The Tramp with the Golden Smile

When I was a kid during the Great Depression, a tramp came knocking at our door. He said he was hungry and would like to have something to eat. So my mother, who often took in stray cats and dogs, invited the man into our humble home. The man was trying to earn his fare to other parts of the world by selling small items like shoe laces and thimbles.

So the man sat down at our dining room table and smiled in gratitude at my generous mother. Even at my tender age, I noticed that his teeth were filled with many gold fillings. I silently wondered how he could afford such expensive dental work.

So, as he drank his coffee and ate his day-old piece of bakery, he began to talk about himself. It seems he was headed for Hawaii and he would fly, not go by boat.

When he arrived in Hawaii, he planned to run in an election and become the president of Hawaii.

I began to get a little suspicious, even though I was young I knew that the president of Hawaii was the same person as the president of the United States of America. My mother didn't seem to be disturbed at all by this man who lived in fantasy land.

Guess what? He came back the next summer for another cup of coffee and a piece of day-old bakery.

Well, maybe this is the way he saved enough money for a trip to Hawaii.......or maybe he pawned some of that gold.

I sometimes wonder where he ended up in reality, or if he ever did.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Most of us are concerned about our hair. After our health, our families, our bank account balance, if any, hair seems to be high on the list of important things that must be dealt with just about every day.

If we are not washing it, curling it, cutting it, dying it, bleaching it, perming it, combing it, brushing it or blow-drying it, we are cursing it. (everybody probably has a bad hair day once in awhile) I knew a teen-ager who even laid her long hair on an ironing board and proceeded to iron out the natural curl.

Young people upon noticing a white hair, pull it out of their scalps without a thought. But older folks do not want to lose a single hair, no matter what color it is.

If you are as old as me, you can recall Veronica Lake, the movie star who wore her very long blonde hair over one eye. I think it is uncomfortable to look at someone who is hiding one of their eyes. Maybe one was brown and the other was blue, It happens.

Then there was Mitzi Gaynor, singer, dancer, actress, who right on the stage "washed that man right out of her hair and sent him on his way." Mitzi's hair was cut very short so it was easy to do, but long-haired girls would have a hard time doing that. That reminds me of the story of Rapunsel who had very, very long hair. She was a prisoner in a tower in days of old, and she would sing beautiful songs that filled the air night and day. Of course, a prince rode by one day and heard her sing. " I must have her", he thought. So he asked her to let down her golden hair so that he could climb up to her using it for a ladder night after night. Ouch!! You'd think, being a prince, he would ask the king, his father, for a long ladder, but he didn't even think of that.

I read that the Walt Disney Studio is coming out with a new cartoon this coming November with a new, improved version of this old fairy tale. It will appeal to boys this time instead of to only girls, so it will have sword fights and violent stuff like that to make it exciting. I read that the golden hair of the girl in the new movie is going to be seventy feet long. That must be a misprint, but I can hardly wait to see this new Disney movie! I don't mind a little violence as long as the best man rescues and wins the damsel and agrees to pay her hair-dresser's fees for life.

It's Nice to be Loved

Early every morning I send e-mails to three of my daughters to let them know I made it through the night. This morning my internet was down and I couldn't send the good news to my "kids".

And I wanted to go to the super market to buy a Sunday paper and stuff, so I decided to leave a message on the phone in case they called to see if I was OK.

Big mistake! I shoulda stayed home. (but then I would have missed running into an old dear friend)

The message I installed on the phone wasn't very clear to them and they got really worried as to my well-being. So one daughter who was vacationing in Chicago, called the daughter in Florida (or visa versa) and the daughter in Florida called the daughter in Alaska (or visa versa) and one of the daughters called my grandson who lives in Duluth. You think YOU are getting confused? The daughter in Chicago was able to reach me by phone when I came back from shopping, as did a granddaughter in Anchorage. The grandson also called me. The Florida daughter told me that they had started a nation-wide hunt for me. !!

After many minutes with the automaton at Charter.net and running back and forth between the phone and the computer, I finally got reconnected with the internet. (I do have a cell phone, but I never use it, except in an emergency)

But it was worth it because now I am positive that my children love me. Before, I wasn't too sure. Ahh, I'm just kidding!

So when my family reads this, I want them to know that I love and appreciate all of them, and next time I lose an internet connection, I will call at least one of them and they can spread the message that all is well.

Now I am going to work on my next blog entitled "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow." (That's Hair, not Here)

The Joys of the Internet

I took the plunge into Facebook a while back when I had very little knowledge of how it worked. I know why they named it Facebook. There are lots of fascinating faces there to look at in one's spare time. If you Google "Annabelle Nelson Smith" you will see a bit of my Facebook page. You could ask to be my friend and I could either accept you or ignore you. Some people have hundreds of "friends". I don't see how they can handle that many.

I am friends with some distant relatives in Sweden, but seeing that I don't understand the Swedish language, I don't visit those pages very often. The only Swedish word I know is "gazoonheidt", or something like that, that you utter after someone has sneezed. I think it means "Please use some Kleenex next time." Actually, one of these Facebook relatives did fly over the ocean from Sweden and visited with my daughter in Florida recently. That was very nice. I have a photo of him and Mickey Mouse taken when he visited Disney World.

I also got in touch with my former sister-in-law in British Columbia whom I haven't seen for twenty years. Facebook is fantastic for getting in touch and staying in touch with people you knew at one time. It is also very convenient for keeping in touch with your children if you have any and you are on speaking terms. I had to go to my daughter's Facebook page to find out if her son, Tom, would be available to mow my lawn today. That daughter lives in Alaska. Tom lives in Duluth. It's a long story that I am sure you would not be interested in. Don't get me wrong, we are on speaking terms. This said daughter put a lot of
pictures of me and other members of the family on my Facebook page recently. I would rather have had a professionally done , airbrushed photo of me put there. But I am still speaking to her anyway.

Google is another wonderful service. When I first googled my name, all I got was obituary notices of people with the same name. But that has changed and there are Annabelle Smiths all over the place and they are presumably still alive. I Google everybody that I happen to think of. I Google the old Hollywood movie stars to find out what they died from and when. I Googled "What to do about an ant hill" the other day. I got lots of help, and started to mix up the Borax and sugar to sprinkle on the hill in my back yard when I saw that Mother Nature had rained them out. Temporarily. Googling is a great pasttime.

I live in fear that my computer might conk out and I won't be able to Google for a day or two.

Mysterious Happenings

Let me bring you back in time when my husband had gone to work in a far-a-way state because jobs were scarce here. Someone knew I was alone, and so about four AM almost every morning, he would come and knock on the wall of my house. He seemed to know that that was a bedroom wall. Of course, I told the authorities about it, but there was nothing much they could do.

Some people even thought I was just making it up because I wanted my husband to come home. Well, his job ended after some months and home he came. Four o'clock the next morning after his arrival, came the knocking on the bedroom wall once more. I was glad that my husband heard it along with me, so nobody could ever accuse me of making up that story to get him to come home. That was the end of the knocking because the prowler now knew that I was not alone anymore. I had a pretty good idea who it was, but without proof, I kept it to myself. This (?) person spent some time in jail for other misdeeds that were much more serious.

Fast forward to 2009. I am now a lonely old widow, but somebody wants me to know that I am not always alone. He is out in my yard getting into rather harmless mischief. I bought myself an infra-red camera that enabled me to see what was going on in my back yard during the night. It was connected to my combination TV and VCR tape player. The next day I could watch the tape of the back yard happenings during the night before, if I so desired. I haven't watched all the tapes because it would take hours and hours and I have better things to do.

But someday I might watch all the tapes just to confirm my suspicions. But why waste precious time?