grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Time in a Bottle

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removing curtains and rods
There is no free lunch at the Bat Cave. In five days I shortened curtains, removed huge cornice boards and curtain rods, vacuumed the bugs between the windows on the sill, changed two light figures, decluttered and rearranged 4 rooms, made several trips to the grocery store, Walmart & the post office, cooked dinner, and removed and replaced the trim around the laundry room door so the new dryer could be moved inside. I returned to Dallas exhausted.
I got 30 minutes for lunch.
One of my projects was cleaning out drawers in my bedroom. Every drawer was stuffed with cards and letters and papers and report cards. And pictures. School pictures of everyone I ever went to school with from 1st grade through high school graduation.

I opened the top drawer and there was Charles Mobley staring at me. Charles Mobley, my 8th grade boyfriend, in his football uniform. Vinnie Barbarino-y. Handsome as ever. And pictures of Anita and Becky and Judy and Jackie and Trina and Craig and Graham and Vic and Doug and Carrie and Mary and Bryan and Robert and TimH and TimA and TimS. Pictures of everyone I ever knew. From every year. A time capsule.

Does everyone open random drawers and find elementary school photos of classmates from the 1970s? Or does this only happen in my family? To hoarders? To people who live in the same spot on Earth for eternity? I hope NO ONE has any pictures of me in their junk drawer. Frightening thought.

I straightened and organized the photographs, disposing of only a handful – those with giant fingers blocking the entire picture and the Polaroids with totally bleached away images.

If anyone reading this needs an old photo of anyone from Keiser or Rivercrest, let me know. I bet I can find it. I have a few Osceola folks too.
talya
P.S. Gary H….I found a picture of you too.

Musical Pairings:


Lisa: Someday when I’m a grownup, maybe I’ll go back and look fondly at our house.
Bart: Well stop in and say hi to me because I’ll still be there chilling in my basement bachelor pad.
Homer: Make sure to water my backyard grave.
Bart: As long as I can dig you up and stick you on the front porch every Halloween.
Homer: Just don’t dress me up as a woman.
Bart: We’ll see.
(The Simpson’s)

Field of Dreams

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At home in Arkansas, I walked around the rice field each morning. Now that the field has been leveled and irrigated, we have our own private walking trail all the way to the drainage ditch at the South end. There were so many things to see in the early morning. Every day something new revealed itself.

Life is abundant. In addition to the rice and corn and wildflowers and vine covered trees, there were FrogsBeaversDucksDragonfliesButterfliesSnakes….
frog
Each morning I walked and sweated and explored, digging up rocks and shotgun shells and pieces of old rusty farm equipment. Daddy’s equipment?
Something shiny caught my eye. A small silver tip nearly hidden in the dirt. It was an aluminum baseball bat buried at the far back corner of the field near the beaver dam. An odd place to find a baseball bat. Field of Dreams?
My corner:)
My favorite part of the walk was the far Southeast corner which is shady and breezy in the morning. Almost cool. I spent extra time there studying the water and the ditch bank which concealed the occasional pearly white shell formed thousands of years ago when the Mississippi River covered the entire delta region.

Over the past week I slowly gathered all these little found objects and piled them in an old rusty hubcap I uncovered in the field. I placed the hubcap filled with treasures near the edge of the bank as an offering to the rain gods. I hope it works…

talya
Musical Pairings:
“With us, when you speak of “the river,” though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved, the Mississippi.“

~ William Alexander Percy 

Land of the Lost

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Taylor (my niece) and I were having severe internet withdrawal yesterday. She needed to download a book for her Kindle and I needed to blog. Temporarily living in the Land of the Lost, we are lucky to even get television reception.

We went to the Osceola Public Library for a quickie wi-fi adventure. The lady on duty checked my driver’s license and assigned us to study carrel 10. It was the only vacant one. She insisted we sit in the carrel, as if she was responsible for filling all the seats on the Tilt-a-Whirl before starting the ride.
Me: Can’t we just sit at one of the reading tables?
Library Lady: The internet doesn’t work there.  (Four yards away??)
Me: (Puzzled. Shouldn’t it work everywhere inside the library?)
Ignoring her direction, Taylor and I spread our things on the reading table, excited to soon connect with the outside world. Several networks popped up, all locked. Having spent time at this library before, I knew the drill although it does vary slightly with each visit.
Back to the front desk:
Me: Which network is the library? (Showing her my screen. There were several options.)
Library Lady: (Reading from a secret hidden paper beneath the counter.) It’s 877456566.
Me: (Puzzled. Again.) Isn’t that the password? First, I need to know which is the library network.
Library Lady: Well, they haven’t told me that yet. 
Me: So do you think one of these might be the library?
Library Lady: Probably the AT&T one. Yes AT&T. Maybe. (She was becoming flustered.)
It wasn’t the AT&T one. At least not with those secret numbers she gave me.
Me: That wasn’t the right network. (My head was beginning to spin.)
Library Lady: Look you really need to sit in carrel 10 for it to work. (Getting a bit snippity.)
Me: Why?
Library Lady: I don’t know. I’m just a part-timer.
Returning to the table with the secret numbers in my head, I tried every network including the dentist across the street. None of them worked. Just for grins, Taylor and I went to study carrel 10 to see if it was magical. Dangling inside was the hard wire to plug in for connection. The plug was larger than my MacBook Air. 
Avoiding the lady at the front who was beginning to look like a Sleestack, we left the library undetected. Driving slowly around town with my MacBook open in my lap, Taylor and I trolled for unsecure wi-fi. As Taylor occasionally announced, here’s one(!), I pulled over attempting to connect. I thought someone on Hale Street might have an unsecure network. No. We thought the Catholic Charities might be generous enough to share. Nope. Secure. The entire town of Osceola is amazingly secure. Or completely without.

Osceola Days Inn
Free Internet + Biscuits and Gravy!
Finally, the manager of the Days Inn generously allowed us to use the motel’s free wi-fi as we loitered in the lobby. It was very nice and clean and comfortable. Taylor downloaded her book and I published a blog about Chatty Cathy.
We returned to the Bat Cave feeling like we had just survived a rickety ride on a Tilt-a-Whirl. 
Taylor partaking in free wi-fi @ Days Inn

talya

Musical Pairings:

Land of the Lost Theme Song

If you’ve been in the Land of the Lost that much longer than we have, you ought to know by now that not everything here is logical. Will Marshall, Land of the Lost

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!