Where the Walls are Soft…

Edible - But You’ll Die, After…
Taken August 9, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

She gave
me
my hat
and she showed
me the door…Somebody found Where the Walls are Soft by Googling “knickety knackety lyrics”, which piqued my curiosity, as I’d thought Ruby had made up that song… so I Googled it myself, and found the following, described as “most annoying song now and forever”.

It was also the song sung by the school-children in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds; something else I didn’t know, which really bugs me, because I love that movie. I should have recognized the song when Ruby sang it.

I married my wife
In the month of June
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

I brought her home
By the light of the moon
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

She combs her hair
But once a year
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

With every stroke
She shed a tear
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Rustical quality
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

She swept up her floor
But once a year
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

She said that brooms
Were much too dear
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

She churns her butter
In her dad’s old boot
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

And for a dash
She’d use her foot
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

The butter it came out
All grizzle-y gray
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

The cheese it took legs
And ran away
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

She let the critter
Get away
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

I asked my wife
To wash the floor
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

She gave me my hat
And she showed me the door
Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Now, now, now

Ristle-tee, rostle-tee
Hey, donnie-dostle-tee
Knickety-knackety
Rustical quality
Willow-tree, wallow-tee
Now, now, now

I called Ruby, accusingly, and she sang most of it to me, but without the “ristle-tee, rostle-tee”, after telling me that she never said she’d made it up. She’d just changed the words of a song her uncle used to sing.

Anyway… that’s it. Slow day.

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Captain Vegetable” - The Muppets

Almost Edible
Taken July 1, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

“I’ll bet
most
people that
read your blog
have never
seen snowshoes!”Ruby wanted me to post a picture of snowshoes for this post. I would have, too, but I couldn’t find any snowshoes to take a picture of, and the ones stealable online were all too small to suit me. Besides, Ruby’s cherry tomatoes are gorgeous, aren’t they?

Ruby and I got talking about snowshoes in the spring (I know, I know - I’m SO behind in these posts!), when I mentioned that another winter had gone by, and I hadn’t bought snowshoes for the kid and myself.

I used to snowshoe in school, and on Cockburn Island with my Dad, but Ky would never even entertain the thought of going with me, until this year, when she took it up in school herself. And fell in love with it, just like I did. We never managed to get ourselves any equipment before the snow melted, though. Sigh…* Next year, maybe…

Anyhoo… The mere mention of snowshoes got a story going…

We used to snowshoe all the time in Northland, you know. We used those old catgut snowshoes - ever see them?

Me: Yes, I did. I used catgut snowshoes, too. My Dad had them on Cockburn, and I think that’s what we had in school.

Well, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Now, they’re those lightweight aluminum things. Don’t take nothin’ to get those things going. The ones *I* used were heavier than *I* was!

Me: Yup. And if you didn’t bang the snow out them every so often, you’d get bogged down with the weight…

That’s right! You had to be careful how you banged ‘em, too, or you’d end up on your face.

(I laughed hard at this - I remember ending up on my face more than a few times.)

I think we spent the whole winter on snowshoes, now I think of it. We wore them for syruping, too. Imagine hauling pails of sap with snowshoes on…! We did it, though. We worked hard, now I look back on it, but I don’t think it occurred to us that we were working. We were having too much fun!

Me: Did you ever just snowshoe for the sake of snowshoeing?

Of course! We snowshoed all winter. Everybody did - even the teacher. He boarded at our house, you know. Slept with my brother.

Me: Your school teacher boarded with you?! God, you must have hated that!

You’re telling me I hated it! I didn’t like that guy much. He thought he was funny, always joking around… Any time a man walked into our kitchen, he’d yell at me: “Ruby! There’s somethin’ in the kitchen with pants on!” He used to make me so mad!

(Let’s all take a break here, while I try to stop laughing…)

I teased him back, though, I guess. I got in big trouble with him over that once.

Me: What’d you do?

Well, he got sweet on this girl in our class one year. He wasn’t much older than us, after all, and he took a shine to this pretty thing that had her nose in the air all the time…

Me: Uppity, was she?

Uppity?! She wouldn’t even talk to the rest of us girls, that’s how uppity she was! Anyway, the teacher was sweet on her, and one day when us kids were all out snowshoeing on the ice, this girl was with us, and we started teasing her about the teacher. She got mad at us, and sat down on the ice and wouldn’t speak to us at all.

So we thought, “Oh, to heck with her,” and off we went without her. Well, when we come back around again, she was gone. We could see two sets of snowshoe tracks making off into the bush, and we knew the teacher had come by and they’d gone off alone together. We made fun of them back and forth to ourselves all the way home. I could hardly keep a straight face at the dinner table that night, with him sitting across from me, let me tell you!

Anyway, that night, my sisters and I were upstairs getting ready for bed, and I got singing…

“She sat on the ice, and she wouldn’t talk
Knickety-knackety, now-now-now.
When the teacher came along, they went for a walk,
Knickety-knackety, now-now-now.”

(At this point, I must interject with the news that Ruby actually began to recite a ditty she’d made up over 70 years ago, and probably hadn’t thought twice about since…. I was flabbergasted. I daresay Ruby was too.)

Well! Didn’t that teacher hear me from down in the kitchen! He came barrelling up those steps - scared the bejeezus out of me! Told me right off, and I got mad at him! I said, “Oh, but it’s alright for you to say, ‘There’s somethin’ in the kitchen with pants on,’ every time somebody comes in!”

And he turned right around and never said another word.

I finally had the sense to dig out the digital recorder. I turned it on, fully expecting her to balk, but…

Ruby sang! When I asked her if I could blog it, she actually agreed. “But,” she said, “You should put up a picture of catgut snowshoes. I’ll bet most people that read your blog have never seen snowshoes!”

Ruby’s tomatoes will have to do, though. I’m more excited to share her voice with you. Check it out.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Knickety-Knackety-Now-Now-Now” - Ruby Daniel

Parade Girl - 1956

“They figured
Lake
Huron would
just wash the
beach away
in a couple
of years, and wouldn’t
that be just a waste of sand and money?”It didn’t show up in the photo, so Ruby’s sister, who took the original picture back in 1956, wrote what the sign said with a ball-point pen, on the copy she made for Ruby. Yes, that’s Ruby with the face-paint, goggle eyes and bathing suit. Ummm. Yeah. That’s a bathing suit.

Ruby had no qualms whatsoever about handing it over for bloggery mischief - in fact, she hunted it out on purpose for me in March of this year.

Sorry, folks. This post is a few months late.

Did I ever tell you about the time I marched in the Community Day Parade on the Island?

Me: No! When was this?!

(laughs and claps her hands together) Wait’ll you see this!

She disappears into her spare room and comes out with the above photo, at which I, of course, laugh.

Me: ‘Splain to me this, Ruby.

Ruby (eyes just a twinkling): Do you think that Mushy-fella will like this?

Me: I think he’d rather no mask.

Ah, well. He’ll have to suffer the mask, then.

Me: So, what’s with the sign? Were you protesting?

Kind of. But we were more making fun, I guess.

Me: Who were you making fun of?

The Town Council, that’s who! A couple years before this, somebody on the council got the bright idea, that if they made a sand beach along the waterfront on one side of the Island, that the tourists would come in droves. There was fighting and voting and more fighting and more voting than you ever would believe over that beach mess, let me tell you!

Me: Looks as if the town wanted it, by the sign…

Nope. Just the opposite. Most people in town didn’t think it would work at all. They figured Lake Huron would just wash the beach away in a couple of years, and wouldn’t that be just a waste of sand and money?

Me: I guess it would.

Your darn right it would! But Council won out, and they must have spent thousands trucking in sand in big trucks and dumping it. They made a right nice beach, too.

Me: And….?

And the very next Spring, Lake Huron melted and hauled the whole works away to God Knows Where! (laughs for a long time) Town Council was pretty red-faced about that, lemme tell you!

Me: And so you marched yourself down Main Street in the Community Day Parade with that get-up and a sign, just to make fun of the Council? I wouldn’t have thought you to be so mean, Ruby!

(I said this ADMIRINGLY, though, you must understand….)

Ruby claps her hands together in laughter again….

Yup! And….

I won First Prize!!

Random Song for the Day: “Nobody Told Me” - Puddle of Mudd

Joycie, Rex, and Ruby - 1928

The kids
would
all be
lined up, and
with the
midwife assisting, the
doctor would stick them
all, assembly-
line fashion, no questions asked, no names taken.Hey, a picture is a picture, right? Ruby dug this out especially for me to post here. That’s her on the right, sitting behind her brother Rex, on their tricycle - doesn’t she look like a little devil? And I’ll bet Rex dropped Joycie on her head off that trike about 30 seconds after the shutter clicked. Not that he did drop her on her head - just that he probably did. Just sayin’.

Rex is the brother of Blackberry Summer fame. Ruby hadn’t told me much about Rex up to this point, so when she presented me with this photo, saying, “There. I wonder what that Mushy fella will say to that?”, I asked her about him.

Rex was about 18 months older than Ruby. She was about three in this photo, so he’d have been a little over…. five maybe? He had asthma and it plagued him all his life. When he was eight, it almost killed him because of a Scarlet Fever vaccination.

They didn’t have a doctor in Northland, so every year or so, one would come in by train and stay a few days, checking up on people and taking care of any emergencies that might crop up while he was there. The rest of the time, Northlanders most likely were doctored up by midwives, veterinarians, and God Himself.

On the last day of an annual visit, if there were any school kids of the right age, the doctor would innoculate them all one after another, just before he jumped back on the train out of there. The kids would all be lined up, and with the midwife assisting, the doctor would stick them all, assembly-line fashion, no questions asked, no names taken. Prick, prick, prick, prick, pack up and go home.

Rex had asthma, but the doctor didn’t know that, and he didn’t bother to ask. If he had bothered, he’d never have given him the shot. Five minutes after the doctor left for the station house (which, ironically, was where Rex’s dad was, being the section foreman, after all), Rex went into convulsions. The quick-thinking midwife scooped him up and ran for the station house, where the train was just pulling in, and Rex’s dad watched the doctor save his boy in the nick of time.

When I asked Ruby what the doctor did to save him, she said she hadn’t a clue, just that it had been close. She also laid dollars to donuts that the doctor never gave another shot without asking a kid’s history first.

Rex survived, though, and grew up to work for his dad on the railroad, which kept him employed until World War II. He tried to sign on, of course, but his asthma did that idea in. He ended up working as a time-keeper for a chain-gang of POWs for the duration of the war, at a camp further up the ACR.

The POWs he was in charge of were mostly Italians. The were a friendly bunch, and the Canadian government treated them very well. They may have been called a “chain-gang”, but not a one of them wore a chain. Where would they go if they ran? Into the Northern bush to starve or freeze to death? No, they weren’t that stupid. Better off where they were, where they were housed and fed fairly comfortably, considering, and each and every one of them worked hard, Rex said.

In the evenings, some of them built tiny little ships, with masts and sails that were squished magically through the necks of whiskey bottles and glued down. The masts, sails all furled up, would be stuck to the ship with rubber cement, and laid flat on the decks with little strings attached to the tops of them. The tiny dab of rubber cement stayed flexible long enough that when the whole works went through the bottle neck, the strings could be pulled gently and the masts would stand up straight and the sails would unfurl. Rex said it was a great thing to watch. By the end of the war, he owned three ships in bottles, and had them ’til he died.

A lot of those POWs applied to stay in Canada when the war was over. We must have been pretty decent people back then, I guess. Who would choose to stay here otherwise, and freeze for six to eight months of the year?

Random Song for the Day: “Belgium or Peru” - Green Monkey Project

“Drained”
Taken November 17, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

“…there’s more
old
maids married
during Leap years
than any other.”Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

That’s about the only word I can use to describe how I feel right now. It’s not a bad “blah”, so much as a really, really tired one. It’s also not really a bad “tired” - just… ah. No words for it.

It’s been a busy last little while. We have made The Hummingbird’s sojourn here a little more “official”, which has required a few meetings and several thousand forms to fill out. I have not yet got all the forms filled out, in fact. Once I have it all done, I think I might own the kid. If that turns out to be true, I’m going to sell her on eBay, just to pay for all the miles I’ve walked and all the “signaturing” I’ve had to do.

Tonight is the first chance I’ve had to work on a post - The Turkey made supper… cuz she’s a good kid, and I’m a bad mom. Actually, I probably would have remembered to make it myself, if I hadn’t spent three hours dancing around the living room with her, so it’s all her fault anyway.

But, I’m full of rice (She made rice. Just. Rice.), and so I’m now powered up enough to tell you all what Ruby has to say about Leap years…

Is this year really a Leap year?!

Me: Yup.

Well, now - here’s your chance!

Me: My chance for what…?

For a man!!!! (And she cackles long and loud, clapping her hands.)

Me: Ruby! I don’t want a man!

(laughter)

Me: I don’t!!! Besides, if I did want a man, why could I only get one on a Leap year?!

Because on a Leap year, the girl gets to do the askin’! Haven’t you ever heard of a Sadie Hawkins?!

Me: You mean, as in a “Sadie Hawkins dance?”

Yes, a dance! And the girl does the askin’! We only had them on February 29th… Leap years. A girl could ask a man to the dance, and she’d go pick him up and the whole nine yards. They were lots of fun! And they worked, too, you know… there’s more old maids married during Leap years than any other. Or there used to be, anyway. Time have sure changed. (sighs)

Me: I’ll say…! We used to have Sadie Hawkins dances in high school, but we had them every Hallowe’en, not just on Leap years…

Well, you cheated, then. And they’re supposed to be on February 29th, not Hallowe’en.

Me: So, why not take your Leap-year-given right, Ruby, and go out and get yourself a man this year? You’ve still got a few weeks to pick one out.

Me?! What am I gonna do with a man?!

Actually, every now and again, I sometimes wish I did have a man. You know, to take me out to dinner and then out for a drive. Then he’d have to go home.

You know, after Roy died, I had a friend who kept trying to tell me how to get a man. She used to say I should go to the grocery store and look for some poor confused-looking fella and help him tap a melon or something. She’d say men are so grateful over stuff like that that they’ll up and ask you out next thing you know! (laughs) Or she’d say, “Ruby, go to the laundromat. Help some poor idjit fold his clothes. He’ll follow you right home, you’ll see!”

Me: So did you go to the laundromat, then?

Of course not! I’ve got my own washing machine! I should have maybe done just that back then, though, now I think it over.

Me: Well, it’s not too late, is it? And it’s a Leap year!

No… I should’ve gone twenty years ago. I wasn’t so buggered up then as I am now.

PS Check out what Amanda has to say about me ‘n my blog! Now, how cool is that?!

Random Song for the Day: “New Soul” - Yael Naim

Ruby’s Mom & Dad – March 23, 1909

”She didn’t
like
the idea
of letting a
strange man
in, but she
didn’t have the heart
to run him off, either…” Meet Ruby’s Mom and Dad. This photo was taken on their wedding day. It took a lot of begging, but Ruby finally let me take the picture home, frame and all, to scan it.

It kind of looks as though Ruby’s Mom has her hands in her pockets but Ruby says, no, her mother always held her arms a certain way, in photos, or when talking to people, to make it less noticeable that she had

No.

Forearms.

She would fold her hands at the knuckles, just behind her hips. Her grandchildren used to walk around doing that, pretending to be Gramma, Ruby said with a laugh, as I was packing up the picture to take home. I was trying to get the hell out of her house with it before she changed her mind, but then she started talking about her mother during the Great Depression, and I sat right back down again.

We used to call them the ”Dirty Thirties”, you know. All those people out of work – it was just awful.

We did alright – my Dad worked for the railroad, and we had a little farm, so we didn’t have to worry about starving to death, even with all us kids. I think my mother always felt a little guilty about all those people with next to nothing, because she was always giving food to perfect strangers, whenever they’d ask for it.

There were always hobos on the train in them days. There’d be men leaving their families behind to hop a train out West, hoping there’d be work out there. Us kids used to run down to the tracks whenever we heard a train coming, just so we could count the hobos and wave at them. We wasn’t making fun of them, mind you, but we used to wonder at the things those men saw. Some days there’d be up to a dozen hobos waving back at us. They always waved back.

Sometimes, when we’d get back home there’d be a hobo in our house! The odd one would get off the train, or maybe he’d get caught and thrown off, I’m not sure, and our house was right there, wasn’t it? So, sure enough, he’d be bound to knock on the door, and ask my mother if she’d give him something to eat.

One day, a hobo knocked, and my mother was alone in the house. She didn’t like the idea of letting a strange man in, but she didn’t have the heart to run him off, either, so she said, “You go round back and chop me some firewood, and I’ll make you a lunch.”

So, off this man went behind the house to the wood pile, and he chopped wood for an hour, while my mother cooked him up something to eat, and packed it all up for him to take away with him. He sure earned his lunch that day, I guess!

For some reason, my mother followed behind him when he left with his lunch – maybe she was going to haul water, I’m not sure, but she happened to see him meet up with four other hobos off the last train. She felt awful, too, when she saw he was splitting up that lunch between the bunch of them, after she’d made him chop all that wood… She wasn’t mean with a meal, but she’d only packed enough up for one man.

There were times, too, that a man would need a place to settle in for the night, and my mother never turned anybody away. She’d bed him down on the living room floor and give him supper. In the morning, he’d have a hot breakfast, and she’d send him off with a lunch for later, too.

Then she’d spend the whole day washing all those bedclothes twice over, just in case the fella was lousy, or had fleas.

One day, she got a great big box off the train, addressed to the “Section Foreman’s Mrs.” Inside that box was a whole set of “Knowledge Books” – encyclopedias, they were. And the note said “Thank you for taking me in, and for the nice meals on such-and-such-a-date….” It was from some hobo off a train, who’d maybe got himself a job selling Knowledge Books in Toronto or some such. Imagine that! My mother had those Knowledge Books ‘til she died. I wish I knew who had them now….

Before I left, Ruby showed me this little thing in her china cabinet. She’d bought it for her mother to hold her glasses on, and it sat on her mom’s night-stand, doing just, that for years.

And, yes, those are Ruby’s Mom’s specs still sitting on it.

”Tell that Mushy-Fella
that this is me…”
(Laugh, laugh, laugh….)

So, there, Mushy-Fella… I think we might be wearing her down. Maybe.

Random Song for the Day: ”Scar Tissue” – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Now in Assorted Colours!

I
think
those people
had it in
for poor
little Joycie.
It’s a wonder she
survived childhood.Cardiogirl said that in her comments yesterday, and I’ve adopted it as my new “creed” of sorts. It just works for pretty much everything, wouldn’t you say?

Crap piling up? “Be One with the Shovel.” Live in Canuckia? “Be One with the Shovel.” Gotta get rid of that pesky bill collector? Yeah, it works for that, too.

It also reminds me of yet another Ruby story. This one came from this particular little one liner from Ruby, awhile back…. Yeah, the one at the top, there.

“She” is Ruby’s little sister, Joycie. Joycie had a hard life with Ruby, as a kid, apparently. They laugh now about it (rather hysterically, at times), and Joycie forgives all. In fact, she’s can’t remember for the life of her why Ruby hit her in the head with the shovel in the first place.

“She musta been mad at something I said, I guess,” is what Joycie says. “She was always mad at me for something.”

And Joycie was always getting hurt as a kid, anyway…. What difference is a knock on the head with a shovel gonna make? Joycie remembers worse “accidents”.

Like the time her brother was running down a hill ahead of her, rolling a barrel-hoop. For reasons unknown, he decided to pick up the hoop halfway down the hill and pitch it up over his head behind him. Of course, it struck Joycie right on the forehead and she’s still got the scar to prove it.

Then there was the time all the kids were sliding on the ice with their boots – they didn’t all have skates, but boots worked alright – and Joycie wiped out and cracked her head a good one on the ice. Her mother (yeah, the lady with no. forearms.) taped her up good – so good, that she managed to tape Joycie’s eyelid open. And it stayed taped open for a week. I think those people had it in for poor little Joycie. It’s a wonder she survived childhood.

I got the chance to sit and talk with Joycie’s all-grown-up daughter, “Lucy”, a while back, and tried to get a few stories out of her. She immediately looked at Joycie and Ruby and said, “Do you remember the time Donah picked all the blueberries?” They started laughing (hysterically), and they stayed laughing for about ten minutes, not a one of them able to spit out a coherent word. I felt very left out of the joke.

”Who the hell is Donah?!” I finally yelled.

“Donah, is my ex-husband, the cheap bastard,” replied Lucy, and they all promptly went into hysterics again.

“Remember the wine-glasses on my anniversary?” said Lucy. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh….

Finally, she tells the story about the three lead crystal wine glasses she got for a wedding gift. Why three instead of four, was beyond her, but she always wanted that fourth glass, so she could offer wine in matching glasses when another couple came over.

One summer, Lucy and Donah were camping in a trailer on the week their wedding anniversary fell. Donah very mysteriously disappeared into town on the happy day, returning at night-fall with a bottle of wine and a box wrapped in pretty paper, which he handed to Lucy.

When she opened it, she was moved to tears to discover not one, but three more lead crystal wine glasses to match the ones she had in her china cabinet.

“Oh, Donah… now I have a set of six! Thank you!” Donah grinned and opened the wine.

It wasn’t until they returned home, and Lucy set about putting the new glasses into the cabinet that she noticed the first three were gone… When she confronted Donah, he admitted that the bottle of wine was the actual anniversary gift.

“I told you he’s my ex, right?” laughed Lucy.

“Okay, but what about the blueberries?” I demanded, which set them all off again for another ten minutes, but I finally got that story, too. Poor Donah. It wasn’t really his fault, but the poor bugger sure had some stupid luck…

He was out fishing one summer day, and on his way home he decided to visit Lucy’s aunt and uncle, who were “trailering” for the summer. He found the trailer, alright, but no one was there. He decided to wait for them.

He waited.

And waited.

He noticed there were blueberry bushes all over the area, laden with thousands of the biggest berries he’d ever seen, and, noticing a half-gallon plastic bucket sitting partly under the trailer, he decided to pick Aunt and Uncle some blueberries while he waited for them to return. It wasn’t long before the bucket was brimming with berries, but there was still no sign of Aunt and Uncle, and finally, he put the bucket next to the trailer door, where he knew they’d see it, and drove home.

He went back again a few days later, and there they were, so in he went. After a bit of conversation, he asked them if they’d found the blueberries. Uncle quickly turned the conversation to the fish he’d caught that morning.

After a bit, Donah asked again about the blueberries, and Auntie showed him the new curtains she’d made for the trailer.

Finally, when Donah asked again about the berries, Auntie said to Uncle, “We’re gonna have to tell him, I guess,” and turned to Donah.

“Donah, that was our pee pail.”

PS - Check it out! Another “new” word!! I clipped this from “My Thermos”. You should check that out, too.

clipped from mythermos.com

Blego

(Darkside-Dreamland.com’s definition)

n. a protologism combining blog and ego. Used to define the ego of a blog or blogger. Like personal ego, blego may be good or bad.

AND….. This is right cool. ElitALICE found it first.

Random Song for the Day: ”The Last Resort” - The Eagles

She always
brought
her brother
with her, just
in case
there wasn’t anybody
there good enough to
see her homeElle, from Maxwell the Tattooed Boy and Other Astounding Joys. wrote about her grandmother in a post yesterday. Her Grandma was a Flapper in the Roaring Twenties, a time that fascinates me (I’m in - okay, mostly out of, lately - the midst of a novelish-type project about those days). Suzi wondered in Elle’s comments what Ruby’s take on flappers might be. I have to say, I wondered, myself, once Suzi put the bug in my ear.

I didn’t even get the chance to ask, though, before Ruby started on about her Mom again…

My mother used to tell this story over and over, when I was a kid. She had us laughing every time she told it…

There was a dance every weekend when my mother was a girl, and that’s where all the young people went to socialize. There’d be fiddle-players and sometimes somebody would bring an accordian, and everybody would square-dance. It was at these dances that all the girls “caught” their husbands, mind you, sometimes a girl had to keep fishing awhile before she caught the one that suited her.

There was always a hoity-toity girl in the bunch, too, that just enjoyed the fishing part. There was this one girl that was just too good for most all the boys, but that didn’t stop them from sniffing around. She always thought too high of herself, and always had her hair done just “so”, you see. Always dressed to the nines, and acting like she was better than the rest of them. The girls all hated her, except for the few that she buddied with, and they were a little uppity, too.

Me: What was her name?

I don’t think my mother ever said. If she did, I don’t remember.

Me (writing furiously, of course): Should I just call her“Diva”, then?

What’s that?

Me: Well, properly, I guess it’s an Opera singer… but people sometimes use it to refer to a woman who acts like that. You know, with like, a Prima Donna attitude?

You mean “uppity”?

Me (laughing): Yeah, I guess so.

“Diva” works, then. This girl was the most uppity little snit my mother’d ever met. She always brought her brother with her, just in case there wasn’t anybody there good enough to see her home. Just uppity.

And there was this fella my mother knew who was a little simple. Wasn’t stupid, mind you, just a little…. slow, I s’pose you’d say, but he was a real nice fella. He was at every dance, never missed a one, but he didn’t seem to have the sense to clean up much before hand. But he worked hard, and like I say, he was a real nice fella. That should have counted for him, not against him, my mother always thought. His name, I do remember - it was Joe.

Diva, now, wouldn’t have nothing to do with Joe at all, probably on account of his being a little grimey, but my mother always maintained it was on account of he had a lisp. She said every time he opened his mouth, the conversation got a little comical. You’d have a hard time keeping a straight face at a funeral, if Joe spoke to you, I guess.

Joe didn’t much like Diva, either, but somebody at the dance one night dared him to ask her to dance. Joe wouldn’t turn down a dare for anything, so he marched right up and asked her, “Would you take the nekth danth with me?”

Of course, Diva turned him down flat, and she wasn’t very polite about it, either. Joe took offense to that and smarted right back at her, “Well, fine! You can kith my ath, then!”. Right in front of all her friends! And then he marched away again.

Well! (Ruby claps her hands and laughs) Diva didn’t like that one bit! She went off to find her brother and told him Joe had just insulted her, and of course her brother hunted Joe out and told him off. He was a big guy, too, and when he told Joe he owed his sister an apology, well, Joe just agreed that he’d take care to apologize first chance he could. And he did, too.

(Pause while Ruby starts laughing again)

He went marching back up to Diva and her gaggle of friends and said to her, “Thay, Mith… You don’t have to do that there that I told ya… me and your brother made different arrangementh.”

Me (laughing): I wonder if he got beat up on the way home.

(Ruby - still laughing) I always kind of wondered that myself!

Random Song for the Day: “Rats” - Pearl Jam