See You In 21 Days.

I will be off-line for the next 21 days. My church is doing the Daniel fast again. Therefore, Flashback Friday will be suspended until then. God bless.

Flashback Friday #218

Mom Gets A New Job


Greeting to those who have braved the fierce information super highway to be regaled by stories of people & places long ago.

I've spoken before that Mom worked in a tile factory in Westerville. At this time, Dad was a finish carpenter sub-contractor. Sometimes there was work for Dad, sometimes there wasn't. When he wasn't out on a job site, he was making panels. That being said, money was tight. Mom wasn't getting overtime like she had in the past. Since she wasn't working week-ends, perhaps she could find another job that only needed her on the week-ends.

That's exactly what she did. Doris' sister Violet (whom we visited on our Florida trip) had moved to Ohio and was working at a hotel in Columbus. She told Mom that her employers were always looking for cleaning staff. Mom went there to fill out an application and came home with a week-end job. She cleaned rooms in the hotel. She was a maid. All those times she said "I'm not your maid" went flashing through my head.

There were perks to being a maid. If someone left magazines or newspapers in the room, Mom got to keep them.I loved it when she would bring home the Sunday "Columbus Dispatch". It wasn't often that I got to read the comics from the newspaper (especially color comics). Dad liked the fact that Mom would bring him home men's magazines. Apparently guys would buy them, read them (meaning look at them), and leave them in the room when they checked out. I guess they didn't want their wives to know what they had been "reading". Mom figured if you'd seen one naked body, you'd seen 'em all, therefore she didn't care if Dad looked at them (I don't know if he knew that I knew where he stashed them).

Mom worked that job for two or three years before Dad had a stable income that allowed her to quit. Ironically, That hotel is where my wife & I spent our honeymoon.

Flashback Friday #217

Hey! That's MY Magazine!




Welcome to another post of trivial minutia. Have you ever purchased reading material, gotten half way through it, and lose/misplace it, never to see it again? Frustrating, isn't it?

I wish that had happened in this situation. I would only be able to blame only myself. As it is, I know exactly what happened to my reading material and exactly who took it. It was Miss Hubbabubba.

In Flashback Friday #213, I told of the first of three things that turned me totally against her. This story tells of the second. While in her cloister, er, study hall, we were to remain silent. It didn't matter what you did, as long as it was silent. Dissect road kill? Sure, as long as you did it silently.

But I digress. Seeing that I knew of this hardship period in my school day, I came prepared. While at the store with Mom the previous night, I picked up the newest issue of "MAD Magazine". This particular issue has a spoof of "The Muppet Movie" in it. Anyone that knows me well, knows that I love the Muppets.
Anyway, I was sitting silently reading this magazine when someone snatched it from my hands. There way a triumphant "AHA!!!!" as it was snatched. I turned and blurted "Hey, That's MY magazine!" I then realized that Miss Hubbabubba was the snatcher.

"This is one of those magazines that's not supposed to be at school", she bellowed. There had been a rash of sightings of "National Lampoon" throughout the school. The teachers were alerted to be on the lookout for them. If you've never read them, they can be rather racy. I explained to her that there was nothing at all wrong with MAD and that she should give it back.

She wouldn't be moved. Away my magazine went. Later in the day, I saw her and asked if I could have my magazine back. She said "That was a really funny magazine, but you're not getting it back. In fact, I threw it away." Great, just great. I didn't even get to the Muppet spoof.

At a later date, I'll expound on the third event that sent me over the edge and put her on "My list" forever.

Since this is December 22, 2012, I'm Assuming the Mayans Were Wrong

There were many people concerned because the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. The end of the world was predicted by many (probably some of the same people that prophesied about Y2K). Then there were a couple of things that happened to strengthen the apocalyptic threat.

First, Dick Clark died in April. Without Dick Clark, can we usher in a new year? Secondly, Hostess filed for bankruptcy protection. Hostess makes Twinkies, the only food that could survive an apocalypse.

All that worrying and hand-wrnging has come to naught. I'll bet this is why the Mayan calendar ended at December 12,2012:

Flashback Friday #216

Building A Garage


Hello. It's good to see you here on this Friday (can you believe that I got this post out on time?). Today my discussion rests upon a garage that Dad was planning to build. We had plenty of land, so why not build a garage/workshop on it?

What's the first thing you need to do? Um, Digging a hole for the foundation would be nice. Do you think I was going to volunteer to dig it? Idon'tthinkso! That's the nice think about having lots of friends. Dad knew someone that not only had a backhoe, but also was skilled in using it. That just happened to be Uncle Phil (Aunt Shelly's husband).

Uncle Phil drove his backhoe over and began digging. If we had lived far away, he would have put the backhoe on a trailer and brought it over. Since we only lived about three miles away, he felt like driving it. He was making good time until he hit an obstacle. He had run into our "basement home" that we had lived in for a year before we purchased the adjoining property (and house) we currently abode (this is where I lived when I had my teeth ripped out). Once we bought the new property, we abandoned the basement home and moved into the house. We filled the basement home up with trash and buried it.

Anyway, Uncle Phil's claw had snagged an old freezer that we had tossed. He asked if he could have it for scrap metal and Dad said he could. Now that he knew he was traversing a "mine field", he was a little more careful.

Once the footer hole was dug, cad called the local concrete company to come out and pour concrete. He made sure he took the day off so he would be there to make sure nothing went wrong. Perhaps he should have gone to work instead.

When the truck got there, Dad motioned it into place and the concrete came pouring out. I had just gotten home from school when the truck began. Dad grabbed a shovel to smooth out the top of the foundation. It was difficult to do from up top, so Dad took off his socks and shoes, rolled up his pants legs and hopped into the wet concrete. He was smoothing it out for about five minutes and he jumped out and ran over to the garden hose. He sprayed his legs off just as fast as he could. He didn't realize that there was a type of acid that was in the concrete to help it cure. It burned his legs something terrible.

Well, by the time he got patched up and was able to put weigh on his feet again, the concrete had hardened enough to make smoothing out the top impossible. He got the foundation laid, but never finished that garage.

I Can Totally Relate!

Just What Have You Been Doing?

Things have really been busy around her this month. Recently, "The Boy" had the lead role in our church's Christmas musical "In a Galilee Far, Far Away". He was Commander James T. Church of the starship Emmanuel.

Here's the rest of the bridge crew:

Navigator Polo

                                                                      Robot

                                                  Communications Officer Sparky

Information Tech Info (the resident Vulcan)

                                           Security officer Zip (the resident Klingon)

And Chief Engineer Otto (who I must add did a great James Doohan impersonation)

The kids were fantastic. the props were out-of-this-world (no pun intended). "The Girl" got to play one of the animals at the manger scene. At the Sunday morning performance, she tried and wandered from the manger to the friendly lap of her dad, "The Woodsman"

We also had a Middle School band Christmas concert. Here's "The Boy" playing the marimbas:

Once the 6TH grade band finished, "The Girl was finished too. Since she no longer could watch her brother, she found other ways of entertaining herself.

Last night we did our annual Christmas cantata. We've been practicing for months. Our director was a wreck. She kept saying "Christmas has snuck up on me this year." She even cut a song from the list, which we would belt out at different times during lulls in practice. At the end of the cantata, when the thanks yous were being said, we belted it out again. On a related note, my wife watches the directors youngest a couple times a week and once they were watching a Veggie Tales movie with said song in it. Her eyes got big and she exclaimed "That's the song my mommy doesn't like!" ROFL