You have heard all about my childhood pets.  But I have had pets as an adult, too.

My first pet was really the dorm cat.  My room mate was a fish outta water on our floor of the dorm. Most of the girls in the surrounding rooms were music majors so poor Doris was exposed to all our musical angst.  We had a great deal of worry about sol feggio exercises.  We all called it sol feg (and probably didn't know this was short for sol feggio, anyway).  Sol feggio  was singing a piece of music using the names of the notes rather than the words.  So do re me is a version of sol feg.  I think we also had to use the hand gestures associated with the note, so practicing sol feggio is a lot like sign language only with singing.  My roommate, due to being normal and all, ask us what was this Soul Fish thing we were all so worried about.  Thus, the cat's name (at least on or floor), became Soul Fish, which I actually think is a pretty good name for a cat.

Did you know that cat's can't digest milk?  Well, neither did most of the kids in the dorm so Soul Fish developed the nasty habit of having diarrhea on the students beds.  Soul Fish disappeared and although the thought is a little disconcerting, the med students had to dissect cats as part of their training. Do you suppose... Nah...

My next pet was a big, blonde, long-haired cat named Marilyn after...well, you can figure it out. I was a year ourt of college and living in a dive apartment with my roommate, Terri.  The apartment was crap, but it was two blocks off of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City which gave it a certain (small) level of class. I had a job as a "psychiatric technician" (which is a glorified babysitter for patients on the psych unit) at a suburban hospital making minimum wage and supplemented it working retail at a store in nearby Westport.

I bought Marilyn  a pink rhinestone collar and had visions of her lounging on a silk pillow and sipping (something other than milk) out of a swanky silver cat dish.  I thought she made me seem chic...except for two things.   1).  I guess it was the year of the fleas because she was covered in them.  When fleas are too numerous on an animal, they leap off, looking for some other source of food.  My feet and ankles became flea fodder and I looked like I had some rare skin disorder confined to my feet. Several batches of flea dip and multiple cans of flea powder finally got rid of them  but then #2 came up.  As a just-out-of-college trying-to-be-cool young adult, I tended to spend my limited disposable income on things like red leather gloves and tickets to see the Eurythmics rather than on adequate pet care. So Marilyn never got fixed.  A cat in heat is not pleasant.  After suffering through nightly yowling and ruined sprayed furniture (that's okay since most of it was dumpster diving stuff any way), I finally convinced a co-worker to adopt her. I don't like to think about what may have happened to her after that!

When I went to grad school in Michigan, I did not subject any pets to my infrequent presence. Although,  I tried to have some fish in a bowl for awhile.  Somehow, I got the idea that  needed to use distilled water, and Fred and Ginger (so I like old movies, what can I say) went belly up from asphyxiation.

My next pet was after I graduated and had my first real job in Danville.  I adopted a runt-of-the-litter cat.  Cats really are ideal for busy/lazy people.  They are litter trained from the start.  They don't require walks.  They eat cat food without begging for your food.  Since I was an adult (sort of) now, I did the grown-up cat parent thing and got her fixed. Hooray!

I was dating a guy from India at the time, and named her the Tamil word for cat, which is punai  (pooh-nie).  But I never really called her that , and after I broke up with the Indian guy, I regressed to calling her the very original name of Kitty.  Her named was finally The Kitty.  The was actually part of her name.

The Kitty lasted a long time.  She moved to Chicago with me after I got married. She made it through two moves to our current house.  She made it until my son was 6 year old.  Then, she chose a day when we had company for lunch to have a heart attack and die.  If that wasn't awkward enough, My son, who had taken to calling her Creepers" because she was always creeping around, chose to hunt for her to show her, to our company,  after the death event.  I gently took him aside and said, "Eli, The Kitty was very old.  She was so old that her body couldn't live any more and she died".

I was waiting for wailing and tears.  His little face contorted for an instant before changing to questioning wonder.  He looked at me and asked,  "Can we get a fish?"

Our next pet was not a fish.  I will tell you more next time.

Grandparent memories 


When we weren't at the creek or avoiding the outhouse, we spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house.  My paternal grandfather was semi-retired to Owensville where he was a minister at St. Peter's church.  (That's right- my dad is a minister, his dad was a minister, my mom's dad was a minister, my dad's grandfather was a minister, and of my dad's nine uncles, there were eight ministers and one psychiatrist who said it was his job to take care of all those crazy ministers).

My grandparent's lived in, what else, a parsonage.  My great-grandmother (my dad's mom's mom) also lived there. She was a little scary because she was so old!   There were lot's of Victorian antiques, and some of my dad's toys, too. I wish we still had those! The room that my sister and I slept in , had an antique picture of some very stern-looking ancestors.   I thought they would come out to haunt us if we didn't behave, so for us anyway, we didn't act up at bedtime.  My brother slept in a tiny room at the top of the stairs, so the tiny bedroom curse obviously followed him there. 

This is me at my grandparent's parsonage. Loved that dog!!

The other thing that terrified me about that house, was the railroad tracks that ran behind it.  I screamed and cried every time a train came by,  and I remember wondering why everyone else did not understand that the train was going to ram into the house at any minute.  Didn't they know that we were all likely to die? 

The train of doom did not keep me from playing in the park next door to the house.  It was an old fashioned playground with a now obsolete merry-go-round and one of the metal slides that would burn your butt off in the summer.  I also remember the seesaw. My sister was standing up in the center to balance it, when lost HER balance and landed, crotch first, on the metal bar.  I think she lost her virginity that day!  Remember the stress reaction of fight/flight/freeze?  That is the one and only time I have ever had a freeze reaction.  Beth kept yelling at me to run for help, and I remember thinking that I should go, but just couldn't move.  She must have thought I lost my mind!

I loved to go to grandma and grandpas house at Christmas because we used to get a brown paper bag filled with candy. (CANDY!!) It had those chocolate cream domes and an orange, and that yummy ribbon candy.  I think it must have been some sort of law that  little country churches to give the kids that specific mix of candy in a brown paper bag at Christmas!  The only bad memory I have is when my sister puked on my doll on the trip to Owensville.

My sister got carsick almost every time we took a rode trip.  That year I really, really, really wanted a Dancerina doll for my birthday.  She was a blond doll in a pink tutu with a plastic crown on her had.  If you held her crown, she would spin around in a pirouette!  I'm sure she was not cheap, but my parents got it for my birthday.  Mind you, my birthday is December 15, so she was pretty new on Christmas.  I took her on the trip to Owensville, and Beth got sick in the car, of course.  My recollection is that she specifically leaned over on my side so she wouldn't get puke on her side.  By doing so, she puked all over my brand new Dancerina doll!  My mom and my Grandma spent most of that day cleaning her up and fixing her hair.  She still worked, but her hair was never the same.  Good thing I could console myself with chocolate cream domes and ribbon candy!

Just as an aside, I recently was in an antique store and found a Dancerina doll in the original box!  Everything in that particular part of the store was 50% off so she cost a whopping $15!  So now I have a un-puked on Dancerina doll sitting in my closet.  I promise not to take her on any road trips with my sister!

The cabin

No discussion of my previous homes is complete without some discussion of The Cabin. 

My Dad and Mom purchased some property out on a lonely stretch of Highway P near Owensville.  You know it's rural when the highways are called rural route or highways with letter names!  Even though it was right off the two lane "highway", the property seemed to be deep in the woods.  Initially, there were no structures on the property, and we went there to experience the true definition of camping.  No electricity, no running water, sleeping in tents, cooking over an open fire,  using the outhouse.. The outhouse was down a trail far enough away from the camp site to prevent the aroma from impeding our ability to breathe.  It was initially painted pink so it was dubbed "The pink pagoda".  When the weather removed that color, it was painted yellow and renamed ""the golden throne".  No matter what we called it, it was not a pleasant place to be.  Apart from the fact that it offered some measure of privacy and a way to keep from getting poison ivy in uncomfortable places, it was everything you hate about gas station restrooms only twenty times worse.  No matter how much lime you sprinkled on the contents, you could not eradicate that special sewage smell.  When I was very small, there was a little chamber pot that I could use if I had to go at night, but when I outgrew it, I had to trek down the trail with a flashlight and my sister, if I could convince her she had to go, too! Otherwise, I would risk wetting the bed before I would face the potential critter encounter.

The pink pagoda was only one aspect of having no plumbing. The lack of bathing facilities was also an issue.  Washtubs served as general clean up facilities and for more significant bathing we would journey to the creek.  Their are a zillion little creeks and brooks running through central Missouri.  Creeks are tributaries of the rivers running through Missouri, and I am pretty sure the creeks we frequented were fed by the Gasconade River and the Missouri.  Creeks generally have rocky bottoms, so we always had creek shoes. Flip flops don't really work, because creeks have currents and, depending on how rainy It has been, flip flops could be pulled right off your feet.  So creek shoes were usually last years Keds or knock-off white ladies from K-Mart. 

Besides being our giant bathtub, the creek was a kid's paradise! Favorite past times included catching tadpoles and crawdads.  It was really fun to find a mostly morphed frog with a tale or a tadpole with tiny rudimentary legs. What wasn't so fun was getting the occasional disgusting leech! You learned very quickly to avoid the brushy areas near the shore where they, and the native water snakes hung out.
It was also fun (and is still fun) to look for flat rocks to skip across the water and the American Indian arrow heads made from the flint and quartz rocks along the creek bottom. 

We did not spend too many summers sleeping in tents.  My Dad found four trees in a rough square and used them as the corners for the original cabin. As you can imagine, this was not up to any kind of architectural code, but it beat sleeping out in the open.  We had just enough room for bunk beds for Beth and me and a double bed for my parents.  Although I am flabbergasted by the thought, I'm pretty sure, my brother was part of the camping experience as an infant.  And I am pretty sure this entailed diapers.  Cloth diapers.  With no running water.  My mom needs to be a candidate for sainthood.  Initially, my brother slept in a trough or something, and eventually he slept in the "rafters". The cabin was truly a hooterville, and from the one small bedroom, it eventually got a screened in "kitchen" tacked on to one side, and a small living room with a stone fire place built in some how, on the back .  It actually was kind of cool in a rustic very hick way.  We had an antique icebox and we would get a huge block of ice for it.  It actually kept things refrigerated for a day or so.

Next time, I will tell you more about our days at the old cabin.

    

Cows and Fourth of July

All of the mandatory visits, crazy or boring were made up for with visits to Billy and Jere's house

Everyone called their parents  the same names  Billy and Jere used for them, which was Mama and Daddy

Mama and Daddy were hosts for many a cookout for, not just our family, but for the youth group from church or school organizations. There was a lot going on because Billy and Jere were into a  lot of stuff at school.  It seems as if, between the two of them, they knew everybody in Jefferson City and beyond.  I once watched Billy chase a poor girl down the street in Fulton, Mo because he thought she looked familiar!

Mama and Daddy  grew Christmas trees and raised cows, among other things, on their farmland  Jere played the oboe in the band, and I think Billy played the trumpet, so the cows always got named after instruments.  It was  a sight to see Mama, (who stands about 5 feet 'nothin,)  chasing a cow and  yelling, "Bassoon!  You get outta them pine trees!". 

Fourth of July was a memorable occasion with Billy and Jere.  Billy would say, "Mama go put on your asbestos jumpsuit, everyone else stand way back so Mama can use the blow torch and we can all really enjoy that sparkler!"  Regardless of safety jokes, the fireworks were always great and the food was better.  Fresh corn and hamburgers on the grill.  Beth was especially enthusiastic about how fresh and juicy they tasted.  Until she looked around with wide eyes and asked, "Where's Bassoon?"

We also got invited to the farm at Christmas to pick up our Christmas tree.  Daddy always had the biggest and prettiest one picked out for us.  We would ride out on the hay wagon and bring it back to the house for cider and donuts.  Now I am spoiled for Christmas trees because nothing compared to those fresh cut pines!

Visiting the farm was far from the only fun times with Billy and Jere.  Billy wa a budding Cecil B. DeMille with his Super 8.  He and Jere would write, produce and direct their own feature films.  We used the church basement as our set,  of course!  Jere wrote a screenplay called "Are These Lips my Own?" In which I was to play an aging actress whose lips were malformed, looking to find a sweet young thing to use a a lip transplant victim.  I can't imagine why we never made that one! 

I loved Billy.  Beth said he was her "go to" friend.  If she ever needed anything, Billy would be there for her.  Jere was MY "go to" friend.  Probably one of the best friends I ever had.  My sophomore year, when he was a senior,  don't think a day went by when I didn't see him!  He worked at as a delivery man for one of the local pizza joints, and he used to call me to place an order and ask for him  to deliver it.  I would order a sandwich or something, he would come over and "deliver" it to me, but , really, just pay for it and eat it himself! 

When I got news that Billy died, I was married and living in Chicago.  I hadn't seen Billy for years, but the world got a little darker for me that day.  Just knowing that someone like Billy was alive just made the world seem more colorful. 

Jere is still my friend, and even though he is on the other side of the country, I love knowing he is still a part of my life. 

Just another word about Billy.  Even though he was capable of terrorizing small town girls for fun, he was actually a good kind-hearted person.  I remember when one of the youth group members was dying of brain cancer, and Billy brought his movies to her so she could be part of the screening.  That type of kindness and acceptance is what I will remember most about Billy.

Parrots, chickens and cows. Oh My


The minister of a church is frequently asked to have a meal with parishioners.  Often times, the whole family is invited along. For me, this usually entailed sitting quietly in uncomfortable dress clothes while sitting on  doily coved sofas and listening to polite adult conversation.  If I was lucky, there would be  Jordan almonds in  cut glass bowls that I could nibble while trying not to break something.  But,occasionally the yawn inducing visitations would have an unusual twist.

An elderly pair of maiden lady sisters invited us to their antique laden house, kept dark in order to fend off the heat, for lunch. They were the picture of genteel, soft spoken Midwestern ladies, wearing their Sunday best to host the young minister and his family.  Their table was set with their lovely old china and best silverware.  But what was with the extra place setting?

It was for Billy.  Not my friend Billy.  That would have been odd enough.  No, Billy was a parrot.  Bill, the ladies' pet parrot was allowed to roam freely through the house.  He had his own place at the table and ate from the some lovely china as everyone else.

Billy did not really like company.  His first words to use were "Goodbye".  When we didn't leave, he stepped up his tactics and began squawking, "Help! Police!".  The  lovely old sister ladies gently scolded "Billy!  That's not polite"  but he continued chirping "goodbye" and "help me".  throughout our stay.  I don't remember much of the meal-probably finger sandwiches or something- but Billy had what we were having.  I think Billy resorted to some passive aggression by occasionally lifting his tail and leaving a little pile of what he thought of us on the newspaper the ladies kept under his chair. 

This may sound unappetizing and potentially unsanitary, but parrot poop is child's play...

One of the homes where we were invited was out in the countryside on a pig farm.  If you are from farm and ranch country, you can discern between the pungent smell of cattle manure, and the even more pungent smell of a hog farm.  Nothin' like the smell of a good thriving bunch of pigs to whet your appetite.  This family were what you call "salt of the earth" kind of people.  The men folks wore overalls for everything and if they needed to fancy up a bit, they would wear  their better (overalls without stains or holes).  The farmers's wives were just as hard working and strong.  In this case (at least in my memory) the hostess wore a green floral dress with an apron.

I know I have discussed how fickle memories can be, so I am sure that mine are corrupted and only partially correct, but these are my recollections of that visit!

What stikes me as my most visceral memory, is drinking grape Koolaide  out of a plastic cup.  I'm sure our hostess was a great cook.  Most farm ladies are.  But I can't remember what we ate because everything else was so bizarre.  First, I think teeth were optional in the family we were visiting.  Cleanliness was also not much of a concern.  Food was served directly from what ever pot in which it had been cooked.  Dubiously clean utensils were made even more dubious when our hostess used the front of her dress as a towel to wipe them "clean".  I think my focus on drinking grape Koolaide had two purposes.  A). to keep me from having to notice the scary level of filthiness, and B). to keep me from laughing uproariously.

The piece de resistance, however, was not the kitchen, but the bathroom.  Old farmhouses, as I recall this one to be, usually were not built with multiple bathrooms.  Therefore,  I am pretty sure this may have been their only one.  It would not only have been the only toilet, but it was likely the only bathtub and shower.  It was striking that, not only was this not the cleanest bathroom, but the bathtub was being used to raise newly hatched chicks.  That is definitely the only time that I have ever shared toilet facilities with poultry! 

I think we have been invited to eat in that home on at least one other occasion, but if I wentagain, I have blocked the memory.  To this day, I cannot drink grape Koolaide!

Not all visits were uncomfortable, however, so next time I will tell you about Fourth of July at Billy and Jere's house!

Pets III

Jefferson City was, somehow, not any more conducive to pet longevity than past homes had been.  We continued to go through attempts at pet  ownership, but until the very last summer, when we got our long term dog, Sadie, we just had bad luck. 

We had a little dachshund named Gretel, who, I frankly barely remember except through pictures.  I'm pretty sure she never got housebroken and was no longer welcome in the parsonage.  I think we had a cat named Beethoven, as if naming it for a composer would give it more class or something, but running from our family seemed to be our pets favorite pastime, and he didn't last long, either.

My sister attempted to make a go of having fish.  She just had a small bowl and some gold fish, but her busy schedule got in the way of fish bowl maintenance.  A lot of the Jefferson City kids got summer jobs as tour guides at the capitol.  Tour guides rotated from giving tours of the beautiful capital building, the Governor's mansion, and an area called Laclede's landing.  I guess not too many people came to Laclede's Landing, so the days there were pretty boring.  On one of those days, I guess Beth got bored enough to actually think about her fish bowl.

Since I was too young for a summer job, I was busy doing nothing at home while my parents were at work.  In those days, the phone was attached to the wall and there were no answering machines.  If you  were out and about, you were not able to make a call unless you used a pay phone, and if people tried to reach you, they were just out of luck   But, since I was by the old fashioned house phone, Beth called  to ask me to change the water in her fish bowl. 

Previously I have written about how overly dramatic I could be.  Well, I had nothing on Beth.  When I say she asked me to clean her fish bowl, I mean she let me know how desperate the situation was and that the fish would probably die a painful lingering death of fin rot  if I did not clean the bowl and give them pristine, life affirming water.  Oh, and by the way, could you feed them, too?  The idea of taking pity on her or the fish was never an option.  "You can clean it yourself when you get home"  More pleading "But I have a date!  I won't have time!  They're gonna diiiiiieeeee!! And it will be your fault."  Me:  "No."  Her:  "Pleeeease!  They're gonna die!!"  Me: "No.  Clean it yourself"

I am sure this went on for awhile before one or the other of us finally hung up.  About two seconds later, the phone rang.  I knew it was her.  I didn't answer because I was NOT going to clean her damn fish bowl!  It rang, and rang and rang...No answering machines in those days.  No fancy volume controls or cool ringtone.  No, it was a loud, monotonous, persistent sharp bbrriinngggbbbriinngg until you wanted to tear the thing from the wall and shove it into the garbage disposal.   But then I thought, "What if it's Mom or Dad? What if it's an emergency?  What if it's a church member desperately trying to reach the minister?"

So, after fifty-two rings, I answered it.   "Bitch!" loudly emanated from the headset before I even finished saying Hello.  So I hung up and did the only rational thing I could do.  I called Mom at work.  "Beth just called me a bitch".  To this day, I do not know what I expected her to do, but it seemed important to me that my mother know about the great insult to which I had just been subjected!"  Since she was not all that concerned, I made a trip to the Sunday School building and got a Coke for a quarter and came home to nurture my bruised ego.  Actually, I probably would have gone to get a coke no matter what! . 

I think the fish did not die, but they didn't last too long after that, anyway.

Since our track record with pets was not so good, we learned to enjoy other people's pets instead. 


Tomorrow I will tell you about some of the memorable animal encounters while in Jefferson City

A word about lying...

The truth shall set you free; the lantern looking for an honest man; George Washington and the cherry tree...  Telling the "Truth" has become something of great value and personal pride.  But show me a person who says they always tell the truth and I will show you someone who is either lying or has Asperger's Syndrome.

In order to lie, we must have a theory of mind.  That is, you must understand that my mind knows things yours does not.  I tell parents that a child's first lie is a thing to celebrate.  This is  a major developmental milestone.  The child has realized that he or she is a separate individual.  Saying "I ate my broccoli" when the kids knows it is under the napkin or inside of the dog, means they understand that you cannot see inside of their mind.  

Telling kids that they will get in more trouble for lying about what they did than the actual  thing that they did, is simply creating more successful liars.  Kids want to please their parents.  They will lie to avoid getting into trouble and disappointing them.  Sure, the don't want to lose their DS for the day, but disappointing their parents holds more weight.  Most parents try to get kids to tell the truth by trapping them.  They ask "Did you brush you teeth?" knowing that the kids toothbrush has dust and cobwebs growing on it.  The kid doesn't want to stop watching Cartoon Network so will say that they did.  The parent will yell at them for not bushing their teeth and for lying about it.  Rather than break down and confess, the kid will dig in their heels and go for broke.  What the kid learns is , they have to be sneakier in how they concoct their story. 

Parents:  If you know the answer to the question, just make a statement.  "Please go brush you teeth". Don't set the kid up to lie because you will be disappointed and think you are raising the next Tony Soprano.

Also, for teenagers, the opposite of lying is not being truthful. The opposite of lying is arguing. Kids will lie to avoid arguing.  The answer to the question "Will an adult chaperone be involve?" is almost always "Yes" because kids don't want to argue about why they should be able to go to the party even if there is no chaperone.

All this to say that,  yes.   Yes, I did put the hole in the ceiling of the parsonage.  I did not tell the truth because a) I didn't want to admit that I was so stupid and b) I did not want to argue about consequence.  My sister was on the color guard in the band one year.  She was a flag girl and learned to twirl and manipulate the long flag poles..  I though they were cool and, since I was in the orchestra (you can't march with a cello), I just thought I'd try it out right there in the hall where she left it.  Physic and spatial relations require math and I chose not to waste precious neurons on math.  So I did not bother to calculate how far the flag pole would reach as I launched it over my head. Hello ceiling.  This is flag pole.  Oops. 

The other thing to know about lying, is that it is extremely easy to make eye contact if you are really determined to make the lie stick.  Why the idea that liars don't make eye contact has made its way into common wisdom is beyond me.  It's sort of like trickle down economics or standardized testing  as a way to tell how well kids are doing.  Someone just decided it sounded good and no one questioned it. (Some things then become political lies, and political lies are a whole other category)

I would like to believe that no one ever asked me about the hole in the ceiling.  I would like to believe that I just made a sin of omission rather than commission.  However, I am pretty sure I remember my mom asking me about the hole and looking her directly in the eye with a straight face and saying no...and possibly blaming it on Billy, although I think everyone just assumed he must have done it because it would have been typical of him.  I apologize to Billy's memory, although I'm pretty sure he would not have cared if he was blamed.

One thing I can honestly say is that, while in high school I never got drunk or used any substances. I did not go all the way with a boy till much later, either. One of the kids I used to work with told me he thought I was the kind of girl who lost her virginity on prom night her senior year.  I assure that that this is not true since my senior prom date preferred a different body type, if you know what I mean...I left high school with my honor intact.

 And, to this day, I have never smoked a tobacco cigarette.  Although, I did smoke a cigar once at a poker game in college,.  Does that count?