Slug-A-Bug

When my kids were younger - as in this picture of them taken the first day of school in 1978* when we lived on Tuck Corner (Kari 9, Doug, 16, Preston, 7) - they had a 'game' they played whenever they saw a ...

....Volkswagen Beetle automobile. I'm pretty certain it was a game Kari & Preston's father, Denny, taught them. The gist of it was that the first one to spot a VW Beetle yelled slug-a-bug and punched the other(s) in the shoulder. I know I didn't teach them the game because I had to ask why they were hitting one another - other than the usual reasons: "He's looking at me. She's on my side of the car. They're making faces at me." Etc. Etc. Routine sibling stuff.
There are various names and rules for this "game" - Punch Buggy, Slug Bug, Slug Beetle, Punch Bug, Beetle, Slug-A-Bug, Piggy Punch, Punch Dub and, in Great Britain, Yellow Car. 

There's a reason 'slug-a-bug' is on my mind. A few weeks ago I started noticing iridescent trails on the cement of the patio when I went out early in the morning. (Can you see it in the very middle of this picture?) My natural curiosity had me guessing what on earth was making those pretty paths? Did Bud have any idea? "No."

Then I found a shed snake skin in the flower bed. I could see the iridescence of it in the sun. "I'll bet the snake crawled across the patio and left those trails", I told Bud. It seemed a reasonable explanation and I quit wondering about it.

Until this morning when Bud came back from an early walk and called me out to see something on the deck. "Look at the size of this slug", he exclaimed. "I've never seen one so big!" I agreed. "It's four times the size of the one I swept off the patio last week and I thought that one was big", I said.
Bud was going to put it back down in the flower bed. He thought slugs were good for the plants. I told him not to do that, I thought that they were bad for plants. So he carried it away, but I began to question whether I was remembering that correctly. I said I was sure I remembered Mom trying to keep them out of the garden when I was a kid, so I had to google slugs to make sure I was remembering it correctly.
And, guess what I found out - besides the fact that they are a pest you don't want on your plants or in your garden - the slimy trail they leave behind them is iridescent!
So, two questions answered - slugs are bad and the marks left on the patio cement were made by slugs. I also looked up how to rid the pests from your garden because salt was all that came to my mind - it seemed Mom sprinkled salt around the plants - and I did find that you can kill the slugs in salt water - after you pick them off the plants.
E-w-w-w, picking slugs off plants - that memory must be why my face is all scrunched up in this grimace and why I felt sick reading about slugs. The ones I remember as a child were much smaller than the monster pictured above. What I read says they like moist areas. So why, in this extremely dry and droughty year are we having slugs? I just hope there are not any more. Yeck!
Maybe I can get the kids to come back home and 'slug-a-bug'?

(* Grand kids notice: Your dads and aunt did not have fancy back packs. Preston has an old book satchel and Kari has a plastic draw-string bag from a store. High schooler Doug, of course, is too cool to carry anything other than a notebook.)

Treason At Lisson Grove

As I remarked in my July 26 post after reading Anne Perry's latest Thomas & Charlotte Pitt novel, I planned to read the one immediately preceding it (#26 in the series) before going back to the beginning of the series to read them in order.
Treason At Lisson Grove has Thomas going off in mad pursuit of a killer, following him to France in the company of another Special Branch officer. Too late, he realizes it was all a plot to get him out of London and away from his supervisor, the head of Special Branch, Victor Narraway.
In the meantime, Narraway is accused of embezzling government funds and removed from his office. He goes to Ireland to try and find out who set him up and why, but without Pitt to go along with him, Narraway asks Pitt's clever wife, Charlotte, to accompany him to Dublin and help in the investigation.
I have warmed to the characters of Thomas and Charlotte but more especially to Charlotte's Great Aunt, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. If our library has them all, I have twenty-five more Anne Perry's to read my way through.

Last week a friend of mine told me she is reading her way through Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series. As a rule, anything she likes to read, I like, and as I am always on the look-out for a new author, I told her I would give Stabenow a try and we could discuss her when she (my friend) comes to visit us this week.
A Fatal Flaw is the second in this series, set in Alaska. From the back cover of the book: "Once Kate Shugak was the star investigator of the Anchorage District Attorney's office. Now she's gone back to her Aleut roots in the far Alaska north - where her talent for detection makes her the toughest crime-tracker in that stark and mysterious land.
On the first day of spring a man went berserk, killing eight of his neighbors. Only there were nine bodies lying in the snow. The last victim was a golden blonde with a tarnished past - and her killer was still at large. It's up to Kate and her husky, Mutt, to track down the suspects - before the murderer melts back into the snowscape. But the guilty party could be anyone, because in the Alaskan spring, old hatreds warm up quickly."
As soon as I began reading this book, I thought, "This really sounds familiar, but I know I haven't read the book before - more like something I saw on television". With Bud's help, we finally figured out that the book (written in 1993) was based on the real life of Michael Alan Silka the sniper who killed nine people near the small town of Manley Hot Springs, AK in 1984. The opening of the book was almost exactly like what we had watched on The History Channel, but from there on, it was the author's account of how Kate Shugak figured out who killed the ninth victim and then tracked the killer down.
I did like this protagonist and like reading about Alaska - at one time in my life, I thought I would like to live there. I have the next book in the series ready to read. It looks like there are nineteen so far. I will read all our library has.

My son, Preston, thought Kate White's book, Hush, looked like something I would enjoy reading so he got it for me. At first, I didn't think I was going to like it - more to do with the writing style than the story line - but that was just the first few pages. By the time I got that far in, I was hooked on Lake Warren's life. She is in a legal battle with her husband, Jack, for custody of their two kids, so when one of the doctors at the fertility clinic she is preparing a marketing program for is killed after she has spent the night with him in his apartment, the last thing she wants is to give her husband ammunition to win custody by becoming the prime suspect in a murder. So, she lies to the police. When Lake begins receiving threatening phone calls and worse, she can't go to the police - they might discover she had lied about being in the Dr's apartment.
This really was a well written mystery. Several times I was sure I had it figured out, but it wasn't until the very end I was pretty certain I knew who the murderer was - though not why.
Kate White is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan as well as the author of the Bailey Weggins mystery novels. Our library has most of that series. I think I'll give them a try. They also have Hush but without my son giving it to me, I might never have read this author.

The Gift & Grandma's Ring aka '88 Poetry Class

 The Gift

I name the plants without a thought
The trees and flowers wild or bought
Rare herbs and common weeds I know
To the gardener a friend or foe

A walk through woods quiet and cool
Recalls the names as though in school
Pity the one in meadow bright
Who knows not plants of such delight

Not herb to steep for fevered brow
Nor weed to pick for salad now
How do I know the names from naught
A gift to me my Mother taught

(ril 9/28/1988)

 Grandma's Ring

Ruby flashing in the sun
Woman's work is never done
Worn on hand used to toil
Tending babies, turning soil

Years go by, duties do shrink
Fewer dishes in the old sink
Ruby ring still shiny bright
Grandpa a memory in the night

Visits to the nursing home
Grandma wizened like a gnome
Shriveled hand, ring is lost
Value sentimental, not in cost

Grandma's gone, sorting her things
Ruby's gone, but here's her ring
Treasured topaz now I wear
Think of Grandma, how I care.

(ril 10/05/1988)


I have loved poetry my entire life but it wasn't until 1988 that I took an adult education class through the West Des Moines Schools to actually learn how to write metered, rhymed verses.

These were my first two assignment attempts. How did I do? Do the pictures help convey the stories I tried to tell in verse?

"Only An Aunt........

......... can give hugs like a mother........

Of all my aunts, Dad's sister Leona was my favourite.

.........Keep secrets like a sister........

Leona was six and a half years younger than Mom. She didn't have an older sister. She would have, but her sister, Evelyn Lois, died three days after birth - two years before Leona was born. So, Mom became her big sister when she and Dad married. Here Mom is 18 and Leona is almost 12. Her birthday was the same day, June 19, as Mom's sister, Lois. Mom also had a sister named Evelyn. I always thought the names and birthday coincidences confirmed that Mom and Leona were meant to be sisters, too.

.........And share love like a friend."

Aunt Leona was one of those people who got along with everyone. Here she and Bud are having a good chat on the deck of her 'second home' in Punkin Center (Tonto Basin) in '93. My Aunt and Uncle and kids moved to Arizona in 1959, so there were many, many years we didn't them. They didn't come back often and we never went down there. Letters now and then and rare phone calls were the only connections.
But when they still lived in Corning, Aunt Leona was the one I turned to for a second opinion or advice on something I was too afraid to ask my Mom about. I knew she would give me a straight answer and not tell Mom if it was something I didn't want known.
I can remember one time asking her if she thought I was fat. Her reply: "Well, do your thighs rub together when you walk?" I said I didn't think so. "Then you're not fat," she replied. I've never forgotten that.

The spring of 1978 was a tough time for all of us. Aunt Leona's husband of thirty-five years, Al, died in April. The middle of May she brought his ashes back for a funeral service and burial. She only stayed a few days before going back to Arizona. She had just gotten home when Mom called her with the news that Dad had died. She turned around and made a quick trip back to Iowa for her brother's funeral. Her daughter Georgia and granddaughters, Heather and Jennifer made the trip with her.
This picture is of Leona and Georgia standing in the barn doorway. Georgia wanted to go through the barn she remembered playing in as a young girl. After Aunt Leona retired and remarried, they began coming back to Iowa for part of each summer. It was good becoming reacquainted with her. It was like all those years apart had never happened. The talking and close feelings were still there.

For Mom's 80th birthday, we all chipped in and bought her a plane ticket to fly to Phoenix. It was Mom's first trip in a jet airliner. She loved it - wasn't a bit apprehensive. This picture with the lemon tree was taken in Aunt Leona's back yard in Glendale. Except for the height difference, these two look just like the sisters they became in 1937.

We spent one day wandering around the old downtown area of Glendale. A walking tour highlights the town's origins as the trading area for the rural farming community it once was. This bronze sculpture, Old Friends, created by George Lundeen, greets visitors to Murphy Park and Velma Teague Library. Many of the original buildings are now antique shoppes. It is an area I would enjoy visiting again someday - perhaps with my niece, Lorrie, who now lives in nearby Peoria.

My beloved Aunt Leona died ten years ago today. She had just gotten a computer and was learning to e-mail. I was so looking forward to having that instant communication with her at a time in my life when I needed her most.

"Only an Aunt can give hugs like a mother, keep secrets like a sister and share Love like a friend."

Cash Cows - Oops - I Mean Cash Scow

A cash cow is a steady, dependable source of income. These are some of the Cash Cows I milked during my teen years. The roof of the barn they were milked in was shingled by Emil Showalter.

Cash Scow is a rollicking read by B. K. Showalter. It is one of those books I would normally have passed by except I remembered hearing or reading something about it not long ago. (Never did remember what I saw or heard.) Even after I got it home from the library, I wasn't certain I would read it. Boy, I'm glad I did. It is such a fun combination of humor, romance, and drama. I laughed out loud several times.
From the back cover: "When "Chief" Whitehorse musters out of the Navy, he buys a vessel suited for sport-fishing and goes into business. In memory of a Dear John letter writer, he names his vessel "Squaw." Money needs lead him into running marijuana for a drug cartel. When the cartel's boss, Ramon Norbierto, sends Whitehorse to sea with a load of dirty cash and instructions to make a mid-ocean rendezvous with another vessel, things go horribly wrong. Whitehorse loses his boat and the cartel's cash.
Certain that the cartel will blame him for the money loss, Whitehorse flees, but eventually he makes his way back to the west coast and settles in the town of Brookings, Oregon. There, with the able assistance of a cadre of new friends, Marvella Hooker, Arvin Fogle, and Jane Boxer, he sets up a scam that will free him from further threats. His plans incorporate the drug-dispensing skills of a leftover hippie from the Age of Aquarius, alerts mailed to a regional drug taskforce, and a banker convinced by Marvella that his firm will handle the accounts of a soon to be constructed Indian casino.
Add in a murderous cartel hit-man, an obstreperous goat, and the result is a biblical flood of mishaps that leads to a romantic Blazing Saddles finale."
If all humorous books were written this well, I would read more of them. Wonder if B.K. was related to Emil?

In one of those unusual twists, I unintentionally picked up two books written by Oregon authors and both set on the Oregon Coast. Death of An Artist is the latest book written by 84-year-old Kate Wilhelm. This is the first time I've read any of her books, although she has written nearly 50 novels in her 56 year writing career. There is an interesting article about Wilhelm and her writing in the Eugene, OR newspaper, The Register-Guard, which I found just by googling Kate Wilhelm. (An aside for one of my blog followers - She began her writing career with a Sci-Fi story.)
The fictitious small coastal town of Silver Bay, OR, (near the real town of Newport) is home to three generations of women: Marnie, the long-widowed owner of a small gift shop; Van, her granddaughter, who is about to graduate medical school; and Marnie's daughter, Stef, a brilliant artist who refuses to sell her work; as well as Van's small son, Josh. It is also the new home of Tony, former New York City cop, retired after being shot, and looking for a quiet place to recuperate and begin his new life as an artist whose medium is beautiful wood.
When Stef discovers her husband, Dale, is trying to sell her artwork behind her back, she puts a stop to it and threatens to divorce him. Shortly thereafter, Stef dies in what appears to be an accident in her studio. A few weeks after her death,  Dale shows Marnie and Van a signed contract granting him the right to sell Stef's work. Marnie and Van both believe Dale was responsible for Stef's death. They ask Tony to help them prove it.
I liked this book as much for its setting as for the story line. It is fun for me to imagine the beautiful Oregon coast and the ocean. The fact I know a 'Marnie' who makes her home a little further up the coast line made me wonder if in our small world she happens to know this Oregon author. Wilhelm has a legal thriller series featuring Barbara Holloway. I believe I will try one of those to see how I like that protagonist.

Tiffany Baker's The Gilly Salt Sisters is one of those books you pick up because of the odd sounding title and the cover artwork, then read because it is a magic-tinged tale of dreams, family secrets and betrayals.
Baker's first book, The Little Giant Of Aberdeen County, was a New York Times Bestseller. I liked her second book well enough that I plan to read that first one, too.

"Leave No Stone Unturned"*

Of all the things I gave away, sold, left behind or otherwise no longer have, one of those I think about a lot is the pile of rocks I didn't/couldn't bring with me when we left the farm.
Picking up rocks has been one of my most favourite pastimes for as long as I can remember. As a child sent to bring up the milk cows from the pasture, if I was going to cut across the field east of the barn rather than go down the lane, Mom knew to start me at least twenty minutes early. If I took that short cut down that hill toward the stream running through the east pasture, she knew I would be stopping to pick up rocks every few feet. Each plowing or cultivation turned over new treasures for me to find.

Somewhere in my development, I became fascinated with Indian lore. Of all the rocks I could ever hope to find, finding a Native American grinding stone became the 'Holy Grail' - that and arrow heads, of course. Whenever I found a smooth, rounded stone, I imagined it had been used to grind corn into meal. I just couldn't find the large, hollowed stone the grain had been ground in.

At the time of the spring equinox in 1993, Bud and I planned a trip to Arizona to see my Aunt Leona a couple days before going to the Grand Canyon and Canyon De Chelly. At that time, Aunt Leona was up at Tonto Basin - their summer home where she could enjoy the peace and quiet as well as escaping the heat of the Phoenix valley.
In January that year, there had been a big flood on Tonto Creek near their home. She wanted us to see all the erosion and the debris left behind. As we walked out past their property line toward the creek bed, we passed by some rocks she had collected. Among them was the above pictured grinding stone. That stopped me in my tracks. I was spellbound as she told us how they had found it while exploring up in the mountains. (Those are the Mazatzal Mountains behind us in the picture.)
I related how I had always hoped to find a grinding stone. "You can have that one if you want it," she offered. I couldn't believe she would give up such a treasure. "I couldn't take that," I demurred. After a few more offers and deferences, Bud loaded it into the car for me. Aunt Leona seemed happy to have given me something I appreciated so much. She was even apologetic that she didn't have the small stone grinding tool that went with it. (The one in the picture is just one of those small, smooth, rounded stones I had picked up somewhere.)

On our way home from our last Southwest trip in 2010, we stopped in the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico mostly because I wanted to see some of the thermal springs the previously named Hot Springs, NM was famous for. We headed for the Geronimo Springs Museum - unfortunately closed on Sunday - but next to it was the Las Palomas Plaza, created by New Mexico artist Shel Neymark.

We weren't able to tour the museum, but we did enjoy the beautiful plaza and I noted this collection of Native grindstones.

Including this one which looks similar to the one Aunt Leona gave me. It is said archaeologists can tell much about different tribe's culture and the area they came from by their tools, including their grinding stones. I wonder if they could tell me anything about the one I have?

T or C is also the permanent home of one of the half scale traveling replicas of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, several of which toured the country in the late 90's. It is located in the impressive Veterans Memorial Park. The adjacent Hamilton Military Museum was closed because it was Sunday. Wouldn't it be something if this was the same replica we saw when one of them was in Des Moines?

Mom used to tease me because whenever I moved, I took my rocks with me. I did leave them at her place when we moved back to West Des Moines in '84, though. By then I had collected way too many to move that far. The pile was still there between two evergreen trees out in 'the orchard' when we moved back in '95. Every time we took a trip, I came home with more rocks. I introduced the grand kids to the joy of hunting rocks along old dirt roads and we'd come home with another batch to add to the pile.

There will come a day when I can no longer keep or move the few special rocks I moved here when we retired. Who will be the next 'keeper of the stones'? I want it to be someone who will treasure them; someone willing to haul them along on any and all of their own moves. Someone who knows how generous my Aunt Leona was in making it possible for me to have, for a while, my own grinding stone and will pass the story on.



* "Leave no stone unturned." Euripides (Meaning to do everything possible to achieve or find someone or something.)

Zorro, Perry Mason, Moondoggie, Flint McCullough and Ginger?

A picture may be "worth a thousand words", as the saying goes. A picture can bring back memories from fifty-four years ago, too, but so can a diary. And a diary can bring back those words verbatim. Fifty-four years ago was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in high school.

It was a summer of dressing more than eighty chickens to put in our new deep freeze in the basement. It was the summer we got our new horse, Josephine - a much taller horse than old Queenie and not so apt to nip at us as we tried to put the bridle on her. It was another summer of swimming lessons about which I wrote: "Went down to Tranbarger's right after we got home (from swimming) and got our new little puppie [sic]. 'Ginger' is Leslie's name for it. It's real cute."

Looking at this freshman school picture makes me realize how little my hair style has changed. That lock sticking out the side of my neck at the back still bugs me. I always thought of a 'cowlick' as unruly hair above the forehead or at the crown - maybe the 'cow licked' me on my neck?
That end of July, 1958 diary entry relates something else I had completely forgotten about: "Got my pictures I sent for. R. Burr, R. Horton, G. Williams and J. Darren." I was forever forming crushes - boys in my class, boys I met from another town, friends of my older brother - even TV and movie stars. Apparently these were favorites enough that I wrote away for publicity photos:

Guy Williams - better known as "The man who wears the mask of Zorro!"  I had forgotten this was a Walt Disney Production, which explains why Annette Funicello was given a part as a birthday present in one episode. Zorro's 'real' name was Don Diego de la Vega, an intellectual Spaniard completely inept with a sword. Don Diego's manservant, the mute, Bernardo (Gene Sheldon), pretends to be deaf as well as mute in order to listen in on the plans of Zorro/Diego's enemies.
So, what young romantic girl wouldn't fall for Zorro and want a picture of him? Remember the uptick in the Z's carved in desks and picnic tables and painted on sidewalks and walls?

So, Zorro, Si; Professor John Robinson, nada. I must not have watched Lost in Space with Williams as the head of the Robinson family and June Lockhart as his wife. Or, if I did, he looked and acted so completely different I did not recognize him. Williams also appeared on some Bonanza episodes as Ben Cartwright's nephew, Will Cartwright. Oh, those Cartwright's - I think I had a crush on all of them at one time or another, especially Adam and Little Joe. Guy Williams died in 1989.

Raymond Burr, the man with the steely blue eyes, was the actor who brought to life Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason. I would not miss an episode of Perry Mason. I had always wanted to be a secretary so of course I imagined myself as Della Street. I didn't necessarily think Raymond Burr was handsome, but he was charismatic. And he was always on the side of justice.

By the time Raymond Burr played wheel-chair-bound, Chief Detective Robert T. Ironside, I was over developing crushes on actors. Well, almost over it. But I did think Perry Mason had aged well and made a good-looking Ironside. Raymond Burr died in 1993.

My crush on James Darren must have resulted from his singing career rather than acting as he wasn't Moondoggie in the Gidget movies until 1959. Or perhaps I saw him in one of his earlier movies, Rumble on the Docks, Operation Mad Ball or The Brothers Rico. 

It was always so easy to confuse James Darren and Bobby Darin. James Darren acted with Sandra Dee. Bobby Darin was married to Sandra Dee. James and Bobby were both singers as well as actors.
From this 1999 album cover, I would say I could probably still get a crush on James Darren. He has aged very well. I should listen to some songs from this album, Night and Day, I'll Be Seeing You, Just In Time, The Way You Look Tonight and many other old standards to see if I remember his voice. Darren was born in 1936.

Possibly the least known of the four I requested photos of was Robert Horton. He played frontier scout Flint McCullough on the television series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1962. I remember wishing the shows highlighted him more than they did the Wagon master, played by Ward Bond. Flint was always being sent ahead to scout the trail while Wagon master Major Seth Adams dealt with that episode's problems. Horton was often confused with Robert Fuller, the actor who replaced him when he left the series to pursue a career in musical theater.

I think this is how I remember Robert Horton looking when he appeared on a Murder, She Wrote episode - another actor who has aged well. Or maybe they all just still look good to me because I've aged, too? Robert Horton was born in 1924.