This is Home, Part 38 - Hickory school and Uncle Doc's hand, Uncle Doc, Assessor

This is part 38 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Hickory school and Uncle Doc's hand

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Uncle Doc drove us to Hickory School each day. He picked up any children that were walking and also gave them a ride back.

He came and played with the students for a short time after school sometimes. I don't remember what we were playing, but we had to choose people for each side. Everyone called him Uncle Doc and wanted him on their side.

One time when he was getting ready to go home, he was taking the Hill children in the car with us and he said, "Now, be careful, I'm going to close the door. Keep your hands out of the way." He was leaning over and looking in with his hand on the door opening. Then he closed the door on his thumb.

His thumb was cut along the middle lengthwise. It was broken and bleeding a lot,

The teacher -- I think it was Miss Hazel -- wrapped his thumb in his red or blue handkerchief that he wore around his neck when he worked in the field, and drove really fast to Jacksonville to a doctor.

He always had a deep line where it was cut and the nail had a caved-in line after that. His thumb was thinner, also.

When the weather was bad, Charley took us to school and picked us up in the buggy. Mom used to come running out with hot wrapped bricks that she put under our feet.

When it had snowed and we went to school, I always admired the outside of the turn to go down the hill below the barn. Snow always drifted there and it looked like layers of whipped cream.

Mom used to make extremely good chocolate pudding with real whipped cream and send it in our lunch. The whipped cream had layers and tasted cool and faintly sweet. Her chocolate pudding was really good. So is Sharon's chocolate pie.

I remember a spring day when it was too muddy to drive and Uncle Doc came walking after me. He couldn't take the jolting from riding a horse.

Anyway, this particular day was nice except for the mud. Walking was fun and different. When we almost reached the road going to the house, we went through the large gate into the pasture and walked through there. Just about where the large gate was when we were there, David. However, the fence used to run along the side of the road. It was straight.

When we got home, Mom, Daddy and Charley were working in the garden behind the barn. Uncle Doc went back to helping. Someone had made a raised bed for onions to be set out. They had rows dug in the garden and they were dropping seed in them and covering it. It was interesting and fun. This was the garden where sage grew along the fence every year.

Uncle Doc nagged the county until they finally put gravel on the road to our mailbox. From the mailbox on through the neighborhood we had dirt roads.

In the spring, cars made deep ruts in the road due to trying to drive in mud. At other times of the year, also. When it dried out, if something wasn't done, cars would follow the deep ruts and scrape on the underneath side of the car.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley made a drag with very thick, heavy, rough boards. They bolted them together in a rectangular shape with the same type of boards on the top. Then they put a huge rock or two on it and Daddy or Charley dragged the roads themselves with the horses. The graveled roads and up past our house.

Uncle Doc, Assessor

When Uncle Doc taught school, he had a pupil who later became the Randolph County Assessor for years. His name was Walter Wright. His secretary was Frances, who became my boss' wife. They had three children when I worked for James Stone -- real estate office. A couple of the children were twins and really fast at snatching things off the desks when Frances brought them to the office.

Anyway, Walter Wright contacted Uncle Doc and asked him if he would assess some farm property for him. Uncle Doc did this every year for maybe four or five years, maybe longer.

Farm families are different. If you are there at mealtime, they expect you to eat. Uncle Doc wound up eating with a lot of different people. Sometimes, he took lunch with him if he didn't know the people.

I think he enjoyed the work, although sometimes he looked pretty tired when he got home. He worked at this job for maybe a couple of months each year. Maybe three. I'm guessing. I remember him being gone in the summer and early fall.

This is Home, Part 21 - Uncle Doc fixed tires, Mom curled our hair, Tangee, the Toni

This is part 21 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Uncle Doc fixed tires

Uncle Doc used to do some repair I thought was interesting. I don't know that this was something that would especially be done during war time. I think it was probably just something necessary when one lived out of town.

Uncle Doc used to take off the car's flat tire. Then he took the inner tube out of it. He put water in one of the large galvanized tubs and put the inner tube in it. He had to keep pushing it down; it wanted to float. When he held it down, there would be bubbles of air from the puncture.

Uncle Doc had a tire repair kit with a light weight metal thing about the size of a flash light. It had metal pieces sticking out on one end that he rubbed over the puncture, then he put glue from a tube in the kit on one of the patches and glued it on. Of course, the inner tube had to be taken out of the water and dried before it could be patched. After the glue dried, the inner tube could be put back in the tire and the tire put on.

Mom curled our hair

Sometimes Mom used to curl our hair before we went to school. She had a metal curling iron. This was before we got electricity, so it was during grade school.

The curling iron was longer than the ones used today. The curling iron had a long rounded (like a pencil) part that the lock of hair was wrapped around, then had a long curved piece that fit halfway around the rounded part. It had handles that resembled handles of scissors.

Mom would open the curling iron and put the rounded part and the part that fit over it carefully into the opposite sides of the lamp chimney. The heat from the lamp flame would heat the iron. It cooled fast, so she had to keep heating it.

My hair uncurled itself in a short time.

Tangee

We had a very interesting first lipstick. It was called Tangee. It was a small tube like the ones used on the large Barbie faces by Patricia, Sharon, and Christina. However, Tangee was for girls, not dolls.

When we put it on it felt like Chapstick does and had a faint orange tint. We found out that the more we put on, the more color our lips had. However, we still had just a small amount of color.

This was in grade school. In high school I had a medium red lipstick. I think Jean had a different shade.

The Toni

There used to be an ad in magazines showing twin young women with curly hair, with the question: "Which twin has the Toni?"

A Toni was a permanent one could give oneself. Jean and I liked the twins' hair, so sometimes during the summer Mom would give each of us a Toni. We sat out on the concrete top or steps of the well from which they got drinking water, to dry our hair. We loved the soft curly hair that resulted from Mom's work.

This is Home, Part 15 - Democratic speakings, voting, Uncle Doc, influential Democrat, ninety candles, Uncle Doc the judge, election day

This is part 15 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Democratic speakings

Back home at that time, we had what was commonly called Democratic speakings. I don't even remember hearing about Republican anything.

At the speakings, the Democratic women sold food such as pie slices, ice cream and cake, sandwiches of mutton, beef, barbequed pork or whatever.

The candidates would speak, we would listen and clap. People would also hand out cards for the candidates.

They were getting ready for a local primary election. Something we just had.

Voting

I remember when I first voted back home. There were two large circles at the top of the ballot. One was Democrat, one was Republican. If one wanted to vote a straight Democratic ticket, one would just put an X inside the circle at the top. I did.

Uncle Doc, influential Democrat

Uncle Doc had been a member of the Randolph Democratic Committee for years. Mom had a Missouri Blue Book from 1913 that had been sent to Uncle Doc because he was on the Democratic Committee. There may have been earlier ones. Mom said he was a young man when he joined. Uncle Doc's name, J.D. Rice, is in each of the Missouri Blue Books as on the Democratic Committee from Randolph County, Sheriton Township. The actual name of the Blue Book is Official Manual, State Of Missouri. You all have one for your year of birth except Sharon, who was born in Scottsdale.

Back to Uncle Doc. He became influential in the candidates the committee supported. I remember candidates coming to the farm to talk to him and being sent over to where he was working. There the candidate was in a suit and tie with nicely polished shoes, while Uncle Doc had on faded overalls, a blue shirt and work shoes. Not every candidate, but some.

I also remember hearing committee members asking Uncle Doc who he planned to support.

Uncle Doc met Harry Truman, shook hands with him and talked to him. Truman later became President.

Ninety candles

Uncle Doc went to Jefferson City to some Democratic Committee meeting in May 1960. He came back and happily told me that they had surprised him with a birthday cake with ninety candles on it. He said it looked beautiful with all the candles lit. I was so glad for him. We had celebrated his birthday just before he left, and had only put something like three candles on it so it would be easy for him to blow them out.

Uncle Doc really worked to elect the candidates he liked. He recommended them to people he was talking with and he arranged for Democrats who had no way to get to the polls to be picked up and driven there and back.

Uncle Doc the judge

Uncle Doc worked as a judge on election day. As he got older and was under stress, his handwriting got shaky. Mom worked as his secretary and did the writing. After Uncle Doc died, she became a judge.

Election day

Election day was strange. When we got home from school, there were no snacks waiting for us and Mom wasn't asking how our day went.

Usually, it was cold, but the roads were passable and Charley picked us up from school in his car. We went home to get Daddy, then to the voting precinct in Darksville so they could vote and get home before dark.

It was always well after dark when Mom and Uncle Doc got home. They had to help count the votes after the polls closed.

School, by the way, was always from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for all grades. We didn't have kindergarten.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Albert Hooper were the school board the entire time we went to school at Hickory. Daddy was President, Uncle Doc was Secretary-Treasurer, and Albert was a board member.

This is Home, Part 14 - Hot dogs, the little monkey, the puppy in the pocket

This is part 14 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Hot dogs

We used to shop sometimes in Macon instead of Moberly when I was small. They had really good franks at Macon. They were a lot better than what can be bought today. They were large and I loved the skin. It was greasy. It could actually be browned.

The little monkey

I got out of actual shopping for anything if I could. While Mom was shopping one time, Daddy and I made a lovely discovery. There was a man with a monkey just off the main street. It had a little collar around its neck and a tiny chain kept him from disappearing. I'm not sure if he had on a little jacket and cap or not. He was a capuchin monkey. His owner may have had an accordion or something similar. Something attracted our attention.

Anyway, he was such a cute, friendly little monkey. Daddy gave him coins and he bit each one to see if it was good before he put it in a purse. He was in or on some sort of cart. Daddy asked what he could eat. One thing was coconut candy. There used to be candy that was about the size of and shaped like candy made with maraschino cherries in it. Coconut candy had a pale coating of one of these: white, pink, yellow, brown, or green candy. Inside was coconut candy. It could be bought in bulk at grocery stores. The store would put it in a small white sack.

We always fed the monkey coconut candy and gave him coins. I remember him holding out his tiny little hands. He was so cute.

The puppy in the pocket

Jean always stayed with Mom and missed all the fun. She never got into things like I did. One time Daddy and I were walking along a street in Moberly. A man stepped forward and fished this cute little puppy out of his coat pocket. It had huge eyes and a little blunt face and was furry. I really wanted that pup. I petted him. Daddy admired him. I wanted him, but Daddy wouldn't get him. He said that kind of dog belonged in town, not on a farm.

It was a Pekingese and looked like Bandit.

So far I have had three Pekingese since living out here. Sharon bought me two of them. They were all pure bred. Bandit was born in Phoenix, but Wojo came from Kansas and Mizzou came from Missouri.

Sharon also bought me a pure bred Boston terrier named Lady Bug. We used to have a book with a Boston terrier in it and I wanted one.

Daddy, Uncle Doc, and Charley always bought us a candy bar or an ice cream cone each when we all went to town. The candy bars were all chocolate and all different. Mom finally said that was too much.

Daddy and Uncle Doc always met a lot of men they knew to talk with. They were lawyers, judges, politicians, Democratic Committee members, farmers and others. They stood around in groups and talked.

The family I grew up in were staunch Democrats, as I am today.

This is Home, Part 12 - School, Uncle Doc and school, chores and school, Mom at school, school, box suppers

This is part 12 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



School

All of a sudden the unbelievable happened. School was starting and I was expected to go. I felt like a queen who had just been dethroned.

Daddy and Uncle Doc had a cousin who taught school. He was young and his last name was Sears. He had come by every once in a while and taught me how to say the alphabet and read some. I could also count some.

When I started to school, I started in the second grade at the age of seven. You wouldn't believe how much I hated school.

To add insult to injury, Mom invited the teacher, Miss Hazel, to stay with us for awhile! She thought it would make it easier if I knew her. However, it just meant I could never escape her.

After a short time, I decided I couldn't stand the idea of going to school. I refused to go and I ran out of the house and under the honeysuckle bushes. They were like shorter trees and were quite wide.

I ran under one of the bushes and Mom and Miss Hazel tried to surround me and grab me. The bush was too wide and too low. They couldn't reach me. I just kept zooming from one to another. They tried for awhile longer, then finally gave up.

Miss Hazel went to school, but I stayed home.

No one yelled at me or spanked me. They didn't do that type of thing. They just went on with their work and ignored me somewhat. They answered questions, but just didn't engage in a conversation as they usually did. They made it clear they disapproved, without a word.

Next day I went back to school. I didn't do that particular thing again. I thought of others.

I went to school in a one room school house. There was a little room we entered first. It was a cloak room, but one wall was covered with books. It also served as a library. It also had a front porch before the cloak room. The front porch had a concrete floor and a roof over it.

Toys consisted of a ball and bat, chalk to play hopscotch on the porch, and a rope to jump while two other children turned it.

I don't know how many kids were necessary to have a school, but I do know there had to be a certain number. We probably had around fifteen or sixteen my first year. I found a picture of a year where I was probably around the fifth grade and there were sixteen children. The school had windows down one side and one in the library. I don't remember windows on the other side of the school room. We had to depend on the windows for light. No electricity. This teacher and the ones following made us go outside at noon and the two recesses. They also wanted us to join in playing. I wanted to stay inside and look at the books and later, I wanted to read and draw pictures. I hated baseball. It was so boring. I didn't mind playing hopscotch, tag, or jumping rope.

Uncle Doc and school

I asked Uncle Doc one time what he played when he went to school. He chuckled and looked like he was remembering. He said there was nothing to play with when he went to school. However, he said, there was a big tree with long branches. So, a bunch of the boys grabbed a branch and pulled it down. One of the boys got on it and they released it. The branch went back up in the air and the boy on it shot up even higher.

They also took hold of each others' hands and formed a long line, then they started running in a circle with the one on the inner end hardly moving. They kept going faster and faster. The ones on the outer end started being flung off. I think it was called Crack the Whip.

Chores and school

Uncle Doc told me one time that when they were in school, they had to get up early and do all the chores each morning before they left home. On a farm, this would mean milking the cows, feeding and watering all the animals, and maybe letting some out. I hope they weren't expected to cut out holes in the ice so a herd of cattle could drink. I'm thinking of farm chores.

No matter what the weather was, they had to walk to school. I don't know what school they went to -- maybe Darksville. Hickory didn't look that old.

At night they did the chores again.

Mom at school

Mom told me one time that she could run faster than anyone at her school. She also said she could climb trees. I guess this is what her school did.

School

When the East Fork got out, there was no way for us to get to school. I don't think it affected any other family.

Miss Hazel moved to Elmo Hudson's house beside the school while the weather was still good. Elmo and his wife had no children, but the teachers always stayed at their house thereafter.

I'm suspicious that the school board or just Daddy and Uncle Doc may have given them money to keep the teachers. Elmo Hudson and his wife were not known for their generosity. They were also a pain in the neck. Especially Elmo.

Mom bought blinds and curtains for all the windows at school. She bought a rod to run along the stage which covered one end of the room. Then she bought material for stage curtains. She sewed them and put gold colored rings on them so they could be drawn open and shut. Our family contributed all this.

There was no water, so a large water container (cooler) was bought.

Miss Hazel was young. She was tall with red shoulder length hair. She was actually a pretty nice teacher. I just did not want to be told what to do or to spend time away from home.

The sideboard at Sharon's house used to be in the living room on the farm. It had a square mirror on top. Miss Hazel used to come down, get on her knees in front of it and comb her hair. I have no idea why. She had a perfectly good mirror on top of a dresser in her room. Also, a very tall mirror on a dresser in the hall next to her room.

Box suppers

In the spring or fall, grade schools back home had a unique way of raising money. They had box suppers.

Each girl student had a box full of food that she shared with the person who bought it. The boxes had lids that were beautifully decorated with ribbons, flowers, anything that looked good. Parents and anyone else who was interested came, and the boxes were auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder.

Jean and I were in a panic even sharing a box with Roscoe. So Mom pointed out the boxes that Jean and I were taking to Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley. They outbid anyone else.

The women who came also brought boxes. So did the teacher.

This is Home, Part 2 - Uncle Doc, Charley, the farm house, the log cabin

This is part 2 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Uncle Doc

Uncle Doc (John D. Rice) was Daddy's older brother. He was born May 3, 1870. He quit teaching and came home to take care of his parents when they got old. He had taught school for 18 years. He was single. He told me that the girl he loved and planned to marry died.

When he came home, his mother had cataracts, and was slowly going blind. He took her to a specialist in St. Louis who said nothing could be done.

Charley

Charley Roe (Charles Albert Roe) came to work and live on the farm sometime before I went to school. I might have been around four or five. Charley's birthday was July 31, 1884. He was younger than Daddy and Uncle Doc. He was also single.

The farm house

The farm house was two story, but it wasn't completely finished upstairs. The lumber was stacked there to finish the room over the living room. The room had about two thirds of the flooring down. The room over the kitchen had flooring down. I wonder if I came along about that time and caused them to stop.

Anyway, there were four bedrooms downstairs. Charley got the one off the living room. It had a double bed and a dresser with a partly marble top and a tall mirror. I think it was oak, Charley's trunk was put across from his bed. There was a rocking chair, too.

One room opened into another. His room had six doors -- one opened into the living room, one onto the screened-in front porch, one into the South bedroom, one into the hall, one into the North bedroom, one into Uncle Doc's bedroom. He also had a window that faced the front porch

The back of the house had taller ceilings and huge rooms. Even the hallway was wide enough to have heavy furniture, like a wardrobe and large dresser, on opposite sides of the room. It also had a rocking chair and other things. Later, it had my cedar chest, which we called a hope chest back then. It had furniture on each side. It also had a door that opened onto a small porch with a large honeysuckle bush across the end. I think it was a climber. The humming birds liked it.

The South bedroom had three doors; one opened onto the screened-in front porch, one into Charley's room and one into the hall. It also had two windows; one faced the front yard and the other had a view of the road. I used to sit in front of the one with a view of the front yard and write to Edgar on the little table with the single drawer that Sharon has.

I also used to watch from that window for his car to come over the hill when we had a date. Sometimes I walked around the front yard.

The North bedroom had a door that opened into the hall and one that opened into Charley's room. It had two windows -- one facing the back yard and one facing the road.

Uncle Doc picked the smallest bedroom on both farms. He had one door that opened into Charley's room and two windows. One window was beside his bed and faced the back yard. I used to like to lay across his bed when it was raining and look through his catalog of books. It had descriptions of the books as well as names and authors. This is the one he ordered "Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall" from for me. His room also had a window that came down fairly close to the floor. Jean and I used to climb through it onto the screened-in back porch that Vanskike built.

Jean and I used to run through the house chasing each other. We climbed through the window in Uncle Doc's room onto the back porch and through the window from the living room onto the front porch. Whoever was home would be telling us not to run in the house because we would fall and get hurt. One of us usually did either bump into something or fall. It was fun, though. We didn't do it often. This was in early-to-mid grade school.

Walking with Uncle Doc

When I was small, I was interested in everything Daddy and Uncle Doc were doing. I wanted to go to the fields with them. I held onto Uncle Doc's hand and walked with him to the end of the concrete walk, then I wanted him to walk back to the house with me. Mom said he did it a few times, then he called "Lola, come and get this child so I can go to work."

The log cabin

There was a two-story log cabin in our back yard when I was little. I loved to play in it and watch the sunlight through the openings. There was a stairway going upstairs. They told me not to climb it and I didn't, because I was afraid I would fall. They tried to keep me away from the log cabin, but I kept going out there. Finally, they tore it down.

No electricity or running water

There was no electricity on the farm in those days and no running water. We had a good supply of lamps which burned Cole Oil (or coal oil) and the house was surrounded by three wells. The wells had pumps. We usually used the one with a higher concrete top for drinking. There was always a bucket with water and a dipper in it on a table on the screened-in back porch. The water didn't have the minerals or the horrible taste water out here has. It tasted cool and fresh.

The stoves

Mom cooked on an iron stove with a warmer across the top to keep food warm. It also had a large oven and a deep reservoir on the side that kept water warm for washing. The stove had trim that looked like chrome but could have been nickel. The heating stoves were banked at night. We only had two heating stoves -- one in the living room and one in the South bedroom Jean and I used.

Emergency Bell

I remember Daddy installed a big bell on a post close to the front door in case Mom needed him, when Jean was a baby. Jean is two years and four months younger than I am. She is also completely different in the things she likes. I was plain disgusted when she was a baby because she couldn't play or do anything.

This is Home, Part 1 - My mother's parents, and the rug with the rabbits with the glass eyes

In 2004, I helped my mother, Maudie Morgan, write a book of her experieces. She wrote them in ink on small tablets of lined paper, and I would put them in the computer, in the Microsoft Works word processor. The stories, as she would write them, were frequently in pieces, as she would think of additional things to put in, or change what was there in places, and she would put them in by the story, with lines indicating where they were supposed to fit in, and I would put everything together in proper order. I also sometimes reworded things to make the story flow better, while not changing what she was trying to say. Sometimes I had to ask her questions about it, to clarify things, before I could finish the writing. I also helped her with the titles for the stories. Sometimes they were done by her and sometimes by me. I always told her what I was doing and about any changes I made, and she almost always approved them. In the few times that she didn't approve, or wanted it done a particular way, it was done her way. Anything that appeared in the book was approved by her.

She titled the book "This is Home", referring to where she lived when she was young and her life back then, and the people and the places as they were back then. It was given out as Christmas presents for the family in 2004.

The pages were printed out on the computer printer, and placed in clear plastic sheets, two pages to a sheet so they would be double sided, and the pages then placed in three ring notebooks. A special cover page was printed and placed inside a clear plastic area on the front of the notebooks. The cover had no pictures, just text, the title in large bold letters, and my mother's name below in smaller bold letters, preceded by "By". It also had a line about me editing it, that only appeared on the cover. It was near the bottom, and said "Edited by Stephen Ernest Morgan", in smaller letters. My mother also wrote a long acknowledgment at the end of the book, thanking me, which I will post later.

Below is the book from the beginning, up through the story about the blanket, later rug, with the rabbits with the glass eyes. I will post, over time, the rest of the book, in as many posts as it takes.

Again, this is a story told by my mother, about her life. The part within the story that appears in brackets, a note by me, also appeared in the book.



This is Home

By Maudie Marie Rice Morgan



Patricia suggested a few years ago that I write down the way it was when I was growing up. Stephen has strongly suggested it again and offered to type it on his computer. I have wished I had asked more questions of Mom, Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley, so I decided maybe Patricia and Stephen have a good idea.

I grew up on a 720 acre farm north of Moberly, Missouri. It was a little west of Jacksonville and a little east of Darksville. It was 20 miles to Moberly by way of the Darksville-Huntsville Road. The farm was in Randolph County in two school districts -- Hickory, where we went, and Jacksonville. It was in Chariton Township.

Our ancestors settled in Missouri many years ago. An incident that occurred to one of them caused the name Darksville to be chosen for a later settlement. In 1821, William Elliott was hunting in Chariton Township, in Randolph County, and he camped along a river. There was evidently no moon, because he complained that it was the darkest night he had ever seen. They called the river Dark Creek, and in 1856 a small settlement that grew up near it was named Darksville.

When I was born

Anyway, I was born in July, 1931. The stock market had crashed, unemployment was high and increasing, and there were soup lines. President Hoover, a Republican, was waiting for the economy to fix itself. A new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, was elected in 1932. By the time he went into office on March 4, 1933 banks were closing. Daddy and Uncle Doc had money in three banks, a Moberly bank, the Huntsville Bank and the Cairo bank. The only one that they didn't lose money in was the Cairo bank. Uncle Doc was president and one of the directors of the Jacksonville Savings Bank, at one time. So was Grandpa Rice. It closed near the end of September, 1931. Uncle Doc also had shares in it. They used to make some loans with their own money, Mom said.

Wanting the moon

Mom and Daddy had been married for around ten years when I was born, so I really got lots of attention. Mom said when they showed me the moon, I reached out my hand and cried when they wouldn't get it for me. I was carried, rocked and talked to a lot. Mom said I refused to walk, I wanted to be carried. Finally, when I was around two, a neighbor and his family came to visit. They had a little girl, Martha, who was a little older than I was. Mom said I watched her rock in my rocking chair, play with my toys and walk all around. After they left, I started trying to walk. Years later, Charles' employee Elmer was her husband. Her father was Dutch Andre.

My mother and father

My father, Ernest Rice, was born in Missouri on October 23, 1873. Mom was born in Iowa on July 12, 1894, so there were quite a few years difference in their ages. Mom used to date and write to a sailor. His name was Bill Haney.

Then she met Daddy. She told me one time how handsome he was and how the single girls set their caps for him. "But," she said, laughing and blushing, "I got him!" She told me that Daddy used to come courting her in a buggy and she showed me a lap robe (heavy black blanket-type cover with padding -- probably had cotton on the inside) that he put over her to keep her warm. The lap robe had two rabbits on the top side. They were the size of real rabbits with green glass eyes and brownish rabbit-looking fur. She had taken such good care of it, it looked new. I don't know what type of material the black covering was -- it felt soft.

[A small rug roughly matching the description of the lap robe (the rabbits with the glass eyes were there, but the rug was gray instead of black) was laid over the carpeting in the house on the second farm. I believe it was near the furnace, just across the opening from the middle room with the big wooden dining table.
-- Stephen]

They were both cheerful, high energy people.

They were married December 16, 1921. Mom told me that she and Daddy used to go walking over the farm before I came. She also said she met the wagon when he came home in the evening and rode back with him. She was still doing this, sometimes, when we were little. We all met him and rode back on the wagon.

They had been married about ten years when I was born.

Dream - I try to fix the station wagon but it just gets worse, it's towed away, I look for it and the man who towed it, a friend gets poisoned, and I come across various things, including a tractor-like vehicle, a robot, and a device left with an old woman

On Sunday, June 20, 2010, around 8:30-11:45 PM, I dreamed I went to my sister's house with my mother. I think my sister was planning to go somewhere soon for a while, out of state. My sister's house looked nothing like it does in real life, and wasn't where it is in real life. It had very large rooms, but not many of them, and some were partly open to the outside. My sister also had a woman visiting her, slim, probably in her twenties or thirties. I think we might have been going to eat supper there, but I'm not sure.

We were finally going to go back home, then. We got in the car, which was in one of the rooms that was partly open to the outside. The light was dim there, though it had been bright in the other room. We were driving the light blue 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon.

I started the car, and it was making a light tapping noise. It seemed to be the fan. My mother wanted the fan shroud adjusted, and didn't want to leave until it was done. She had fiddled with it before we came for some reason, and it was making a little noise now from the fan blades tapping it. I was loudly begging her to just please, please let it be and let's go home and worry about it later. She kept insisting, saying that we couldn't drive it while it was like this, that she was surprised that I would want to, that it wasn't safe, or something like that. She got out of the car and opened the hood herself and started poking at things.

I finally got some tools and took things loose and was trying to work on it. My mother was talking and I was complaining, and my sister was making remarks, sometimes teasing and sometimes looking insulted, depending on what I said. Her woman friend looked on, amused. I had a couple of tool trays, mine I think, and my sister also had a tool tray, on one of the long tables, that I sometimes looked through. I also looked through the car for tools, especially in the front, in the glove box and on the dashboard. The tools tended to be old and dirty, and sometimes strangely shaped. I kept fiddling with things. I would get part of it done and then couldn't find the right tools again, and then was trying to find something that would work.

I finally had the whole engine out, and then one of the heads off. I set it on a very large table with a tablecloth, next to the car, then it got moved to another very large table, also with a tablecloth. I was loudly talking to my sister about it, irritated that I kept getting constantly interrupted while I was trying to do this, saying that I had the whole engine block out, and it probably weighed 500 pounds, and I could lift it, see, and I picked it up and held it in the air and then held it up and out with my left hand. I had been concerned that it might be too heavy to lift, but it wasn't actually too bad. Then she was going to meet my challenge by lifting it, and I had put it on the other table, and she was smiling and grinning and lifted the head up and held it, and then she was going to put it back and then lift the rest, or maybe the rest without it, but then it was missing and we couldn't find it anywhere. It turned out she had hidden it on a chair by the head under a big cloth, and had made it seem that the cloth was just covering the head. It was something she had done to fool me. A man friend of hers came then to try to help, supposedly. At least I got the engine back.

My mother kept wanting to go, trying to hurry me up. My sister wanted us to go too, so she could finish getting ready and go on her trip. I had only gotten the thermostat housing partly tightened and I couldn't find the right tools now to finish it. The top hose wasn't even on yet, and the radiator had to be refilled with antifreeze and the fan shroud adjusted. I was going to just dump antifreeze in and fill it up and hope we had enough to get at least partway home before it overheated. The antifreeze level would drop after the engine warmed up some, and so would be too low then and would have to be refilled.

We got out of the house and out from it to a large dark parking lot. A man was coming though, trying to get us, wanting to get the car and tow it away. We had someone else with us I think, maybe my niece. The man was going to tow the car, or try to, or a man of some kind tried to.


I think it did turn up missing, and I was trying to find it, going through a series of rooms in a large building, relatively nearby I think, within a few blocks. I found a large tractor-like vehicle in a room there. I thought it had something to do with it, maybe was used for the towing. I cut the main electrical wire to the engine, to the distributor or whatever the equivalent was, and was holding it out to the engine, which was now running, and zapped the engine with it. The engine was completely open on the sides, no covering over it, and was a straight something or other, probably a large straight six.

As I was zapping the side of the engine, a man came from around the counter, on the other side of the vehicle, and was concerned about what I was doing. He said something about the man coming back soon I think, and he didn't want it damaged, though he seemed smugly doubtful I could damage it. I moved the wire over to the distributor, and tried zapping that for a while. The engine kept on running, kind of ragged and irregular, not much of a change from when I was zapping the side of the engine though, maybe a little worse. I finally stopped and left, going to another area, still trying to find the car.


Sometime later, I was at a restaurant somewhere in the place. It was the middle of the night I think. I was with someone, a man I knew. He was concerned somehow with helping me get the car back, and fighting the people, though he wasn't there earlier in the dream. He seemed an important part of it now, though. We had been at the bar, talking with each other and with another person or two, eating there. We started to get ready to go, and he turned to get his coat, which he had put on the back of a chair at a table near the front. The coat, a jacket, had a greasy area on the back of the neck, on the inside, maybe a couple of inches long. It was poison. It was something that had been tried earlier on me I think, and on him in earlier versions of the scene. He went to put it on now, talking to me.

I nervously tried to stop him from putting it on, without saying anything about the poison I think. It seemed like it would be altering the scene with knowledge that I wasn't really supposed to have. Then I took him home, or tried to. He was poisoned by the greasy substance on the back of his coat neck, and he was immediately feeling dizzy. Trying to hurry and get him home, I took the wrong way through the building and its tunnels, having to go back and try a different direction, sometimes without him coming with me, with him still back in the other tunnel, with me waiting for him and finally going on, and then trying again. I finally got him home. I wasn't sure if he would survive, but I left him with his family, and hoped for the best. In an earlier version, or a history hinted at, he didn't make it, though it seems we actually lived through at least one prior version in the dream, and the last one redid it.


I went back and attacked the machine, or tried to. Going back to the big building with the series of rooms, I came across a mostly bare room, concrete-floored, maybe the room where the tractor-like thing had been. I saw a device there like an air conditioner condenser, but thicker. I thought it was connected to the man we were having trouble with, who was trying to get us, and had taken the car. I poked at the grill of it, actually just fins and tubes, poking with a screwdriver-like thing with a bent tip, trying to damage it. It hissed but didn't leak liquid. I wondered if it had air in the tubes or maybe something like a air conditioner has, freon. A man came from around the counter objecting, and a strange little robot, like a thick mobile air conditioner condenser with skinny metal legs and arms. I poked at it with the tool, too. It had been talking, and now its voice sounded funny. It talked somewhat quicker and irregularly, and seemed to be making less sense. It awkwardly rushed off to the side and threw up a little, while the man was talking concernedly at it, then it rushed off in a different direction and tried to throw up again. I left, still looking for the man.

I went outside, and eventually to a place ran by a short skinny woman in late middle age, heavily wrinkled. It was a large outdoor room, out near the road, by the parking lot. The area seemed relatively isolated. The room had a roof but no walls, at least not complete walls. It had a low dark wall running around it, maybe three feet high, with dark screening over the rest, at least in most areas. It was sometime during the day now. She had several devices, lots of them, set out on old long wooden benches. I started poking at one I felt the man had left there, trying to damage it. The woman seemed saddened but a little resigned to it, and talked to me about it. She was obviously concerned about the damage, she was trying to sell them or do something else with some of them, maybe repair them and sell them, or maybe repair them for the owners, and damage would mean a significant loss of money for her. I felt sorry for her, but still felt it should be done, to try to get back at the man. I think I tried to damage a few other things, too. Other people sometimes came and went, men, cowboy-like, who were concerned with other of the devices, maybe dropping them off or picking them up.


I finally made it home, with the car I think. My mother was there, too. It was late afternoon it seemed. I was out in the side in the front, by the carport, near where the round circle of garden border blocks were. I had a shovel I think, and was trying to do something, maybe something with the side yard, but there was also a large device of some kind there I was trying to do something with, and also maybe still trying to do something to the car. For some reason I was not wearing anything from the waist down. I was talking to her, but she didn't seem somehow to really be my mother now, she looked much younger and looked different, and maybe wasn't actually my mother now, it seemed she was actually someone else. I didn't know who she was, though it felt that I did seem to know her, or should know her. I said I thought this was something we had agreed to do, being naked, and you were going to take your clothes off, too. She talked back to me, not looking down, and was saying something like yes, but she had changed her mind, and was wanting me to get dressed. Her eyes looked partly blind too, partly clouded. She seemed tired, and while she did seem bothered some by my being naked from the waist down, she seemed only mildly bothered, and just slightly concerned, almost like it was an afterthought. Some other people were going to come, she reminded me, we were concerned about it, and in a hurry to get things ready. She left, went in the house I guess, probably through the carport door.

Some other people did come, while I was out working, generally one at a time, thin cowboy-looking figures, middle aged. I was becoming more and more concerned about being naked, and was sometimes trying to hold something in front of me, to partly cover me. Nobody mentioned it though, or seemed to pay much attention to it.

Dream - The no-win situation

On Monday, June 14, 2010, around 4:15-7:00 PM, I dreamed I was with my mother. I had just picked her up somewhere. We were either in a very small room, cramped with things, or in the car, still cramped with things around us, though not much between us. We were separated by a little space, two or three feet, like she was in the passenger seat and I was in the driver's seat, though we could also have been sitting somewhere inside a small room as I said. I was going to take her somewhere, back to the house maybe. She looked younger than she does now, maybe in her fifties, maybe even forties. It was daytime, maybe early afternoon.

I was smiling, happy. I asked if she had seen it, on TV, when I had won. She had something she had tried that hadn't won. I hadn't expected her to win, I knew it was a waste of time, but it was something she wanted to do, something she wanted to try. She talked some about her attempt to win, but she wouldn't say anything about mine, and I kept repeating it. I knew that I had won, was absolutely sure of it. I had a lot of money now, or would soon.

I finally realized that she hadn't seen it, that it hadn't been on TV, and that I hadn't won either. I said something about it, getting quieter and trailing off a bit, looking less happy and more thoughtful. I was puzzled. I couldn't understand it, I was supposed to win, it had been fated that I should win. I thought about it to myself. I couldn't understand it, something must have gone wrong, but what could have happened? Had I just been fooling myself, and was no more likely to win than she had been?

She said, quietly, gently, not to worry, I would have a lot of other things, it was my birthday and they were going to give me presents and have a birthday dinner. We went home, and I lay in bed for a while. My sister came in and I talked to her for a while, until my mother and father came back. They talked a bit about what they had planned for me, the dinner and the presents they were going to give me. It was getting late afternoon now, and it wouldn't be long before it happened.

Dream - The little town that was made for me, house painting, and the dinosaur figure in the back yard

On Wednesday, June 2, 2010, around 2:15-3:45 AM, I dreamed I had been driving back and forth in a small white car out in the country. Some other people had been doing it too, in another car, maybe two. Earlier it seems there had been something about a large circular swimming pool that I visited and walked around a bit, that was full of people. It was something that had appeared in some dreams years ago. Now I had been driving, and heading for the portion where the road went gradually uphill. The area was a crisscross of small roads, a lot of them dirt. The ground was pale and a little sandy. I got to a crossroads and stopped. The other car had come, from the right I think. It was late and I was tired. I think my mother was in the other car, along with someone else, maybe my brother. They, along with another couple of people I think, had been making a surprise for me. They had constructed a toy housing development with roads and even railways. The houses were made in great detail out of wood and painted. The roads and railways ran for miles, going up the slope, and also to the right. The houses were probably two or three feet across. I thanked them for it and they took me on a tour. They had a lot more to do with it, to finish it, but had worked fast.

Walking up the slope in the broad cleared area beside it, we went all the way to the top of the slope, miles, to where the little roads and rails met with another coming in from the right and at steep angle, and then continued in their respective directions for a few inches and stopped. They were going to extend them as they worked in the next few days, going over the hill and down the other side, maybe continuing until close to the next town, and put more of them in also. I worried some about cars coming by before it was finished and not understanding it, and maybe about police or town officials seeing it and interfering, but I don't think I said anything about it.

We went back down the slope to near where we started, then were going back up looking at things in more detail. I saw in the darkness in the dark dry trees and dark dense brush to the left of us, that we were walking nearby, huge spiders with thin curved legs, the legs maybe as big as an inch and a half long in some cases. I kept telling them about it. My brother didn't pay any attention and kept talking, but my mother sometimes turned and pooh-poohed it to me.

We continued up the slope and after a while we turned right and walked along another cleared area, with the houses laid out to the right on the higher ground here, overlooking a sharper section of slope that gradually leveled out as it approached the area where we had parked. The dense trees and brush were to the left of us, and ahead of us too as we reached the limits of the cleared area again. I saw the spiders again, in the darkness, in the brush and trees, slightly different looking here but even slightly larger. I nervously said something about them again, but again the others didn't care, though they may have turned toward me briefly as I talked about it. They mostly talked about the project, telling me about it, and discussing it with each other. It seems then that we went back down at least partly, and spent the night somehow, sleeping outside or in our cars maybe.

Then it was later, maybe the next day or maybe a few days later. A lot more of the complicated little wooden houses had been built and painted, not always in the same colors. I walked along on the lower ground looking at them up on the higher ground, my brother and mother I think pointing them out to me. It was impressive, but the occasional ones in different colors stood out and clashed, and I thought that a uniform color scheme would probably have been best, though I didn't say so. The houses themselves had two or more colors painted on them. That was alright, it was just where the houses didn't match other houses that it looked wrong, but mostly in where the long projections of the roofs stuck out.

Down below, in the gentle slope bordering the road that went uphill, leading to the road that crossed it where we had earlier parked, where a row of real houses were, mixed in with the little ones, we went to a house two or three houses along, which was somehow my grandmother's house in Arizona, though somewhat different looking here. A lot of people were working there, painting both the house and the little houses, which they were making in the yard and basically all over the place. Some of the people seemed to be from the radiator shop, and my sisters seemed to be there, looking much younger, maybe even in their teens, plus friends of theirs and maybe some other people. I think my grandmother was also there. They were getting paint all over everything, including the yard, which I think had cars parked in it, and very tall dry grass, looking almost like wheat in some areas. A low inexpensive picket fence, the posts joined by woven wires, separated the front yard from the one to the right. It was late afternoon now. People sometimes went in and out of the house, and some were painting it and even up on ladders and things up by or on the roof. All were working swiftly and industriously. They didn't seem to care how much paint they got on the grass or fence or whatever was in the way, and sometimes seemed to revel in it. A lot of paint was being wasted that way. My youngest sister was laughing and taking joy in it, and the painting itself. She was working with someone else, a man, one of her friends maybe. She went along from the front of the house and out into the yard. I followed at a distance, frowning some, floating low over the tall grass, which was mostly covered now in splatters and strings of paint, with some areas having a heavy, goopy deposit covering a foot and a half or more. Some was on the grass of the next yard, too.

I went along near the fence toward the pale dirt road that ran in front, then I went back toward the house. It was getting darker now. Going down the short section of the side yard, still floating, I managed, with some effort, to get high enough that I could go over the taller fence there, maybe six feet, that separated the back yard from the front. I think it was chain link with metal slats through it. I went along the edge of the roof and then higher, up into the air. It was almost dark now.

I saw in the back yard the old dinosaur figure I had made long ago. It a was fairly simple version of T.rex, standing and facing toward the house, maybe six feet high or taller, looking ferocious. I had later made a more natural looking version, about the same size, and devoted almost all my attention to it, instead of working more on this one. This was all in the dream, though in real life I did make one T.rex around four feet high.

A huge, very thin wall ran by the dinosaur, to the left, touching it, sometimes leaning against it. The wall was probably around the thickness of cardboard, and was black. It was very tall, maybe fifteen or more feet, and went across the yard at a slight angle, supported by wires or ropes that ran to something in the alley, perhaps a telephone pole, and to the house. The thin wall reached the house at about where the corner of the utility room stuck out from it. The wall moved a little in the slight breeze. I looked down at it from where I was in the air.

Near the house a large dog was chained, looking out at the dinosaur and the wall, sometimes angrily barking and growling at them, evidently when the wind caused the wall to shift some and when it sometimes made a slight noise when doing so. It may have also sometimes barked or growled at me, but though it sometimes looked up at me a little, it didn't seem to mind me much, and knew who I was. In real life I was probably hearing the two small dogs fighting with each other in the kitchen.


The dream seems to have had a lot happen earlier that I don't remember.

Dream - The redwood pool in the back yard that became a pool in the Cadillac

On Saturday, December 18, 2010, around 12:15-2:45 PM, I dreamed there was a tall pool of water with sides of redwood fence material, vertical boards, at the southeast corner of the back yard, near and adjoining the alley. It was something I made. I was inside the house with my mother and some other family members, other people too, I think.

I went out to the pool, fully dressed, and got in it. I wore my glasses too I think, and had a bubble of plastic over my head to protect my hair and ears. The plastic stuck out like a cloud around my head. Other people came out from time to time to check on me. It was late afternoon and we were going to have supper soon. Eventually it came to be that the pool was built onto the back of the gold 1970 Cadillac.

I would bounce around in the water, sometimes going under then coming back up. It was too small to really swim in, maybe seven or eight feet square. Sometimes I looked out to one side or another. There were little kids in the alley sometimes, walking around a bit, playing there I guess. They tended to be to one side or the other of the pool. I don't think I talked to them much, maybe not at all.

Sometimes I would stay with my head above water for quite a while. Some people from the house started coming out again, and I started going under water some more. I realized that the plastic over my head was gone, then. I had taken it off and forgotten to put it back on. I was a bit concerned about it, but my hair seemed unaffected, the water just seemed to roll off when I came up, so I decided to let it go.

My mother came out one time, talking to me, and got in the water with me. She seemed much younger, in her fifties maybe. She then got out of the water, still talking, and made her way over the back seat of the Cadillac, and over the back of the front seat, going along by the windows, and got into the front seat and then out.

A friend of my sister's came over, a tall man with dark hair who seemed to be in his twenties. I didn't know him much, maybe not at all. He got in the water on the east side, and talked with me for a while. He talked gently and tried to be friendly, but I was uncomfortable with him being there, and tended to give short answers to his questions. One time he somehow misinterpreted something I said, to be a remark putting him down, and though he chided me about it a bit, he remained friendly. I think I tried to tell him that it wasn't what I meant, but he didn't accept it. He finally got out.

My sister came after a while with several of her friends, and got in the Cadillac and started it, over my continual objections, and backed it out, pulling the pool loose from the yard. Then she started slowly driving west down the alley, trying to reassure me, saying that I didn't understand.

Partway down the alley, a few houses down, heading west, my sister paused and stopped. She seemed to have gotten bogged down somehow, I think. We were near a chain link fence, to the right, perhaps a little over it, by or partly in a yard that was in disrepair, with uneven and raw dirt, dug through areas of grass. A thin man, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, was out in the back yard there, or came out there, and was standing there looking at us and talking to us. I don't think he was mad, though, mainly just interested. People were getting out of the car, Sharon's friends maybe. Quite a few people had been in there, a lot of them fairly young. I headed back toward home. I think I may have gone out there through the air, along by the trees, watching the car from above, instead of being in the car with her, and may have gone home the same way.

There were drinking glasses and other things, in heavy clear plastic bags, in the side yard on the west, over by the old, old bush near the side fence, in the grass, partly hidden there. The bags weren't large, just able to hold a few gallons. They were similar to the bags the hospital gives to patients to put belongings and things in, heavy plastic with a built-in cord for a drawstring. They were in a few places, in the same general area, some of them close by each other, even touching, but none of them very far from the others. They were sometimes in layers, going down some into the ground, into a hole there. I'm not sure there was originally a hole, but one seemed to have formed around them as more and more stuff got added, the lower layers sinking down into the earth. I had put them there when cleaning up the yard, different things at different times, some of it long ago, some of it more recent, perhaps even today.

I was trying to save what I had put there, at least some of it. The glasses were generally old glasses of some kind I think, perhaps some of them some kind of commemorative glasses, perhaps tourist type things, or they could have been something from fast food places, or perhaps some combination of that. It's possible that the tall bumpy green glass with the stem was in there too, the big green goblet, the one my mother got, as a free gift, when subscribing to a book series. She used to let me use it, and bring me drinks in it, such as orange or cranberry juice, and perhaps iced tea.

Other things were in the bags too, I think, that were just trash, papers and things, though some of that I might want to save too, if it turned out to be something that shouldn't be thrown away. It would all have to be gone through, sorted out, with the stuff I wanted to save, including a lot of the glasses, taken inside.

I spent some time digging through them, seeing what was there, before kind of loosely putting them back. This seemed like a really bad place to store them, but I didn't have a lot of time now to do anything with them. I hoped that no one would throw them away before I got it done. I hoped, too, that I would be able to get it done, that I wouldn't pass away and leave it unfinished. If I did, I hoped that someone would go through it, though it seemed a wistful feeling. I took some with me, some of the bags, and carried them around with me, as I wandered around in the yard, sometimes going all the way over to the other side and back, before finally setting them down somewhere, maybe back by the bush. I sometimes went back to the bags by the bush, looking down at them at times, sometimes going through them again a little, worrying about them. There was a lot more trash now, and papers and things, mixed in with them, even outside the bags, some on top, some down in the layers, stuff I hadn't realized was there before, and was surprised to see now.

My mother brought some plates of food out to the back yard, and gave me some, while talking to me about it and about what was going to happen. She was getting dinner ready, there was going to be a family get-together, and some other people were coming, too. The food needed to be tested, before she served it, and she wanted me to try it out. I think it was something she had had in the refrigerator for a while, or had set out too long, or some other thing. It's possible some may have come from suspicious cans, but I'm not sure now. It was odd food, maybe uneven pale green lumps, like some fancy marshmallow type salads. She needed to see if they were actually alright, that nothing was wrong with them, that they weren't poisoned or spoiled. I had some hope, I think, that they might be sent out for testing, but it looked like I was going to have to do it for now, even if they were sent out later.

I stood there, eating some of it, with some distaste and worry. I think she was going to feed some of it to the dogs, too, as well as the people at the dinner. I didn't want to have it served to other people without me at least trying it, to see if it was still good. I would rather it be me that was the Guinea pig instead of the others. I wasn't even really comfortable with serving it to the dogs.

Quite a bit of time passed, as I stood there with the plates of food, sometimes eating a little of it, sometimes talking to my mother, when she was there. She also held plates of food at times, but I think she was saving them for me, or just holding them until doing something else with them. We walked some into the side yard for a while, looking some in the direction of the front, as she talked about the food and the people coming. Sometimes we were in other parts of the yard, and sometimes I was alone. The sky seemed at least partially overcast. It had been afternoon, but as time passed it got closer to night.

We had been going to have something like a picnic, out in the back yard, the family and whatever friends were coming, but it seems to have been reconsidered, and we were actually going to eat inside now. I could see some people in the house already, members of the family, and some other people who had come. They were in the dining room, standing there, talking, not far from the table, which seemed to have been set up with food. My mother went back into the house, leaving the plates of strange food out. They were set near the fence on the west side, perhaps on the ground, though there may have been something there she put them on. There were quite a few of them. I looked at them for a while, from some distance away, considering.

Dream - The mall, the man in the devil mask, and the storm

On Saturday morning, November 20, 2010, in a period of sleep ending around 11:00 AM, I had a long dream in which I ended up at a large mall, apparently where the old Osco/Bashas' stores were, at 74th St. and McDowell Rd., then left and wandered off north, possibly to Plaza 777 where the radiator shop used to be, then I went back to the mall again. I was talking to some other people sometimes, at least some of them family members. It was afternoon, a pleasant temperature, mild, the sky clear but kind of a gray tone. I went back in the mall and was wandering around. Besides little shops, it had layers to go though. Some of the mall was to the right, like at Fashion Square, but I went to the left, and it seemed like I was going through layers of primarily the same store, to different departments, with walls between them. I also found some candy by little walls, in glass jars. I ate some of it and was looking for more.

I finally left, taking a heavy white plastic trophy I saw on a shelf by the free snacks. It was a statue of something, heavy and compact and styled, with just the suggestion of an animal form. Out in the parking lot I began to wonder if it was really free, and decided that it probably wasn't. I looked around it for a price tag. At or near the car, the gold 1989 Olds, I finally found a small white sticker with something written on it. I turned it up toward the sky to try to get more light on it, but the light was dim, it was late in the afternoon and the sky was somewhat overcast. A little sunlight came through, though. At first I thought the price was other things, then finally resolved it as $9.00. I decided that I had to take it back. I walked back in with it, hoping that no one would bother me about it. Some people frowned at me, and I eventually set it down somewhere, not where I got it.

I saw my sister, the oldest one, who was several years younger than me, and we walked through the mall together.

It was starting to get late and things getting ready to close. We went back toward the entrance. We passed some people from the store at a minor side entrance, doing a strange dance, one or two dressed in strange clothes and wearing strange lifelike almost devil-like masks, but without the horns, doing a strange acrobatic dance over a large broad mattress-like thing close to the floor, entertainment for the people. A woman showed up with the mask after a while and did some of the tumbles, but it was like they shared the same mask, that the other guy had taken it off while he was gone and then she emerged wearing it, though I think I eventually saw them together with masks on.

Approaching the main exit, I lost my sister and went back into the mall looking for her. I got to where it turned a corner, and there were other little stores, some of them selling food, but they were pulling down their roll-up covers over the fronts of the stores.

Going back, I passed the man with the devil mask and strange costume. He had his shoes off and his feet were covered with fake feet too. The mask was tight fitting and had no seams, and looked natural, though still somewhat rubbery. He had a reflective expression on his face, sitting and looking off into the distance to the right, toward the short exit, rubbing his foot. He talked very briefly. I moved on. Near the main exit, my sister came up behind me. She had been following me for a while, and seemed amused by it.

She had been for a while at a side room across the aisle, too, a place where food was served and also where everyone sang and played musical instruments. I could see them from here. I went over and went in for a while. The place had a tropical theme, which became more manifest deeper into it. At the other side of the room it blended into an outdoor area with plants and palm trees, and round concrete tables among shrubbery. Inside, everyone sat close together. I wandered outside for a while. There were worries and warnings about a storm approaching. It was still light outside, late afternoon, near sundown, still with some sunlight. A strange cloud was there to the southeast though, gray brown, boiling, churning at the edges, on the ground, wider at the top than the bottom, and with a flat top. It was coming this way, visibly so, though people didn't know if it would dissipate before it got here or not. People were running around, though, trying to get away. I kept looking back at it. Each time I looked it was moving this way, but didn't seem to get closer between looks. I wandered off to the southwest, into the parking lot. Large areas were flooding, with tall palm trees sometimes at a slant, sometimes with large areas of sodden mud over the parking lot and things. It had evidently gone through here already.

I went back inside and went over to the main exit. The various things lining it, little stores and various activities, had closed for the most part, and were covered up, but now they were starting to reopen, a late night thing. Things seemed more sinister. The man in the evil mask was back again. A place there was also offering odds at things, like odds on how TV shows would do, and odds on other minor things, and I thought about placing a bet, but wandered back to the main section and was trying to find the board/sign I saw with odds on it. Looking at it, I realized I had misunderstood what I had read before, and the odds weren't good. I decided not to do it. The man with the devil mask was going over a raised, long rectangular area with concrete edges, and a cloth placed over the middle. Underneath it were a series of crosswise rods and large beads. Before, when I was going to leave, he had been on a slanted one, like an escalator, with things in the middle that weren't moving but with bands on the edges moving down, with little rough things on them and around them, like tiny broken rocks. He had been cavorting in the middle and maybe singing. I had tried to grab onto and slide down one of the bands. As I made my way toward the direction of the exit, I saw him looking my way, not entirely happy at it.

It was night now, had been for a while, late, and I went out the exit to leave. It was cold, and the parking lot was covered by cold mud, with snow dusting it in places. Some areas just had a little mud, and some areas were very diluted, almost water, some just slightly dirty water, and some not much of that. It was daylight still then for a while. I went to the car. It was looking normal, but as I got there, or soon after I got there, it changed to a much smaller and lighter electric car, still with front wheel drive. Some other people were coming too to their cars. We passed by some tiny wooden guard shack type things, damaged by the storm, sometimes sitting at angles there between the rows of cars, wet inside. I walked through one and out the other side, wondering a bit if someone would object. The others seemed more afraid to do that. I got to my car, which turned out to have my mother's purse there on a small white table behind the passenger door. I guessed I must have left it outside the car. I was glad no one had taken it.

I got in and drove, not toward the exit at 74th St., but down the row toward the north, then toward the east and into another row going back south, where conditions were much worse, heavy mud covered the pavement. A delivery type truck was backing out down the row ahead of me. It slowly backed out, but there was some kind of trouble, and it finally got going and moved away. There was another big truck on its side at an angle, that I had to go around. In the dream I didn't know why I came back there, it was a lot harder to get through and more dangerous. The small car with front wheel drive that I was in, though, pulled through and over the mud.

I got to the front, by the mall, and turned to the west, toward 74th. Other cars were going out through the exit near the intersection, across from the bank. I didn't like that though. I thought it was too close to the intersection, too hard to get out, although it had a traffic light. However, there didn't seem to be one earlier, and at times, and I tried to go to the south, to another large exit, further away from the intersection. People on the walk around the mall were calling out to me, not to do it, it was too dangerous. It was fully night now, late. I tried to go south, but ran into increasingly heavier, deeper mud, and there was also worry that I might heading into the storm, that it would come through here. I turned around and went back. A little Mexican-type kid, possibly part Indian, had been following me, a little girl. She was associated with someone, a couple of people mainly, but had been following me, and I agreed to let her go along. The car was so tiny now, that she was riding on the back. It was rainy and cool, even chilly. The car seemed to be a two seater with a small wooden platform on the back, even some wood rails going along the sides, and a very short front.

I waited at the light for a while. It turned red just as I got there. Across the street, there was just the sidewalk with landscaping along it. Everything was wet and cold, and rain was softly falling. Water was running in the gutter in front of me, and it was a sharp short slope to the street. I couldn't see the traffic light from here. I had to lean forward and tilt my head to look up, then I could see a tiny curved dark metal tube coming down from it, with the end glowing the color the light was. Off to the right was the intersection with its own traffic lights, and I thought it was going to be a long time to wait, to get them both coordinated properly. There was only a very short wait, though, before I saw the light in the tube above me turn to green, and I pulled out into the street, going south, the girl happily riding along with me, and sometimes running beside me holding on. I had no idea really what I was going to do with her, whether I could drop her off at her house somewhere along the way, maybe on a small side trip, or at somebody else's house along the way, or just a a place where she could make it home from or be picked up from, an intersection in the neighborhood, or if I even had to take her to my house for a while. Her parents seemed to approve her going along with me though, so I guessed it was alright, whatever was going to happen.

Dream - I almost die and find I can't talk anymore, but when the paramedics come I try to get them to look at my grandmother

On Wednesday, October 27, 2010, around 4:30-7:00 PM, I dreamed of almost dying. After some time spent somewhere doing something, generally associated with my house but sometimes somewhere else, I went to a place that was something like my house and something like my sister's, but much larger than either of them. It was a one story house with huge open rooms, with a railing that enclosed a central area that was apparently a lower part of the house, below ground level. I started talking to my sister, who was at a small glass table, round I think, near the railing, arguing a bit with her. My mother was perhaps ten feet or so off. My sister said something and I said something back, in a low voice, irritated, saying "What do you care what other people think," and then something else attached to it, maybe ten or so words. Then she said something, and I leaned over on the table, my arms and elbows on it, my head low, and was saying, approximately, in a low voice, almost a hiss, "You know, the thing I was saying before, the first part of it, 'What ...'"

I was trying to say "'What do you care what other people think?' was said by Richard Feynman to someone associated with the space shuttle disaster, during the investigation about it," but I found I couldn't. After the "What", which I had difficulty getting out, and trailed off after the "W", into a kind of breathy sound, the following words I couldn't get the consonants out for. I tried to say "do" and some of the other words, but they were all breathy sounds. My mouth was formed to say them, but they just came out as slightly different breathy slow rushes of air. My head was almost on the table. I was trying to explain the problem then too, but still couldn't say anything, just the breathy rushes of air through a mouth that was formed for the words but couldn't say any consonants, or even any vowels really. My sister was staring at me, frowning a little.

Then I was on the floor, slid off the table and slowly settled on the floor, laying there. I got turned over to face up. I may have done it or maybe other people did, I'm not sure. I looked up and saw my sister and some of her friends, bent down a little, staring down at me. Everything had changed to gray, they were dark gray figures on a lighter gray background, still clearly seen though looking 2-dimensional and flat. I reached my arms out straight up into the air, trying to grasp something and somehow pull myself up, though nothing was there, and the arms, pale and gray-colored, stretched out an enormous distance, maybe six feet, fading a little toward the end of them, even becoming a little transparent.

I was picked up and moved to a different room. The rooms were mostly open, though, frequently with room-sized openings between them. I was taken to a couch I think, or maybe a very large soft chair, which was at right angles to a couch where my grandmother lay on her side, facing out, legs bent a little. Behind her on the couch was a huge mound of clothes, along behind her and up beyond her head, loose clothes that were just thrown there, and more over them, it was a huge mound that went up onto the back of the couch, and all along behind her and past her head, occupying the couch area there. As it went along her and beyond her and around the top of her head, it formed a cliff that partly overhung her head and body, and I was worried about her, that it might fall onto her.

I couldn't get it straight in my mind for a while whether she was dead or alive, and after going back and forth in my mind about it I finally decided she was alive, that she had been dead for a while but came back to life, and should have some medical attention. The paramedics had been called for me, and were coming, and I think even arrived at some point, and though they were gathered around me weren't doing much. One or more people were talking on phones, maybe one of them too, though I think my sister was also on her cell phone. I kept trying to tell them about my grandmother, that they should do something because the clothes might fall on her, and also that she should be looked at, have her checked medically, that they should tell the medical people about her, but I couldn't say anything. I finally felt better enough that I was able to move over to her, crawl over from one piece of furniture to another, and partly hold her. I was starting to be able to make more definite sounds now, instead of just breathy noises, but still couldn't form words.

Dream - I am at a school, but can't find my class again, and I had left my backpack and briefcase there, I go outside, but they have a new tardy policy and I am too late getting back

On Monday, February 21, 2011, around 11:00 AM-12:20 PM, I dreamed I was in school. Though I think initially the place may have been something else, it was school now. It was apparently something like DeVry, though it was laid out more like my high school, but was still different from either one. It had some landscaping out front, with a short slope down to the parking lot. The buildings were long, and set up in two rows. I was in the building on the far left, around the middle, but not quite that far. My sister was there for a while, and we talked for a bit, but she then left, having to go somewhere. There were very few people around when she was there.

We were initially in one of the empty classrooms, and then wandered across the hall, more to an administrative area, which was also pretty empty, and maybe to a restroom there briefly. As she left, more people were showing up, students. It was almost time for classes to start. The place became busier and busier. I wanted to find a restroom, looking for one on the original side of the hall, where I knew a couple were. I had trouble finding them, but I think I did eventually find one somewhere, maybe back on the right side of the hall, though it seems I did find something on the left. I had trouble then finding the class I was in before. The rooms seemed different, some of them bigger even, with unfamiliar students and teachers. The students, sitting in their seats, turned and stared at me as I peered in the rooms, or glanced in the windows as I went by. I had left my backpack and books in there too, maybe even a pale brown briefcase.

I kept going back and forth, sometimes over in the administration area too, and classrooms past and behind it, and also way back toward the front. The rooms in the front half on the administrative side were mostly offices, with a few at the very front on the other side also offices, but I glanced in them too, just to be sure. Sometimes a woman, generally wearing glasses, looked up at me from behind a large desk, at the back of the room. The rooms on the classroom side tended to be much larger than those on the other side of the hall, with some of those on the other side being very small indeed. Though the administrative area in the middle had large open areas with the offices, they were small themselves, and had only partial walls, perhaps only four feet high sometimes, and were largely open to the very large carpeted highway in that area. As I went back and forth in the hall, some of the offices did seem to change to classrooms, but at the same time some of the classrooms enlarged to be partly offices, sometimes with rooms joining together with big open areas between them, though closed off with doors to the hallway, except for the middle of the building, where a very broad hallway went through, and they became open rooms with short four or five foot walls.

Classes ended and there was a little break until the next ones. I went back in the rooms around where I had been. Most of the students were gone now. I looked among the chairs but didn't see my backpack or anything else I had left. I hoped that it was given to the teacher, that someone had noticed it and said that someone had left them, or the teacher had noticed them, and perhaps the teacher had put them behind his long desk, or maybe had them put in a lost and found somewhere, though that would mean they would be more trouble to get. A teacher was still there, but though he looked at me like he wondered why I was there and what I was doing, he continued talking to the student in front of him, from perhaps ten feet away from me.

I started to wonder if I should leave. It seemed late in the school year, and I only had a few days left. Did I even have any more classes today? I wasn't sure. It seemed I might have missed a couple trying to find my stuff. Were they important, was there anything in them that I had to know, or to do? It seemed there might be an economics class. I thought they were sometimes in the afternoon. They didn't happen every day, just two or three times a week. Thinking on it, I realized that I hadn't attended one for a long time, maybe missed most of the classes. There was still supposed to be a final I thought, maybe today, if I hadn't missed it already. It might have been on a previous day, or maybe was going to happen today or tomorrow. I didn't know just when the class was going to be. It was possible I had already missed today's. I couldn't even remember where it was supposed to be, or what room it was in. I thought it was more to the back, maybe on the other side of the building, or on the hallways leading there.

I walked through that area, back and forth. It seemed to be late in the afternoon now, and there weren't many students in this area. Sometimes I saw teachers looking back at me, from their classrooms, looking concerned, and sometimes they looked something like what I thought my teacher looked like, but not quite. I wasn't sure what good it would do me to take the test right now anyway. I had missed most of the lessons and hadn't read most of the book. I really needed to study some before I took it, as much as I could in the day or two before the test, if I could put it off that long, if I could convince the teacher to do so, or to give me the test if I had already missed it. I went back toward the other side of the building, still looking, still hoping to find my stuff. The hallway through the middle was carpeted and very large.

At the corner, on the far side and the left from where I currently was, was a four or five foot wall partially enclosing what looked like a bar, and in some sense was, with a long counter and stools, but though it served refreshments, and liquor I believe, it also acted as a lab bench, where advanced genius students worked on special projects with, I think, military significance. I wondered if my stuff might be behind the counter/lab bench. A couple of teacher's assistants were behind the counter, and they and the students were talking in low voices. The teacher's assistants had small smiles. I wandered through the area and looked at the bookshelves against the wall on the other side, and wandered back toward and into the classrooms, through the large open connecting areas. Classes were still being held, but there were fewer students than before. I eventually went toward the back, toward the exit. It seemed now to be between classes again.

Outside, I looked around. It seemed to be early afternoon now, and there was bright sunshine. The building had wide concrete steps leading down to a broad plaza that ran between the buildings. Though earlier in the dream I was in the building at the far left, now it was the second over from the left. I started wondering if I was in the right building, and should check the one at the left, though I thought it was just used by non-seniors. They had recently started a crackdown on people who were late to class, and had put monitors at the outside doors, and if you were caught you had to go to an office somewhere and get a special pass. It was mostly about humiliation and inconvenience, and it seemed to me that it would inconvenience the teacher to have the students, with their special pass, come in really late after having to go through all that, and the teacher then having to stop what he was doing and take the pass. I started heading off toward the other building, while some of the students looked worried at me, like they were wondering what I could be thinking, to do something like that, go away from the building, when there was so little time left.

I went inside the other building and down the hall a ways. It was as I thought, something used by younger students. I turned around and headed quickly back toward the exit, and then out into the broad plaza, and started making my way quickly back toward the other building. There were still quite a few students heading for the entrance there, clustering around it, trying to get through. Some teachers or other representatives were slowly going up the steps, sometimes looking a little amused, and some came from the inside too. The people doing this were in a rotation, with different ones assigned at different times. The ones going to the building went through the glass doors. One of them looked something like a younger version of Mr. Gatti, an artist who had been the art teacher at my high school.

I tried to hurry, but I was getting tired, and my legs were too tired to move fast enough, unable to go up the long steps fast enough. The Mr. Gatti lookalike came slowly back out, talking a bit, holding a short skinny dark pole in each hand with a triangular white flag on each one. He carried them to places in the concrete marked with pale X's and placed them in holes there. If you hadn't made it past that spot by now, then it was too late. I was almost there but not quite, coming in from the far side. I hoped I might be able to convince them to just let me in. Several other students were trapped there, too. It seemed silly to have to go through all this, especially for me and because of who I was.

They finally got to me, but there some trouble for some reason. I was finally given a paper, that was wider than it was tall, a form with things jotted on it, and told to take it somewhere to my left, into a side entrance from where the part of the building there formed a slight arc here, but the people I saw didn't seem able to have anything to do with this, and the few who did know something about it weren't able to help me, and in any case the thing I was given was incomplete and actually had some wrong information, a bad case number I think.

I went back to the big desk there outside, on the concrete, and waited again and then tried to get it straightened out. I started to irritatedly wonder/worry if they were going to bring up something that had happened quite a while back, maybe over a year, a mistake people had made that had quickly mushroomed into outrageous accusations with people looking suspiciously at me, even after I had explained it all and hopefully straightened it out. Someone did start to bring the earlier paper in though, coming from the right, from back behind things, and another person frowned and started saying, "Hey, aren't you the one?" I started irritatingly explaining it again, how I had met with someone who came on school grounds, who had been a speaker I think, and some people had seen me, and misunderstood who he was, and thought he was a radical communist, terrorist even, and it grew to where I was a member of a radical communist organization, and trying to get a situation where an atomic bomb could be set off, near the school, and it was all garbage, or something to that effect. I looked at their faces now, still with frowning suspicion on them, though that was lessening into an unhappy acceptance, like they still weren't quite sure about me. The Mr. Gatti character looked calmer and not quite as suspicious, though he still looked like he wasn't sure he believed me, but was willing to let it be someone else's problem, if it turned out to be one. He was looking different now, heavier, changing even as I watched, then becoming less overweight again. He looked less like Mr. Gatti though, and I wondered if he might be a relative, perhaps a son or nephew.

I got the pass, or rather the precursor to the pass, a paper that I had to take inside somewhere and get the real pass from. It seemed kind of a waste of time now, and I wondered if I should even bother or just go home, and come back again tomorrow. Still, as I went toward the middle of the building, and the administrative area, I kept my eyes open for someone who might help me. Looking up at times, with my head still down looking at the paper in my hands, I saw a woman standing up behind a desk, in the middle area, behind a low wall. She was looking my way, and looked a little like someone I knew, from the time I worked in Nevada, the red-haired woman in the Supply department, in the Purchasing section. I wondered if she could help me.

Dream - My mother, the old food, the monkey, the sandwich cookies, and the lake with people around it

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, around 4:15-5:30 AM, I dreamed I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, doing pick up and delivery for the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd. It was a little after noon now, maybe a little after one. The temperature was pleasant, perhaps a little cool, and the light wasn't very bright, like it was a little cloudy. I had had to make a few pick up and delivery runs that day, but it wasn't too busy, enough to get a reasonable amount of work.

I stopped at the house, after going further, into the Tempe area, maybe past the river bottom, and then coming back. I wanted to get something to eat, some lunch. My mother wasn't there, she was out somewhere. I got some food out of the refrigerator, and put it on a plate and was eating it. I went in the living room to eat and watch a soap opera, Guiding Light I think, something with Kim Zimmer in it anyway, the actress who played Reva, though it may have been another soap. She had resumed an old role on one on another network, but I don't think it was that. It was supposed to be a regular one hour show, plus they were doing a special thing of an additional one and a half hours of the show, showing deeper insights into the characters and situations, but not adding to the storyline, so that the next day would pick up where the regular show left off. I didn't have enough time to watch all of it, but hoped I could see part of it. Even staying for the regular show was a little long, because Chuey, the man in charge at the shop while I was gone, didn't know where I was, and we might get something else that needed picking up.

While I was eating, my mother came back, and we talked for a while. She seemed to be in her forties. She was chewing something after a while, and then I noticed that the side of a bookcase, about four feet high, had a splatter on the side of it, kind of gray-violet, with the splatter pointing at an angle away from her. She was grinning, occasionally talking to me. I was looking from it to her and back again. I finally asked her if she did it. She was grinning, and I don't think she ever said directly that she did, but she said something about her getting something to eat. I think she finally agreed that she did it, without actually saying much.

I was tired, and wanted to take a small nap, though I really didn't have time for that either. I hadn't seen all the extra part of the show either, just a little bit, and would miss the rest or at least part of it. I was concerned about being away from the shop for so long, and wondered if I should call Chuey, but I didn't want him to know where I was, I didn't want to admit that I was at home.

I went into my bedroom and lay down. My mother came in after a while, and I got up and talked to her. She was still chewing something, evidently she was still eating, or snacking. She spit again. It was kind of involuntary, accidental, it just squirted out of her mouth. though I don't think I actually saw it happening. It got on the floor a few feet inside the room, I had been concerned that it might get on a bookcase or other furniture there, or even on me. She said she had been looking through the refrigerator and started cleaning it out some. She found some food that had been there a long time, and said I should see it, or maybe said that I shouldn't. I looked at her grinning and chewing, and I got the impression that she was actually eating it, or part of it. I pictured in my mind, something like a large rectangular glass pan with some kind of gelatin dish, or jelly dish, though it wasn't only that, something else was on the bottom, some kind of cake or maybe brownies, that and some other smaller things. She was getting rid of it but still eating it, even though it had been in there a long time. I was surprised and somewhat dismayed. She seemed to be enjoying it, though.


I was still tired, and wanted to get some more sleep. I tried to go back to bed, but didn't get to stay there very long it seemed. I was still concerned about the time, too. Then other people started showing up, including the girls, my sisters, who were still children, and my brother. It seemed to be in the early 1970s I guess, maybe even earlier. My father also came home. It somehow seemed to be the next morning. A lot of other people had come, too. We seemed to have somehow merged with another, larger family, and a lot of little kids were around. There were also some people, another family, who just seemed to be staying with us. A few of the kids, including one or more of my sisters, came down the hallway to my bedroom and talked to me briefly. I tiredly got up and talked to them. There weren't many, generally one or two at a time, but my sleep, or my attempting to sleep, was interrupted.

Then a small animal, a tiny one, jumped off the narrow bookcase by the door, jumped off onto the floor, screeching a little. It was a tiny monkey. It jumped on things in the hall a bit. Then I finally started walking down the hall, softly talking to it, including asking if it wanted some food, while it occasionally screeched a little, and went down the hallway, too. I saw that someone had already gotten it some, and had put it on the floor near the other end of the hallway. It was a line of soft sticky-looking meatball-like things with gravy, lined up at an angle, directly on the floor, with some other stuff in front of it, maybe on a little dish, though it didn't seem to be shaped like it was, just a jumble of stuff in a rounded triangle against the line of meatball things. The monkey went to it and picked up one of the meatball things and started eating. I didn't really like it to have its food directly on the floor that way, but I thought, oh well, it'll get it all eaten up anyway, and went on into the kitchen.

The house was a little different now, bigger. The kitchen was larger, and the dining area was much larger, and now seemed to extend all the way behind the kitchen and behind the bathrooms, and I had the impression that we had an extra bedroom or two. My mother was at the kitchen table, which was now in the extended dining area behind the kitchen, even further back, actually behind the bathrooms, though when I initially came in from the hallway it was still where it normally was, beside the kitchen. A lot of kids were around.

My mother had the stuff she had taken out of the refrigerator on the table, and was eating it a little as she worked. Some of the kids were snacking on it, too. She was evidently going to serve it as a means of getting rid of it. I guessed that even though it was pretty old it must still be alright. The table was still where it normally was at this point. She was talking, and the kids were also saying things.

She had a very large cellophane package of cookies, sandwich cookies with one side vanilla and the other side chocolate, not a major brand. It was probably four or five pounds, and was partly eaten. She was going to put it somewhere, I think in a different package, to try to seal it up and preserve it. She went toward the cupboards to get something I think, then the table was in the new position in the now expanded kitchen/dining room. She got another package of the cookies, again partly eaten, from somewhere, maybe the refrigerator, and was looking around for something to seal it with or to put it in. I was saying please, please, don't put it in the refrigerator, remembering how things ended up there, damp and soft. She paused and looked distracted and uncertain, and a little flustered. I suggested I think that she just dump them in a plastic bag and then seal that.


I went out back then. It seemed to be afternoon again, somehow. It was raining. The house, where we were living, was located somewhere else now. It seemed we had recently moved there, and it felt like it was the mid to late 1960s. The house now had a long metal overhang out back, and the water was hitting it and running off the metal in a small stream. The surface of the roof was wavy, at least on top, though it had panels underneath. It didn't seem to fit together very well, and the seams were crooked. Ahead, there was a slope, though it had paths winding back and forth, and bushes. Other houses were around to the sides and below. We seemed to be in a big basin, with sharply slanting sides heading down to a lake. Some other people came out, kids in their teens I think, and we talked a bit.

I was still concerned about the time, and getting back to the shop, even though a whole day had passed now. I guessed I would have to brush my teeth too, though I was still tired and it seemed like a lot of effort. I could feel with my tongue that I was getting a film on them, though. I was concerned about the rain some too, but then it didn't seem to be coming down as hard as it initially seemed, then it was stopping. It felt like it was a place we had only stayed at for a week or so, and then had to move on, that it was, in the dream, another place we had been. I seemed to be looking back at it from a perspective of much later in the future.


My brother came out, smiling, and we started walking down the paths, going to the right because it led that direction. We got to a main aisle that led straight down toward the lake. A lot of people were out now, including a lot of children. The main aisle had an odd surface, a kind of grayish brown dirt that was very smooth and even, and spongy feeling. I had been concerned about it after the rain, and I felt that I was leaving footprints behind, with small ridges of muck sticking up around them, but it didn't feel bad to walk on. I stepped briefly on a small section that felt that it had a broad board, maybe a foot and a half wide, just under the surface. It was very stiff and hard there.

We continued on, going downward toward the lake, talking. My brother seemed very happy. The area was crowded with people and especially kids, to both sides, though not many were on the broad path, and those on it were mostly to the sides. On both sides small aisles met the path, like for rows of seating in a movie theater, and they did seem to have some kind of low seats in them, maybe like folding lawn chairs, with the seats almost on the ground. They were crowded with people, on them and around them, a lot a of them talking. Some of the little kids had pails and toy shovels, and were digging. All around us, in the distance, houses were on the slopes, vegetation around them. Some of the houses weren't too far away, but the area we were walking down now had mostly the broad path with narrow aisles going off it. Eventually we turned around and went back toward the house. We needed to get back for something. Maybe lunch was supposed to be ready by then, or maybe my brother thought that it should be.


After I woke up, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about the dream. Oddly, sometimes I heard and felt little shifts in my mattress, near my head, sometimes feeling it. It was kind of a deep abrupt sound, like cloth moving under a weight and stress. It was alarming at first, as I wasn't sure what was happening, and even when I realized what it was, it bothered me because I didn't know why it was happening, and why it was suddenly happening now.

I eventually drifted back to the dream at least a couple of times, without actually going back to sleep. In one of them, I was out front, with several other people from the house, and we had a very large broad wheelbarrow that was filled to the brim with the odd dirt from the broad aisle. I don't know where we actually got the dirt from, it may have even come from a place out front, or perhaps we got it for a place out front somewhere. It was a surprise to me, though. My brother might have been out there too, I'm not sure. Most of the people were kids, some in their teens. We were talking about it, among other things. We were near the bedrooms, with a line of tall bushes separating us from the main portion of the yard, which was still largely gravel. Like the dirt in the aisle, this dirt too was flattened and very smooth, and was very slightly rounded and curving down slightly at the edges, to the inner surface of the wheelbarrow bin. It filled it, the middle of it going a little higher than the top of it I think.

I had gone around behind it and was holding onto the handles. I now picked it up and started to slowly wheel it toward the other side of the house, intending to put it somewhere else, where it wasn't setting out in the yard. It was evidently something my mother had done, getting the special dirt and then leaving it out there, for some thing she had in mind. It was a little awkward wheeling it through the dirt and small rocks, though the area had narrow places where the rocks had been swept to the sides, leaving little irregular lanes maybe ten or twelve inches wide, almost like ruts, though they were mostly level. I stopped a time or two along the way and rested. The kids continued to talk, sometimes to me and sometimes to each other, and sometimes just making comments in general.

Later, I had another continuation of the dream, where a person like the woman in the movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" showed up, dressed like her even, with a short wide skirt that barely went beyond her hips. She came inside and was talking to some of the people there. She talked rapidly, and was apparently one of the people staying there now, even apparently a relative.

My mother died on November 8, 2010. The part of the dream about my mother finding food in the refrigerator that had been there a long time and needed to be thrown out, but then eating it, apparently refers to the food she had that I saved there, a little tub of partly eaten mashed potatoes from a fast food place, and the paper plate with her fish sandwich from Burger King, with a few french fries and onion rings. She has a few other things in there too. It may be her way of saying that it's time to throw them out, that it's okay. I had finally thrown out a few things, long ago now, and though I thought about what remained frequently, I couldn't quite bring myself to throw any more out yet. Maybe it's time now. I had been intending to throw some out soon, maybe even today. (It didn't happen, though. I kept the food in there.)