Burnin' Rubber

          You know something?

          As much as I enjoy our weekly visits, there are times when I'm not all that excited about it.

          "What's going on, Peg?" you ask.

          What's going on is I don't have any interesting news or photos to share with you this week. This week it's going to be all rather mundane I'm afraid. But I'll tell you what. We'll get started and see where we end up. I could be wrong you know.

          Our little dirt road comes out to the blacktop with another road across from us and it's not Robinson Road. Weird, I know. On the other side of the blacktop, the road is named Paradise. Lately, the last couple of months, someone has been burning rubber at this intersection. Mike always notices that stuff because as a young man he used to do it too.

          "My first car was a 1949 two-door Desoto. Everybody used to back up to the doors at school and burn rubber going out the sidewalk. It was a wide sidewalk. But my car wouldn't burn rubber in forward," Mike told me. "So I'd drive up to the door and back out to burn rubber."

          "Why wouldn't it burn rubber in forward?"

          "My old Desoto had fluid drive. It had a clutch but a different kind of clutch. You couldn't just dump it."

          "I don't know what that means," I told him.

          "Well, you can't rev up the engine and dump the clutch."

          Yeah. That explains it better. "You mean just let off of it real fast, is that what that means?"

          "Uh-huh. Cause it's like half automatic; fluid drive. Nobody would admit to burning rubber because you weren't supposed to do that. You'd get in trouble with the cops. You'd go to school the next day and you could see the black marks someone left in the night."

          "How'd you get your first car? Your parents buy it for you?"

          Mike snorted. "Noooooo! I wasn't even living at home."

          "Why not?"

          "I didn't get along with my dad very good." Mike continued. "I was living with some people from church. Loren and Christy. Loren and I were out riding around and saw this car sitting in the front yard of a house and it had a FOR SALE sign on it. We turned around and went back to look at it. The guy wanted 30 dollars for it. Loren told me, 'I'll tell you what. I'll buy the car for you if you help me stucco my house. When the house is done, I'll give you the car.' I said okay so he bought the car and brought it over to his house. It took all summer to stucco his house!"

          Mike was quiet a moment, remembering. "Before he'd give me the car though he had to ask my mom if it was okay. Mom made me get insurance on it, which I didn't have any money to pay for insurance so I had to go to the bank and borrow money."

          "How much did you borrow?" I wondered.

          "I don't remember but I needed plates for the car and steel toe boots too."

          Now I was confused. "Steel toe boots? For school?"

          "No. My dad left and didn't come back so I quit school and got a job with a contractor building houses. I'd sign my checks and give 'em to my mom and she'd make the payment on the loan."

           So all of these black marks started appearing at our intersection. Then two weeks ago, Mike and I were coming back from someplace and saw muddy tracks coming out of our road.

          "What's that?"

          As we pulled into our road, I saw what it was. "Someone went down in the ditch." And they left muddy tire tracks as they drove out of it.

          Last Sunday someone plowed down the neighbor's mailbox. I saw it on my way to church and stopped to take a picture. Were the two incidents related? I wondered.

          The next time I went out, on Tuesday, the mailbox was in an upright position.

          "Why didn't they turn it so the mailman could put mail in it?" you wonder.

          I know, right! I wondered the same thing myself.

          By Friday someone had 'righted' it.

    

          "They didn't even clean the dirt off it," you say.

          I know, right! There's a whole ecosystem living on top.

          Crazy weather. We had 60s and 70s during the day then frost overnight. It's just crazy.

          We have shelves for the wild girls in the cat room. It's warmer for them to be off the floor in the winter. It's also too high for them to jump up onto. So I have an old table under it for them to jump to first. On the table is a box with old stuff in it that they've been making a bed in for years.

          With the nicer weather, I've been opening the cat room door during the day. Sometimes I forget to shut it at night. And I forgot one night this week. When I went out to scoop their litter late that afternoon, I found this guy in the box. He'd climbed up the table and into the box. I went back to the house for my camera.

          "There's a possum in the cat room!" I called to Mike. "I need my camera." And I rushed right back out the door.

          Ol' Mr. Possum was so still I thought he was dead.

          I poked the box. "Hey you!"

          He lifted his head and hissed at me.

          "Don't you take that attitude with me, mister! It's my house!"

          He was perfectly content to lay there and wouldn't get up and leave no matter how many times I slapped the box. Then I thought that maybe he was sick or dying. We had a possum come in and die in the cat room before. I didn't want him dying in there. I wanted to take the box outside but it was so big I'd have to lean over the top to carry it. I went in the house to get Mike.

          "Mike, will you help me get the possum out of the cat room?"

          Mike got out of his recliner and came to help me. "We need a stick to poke it," he said and grabbed a broom handle on the way through the garage.

          By then we were in the cat room. "You take one side of the box and I'll take the other and we'll just carry it out."

          "Oh. He's in a box."

          I guess I could have led with that.

          Mike set the broomstick down and helped me carry the box out.

          The next morning I checked the box fully expecting to find a dead possum and was pleasantly surprised that he was gone.

          "He just wanted a comfy bed to sleep in," Miss Rosie said when I showed her the picture.

          There's a Dogwood tree at the edge of the woods just outside my church. The Dogwoods have been coming on for more than a week now but this guy is more shaded so it took him longer to bloom.

          And just under him lives Fringed Polygala also called Fringed Milkwort and Gaywings. It's a small native perennial. It was once thought that cattle eating this plant would produce a lot of milk, hence the name Milkwort. The Iroquois used its leaves as a wash or poultice to treat abscesses, boils, and sores.

          Close by were more wildflowers.

          "What's this one?" I asked Miss Rosie when I got back to the Jeep. We were done with our exercise class and I wanted to take a few pictures before we headed for home. "It's leaves remind me of wild strawberries but I've never seen a yellow strawberry blossom before."

          "You're right. Strawberry blossoms are white. I don't know what that is."

          Then I showed her this one. "I don't know what these are either but I don't think they're Spring Beauties." In retrospect, I can tell you that I didn't do any more than flash the picture at her on the screen of my camera. I'm sure she didn't have a chance to focus in on it or she would have recognized it as the same wildflower growing in her front yard.

          How do I know? When I pulled up to Miss Rosie's house Lamar came out, plucked a handful of flowers from the yard and came down to the Jeep. He always mows around the wildflowers until they're finished blooming.

          "Do you know what these are?" he asked.

          "No, but I can find out."

          It didn't take me long to hit my computer and do a Google search. Then I called Lamar. "They're a little wildflower called Bluets. Other names for them are Innocence and Quaker Ladies."

          It wasn't until I downloaded my photos in preparation for today's letter blog that I realized I'd taken a picture of the very same wildflower up at the church five minutes before Lamar asked me what they were! Geesh!

          The other flower, the yellow one is a variety of Cinquefoil called Dwarf Cinquefoil.

          Speaking of my church... I am officially the church photographer and I've been given a board to post anything I want. We have events coming up but until then I decided to decorate the board with spring things. I enlisted the aid of my Miss Rosie. She has an artistic eye and is good at coordination. If it were left to me, I'd just stick them up there all willy-nilly.

          There were a couple of other people at the church when we put the pictures up.

          "What's that purple one?" Larry asked.

          "Passion Flower," I told him. I just love the Passion Flower, it's my favorite wildflower. I took the picture in Missouri and brought one of the fruits with me to Pennsylvania but haven't had any luck getting the seeds to germinate. But it was his question that planted a seed. I should label them so everyone knows what they are. It hadn't occurred to me before that that they wouldn't know the names of these flowers. I made up the labels and cut them out before I realized I hadn't left room at the top for tacks. It was time to head off for exercise class and I didn't have time to redo them.

          "I don't know how you're going to do it but here you go," I said handing the tags to Miss Rosie.

          "Gee, thanks," she said not minding at all that I drafted her. I think the sideways solution she came up with is just perfect.

          Yesterday, Saturday, was our spring clean-up at the church. Being the official church photographer, and taking my job very seriously, I went to document the day.

          "Here comes, Peg," Karis said, and I took her picture.

          Annette stuck her head out from where they were working cleaning out the storeroom. "And she has her camera." Annette, like many of us, doesn't like to have her picture taken because she thinks she doesn't take good ones, but she's wrong. She does.

          "Of course I do and I'm here to document the day. I'm the official church photographer you know and I even have my own board!" I said.

          "I see that," Karis said.

          Worried that they would think it not appropriate for me to post non-church function pictures on the official church board, I explained. "I'll use it for church stuff mostly. Next week I'll take the flower pictures down and put up the pictures I take today."

          "Oh. I'd better hurry and memorize the names then," Karis said and I was glad I'd put the names of the wildflowers up. 

          I left the ladies that were working on the inside of the church and went to take pictures of the outside work. That's when a little splash of red catches my eye. Unless someone can tell me what this is, I'll have to spend some time researching it. I've never tried to identify mosses before.

          I didn't stay to help with the spring cleaning and the biggest reason is that Saturday's are the day I do the majority of the work on my letter blog. It's my day to spend with you.

          Mike and I went to Dickson City to do some shopping this week.

          "Yay! Road pictures!" you say.

          Sorry. Not this time. I just didn't see much to photograph.

          "Can we get lunch at Burger King?" Mike asked. "I see the advertisement for their new tacos and I'd like to try one."

          "Sure! Wherever you want."

          Mike's been wanting one since he first saw the TV ad. "You know how it is though. They always make 'em look better for TV than they really are."

          I had intended to take a picture of his tacos for you but forgot.

          "How were they?" you ask.

          Well, I don't think he'll ever get another one.

          I was enjoying my Whopper Jr. and rubbed it in a little. "Mmmm-mm," I said. "I bet you wish now you'd've gotten a Whopper instead."

          Yeah. It was more than he could stand. Especially after I waved mine under his nose. The tacos just didn't hit the spot and he loves Whoppers. After his tacos were gone he broke down and got a Whopper — cut in half. He always gets it that way.

          Look at all the mustard!

          On the way home, Mike got behind a slow-moving truck and pulled into the passing lane. When he pulled back into the slow lane, this Mustang roared around us, stuck his hand out the window, and gave us the bird.

          I laughed. It's been a long time since anyone's flipped us off. "Did you cut him off?"

          "No," Mike answered. "We both pulled into the passing lane at the same time.

          Not far down the road, we were both just two more cars in a long line of traffic and for all his anger and speed it didn't get him any farther ahead.

          Hey! Check this out! Fist time this year! Yeah. He's stuck and I came to the rescue!

        

          We were visiting with the Kipps one day this week and as we sat at the table and chatted, I watched the birds coming to the feeder right outside their window.

          "Rosie! What kind of bird is that?" I asked interrupting the conversation. If I'd have waited the bird might have flown away and Rosie wouldn't get to see it.

          "I don't know. It looks kinda like a Nuthatch but Nuthatches don't have that stripe," she said.

          Lamar, bless his heart, got up and got the bird book for us. We couldn't find it in there. "It might be in the big book," Rosie said and Lamar, bless his heart, got up again and got the big book for us. He handed it to me and I handed it to Rosie.

          "I don't even know where to start looking," she said.

          "Start with Nuthatch since it looks like one," I told her.

          Well, it is a Nuthatch. It's a Red-breasted Nuthatch. "I didn't know there were different kinds of Nuthatches," I said.

          "I didn't either," Rosie agreed.

          My book lists five different kinds of Nuthatches. And I know I've told you this before but just let me reiterate in case you've forgotten. Nuthatches are the only birds who'll go down a tree headfirst. All the other birds hop down backward.

          Speaking of not knowing there are other kinds of things, I didn't know there were different kinds of trout, although I suppose I should have.

          "They weren't Rainbow Trout," Miss Rosie said about my last letter blog. "I asked the guy and he said they were Brook Trout."

          I don't think it would make a bit of difference if I never corrected this small error but I want you to know just the same.

          Another bird landed on the post while we sat there chatting. "I know that one," I told Miss Rosie. "It's a Carolina Wren."

          "We saw a Grosbeak this week too," Miss Rosie told me.

          It's weird. It's really weird. I was sitting at my computer, sorting pictures and when I came to these bird pictures, I thought about Miss Rosie telling me they saw a Grosbeak. On an impulse, I got up, got my binoculars off the shelf, and looked out at my feeder. You're not going to believe this but guess what was sitting out there.

          "A Grosbeak?" you guess.

          Yes! A Red-breasted Grosbeak and he has a female with him.

          Coincidence maybe? And that wasn't the only coincidence I had this week either.

          My nieces are beautiful. Every. Last. One. Of them. I have a bunch of nieces and they're all beautiful. That's just an FYI.

          I was just finishing a book written by Francine Rivers. My ray o' sunshine, my best girl Joanie introduced me to Francine Rivers and I love her!

          "Love who?" you ask.

          Both of them actually but I was referring to Francine Rivers here. The book's called Redeeming Love and was based on the Bible story of Gomer and Hosea. In the book, an eight-year-old Sarah was sold into a brothel during the 1800s gold rush in California. I hated it! I hated how the prologue ended and didn't want to read anymore. Then the words of the introduction came back to me. "We believe you'll understand — when you have read the whole book." So I did read it. The story was so engrossing that I stayed up until midnight, one o'clock. I read and read and read until my eyes were so tired they felt like they were full of glass. I finished the book in three or four days.

          And then my beautiful niece Ashley posted a heartbreaking and truly horrendous article about children being sold into the sex slave business. Children as young as nine!

          How's that for a coincidence?

          Francine Rivers takes the bones of a Bible story and weaves them into a story that I can understand. But even more than that. When I'm done reading her story I want to turn to the Bible and see what's actually written there. To compare it to what she's written. See how much was true and how much was story. Anything that makes you want to open the Word of God can't be all bad, can it?

          I've had several projects on my glass table this week but can't show them to you yet. One thing I can show you is a Dangly I made. I love the red, blue, and green glass that I use in this design and every time I give one away, I make another one. I like to have one on hand for quick gift giving. So I got my pieces cut, ground, and drilled. I strung them together and I'm thinking, why is it so short? It actually took me a few minutes to puzzle out that I'd missed the two copper pieces in the middle. As many times as I've made this design too! What is wrong with me!

          Wait.

          Don't answer that.

          I haven't decided if I'll leave it as is or tear it apart and add the copper marble cage and swirly.

          Talk about SNAFUS, I have to tell you that I got an envelope from my oldest and much-adored sister Patti this week.

          It was empty.

          The stamps weren't canceled, the envelope was torn and there was a note written on the front.

          Arrived unsealed at 18853, which is the zip code for my post office here in Wyalusing. Then it had the date.

            I flipped it over.

          "It's been opened," I said to Mike. "Whatever she sent me, it's gone now."

          I didn't think the chances of it being money were very great but I was curious as to what she did send — or should I say what she tried to send? I called her.

          "It wasn't anything important," she told me. "It was just the newspaper clippings from the Sullivan Review about the tornado that hit Dushore. It was an EF-1! I thought you might like to see the article."

          "Dushore had a tornado?!" you say.

          Yep. Less than ten miles from me as the crow flies. I saw the pictures online but would have liked to have seen the article she tried to send me.

          No one was injured but Dushore became an island as nearly every road was blocked by fallen trees. You couldn't get in or out. The huge pines at the Sullivan Terrace where Momma used to live were all knocked down...

...and the copper sheeting was torn from the steeple of the church Momma loved.

          "She'd be sad to see this," I told Patti when I sent her the pictures I found online the next morning.

          "Yes she would," Patti replied.

          With the warmer weather come bugs. Some I like, some I don't, and some I just tolerate.

          Do you know what this guy is?

          He's a firefly with no fire. This species doesn't use light to attract its mate, instead, it uses chemical signals.

          Have you ever seen that southern cook Vivian Howard? I'd watch her show sometimes just to listen to her talk. Vivian started endorsing Duke's mayonnaise on a TV commercial.

          "Duke's is the perfect companion for so many things," she says. "It makes a tomato taste more like a tomato; it makes bacon taste more like bacon. It makes everything it's with better."

          Well, that was enough for my commercially susceptible husband. "We should try that sometime."

          For the next, I don't know, few months we watched for it in the grocery store.

          "Why didn't you buy it online?" you ask.

          Mike did look and did find it online but either I convinced him to wait or he decided to wait. Now it's at Wal Mart and we bought some.

          "If it tastes like Miracle Whip you're going to like it and I'm going to hate it. If it tastes like mayo I'm going to like it and you're going to hate it," I pointed out to Mike.

          He lost! It's like mayo and I do like it.

          "Peg, that looks like diet food. How's your diet going?" you ask.

          Not so hot. I like to eat more than I want to be skinny again. I exercise three or more days a week and try to eat healthy. Hard-boiled eggs sliced on rice cakes with just a smear of mayo is one of the things I like to eat and feel is pretty healthy for me. You do need some fat in your diet for the absorption of some vitamins.

          And you know what they say, don't you?

          They say that people who are happy weigh more. All I've got to say is I'm pretty happy!

          Let's call this one done!