My Neighbor Ellie

I had a neighbor once that you wouldn't believe. These are some memories this poor soul who was born on April Fool's day and was buried on April Fool's day seventy years later.

One day, Ellie came into my kitchen, opened my cupboard doors and began searching for food. She explained why she was doing this. She said she had just gotten company and she had nothing in the house to give them to eat. Well, my cupboard didn't yield anything for her to feed her guests, so she went home empty-handed and probably disgusted, and I just stood there in wonderment.

Ellie was deathly afraid of lightning! Ellie had a deep faith in the goodness of God, but she constantly feared that He was going to strike her down sooner or later.

One afternoon I was having coffee with my mother and an aunt in my kitchen hardly noticing that there was a teeny bit of lightning in the western sky. Ellie comes to my house, figuring she

would be safer at my house than in her own home. So I invited her to have a cup of coffee, but she said, "No, I'm going to sit on the steps that lead upstairs". So while we gabbed and drank our coffee, Elly sat alone on the stairs. After about half an hour she came back into my

kitchen looking very upset. "You people should have come and sat on the stairs with me!" she

barked and left. That was Ellie!

Ellie found it hard to part with anything she owned. Even her garbage. What she could part with, she would put in a cardboard box, tie it with string and place it on the flat bed of her husband's truck. And her husband would then put it where it belonged. She couldn't even part with her junk mail. She had a table in her living room that became the storage area for her junk mail. The mail was piled high on this table. I might mention that her kitchen table was also piled high with stuff. I might mention that her bathtub was also piled high with cleaning supplies which she seldom used, but she couldn't resist another Stanley home party.

If Ellie bought a new piece of furniture like a couch, she just couldn't get rid of the old couch, so

she would put the new couch in front of the old couch. The same with a console TV. One TV in

front of the other. Her decorated Christmas tree stayed up until sometime in April. It finally got to the point where there was only a narrow path through her living room. She'd invite us neighbors in for coffee and served us using the seat of a wooden kitchen chair as a table.

Ellie smoked cigarettes. That's what killed her. It wasn't getting struck by lightning after all.

The strange thing was----everybody liked Ellie. I know I did.

Home is Where the Heart Is

They have always said, "Home is where the heart is" but that phrase means different things to different people. Dorothy Gale was so glad to be back home after her trip to OZ that she kept saying, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." She loved the Kansas farm with the pigs and the goats. I always wondered why she didn't have a horse to ride when she ran away from home. All my daughters had horses and we didn't even have a farm.

Home is where you hang your hat. And you'd better hang your coat up too, or you'll hear about it.

I remember watching Scarlet O'Hara whip that poor stolen horse until he collapsed and died, all in a frantic desire to get back to her home. There wasn't much left of the Southern Mansion, but it was home, blessed home. The Yankees at least left some green velvet drapes hanging on a couple of windows and Scarlet and Mammy whipped them up into a beautiful gown for Scarlet to wear to Atlanta to get money so that her home wouldn't be snatched from under her. You'll do anything to save your home.

My son has spent the last year and a half building a new home, much of it by himself with the

help of his son. There's nothing like the feeling you get when you build a home with your own

two hands. His heart is really in that home!! It looks beautiful in pictures, and I hope I get to

see it next summer.

On the other hand, there are people that have no home. My heart goes out to them, but it comes right back here to this home of mine. There was a time when my childhood family did not have a home. Ma and Pa had bought a home, and then found out that the seller had no right to sell it because it wasn't his, so we had to get out right away. My mother said "No more of this moving! We are going to build a house". So they did with hardly any money. So we lived

in a tent in my uncle's yard. His house wasn't big enough for all six of us. It was a happy day when we got to live in our own home, unfinished though it was.

Dorothy was so right. There's no place like home.

Up the Down Staircase

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to attend a meeting which was being held in a different place than usual. The meeting was to be on the second floor of a Senior Independent/Ass't Living building. We were so happy that they permitted us to meet in a room on the second floor even though we were not residents. But we are Senior Citizens. (in my day people like us were referred to as "the old folks".

I wanted to play it safe and get there early. I entered the building through the main door and spotted an elevator and pressed the button to take me to the second floor. There I was greeted by a nice lady asking if she could help me. I told her about the meeting and she said, "Oh, that is on the other side of the building".

So I set out to walk to the other side of the second floor, but she stopped me and told me that

I had to go back to the first floor in order to get to the other side of the second floor. There are

no steps visible to a newcomer to this building, so I took an elevator down to the first floor.

There I was helped by another lady who guided me to a "hidden" elevator that would take me

to the second floor again, but this time I would end up on the right side, which was really the

left side of the building as you enter.

I found the meeting room with the help of this nice lady but no one was in the room, and the nice lady said "There is no meeting this morning."

I couldn't believe my ears! I knew there was a meeting scheduled. But then another person who came to attend the meeting appeared as if out of nowhere and said, "Yes, there will be a

meeting this morning"!

And there was....... attended by a group of confused "old folks".

I would love to get a look at the blueprints for this building.

The Comic Strips

When I was a kid, my folks would buy a Sunday copy of the Chicago Herald Examiner if they had some spare change. The funnies were great in those days. The thing that caught my eye printed near the heading was a quotation that read "What Fools These Mortals Be".

Shakespeare, who coined the phrase was no fool, though.

I don't know if he would have approved or disapproved of the comic strips of those days before and right after WW2.

I was forced to read some of Shakespeare's plays in high school, and I don't remember much of what I read, but I still remember some. For instance:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.

Wow, how depressing is that?

So it was a very good idea to read the comics everyday to keep your spirits up. "lil Abner might

have been a fool, but Daisy Mae loved him. When the citizens of Dogpatch felt depressed, they

dragged out a jug of Kickapoo Joy Juice and had a good time.

And then there was this character that had a little black cloud lingering over his head all the time, and where ever he went, something bad happened. That was the comic strip fellow who

inspired Dr. Norman Vincent Peale to write "The Power of Positive Thinking" as an antidote to

negative thinking. And many writers have jumped on that band wagon through the years.

But old William gave us an uplifting idea when he wrote "......sleep that knits up the raveled

sleeve of care, the death of each day's life."

So goodnight, Gracie.

Frogs-Continued

I've been doing a little research on buying a pet frog. It seems that getting a frog is a lot like getting a husband. In some countries, you have to get a license to keep a frog as a pet. They are

not easy to take care of. They eat a lot. Sometimes they eat so much that they get real fat.

They are sloppy. You have to clean their cage a lot. Yes, in some ways they remind me of having a husband.

If you go out of town for a few days, you have to get a frog-sitter. Sometimes they out-grow the bug diet and you have to feed them mice. You probably would never find a sitter that would be

willing to feed mice to a frog, even if you paid them.

Besides I read that in a few thousand years, frogs may be extinct, and some of the blame goes to

people that buy frogs to keep as pets. Why? I don't know.

My daughter in rural Florida has a pond with many little tree frogs living in it. Her cats try to bring them into the house as playmates. But sometimes they escape the cats and lose their lives by getting in the way of a shutting door. I ran over a frog with my lawnmower once. I felt

like a murderer.

I don't think I want a frog, after all.

Facinating Frogs

I don't know why I like frogs, I just do. They are ugly. They have very small brains. They eat bugs. They talk funny. Kind of like some people I used to know.

But a frog sitting on a lily pad is a wondrous site. And they make cute little babies called tadpoles that wriggle and swim so entertainingly that children the whole world over go to the neighborhood pond and scoop them up in a jar and hope to watch them change into real frogs. I know I did. Actually, I think all the little tadpoles curled up and died in my jar, though.

In tenth grade Biology we had to skin a frog. That white meat looked pretty appetizing, especially the legs. I have yet to eat a plate of frog legs. They just don't sell them at Super One.

I don't have a dog or a cat anymore, but I was thinking about getting a frog for a pet. I can just

picture him jumping from note to note on the piano. Together, we might even compose a song or two.

When one of my granddaughters was going to school in Prague, I wrote a little poem and sent it to her. It went something like this:

Once there was a little frog

Who sat on a log

in a bog in the fog

in Prague

but along came a dog.

That was the end of the frog. He croaked.

No Guns Allowed on Premises

They should have had the above sign on the door of the corner grocery store where I bought food for the family so long ago.

Why (?) you may ask. Give a listen.

My little boy was presented with a gift from his doting Grandma one summer day, and decided to

take it along when we went to the corner grocery. The gift was a toy machine gun!

We entered the store and were greeting by one of the clerks, Mr. Bloomquist, who held up his

hands and said to my little boy, "Shoot me!"

So the kid shot him! Mr. Bloomquist got a face full of water! Mr. Bloomquist was not happy!

I still have this picture in my mind of Mr. Bloomquist taking up his long white apron and wiping the water from his face.

But he asked for it, didn't he?

Smoke Alarms

Yes, I have smoke alarms. One special one is way up on the ceiling over the stairs that lead to the basement. It's been lurking there for over twenty years. And it still works!

How do I know?

Because it not only picks up the scent of smoke, it picks up other scents, such as the scent of a carpet spot remover, and bread coming out of the oven.

No kidding!

One day I sprayed some spot remover on a little piece of my kitchen carpeting and left the room to wait for it to do its work. About three minutes later, the alarm sounded that horrible ear-piercing noise all through the house. I tried to remain calm in order to find out where the

fire was. I went upstairs and down, but no fire was found.

I realized that it was the spot remover scent that set the alarm off. The high-pitched noise almost drove me crazy because it wouldn't stop and I couldn't stop it. But it mercifully stopped before I totally lost my mind.

I figured the batteries had by now died, but I got fooled.

Just the other day, I was taking a loaf of bread out of a very hot oven when that darn alarm went off just like before. I checked throughout the house, of course, but no sign of smoke or fire. Hirkimer smelled the bread! This time I opened the back door and let some fresh air come in and Hirkimer stopped. I call him Hirkimer because he IRKS me.

Moral of my story: put your smoke alarm in a place where you can reach it so you can turn it off.

P.S. To my dear children: do you recall when you were very, very young and misbehaving, I used to warn you that Hirkimer was watching you through the window? I don't think that

threat did much good, though. And so Hirkimer got his revenge on me.

Toe Dancing

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a toe dancer. I was always going around standing on my toes.

In the school swimming pool, it was easy to do this, as the water buoyed me up. (that's why Esther Williams did her ballet movements in the water!)

One day my mother went to an auction. She came home with a trunk that she bought the contents of without knowing what was inside said trunk. I remember a lot of law books and "The History of the World" set of books which she placed in a bookcase but which went unread for the most part.

But in this trunk was a correspondence course in BALLET! Even illustrations showing you how to

turn your feet into very painful positions. You were supposed to have a bar with which to practice your exercises. Needless to say, I did not have a bar. I also did not have a talent for ballet, I realized. I knew, too, that we could never afford a pair of toe-dancing slippers. So the ballet course went into the fire and I went back to just standing on my toes once in awhile.

But fate came along in my old age and gave me two granddaughters that had a talent for the ballet. One granddaughter even starred as Marie with the Minnesota Ballet production of The Nutcracker! At the curtain call at the end of the performance, the audience gave her a wonderful ovation and the tears in my eyes were from sheer pride and joy.

Sometimes your dreams do come true, but not in the way you expect them to.