Mystery, She Wrote

Sep23

Blood! There were drops of blood all over the deck at my back door. My heart jumped and a lump formed in my throat. A scenario of how they came to be there instantly formed in my mind based on noises I’d heard during the night.  Someone had needed help, but if they rang the door bell, I had never awakened! Guilt seared my conscience.

At bedtime the night before, I had leaned over to peer out my second floor bedroom window. My house sits next to a bridge that spans a small river. The tree leaves along the river shimmered in the moonlight. As I looked, the country-side darkness was sliced open by the headlights of a car speeding past. Its tires went, “thip-thip” over a bump in the asphalt near the bridge. In the silence following it’s passing, a frog croaked. Continue reading →

Dude Ranch

Sep16

By the time I wandered from my bed, everyone else had been up working for hours. I heard the wringer washer humming in the basement and remembered that it was washday Monday. Finding a slice of Mom’s home baked bread in a bag on the kitchen counter, I slathered butter and jelly on it and went to sit on one of the basement steps.

When I sat down, Mom looked up from feeding soggy clothing to the washing machine’s rollers. She said, “So, you finally decided to get up?” I grinned at her and continued to nibble on the bread. Eyeing my summertime uniform, shorts and a sun top, Mom said, “Good. You dressed for the day.”

I popped the last bite of bread into my mouth and frowned.  Last summer my big sisters made a fuss about how I wore my nightgown well into the day and refused to comb my own hair. Pictures that they took showed a fluffy tangled rat’s nest of hair on the back of my head. Now that I was eight and a half I dressed when I got out of bed and even combed my hair. Continue reading →

Finding a Bargain

Sep12

I saw the garage sale sign out of the corner of my eye. After a quick check on traffic, I stomped on the brakes; a bit too hard. The car stopped so suddenly that my eight and twelve year old daughters in the backseat rocked forward and protested in unison, “Mom!”

My theory at the time was to stop at every garage sale that I saw. Not every sale would have what I needed, but through the years I had noticed that on average one yard sale out of ten yielded huge bargains. That made me not want to miss even one sale. The one that I missed might have been the one where the best buys were to be found.

The next time I was in town Niki and Tammie started to giggle every time they saw a garage sale sign and made the sound of brake-locked tires skidding across pavement. “ErrrK! Errrk! I glanced around. Because I was paying attention to traffic, I hadn’t seen the garage sale sign two houses back. Pulling over to the curb, I turned and glared at my daughters. I figured that was the only way for me to make sure they would continue functioning as garage sale-spotting sirens. Continue reading →

Not By Choice

Sep7

Not By Choice

Even though the weather was hot and humid, the minute I arrived home from work, I decided that I needed to prepare my fair entries for delivery to the Central Wisconsin State Fair. I looked forward to relaxing when that job was finished.

Allowing myself a few minutes of respite from my scheduled labor, I sat down at the desk and checked my email account. I found a message from the company that owns The Buyer’s Guide, a weekly advertisement newspaper that I’ve had a column in for the last 25 years and three months.

My eyes widened as I read, “As you may know, we are undergoing some changes in how we allocate editorial resources for the Hub City Times. As part of this, we have moved away from a paid columnist structure. Effective immediately, we will no longer be able to pay for the Lifelines column.”

I thought, “What?” I knew that the paper had moved away from publishing just advertisements and my column to having local news stories and other columnists. Since I never go to the office, I hadn’t known that my column was at risk.

Picking up the telephone, I called my daughter, Tammie.

“What’s up, Mom?” She asked.

I said, “The Buyer’s Guide just fired me via e-mail.” Continue reading →

It’s Snow Good

Feb11

The house felt warm and cozy. Not a glimmer of light from outside marred the bathroom’s black windowpane. It wasn’t the middle of night, though. Only half an hour before, the annoying, buzzing insistence of my alarm clock persuaded me to leave my warm bed. Unable to put off leaving for work, I checked my reflection in the mirror above the sink one last time, and turned out the light. Continue reading →

Facing the Truth

Feb4

I stood in the dim hallway outside our farmhouse bathroom, alternating between knocking on the door, and noisily snuffling into the door frame. On some basic, instinctive level, my five-year-old mind knew that when a little sister pounds on the bathroom door long enough, big sisters usually forgo their desire for privacy. Continue reading →

Snowy Winter Sunday

Jan28

Wind howling at the bedroom window woke me up. I turned over, unwilling to open my eyes so early. Surely it wasn’t time to get up! The morning light filtering in through the screens and my bedroom’s net curtains was gray, cold, and unfriendly. Just as I was drifting back to sleep, another arctic gust howled around the side of our farmhouse. Continue reading →

Devil or Angel?

Jan21

I staggered into my daughter’s kitchen balancing a stack of gift-wrapped presents. Perched at the very top was a small brown paper sack. As I turned to set them down onto a kitchen cupboard, the bag began to slide. I stopped its rapid decent by using my right elbow to clamp it against my side. Hanging sideways, the sack disgorged an avocado and three tomatoes. They gracefully rolled out onto the counter without a single bruise. Continue reading →

My Y2 Missle

Jan7

A pre-holiday malaise had settled over my sixth grade class after lunch. Our teacher worked up a sweat just trying to make everyone open the right workbook. When we filled out of the school building for our last recess of the day, we gasped at the unexpected chill in the air. Like sheep and goats, we separated into groups predetermined by our adolescent hierarchy. Continue reading →