, when I am given a hug, it is a prissy little... “Oh. If I must,” type of haunty-eyed, flick-of-the-wrist kind of dismissive hug. Like air kisses. Done for the sake of and not out of any real emotion. Perfunctory! That’s the word I’m looking for!

Do you know what I do when someone tries to perfunctorily hug me?

No?

I say, “Aw! Come on! Hug me like you love me!” That will usually elicit a laugh and a squeeze. Sometimes a little one, sometimes a big one. And that just show’s to go ya how I am. But then I have to always remind myself that there are people in this world that are not like me. Maybe they have touching issues and a hug is pure torture for them? Maybe they are 93 years old and they are very tender and delicate.

Bob Barker became afraid contestants would hurt him, in their enthusiasm to be on The Price Is Right. If someone forgot and went charging at him to hug him or shake his hand, (I think they were warned ahead of time not to) you could see the fear in Bob’s eyes as he held up a hand and backed away. Do you remember that! LOL! Maybe my age is showing again.

Then again maybe the reason someone is not a hugger is somewhere in the middle. Regardless, I wouldn’t want to cause anyone harm, either mentally or physically. So I try to be respectful.

I didn’t know what to expect from this young woman-who is a relation of mine and yet a stranger.

Should I hug her? I wondered. Take your cue from her, was what I finally decided to do.

When Steph got out of her car, she wanted to hug “Give me a hug,” she said with a huge smile and a little laugh.

And that’s all it took! We hugged, she’s a good hugger, and she’s family.

“Come on upstairs,” I said inviting her into our home. “I made you cookies.” That’s what I call Dream Bars. Cookies.

“Yay!” she said. “I love cookies!”

Uh-ooh, I immediately thought. I might be misleading by calling them cookies, “Well, they’re kind of a cookie,” I mumbled as I headed for the stairs. We went up to the efficiency apartment that Mike and I live in and we sat at the table and had tea and cookies and a wonderful visit.

Having already assumed Steph would have eaten, I wanted to have a little something-something for her so I did make Dream Bars. Coconut, nuts, brown sugar, butter, decadent tasting but oh so easy to make. Then I got to thinking how I used to make and send Sour Cream Sugared Nuts to Stephanie’s grandmother at Christmas time. I had all the stuff to make it and it was one of Aunt Marie’s favorites, and I could never make it for my beloved Aunt Marie again...so I made them for her!

Mike sat with us long enough to have some cookies and sugared nuts then he had gotten called away on business. When he returned he called me from downstairs, “Are you ready to go up to the Lodge?” he asked. He doesn’t make unnecessary trips up and down the stairs.

“As soon as we finish our tea,” I told him, “we’ll be down.”

Mike waited for us and when we went down we piled in the Jeep and drove up to Wilmore Lodge which houses a museum dedicated to the building of the dam as well as the Chamber of Commerce. Then we drove to the scenic overlook where Mike took this photo of us,

then we drove down below dam and checked out the storyboards and wildlife. There were pigeons living in holes in the concrete retaining wall.

 It was funny to look down and see a pigeon coming out of the wall. There were gars swimming close to the surface of the water so we got to see those too. There was even a small paddlefish, belly-up, trapped against a rock where the current kept it pinned. No picture of that, sorry.

Mike and I had decided to take Steph to a restaurant here named Baxter’s for dinner that evening but unfortunately, Baxter’s is closed on Monday’s and that was when she was here. So we decided to go to Margaret’s favorite restaurant, Bentley’s.

　

　


Bentley’s is a British themed restaurant and there are nine brothers and sisters who own it, but most are silent partners. I just love the Scallops Newburg that they make. Scallops baked in a light cream sauce and topped with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Mmmmm. I’m sure it’s not diet but I don’t get it that often that I have to worry about it. After eating a nice fresh salad and a warm dinner roll with real butter, not to mention a glass of wine, I couldn’t eat all of my scallops or broccoli, the vegetable of the day, which was cooked perfect but was the size of a small tree on my side plate.

“Can I get you a box,” the little gal who’s job it was to fill water glasses and box up the leftovers asked of me.

“Sure,” I answered, but truth be known, she was rushing it a bit. I was still working on it when she asked.

“You want the broccoli too?” she asked.

“Yes please,” I said thinking it would be just fine warmed up for lunch the next day.

She turned to Steph, eyeing her remaining half dish of Shrimp Scampi, “How about you? Can I get you a box for that?”

“No, thanks. I’m going to try to finish it,” she replied.

She took my plates and disappeared into the back to box it.

“This is really good,” Steph said, “and I missed lunch, so I was really hungry.”

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t even offer you anything to eat!” I was near mortified.

“Yes you did,” both Steph and Mike said at the same time and laughed a little. “You made me cookies,” Steph said as Mike was saying, “You made her cookies.” Again we all laughed.

“Yeah but that’s not real food,” I said.

Steph flashed me one of her beautiful smiles and said, “It was perfect, I loved it.”

Having been in business for nearly four decades, Bentley’s does many things right and one of Margaret’s and my favorites is their coffee. “Let’s have coffee,” I said to Steph. “Do you drink coffee?” I didn’t even pause for an answer. “They make the best coffee here.”

“Yes, I’ll have coffee,” she answered and we ordered it from Merrill, our favorite waiter, although I should be honest and tell you that all of the wait staff there are really excellent. Professional, polite and attentive.

As we lingered over our coffee, I asked a question that had been niggling at the back of mind. And if you know me, you know exactly how this question came out. No preamble, just put out there. “Are you here because of my letters?”

Either shocked, prepared for the question, or just plain honest, Stephanie never hesitated a moment as she flatly answered. “Yes.”

I grinned real big. It is a wonderful, pleasing side effect of letter writing. People who read me, know me. My letters make you feel connected, you know what I mean?

“It’s like visiting,” I was told by Michael’s Aunt Mae.

“Your Grammy once told me that when my letter came in the mailbox, nothing else got done until she read it,” I told Steph. What a delightful compliment Aunt Marie paid me when she said that. One that I still remember all these years later. And Uncle Clarence?

I didn’t tell Steph but our very handsome Uncle Clarence once told me that he really liked getting a letter from me every week. I laughed and I can still see the mischievous twinkle in his eye as he leaned conspiringly toward me and asked, “And you know what the best part is?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t have to pay a subscription fee to get it!” To this day, in my mind’s eye, I can see the glee on his handsome face as he leaned back in his chair, threw his head back, crossed his arms across his belly and laughed. In my mind’s ear I can still hear his wonderful laughter. He did like a good joke.



One of my favorite things to do on Sunday mornings is make scrambled eggs for Mike’s and my breakfast. It is the only morning that I ever bother with it. Last Sunday, a week gone by now, I decided to put broccoli in the scrambled eggs and upon inspecting my freezer, I discovered I didn’t have any. But I did have spinach. That will be good, I thought and got the spinach out.

Now, don’t forget that I am me, okay?

If I had had broccoli, I would have thawed it in the microwave so I could cut it up. But seeings how the spinach was already chopped, I skipped the microwave step. What a mistake that was!

I got the iron skillet out of the oven-where it stays when not in use, put it on the burner, put a little canola oil in it and chopped an onion while I waited for the oil to get hot. Once I finished chopping the onion, I scraped it from the plate into the hot iron skillet and was rewarded with the sound of a nice sizzle. Then I put the frozen spinach in.

Can you guess what happened?

The spinach started to pop and crackle and pretty soon everything in a two mile radius was covered with flecks of spinach! I knew then that I had made a mistake, but I really thought it would thaw pretty quickly and stop. Well, every time I stirred it, it popped and crackled and spit spinach all over the place again! Finally I thought to put a lid on it, but boy-oh-boy, how I wished I’d have thawed my spinach first!

I sent the photograph of the bird in last weeks letter to the ombudsmen at the Missouri Department of Conservation. He said it is a Carolina Wren.

So this week I sent him the poopy picture and asked him about the seeds and maybe if he knew what kind of animal left it behind. He asked me to tell him more about the poop. Where it was, was there more of it? Then he would work on the seeds. So maybe next week I’ll be able to tell you that!

Let’s do December birthdays, shall we?

Christopher Matthew Kraft, 1^st; Charles Francis Bowers, 4^th; Margaret Spurrier, 7^th; Andrew Lewis Kraft, 10^th; Justin L. Soden, 11^th; Saralee Love, 14^th; Shannon Smith Flowers, 15^th; Diane Bowers Illo, 16^th; Brianna Marie Soden, 18^th; Rachel Irene Kriebel, 18^th; Elizabeth Nancy Burns, 19^th; Susan Merritt, 21^st; Danielle Rose Bowers, 25^th.

Additions? Corrections? Let me know!

Happy birthday everyone!

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike