IT WAS A DARK & STORMY NIGHT

     An ancient and huge maple tree shaded the bathroom window from the sun, but when the dark winds blew, the limbs knocked and scratched like a boogeyman looking for a way in.
      The storm was sending leaves skirling, and witches flying. I ran through the big ol' dark dining room and the cavernous dark living room, past the gaping, chunk toothed mouth of the stone fireplace and into my parents' bedroom.
      Daddy was holding Mama close, standing at the window overlooking the alley that ran between  our house and the loading dock at the rear of the Missouri Farmers' Association or MFA. Safe and dry, we watched the storm pitch it's fit.
     The loading dock, as always, was lit up waiting for late and early milk drop off, live caged poultry arrivals, and miscellaneous feed, seed and fertilizer business. The rain made waves across the windows, obscuring the truck pulled up to the dock. It wobbled in the sheeting water, blurbing up there and bluping out here.  Shades moved from dock to truck and back again, then closed the truck up and drove off into the storm, Daddy said a little prayer for their safety on such a night, and with the calming of the storm, we returned to bed.
     The next morning, Mama was still making the coffee when Daddy answered the knock at the door. At the preacher's house we expected visitors both early and late, but it wasn't usually the sheriff.  Someone had broken into the MFA, wheeled the safe out onto the dock and loaded it into a truck. The preacher's family didn't need the story to dine out on, but it didn't hurt.
     The safe was discovered 3 days later on a rural road. It was basically intact, but with signs of applied hammers and chisels and such. All that work, in all that rain, and all that frustration, just to end up as one of God's littls jokes.
     The thieves my father blessed on their way were never found. Who says prayer isn't powerful?

Back in the Day: The Fancy Lady's Shoes

Back in the Day: The Fancy Lady's Shoes Pin It

The Fancy Lady's Shoes

Grandpa Campbell was, among other things, a shoemaker. He worked in a shoe repair shop right across the street from where he and Grandma lived, just off the Court House Square in Union, MO. When I was there, Grandma and I would take him his lunch, a tin of sardines and a sleeve of soda crackers. It was never different and it must have been what he wanted as no food that Grandpa didn't like would appear in that house.
One day while they sorted out the lunch I found at the bottom of a dark dusty bin an old pair of leather high button shoes in a bright red and yellow spatter pattern. I had never seen such things in my life! I coveted those shoes even more than the mary janes my mother would not allow me to wear. (Bad for my feet, she said.)
To my astonishment those shoes came home with Grandpa one night and were packed away in my suitcase to take home.
Who was the "lady" who brought them in to be repaired and never came back? I was a child during WWII and such shoes had not been worn for 40 or more years, at least by a fancy lady! Where is the back story when you want it?

Back in the Day: The Doggie Gazette

Back in the Day: The Doggie Gazette: "My dogs have always been better reporters than I. They have no compunction about getting down to the nitty gritty filth of it all. They re..."

Back in the Day: Burkhas in Ladies Better Clothing

Back in the Day: Burkhas in Ladies Better Clothing: "No customers, and only two of us were on the floor when a middle eastern man accompanied a veiled woman into the area. They browsed the ra..."

An Ending

Part of our daily routine was visiting the burrow of Old Grumpus the gopher tortoise. Grumpus was a mighty good sized critter, standing nose to nose with a West Highland Terrier and about twice as wide. I am not sure what he lived on, but he lived well, it was obvious.
At least once a day Billy would head canalward and nudge the entrance of Grumpus' hole. Occasionally we would get a leg or a tail, but usually a tortoise nose emerged in greeting, before shrinking back into the sand.
This day we made an early morning visit, not our usualy routine, but Billy insisted. He was straining and pulling on his leash as we neared the burrow, again, not normal Billy behaviour.
Even from a distance, I could see deep trenches where tires had piled sandy soil in hillocks. I couldn't tell where exactly the burrow should be, but Billy knew. He nosed and pawed but made no effort to dig. His friend wasn't there. We never saw Old Grumpus again.

Old Grumpus

An ancient gopher tortoise was Billy dog's best friend. Old Grumpus had a burrow in a vacant lot and our daily walk always included a house call in which Billy would sniff the entrance and a tortoise head would emerge briefly in acknowledgement. Satisfied, Billy would continue his business walk.
When Grumpus visited our house he would appear through the shrubbery and as slow as only a tortoise could be he would make his way across the lawn. Billy would wait in the corner of the lanai watching his poky pal stump through the grass.
Through the screen wire, dog and tortoise nudged noses in greeting. Shoulder to shoulder they would walk to the far end of the lanai where the night blooming jasmine bush would block their progress. Billy would turn, sit and wait for Grumpus to make his much slower turn, then side by side at a tortoise' pace they would return to the meeting corner.
Swinging his reptillian head, Grumpus would continue around the side yard, Billy watching until he was out of sight.