Mr. Chest O. Drawers that I blame for some strange happenings in my hillbilly haunted mansion.
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Here's the bad bad light bulb in the unfinished ceiling of our finished basement. This is not the actual bulb, but a new kind of twisty bulb. I know these reflections are the lamp and the camera flash. They're not ghostly.
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Haunted Basement?

For my second true ghost story, I will take you to our basement.
It is a finished basement (mostly), with TV, couch, pool table, kids'
games, computers, pinball machine, air hockey, slot machine, etc.

Hubby decided to rearrange #1 son's room. He had bought the
boy a large chest of drawers soon after we moved into the house.
We all went to pick it out at a second-hand furniture store. It
did not fit with the new layout of the bedroom, so Hubby took
it to the basement and we stored out-of-season clothes in it.

I don't know how soon odd things began to happen, because
I did not make a connection with this furniture until a couple of
years after it was moved. I was reading an old book called
Haunted Heartland by Beth Scott and Michael Norman, and
there was a story about a table that made knocking sounds.
It creeped me out, to think someone could be so attached to
furniture that he would hang around it after death. It doesn't
seem possible in my logical world.

So...#1 son's room had stopped being cold. The basement
was cold, but all basements are, so that didn't seem odd to
me. Here are some things that happened in the basement:

One light bulb would go out and then on again. No, this was
not a bulb burning out. No pop or sizzling sound. One minute
it was on, then it was off. Only one bulb. The first time, I told
Hubby we blew a light bulb. Being Hubby, it took him about
3 days to put one in. After 2 days, the light came back on. I
told him not to bother. "How can it be blown and come back
on?" he said. It was on a couple days, then did it again. Hubby
put a new one in. "Must be a bad bulb." The new one lasted
about a day. Same thing. On for a while, then off for a few
hours or days. Hubby put in a third one. It worked about a
week. Then...

One night around 11:30 p.m., I was done watching TV and
walked toward the steps to go up to bed. You know how
you get those creepy feelings that something isn't right? I
had one. I thought, "Oh, don't you dare go out now, you
stupid light." And it did. It went right out. The hair on the
back of my neck stood up, and I ran up those steps and
turned out all the basement lights. Creepy creepy creepy.
The next morning it came on, and it stayed on.

Two other odd things happened. #1 son took a picture
of our new fake electric fireplace with his digital camera.
He showed me the picture, and I said, "What's that?"
He said, "I don't know. It wasn't there in the preview."
It was a purple sphere of light in the fireplace, between
the fake logs and the glass. I thought it must be a reflection.
"Mom, I had the flash turned off." That creeped us out, too.
He lost that picture when his computer crashed, or I would
post it.

Now here's the big deal. I saw a man in the basement.
Another late night. I only had the lamp on, not the overhead
lights. As my usual routine, I turned off the TV, then the lamp,
then used the dim light from the TV upstairs to climb the steps.
I had just enough light to see to walk around the furniture, and
where the bottom steps started. As I was walking to the steps,
there was a man in front of me. Not directly, but about a
two-o'clock position. I was startled, and sidestepped to avoid
running into him. He was shorter than me, and had no head.
He was wearing an old-time kind of black suit, with a white
shirt with an old-time kind of collar that sticks up and doesn't
flap over. There were black buttons down the white shirt. No
tie. He looked solid, not see-through. He didn't move or say
anything. Then, after about 3 seconds, he faded away. Of
course I ran upstairs, because I don't like to see thingies in my
basement.

The next day I started harping at Hubby to put in a light switch
downstairs, too, not just at the top of the steps. So he did. Now
I make sure to turn on the overhead lights, then turn off the lamp
and TV. Then I can turn the other lights off when I get upstairs.
Not taking any chances of seeing my man again.

The chest of drawers had been moved across the room in another
furniture moving session about a year before I saw the man. The
light had stopped going off. Hubby has since put in a different
kind of light bulbs. They have all remained on. Nothing creepy
has happened for about a year now. And #1 son sleeps on
the couch in the basement. Is he nuts? I wouldn't do that for
a hundred bucks. He does, though. No night lights or anything.

Was it the furniture? Am I just nuts? Why do these things happen
to me?

Tomorrow....Smells, sounds, and night-time visitors.

Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge V 2.0

If you want to play, post your answers in the comments. The
winner will be announced on Wednesday, June 8. What do you
win? Your name in my blog! All right, settle down now. You only
need the name of the movie. If there is a tie, I'll post a tie-breaker
on Wednesday. Your chances are good to win. Last week only
4 people entered. And now for this week's bad movie trivia....

1. "I've got the most scathingly brilliant idea!"

2. "Your aorta is in your neck."
"Good to know."

3. "You girls watch out for those weirdos."
"We are the weirdos, mister."

4. "I'm surprised you don't just chuck it all and start your own
think tank."

5. "...is an ex-kindergarten teacher and a former nun who just
escaped from the convent, and is tired of being the only virgin
in New York City."

6. "Now, Debra, don't be bitter. Certainly with your growing
collection of flesh-mutilating silver appendages and your brand
new Neo-Nazi boot camp make-over, the boys will come
a-runnin'."

7. "Tess, this is business. Let's just bury the hatchet, OK?"
"You know where you can put your hatchet? Now get your
bony @## out of my sight!"

8. "Time to join Mrs. Earthworm...if she's still alive in there."

9. "You are just like all the other girls. This is your defense?
Your puny faith?"
"No. My keen fashion sense."

10. "I knowed that woman all my life and I ain't never stood
outside her house. She'd let a wolf in if it knocked at her door."

Haunted Bedroom?

Here is the first tale of my haunted hillbilly mansion. I will tell one
each day until I run out of my true horror stories.

We built our house and moved in when #1 son was almost 3.
There was no #2 son yet. #1 was playing in his bedroom one
day, chattering away. I hollered from the kitchen, "Who you
talking to?" #1 came out and said, "Oh, just Tony, that little boy
I play with sometimes." I tried to act like that was perfectly
normal, but the hair on my neck stood up. #1 went back to his
room and resumed playing.

I thought, maybe he just has an imaginary friend. At supper
that night, I said, "How about some for Tony?" #1 looked at
me like I was crazy. "He's not here." Ohhh..kaaay.

#1 never talked about Tony, only to him. And only in his room.
Another day he came out of his room talking about 'George Henson.'
"Who do you mean, George Henson? I don't know anybody
with that name." "You know, Mom, that bad guy that burned
up all those people in that hotel." WHAT? "No, honey, I don't
know about that." Where was he getting this stuff?

#1 refused to sleep in his bedroom. This didn't surprise me,
because even in our old house he wanted to sleep on the couch
every night. One thing I noticed about his new bedroom: it was
always cold. We moved in during November, so I asked Hubby
to adjust the vents to get more heat to that room and less to
some others. Didn't work. In the summer, it was still cold. The
room faces west, just like our living room. We could be sweltering
from the afternoon sun in the living room, but #1's room was chilly.
Again, Hubby adjusted the vents. Again, no change.

#1's bedroom did finally stop being cold. When? When we moved
a certain piece of second-hand furniture from his bedroom to the
basement right under his room. Then some funny things started to
happen in the basement.

That will be tomorrow's story.

And we will still be having the Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge.

The Redneckville Horror?
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Hillbilly Mom's Tales of the Supernatural

I admit that I like to watch shows like Ghost Hunters, or Weird
Travels, or Montel with psychic Sylvia Browne. So as you might
expect, I believe there are things that can't be explained by the
laws of nature. Having been a science teacher, I doubt I would
believe in these things if I hadn't seen them for myself. I don't
even watch David Blaine without trying to explain how he does
things. And be warned, Mr. Blaine, I am onto your silverware
bending tricks. I figured that one out watching the last rerun of
your shows about a month ago.

Something has been happening in my house. This was a new
house. We built it ourselves. Nobody died in it, which is the first
thing people ask me. No, I don't know if it's built on an Indian
(Native American) burial ground. No, I don't drink. Now that
we have all that out of the way....

Here are some things that have happened in my purty little
hillbilly home:

Son talking to people who don't exist.

Bedroom 10 degrees colder than any other room in winter and
summer, even after vents and shades have been adjusted.

Smells that don't belong.

Slamming door.

Popping and cracking every 5 seconds over a 12- hour period.

Light bulb with a will of its own.

Toy that drove itself.

Appearance in plain sight of object we spent 2 days looking for.

Self-flushing toilet.

Son being covered up in middle of night.

Son saying Grandpa (deceased) comes to visit him at night.

Appearance of a man in a suit, no head.

Now that you know I must be crazy, here are some other
things I've seen or heard (but not in this house):

Blue-green orb

Someone walking upstairs. Several times per week.

Metal doors in a gym open by themselves.

White "entity" in a storage closet.

All right, now before you send the men with a straightjacket
to pick me up for a little vacation, hear me out.

I have not seen and heard these things everywhere I lived.
Other people have also experienced these things at the same
places I have. So don't think I'm a wacko until you've heard
the whole story. Ooops! This post is too long.

Maybe I can tell you tomorrow.

Redneck Courtin' Rituals

I met my husband at the pool of my apartment complex after
the owner put in a new building. I had lived there for a year
already, and then some "fresh blood" (as my friend called them)
moved in. For a while, there were 4 of us that hung out.

The day the "dating" started was kind of weird. Future Hubby
walked over to my apartment and asked if I'd like to go for a
ride. I said "OK." I thought the other guy and girl might be
going too. But when I went to the car, it was just me. That
was fine. I didn't think anything of it.

Future Hubby's car was kind of falling apart. The headliner
sagged down on my head. He said, "I need to get some glue
and stick that back up." He drove me way down in the middle
of nowhere to see his parents' graves. That was kind of odd.
It was a church cemetery. There were cows in the road, and
we had to wait for them to move. There were no people, and
we didn't pass many cars, either.

We had left around 10:00 a.m., and it was now getting to be
2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. We had not stopped anywhere
other than the cemetery. No bathroom breaks, no gas, no
getting something to eat or drink. I got to thinking..."Nobody
knows where I am. I don't know where I am. He could just
kill me and throw out the body and who knows how long it
would take for someone to find me."

FH kept driving and talking. I could not tell if we were headed
back, or deeper into nowhere. Finally, I said, "I need to be
getting back. Do you think we could stop for a soda or
something?" He said, "Sure," and stopped at a gas station
and got me a soda. Then we went home.

Now it's not that he was cheap. I guess it just never entered his
mind that I would want to do anything but ride for hours and
listen to him talk. It's not that he was socially backward--he had
been married and had two kids, so he had been able to capture
a woman besides me. I didn't even think of this as a date. He
started coming over to visit. I went to the park to walk every night,
and he started coming with me. Then my friend said, "Why didn't
you tell me you were dating?" I said, "I didn't know I was."
Apparently FH had told his guy friend he was dating me. This
probably just meant "hands off" to him, since I went walking on
the State Park Bike Trail with the buddy, because he could walk
farther than FH. When a hometown guy I knew from college
came to visit, there would be FH ringing my doorbell and trying
to include himself in what we were doing.

I invited FH over for supper one night. I cooked 4 pork chops
and some green beans and Stove Top Stuffing. (OK, so we've
established that I'm no cook.) The point is that I ate a pork chop,
and FH ate a pork chop. Then he had another pork chop. That's
fine. But then he got up, tore off a piece of foil, grabbed the last
pork chop, and said, "I'll take this to work for my lunch tomorrow."
That was not OK! Hey! I had lunch needs too. Who did he think
he was, helping himself to my leftovers!

After about 4 months, he asked me to marry him. I had to think
that over for a while. I bought a house. He worked on it for me.
We bought 10 acres together. He built a barn on it. His kids
liked me better that they liked him. He taught me how to shoot
his guns. About a year after he asked, we got married.

In all that time, we only went on one "real" date. That was to
St. Louis to the Funny Bone with a couple that I worked with.
No movies, no dinners, no dancing, no bars, no tractor pulls.
Nothing other than hanging out at my place, his place, or his
friends' houses.

Now Hubby wants to go out and do things, but I don't. And
I especially do not want to go for a ride.

Too Much Time...Cont.

Here are the results from my May 28 Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge:
Drumroll, please....and the winner is: Rebecca (with 7 and 1/2 correct).
How she managed to watch the same bad movies I do is a mystery
to me. I will have to give 2nd place to DeadpanAnn, 3rd place to
Alexandrialeigh, and Miss Congeniality to Karbonkountymoos.
We will have another challenge on Saturday. Here are the answers:

1. "Lets face it girls...I'm older and I have more insurance."
Kathy Bates to some annoying young things, in Fried Green Tomatoes.

2. "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again."
Ted Levine, the nutcase, to that poor kidnapped girl he was planning
to make a skin suit out of, in Silence of the Lambs.

3. "I'm gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!"
Dolly Parton to Dabney Coleman, in 9 to 5.

4. "Zip it, Old Man River, or I'll break your hip."
Adam Sandler to his girlfriend Vanessa's wrinkly old boyfriend, in
Big Daddy.

5. "Well, if that's what a beautician does, then I'll take mine rare."
Kurt Russell to Meryl Streep, referring to Cher's girlfriend, whose
job was to put make-up on corpses, in Silkwood.

6. "What are you doing with that blade?"
The guy about to get killed by Billy Bob Thornton, in Sling Blade.

7. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Is there anything you can do?"
"I can drive that loader over there."
Sigourney Weaver and Al Matthews, in Aliens.

8. "I can see your dirty-pillows."
Piper Laurie to Sissy Spacek, using her crazy religious fanatic's
word for "breasts" as Carrie was getting ready for prom, in Carrie.

9. "I shot off his upper lip."
"What were you aimin' at?"
"His lower lip."
John Wayne and Glen Campbell in True Grit. (You were close,
Rebecca, but The Shootist was the sequel, and Rooster Cogburn
was the character. My apologies if it was released under another
title over there.)

10. "I thought you were dead."
"I get that a lot."
Ron Perlman (?) to Sigourney Weaver, in Alien Resurrection.
(I forget which character said this to her. Of course it refers
to her character, Ripley, dying in Alien 3.)

I Feel Like I'm Coming Down With a Meme

Well, well, well. Seems as if DeadpanAnn has infected me with
the book meme. Since I have not had my book meme vaccination
yet, I guess it will just have to run its course.

1. Total number of books I've owned.
Heavens to Betsy! I don't have that many fingers and toes. A
rough guesstimate would be over 2000. I have a whole wall
in my office that's a bookshelf, plus a bookcase by the pool
table, a bookcase in the living room, a bookcase at my mom's
house, milk crates in the barn, and 3 boxes ready to give away.

2. Last book I bought.
That would be a 4-way tie. I just bought them at Goodwill
yesterday. (Be careful what you buy, you might have to tell
about it in a meme.)

Sein Language Jerry Seinfeld
(Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Postcards From the Edge Carrie Fisher
(Got home and saw that I already had it. $0.75 wasted!)

A Circle of Friends Maeve Binchy
(Never saw the movie, never read it. Looked interesting.)

Where the Red Fern Grows Wilson Rawls
(10 yr old son said, "I want it, but I'm not paying!")

3. Last book I read.
Josie and Jack: A Novel Kelly Braffet
A little bit V.C. Andrewish, in the style of Flowers in
the Attic, but it kept me turning the pages.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
Don't look for the classics here, people. These are the books
I like to read over and over. And if they happen to have been
on Oprah's list...deal with it!

The Stand Stephen King
I love it. On all levels.

A Map of the World Jane Hamilton
She dares to say what many of us think. Sometimes,
wouldn't you like to be locked up with nothing to do
but read, and let Hubby take care of the house and kids?

Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your
Unconscious Mind Tony Crisp
The reason why I don't tell people my dreams--they might have
this book. I've read other dream books that were a lot of hooey,
but this one is always dead-on for what I have had on my mind
when I dream them.

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence Paul Feig
I laughed till I cried. This is the guy whose so-called life
the TV show Freaks and Geeks was based on.

House of Sand and Fog Andre Dubus III
Loved the book, hated the movie. I like it because both
people are right, yet no solution can be reached.

5. People I'll infect with this book meme:
Rebecca
Vavoom
Misha
Hey guys, maybe you've been vaccinated and you're immune...
maybe not!

6. DeadpanAnn's extra question:
Books I've thrown across the room because they sucked that bad:

The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty Kitty Kelley
Meeeoooow? No, me-snoooorrrre. I gave it up on page 43 of 705.
I agree with the point she is making, but get on with it already!

I Am Charlotte Simmons Tom Wolfe
A wolf in boring clothing. I hit the wall at page 23 of 676,
because I'm really just not that into it.

My Hillbilly Mama's Name
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Happy Birthday, Hillbilly Grandma

Today the boy young'uns and I took Hillbilly Grandma out to
lunch for her birthday. We went to Wendy's, her choice. Only
the best for my mama! None of us had the chili, though.

HG ordered a burger combo, and asked for everything on it
except ketchup and mustard. You guessed it--they put only
ketchup and mustard on it. HG took it back, and they gave
her another one.

Hubby would have taken a bite out of it before he took it back
to prevent them from serving it to some other customer. He
always squeezes rolls left in the basket too, because he says
they will take them to someone else's table. I tell him he's
nuts (for other reasons than that, too), but he says that's how
restaurants are. I didn't believe him until one time at Sonic I
had just gotten the kids' food sorted out and the waitress
tapped on my car window. I just about jumped out of my
skin. I rolled it down, and she said, "I need your burger back."

"What?"

"I need your burger. We gave you the wrong one."

I hadn't even opened it yet, but I gave it back, and she handed
me another one. Then I got to thinking...how did they know it
was wrong? Did the other customer open his burger and
complain? Did someone else have his hands all over this one,
and they were giving it to me now? I couldn't eat it. Why did
they want mine back? Because they were going to give it to
the complainer! Otherwise, they would have just let me have it
and wait to see if I complained too. I can understand if I had
been the first to complain, they might take the burger so people
don't run a scam and get two burgers out of them for the price
of one. But I didn't complain, and they wanted it back. That's
just wrong!

Getting back to HG's birthday...after lunch we went shopping
at Goodwill. I had never been there before, but Hillbilly Grandma
went a couple weeks ago with her neighbor and got some fine
jewelry. She said we should go sometime, that people line up
at the door and wait for them to open. I have a lot of stuff that
I need to get rid of, so we were going to ask about their drop-off
hours and tax-receipt policy. I usually take stuff to the school
nurse or social worker, but hey, it's summer. I have also given
stuff to the local ministerial alliance, but they never seem to be
open any more, and put up a gate because people were going
through the dropped-off stuff after hours. Now you may wonder,
"How poor do you have to be to steal something that these
workers are going to charge you a nickel or a dime for?" Well,
it was people taking it to sell at flea markets, not the people
who needed it.

Getting back to HG's birthday excursion...she took a cart into
Goodwill to push #2 son while he played his GameBoy. That
sure does cut down on the whining. He wanted a Rugrats Video
($2.95). I found 3 books for myself, and Where the Red Fern
Grows for #1 son (4 x $0.75). Then I found a wooden bill &
letter holder ($2.95). #2 son decided he had to have a wireless
keyboard ($3.95). And I got a 1-inch 3-ring binder ($0.95).
Hillbilly Grandma picked up a roll of burlap ($0.95). She said,
"I don't know what I'll use this for, but I'm afraid that when I
come back, they'll all be gone." Maybe she's planning to make
us all new hillbilly clothes.

My sister wouldn't be caught dead in Goodwill. She won't
even go in the Dollar Store. If there's something she wants,
she sends HG to get it for her. She won't shop at Save-A-Lot
either. She is married to the Mayor of Hicksville, which is the
next town over from Redneckland. Don't be putting on airs
with me, Missy! I remember when you were just a little
scraggly-haired redneck girl yourself!

After we took HG home, she decided she would come out
to our house for a ride from #1 son in his $300 car. The
boy young'uns rode with her. When they got here, she noticed
she didn't have her purse, and thought she must have left it in
her garage. Then she wondered if she had left the garage door
open, so she worried about that. After a few rides around the
field, she decided she had to get going back to town. I asked
if she needed me to pin her name and address on her shirt in
case something happened on the way home, she could be
identified. She said "No," and "Thanks for a wonderful birthday."

Doesn't take much to please us rednecks, unless you are married
to the mayor.

UPDATE:
I just called Hillbilly Grandma to see if she made it home OK.
She did, and found her purse in the garage. The door was
closed. But....

HG took her roll of burlap to show her neighbor what a great
buy she got, and Neighbor said, "Oh, you shouldn't have. I don't
know what I'll do with it, but I really like it." HG said after that,
she didn't have the heart to say it was really hers, she was just
showing it off. So she is going back tomorrow to get another
one. I bet she gets two.

Summertime in Redneckland.
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Summer Vacation...Back in the Day

What did you do on your summer vacation when you were a
kid? Didn't it seem like summer lasted forever? I lived in town
until I was 12, so I had plenty of kids to play with. Oh, I did
live in a trailer. I am a redneck to the bone. But our trailer was
on a lot beside my grandpa's house, so I was a town redneck.

On the last day of school, which was always a half-day, my mom
would take my sister and I out to lunch. We could each bring one
friend. Every summer Dairy Queen was the restaurant of choice.
This was the only time we ate real food at Dairy Queen. Plus we
got dessert too. (It was a much simpler time back then.) I always
chose a cherry Mr. Misty, and drank it too fast and got a
headache. My sister got a Dilly Bar, and I can't even remember
what the friends got, though we both took the same friends every
summer.

Our days were spent running around the neighborhood. At night,
we had to be in by 9:00 p.m. Sometimes that was a pain, because
a good game of Kick-the-Can didn't really get going until after
dark. Then we'd have to go home and wash our feet. That was
the main rule. Wash your feet before bed. OK, this makes us
sound dirty, but we really did take a bath, just not at night. And
we never wore shoes in the summer unless we had to.

During the day we always had something to do. Sometimes we
played Army Men. All 3 of us girls (my sister, our neighbor,
and I) played together, and didn't even want to mix in with the
boys unless they invited us across the street to help dig their
dugout in the backyard for a baseball game (yes, it was just a
big hole) or to help build their miniature golf course in the gravel
by the street to play golf with marbles and twigs. My sister and
neighbor and I would each get a pillowcase and a BB gun and
an umbrella, and we would each choose a cherry tree in my
grandpa's yard as our post. The umbrella was to use as a
parachute when jumping off Grandpa's picnic table. The
pillowcase was a sleeping bag. The BB gun was to shoot cats,
but we couldn't do it when the neighbor was with us, because
they were her cats.

When we tired of this game, we played horses with Jane and
Johnny West and all their accessories.

We walked up the creek and dug out some clay and made pots
and painted them with watercolors. (Uh, make a note: the clay
absorbs the watercolors, so the pots all turn gray again. And if
you leave them on your patio to dry while you run to the store
with Mom, the boys will come over and smash them to bits).

We built a tank out of an old wooden phone booth crate and
some 2 x 4's. Then we sat in it and pointed our BB guns at
anything that moved, which was usually an unsuspecting enemy
terrapin.

We played tennis against the back wall of the neighbor's shed.

We rode the wagon down the hill, screaming all the way because
wagons don't steer very well with two people in them, and if we
didn't make a sharp left at the bottom into Lewis's yard, we
would run off the sidewalk and into the creek 5 feet below.

We rode bikes down to the next block to get my dog, Fuzzy,
that a mean boy named Nelson had kidnapped (I thought.
Fuzzy probably just got bored and moved).

We "explored" the culvert that ran under the road.

We took our $.50 bi-weekly allowance to Lupkey's store one
street over and one block down, and bought penny candy:
red licorice whips, Nik-L-Nips, wax lips, jawbreakers,
dots on a strip of paper, gum, Charms suckers with the chance
to win a free one, Sixlets, Chick-O-Sticks, Bit-O-Honey,
Fire Balls, red hots, Boston Baked Beans, caramels, Sugar
Daddies, Sugar Babies, Safety Pops, Pixie Stix, Lemon Heads,
Turkish Taffy, and probably more that I can't remember.

We got to have a "shower bath" when the weather was hot
enough. This means we put on our bathing suits and ran around
in the spray of Grandpa's garden hose and made rainbows.

We put the long lounge chairs outside on the patio and slept
outside. My mom made us popcorn and cherry Kool-Aid, and
we couldn't wait until dark to put on our pajamas and get that
party started. No TV. Sometimes radio. And books. Yes, we
would actually look at books while waiting for dark.

We played gymnasts on a square metal pipe frame that came out
of my grandpa's pickup truck.

We caught June Bugs and tied strings on their legs and let them
fly around us in circles. We picked their shells off tree trunks and
wore them as fine jewelry. I think a June Bug is really a cicada.
We thought it was funny because my Grandma and Grandpa
always called my dad "June." That's because he was a "junior"
and they just shortened it to "June."

We went to Grandpa's cabin on the St. Francis River and walked
barefoot down the road to the dock, catching little frogs and
putting them in Styrofoam cups to race in the water when we got
to the sandbar.

If it rained, we went to the neighbor's shed to play pool, read
5-year-old TV Guides, and look at the deer heads on the wall.
Or we cooked marbles in Grandpa's basement. The recipe?
Take an old coffee can and fill it 3/4 with water. Put it on the
burner and turn on the stove. Add marbles. Let boil about 5
minutes. Turn off and let cool. The purpose? Pretty cracked
marbles that are better to trade with the boys, because they
don't know how to cook marbles.

Evenings we would go up in my grandpa's yard and watch
him water his trees. He would let us drink from the garden
hose. Then we would roll down the hill of his front yard to
the sidewalk--over and over, until the Tastee Freeze man
came. Then we bought ice cream cones, and got a little plastic
ring with Mr. Tastee Freeze on it.

Mom took us to the city library to check out books every
two weeks. I loved the Black Stallion books, as well as
Misty of Chincoteague, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Hardy
Boys, Henry Huggins, Ramona. Anything and everything.
I loved to read. When we went to the A & W for root beer
floats with Grandma and Grandpa, I took a book and laid
up in the back windshield (as I called it) of the car, reading
as we passed under streetlights.

Sometimes Mom took us to Columbia Park to the big
swimming pool. She didn't just leave us, she took a lawn
chair and sat outside the fence.

We were pretty much spoiled. We didn't have to worry
about being kidnapped, or being on time for ball games,
or taking lessons, or going to summer school. Summer
really was summer vacation.

Are any of you so old that this brings back some memories
for you?

Hillbilly fishpond, Version 2.0. Hmmm....is it just me, or is the water still green?
Posted by Hello

CatFishing No More

The saga of the Hillbilly Fish Pond continues. In my May 24 post,
I showed our cat fishing in the fake pond. Hubby had decided to
upgrade this pond with a little waterfall (as he told it.) #1 son
said it wouldn't go with the fishpond we had (some kind of
smooth black plastic vs gray fake rock plastic thing). After my
nagging, Hubby decided he would re-do the whole pond, just to
get this little waterfall. My chief complaint with the original fish
pond was the green water. The rest of it didn't look too bad,
except for the wood chips.

Well, here it is now. It's still a work in progress, but the main
thing I notice is that there is still green water in it! After one day
of pouring the green water in, there is algae already clinging to
the sides and the rock. Hubby said that we had to keep the fish
in the green water or they would die from the shock of clean
water. Hubby says it will clean right up, because the rocks will
filter and the plants will eat up the algae. I complained that plants
do not eat. They make their own food through photosynthesis
(I ain't got that biology minor for nothin', folks) and that algae
are just tiny green plants themselves. And anyway, what plants?
Oh, he is going to buy some.

So now Hubby and #1 son are off to Wal-mart to get some
more rock and some plants.

And the big goldfish that were in the pond? Two of them died
from living in the tall garbage can of green water for 3 days.
The yellow cat got swatted with the garden hose ("Right on his
spine, Mom!") for trying to fish them out through the lattice on
top of the can. Then he ate the two dead ones Hubby threw
down in the woods. (At least the sinkhole was spared these
corpses). "We'll have to watch him now that he's had a taste of
those fish," warned Hubby.

Hello....he was fishing long before that! I have the evidence in
my pictures from the last post! And now the new fish pond is
so unappealing that he won't even fish.

I will post a new picture of the final version when it is done.