This is Home, Part 5 - Uncle Doc chopping wood, baby animals, the baby pig and its mother, trying to put the calf in the wagon, washing clothes, making soap, making cracklins, the lamb in the kitchen, baby chicks, Frankie and the cattle

This is part 5 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Uncle Doc chopping wood

Since we burned wood in the stoves and the cooking stove was used three times a day, Uncle Doc chopped a lot of wood. He used to tell me to stay back at the fence because I could get hit by a flying chip. I wanted to see what he was doing and I kept getting closer. He kept stopping to tell me to move back. He was really pretty patient.

When I offered to chop some because it looked like fun, he chuckled. He was using an axe with a sharp blade on each side of the handle.

I also remember that he cut his foot with the axe one time -- probably thanks to me.

Mom came out and took a picture of us once, but she had both of us move back to the fence.

Baby animals

There are so many fun things to do on a farm. Every spring the bushes and trees burst into bloom. Everything looks like a fairyland. Wild flowers grow along the side of rural roads.

There are baby lambs, baby colts, baby pigs and baby calves. Mom used to take Jean and me to see the baby lambs go in a ring -- one after the other -- around the pond bank. They would run around the pond and every once in awhile several of them would jump to the side with their back feet. They were expressing the joy of being young.

The colt with his long spindly legs, short curly tail, and big eyes could be petted sometimes. After they were a little older, the colt or colts would run around the pasture, kick their heels high and pretend to nip at each other. They would also roll in the grass.

The baby pigs were cute, too, with curly tails like corkscrews, and I always wanted to play with them, but I listened when I was told that the mother pig would get me.

The baby pig and its mother

After asking repeatedly every time I saw the pigs being fed, I finally talked Uncle Doc into letting me hold a baby pig. He had just fed the adult ones and they were all eating. He looked at the mother pig, then grabbed one that was by the fence. He gave it to me to hold. The stupid little pig started screaming the minute he picked it up and didn't stop. No up or down, just one note. The mother pig left the food and came at a dead run towards the fence. Uncle Doc held out his hands and said "Quick, Maudie, give me the pig." He got it back inside the fence and on the ground just in time to stop the mother pig from going through the fence. They are large and very heavy. The fence was wood.

Trying to put the calf in the wagon

One of the milk cows had a cute little calf one time. It was a few days old when I asked Daddy if he would put it in the red wagon I had with me so I could take it to the house and play with it. He told me no, it had to stay with its mother. I was determined, so I asked Charley after he left. Charley said no and left, too. So I decided to do it myself. Unfortunately, I found that I wasn't even strong enough to lift one of its legs into the wagon, no matter how hard I tried, and I did try.

I sat in the wagon myself trying to figure out how to get it there and finally gave up.

Washing clothes

Mom washed clothes once a week. We had a building in the chicken yard that had a washing machine and tubs. When Jean was a baby someone named Bessie came and did the washing.

We used to have three big black caldrons. Bessie used to make a fire under a couple of them and put the white clothes and sheets in boiling water with lye soap in it. She took them out with a stick and put them in the second tub to rinse them. I remember Mom washing small things in the kitchen with a washboard.

There was an interesting thing about Bessie, she didn't want Mom to pay her with money. Bessie said her husband would just take it and get drunk. She wanted food, so Mom fixed a container with a lot of meat and vegetables for her. She wanted "fat back," she told Mom, to cook with beans. Bessie was black and a grandmother. She wore a kerchief over her hair like "Aunt Jemima" on the syrup bottle.

I remember when we got a new gas washer. It had a pull cord like a lawn mower to start it. Mom had a lot of trouble getting it to start. She had a washer with movable rollers that she put the clothes through into the first rinse water, then into the second. Bluing was put in the wash or rinse water, I can't remember which. The bluing made the clothes, sheets, whatever, whiter.

The way she ironed was interesting. She had two or three irons made of iron that she heated by placing them on the stove. Even the handles were iron. She used to use one iron until it started to cool, then put it on the stove and get another one. She sprinkled all the clothes with water and rolled them up tightly before ironing. She let them set awhile. Sometimes, she starched some of the washing. Starch had to be mixed and cooked and the items dipped in it, then wrung out by hand.

She washed a certain day of the week, hung the clothes on the line, then brought them in and ironed and folded them. Then she put them away. Washing took up most of her time that day. It was a big deal. She even ironed sheets and pillow cases. Mom loved the smell of clothes that had been dried outside in the sun and wind. They smell fresh.

Making soap

Mom heated one of the cauldrons to make soap when we needed it. It was lye soap made with lard, wood ashes, lye and I don't know what else. She was proud of how white and mild it was. She cut it into rectangular cakes. It was a lot like ivory.

Aunt Opal and her children were visiting one time and she helped Mom make soap. We had a big, old, black and white dog (Pete) that looked somewhat like a St. Bernard. He slowly followed Aunt Opal around that day and died that night.

Making cracklins

Mom used to also make cracklins. She cooked small, fat pieces of meat until the grease was gone and only a crispy shell was left.

The lamb in the kitchen

It used to snow into the spring sometimes, and the wind was very cold. Sometimes the lambs started coming earlier than they were supposed to and at least two or three had mothers who wouldn't have anything to do with them. They would wind up in a big tub in the kitchen by the fire. Daddy put straw in the bottom of the tub. We usually only had one at a time. The little lamb stumbled around the tub and never stopped going Ba-a-a. I liked being able to pet it but by the middle of the afternoon, Mom was ready to throw it out. She had listened to it almost all day.

The lamb was fed milk in a large round bottle. The bottle was washed by shaking buckshot around in the water. The bottle neck was too long and narrow for any type of brush.

I don't remember how long the lamb had to stay or how we got it to be quiet if it was overnight. Seems to me Jean and I were delighted to find it still there a day or two afterwards.

Baby chicks

Every spring Mom bought five hundred baby chicks. They were cute, soft, yellow and fluffy. She had to make the corners of their brooder house round to keep them from all crowding into a corner and killing themselves. They had a round heater with an extended roof around it so they would be warm under it. Every night at 2:00 or 2:30 a.m. she had to go check them to see if they were okay.

One time Uncle Doc went to town and came back with one hundred pound sacks of feed for the chickens. After carrying them, he had to see the doctor because he had injured his back. He had his back taped up for weeks afterwards. The doctor tried to tell him that sacks weighing a hundred pounds were too much for him, since he only weighed a hundred and thirty pounds himself.

Frankie and the cattle

Daddy's cousin Frank Rice and his wife Valere gave me a little fox terrier when I was a baby. He was born on my birthday. He was small, and white with tan spots and ears. We named him Frankie. When I got him, I was too little to play with him, and later when I tried, he happily went to work with Daddy. Daddy loved dogs and horses. I think he just liked animals. Frankie stood on the wagon looking pleased as Daddy left.

In the winter back home, the cattle have to be fed as they no longer have grass. Daddy and Uncle Doc had a herd of unfriendly Aberdine-Angus (or black Angus as they were called at home). Daddy and Charley were pushing feed for them off the wagon, when Frankie managed to get off on the ground. One of the cattle was ready to go after Frankie when Charley leaped off the wagon to get him and Daddy threatened the cow with a pitchfork.

The herd was started with registered black Aberdine-Angus.

When I was a teenager and used to walk down the road to the mailbox, every time I passed by the pasture where these cattle were, some were always standing under the trees along the road. At least one of them would back up, lower its head, and paw the ground. I used to wonder if they could come through the barbed wire fence. I wasn't even threatened by a bull; they were cows. The bull just ignored me.

This is Home, Part 4 - Fixing the walk, the gardens, getting lost in the corn, the fruit trees, puppies and kittens, the mouse

This is part 4 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Fixing the walk

Uncle Doc and Daddy could do almost anything except mechanical work. When I was little, I remember watching them cut down a tree in the front yard near the sidewalk and front porch. I think it was a peach tree but I'm not sure.

It was a large tree and the roots had got into the ground under the concrete walk and the walk had broken.

After they got it down and removed it, they removed the broken walk, Then they came back and got out one or two rectangular-shaped wooden containers. They were possibly 6 ft. by 4 ft. and flat with short sides. They then got out a couple of sacks about the size of a burlap sack, only these sacks were paper. Inside was a gray powder. They dumped one sack out in each box and got water to add. Then they each started mixing with a hoe. They kept mixing with up and down strokes. I don't remember if they added anything else.

Finally, they put it in something like a wheelbarrow and started replacing the walk. It seems to me that they also put wood along the sides so it would dry with straight edges.

When they drew a line between it and the slab in front and back, I asked why. They said it was because in the winter the ground would freeze and thaw and the concrete might break otherwise.

Funny thing, when it dried, the whole walk fit together as though it had been made at the same time.

I think Daddy and Uncle Doc made all the walks to begin with and, of course, the steps and the platform-type step by the South bedroom, between the porch and the walk, with the date of 1800 something on it.

I used to sit there on the concrete platform on Sunday afternoon with books and papers spread out around me, writing the theme we had to write every weekend one of the years I was in high school.

The gardens

Anyway, I found lots of interesting things to do while Jean was a baby and too little to do anything.

I watched Uncle Doc carry water to water the tomato plants in the garden by the yard and the garage. They were small and he covered them with newspaper pages again after watering them. I helped him put clods on the paper corners so they wouldn't blow away. Then I watched him hoe and got to ask lots of questions. It was interesting to find that potatoes grow under the ground instead of on top like tomatoes.

Preparing the potatoes to plant was interesting, too. Plants or seeds are not planted. Daddy and Uncle Doc brought up a tub of potatoes from the cellar. Then they cut each one into three or four pieces. Each piece had to have an eye -- a place on the potato that is trying to sprout. From each of the pieces a potato plant with new potatoes grows.

Getting lost in the corn

We had four large gardens. One garden was behind the barn lot, next to the pasture where the horses were. One quarter to one third of this garden was planted in corn for the table. This corn had tassels, or corn silk, that could be used for mustaches and hair. The corn itself felt cool and it was soft, not hard like corn for animals.

I used to play like I was lost in a jungle while I walked around in the rows of corn. One day I was really kind of worried for a while.

The fruit trees

The garden behind the garage and past the end of the front yard had several rows of fruit trees that extended the length of the garden. In the spring, they looked so beautiful with pink and white blossoms. It also had a small grape arbor, plus the usual garden produce.

Puppies and kittens

This garden had another special thing. It had a small shed for animals just inside the gate that had a mother dog and puppies in it one year. The pups were tan and so cute. They were clumsy, fell over each other and had big feet they had to grow into. I used to get left over gravy from Mom and give it to them when they were little.

We had baby kittens sometimes, too, but if we found them and brought them to the house to play with, the mother cat carried them away again and hid them until they got older. Then she came to the house with the kittens following her.

We had a lot of cats. Some were at the house (not in the house) and some were at the barn. When Charley milked the cows, he gave the first bucket to the barn cats. He poured it into a big metal pan and they came running from all directions.

The mouse

I used to love mice when I was little. They looked so soft and cute with their pretty gray fur, tiny feet, black nose and black eyes that looked like they were pasted on the outside of their faces.

Every once in awhile we would get one or two in the house. We would hear them running inside the kitchen walls. They would gnaw a little hole in one of the corners and we would see one sneaking across the kitchen floor searching for food after the house was quiet and almost everyone had gone to bed.

I wanted to play with him. But Mom promptly set a trap upstairs and baited it with cheese. I told her that I didn't want her to kill him because she might catch Mickey Mouse. Anyway, I liked him.

Mom said. "Oh, you don't want to do that. He will eat your clothes. If we just leave them, we will have a lot of mice in the house."

One day, I found one just barely moving in Charley's room. I was about to pick him up and play with him when Mom came into the room. She said, "Don't touch him. He is sick or he wouldn't let you pick him up." She took him outside somewhere.

This is Home, Part 3 - Gypsies, hobos and tramps, the new doll, starting the day, the back porch and the carpenter and the bananas

This is part 3 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Gypsies

We had traveling bands of gypsies going through for several years. If they saw a chicken that had escaped from the chicken yard, they had it for supper. They actually traveled in covered wagons with tubs and pans on the sides. Little barefoot children with dark hair and dark eyes ran along behind the wagons with their dogs. Mom hid and told us to stay hidden and not talk, but I peeked.

I wanted her to answer the door. I thought it would be fun to be a gypsy and sit around a campfire at night like Mom said they did. Also, I thought it would be fun to sleep in the covered wagon. Mom said I wouldn't like it if I had to do it.

I think she was right.

Hobos and tramps

We also had tramps going through. Most of them were young men, but some were older. They weren't bad people, just people who had no job or money because of the Depression. They were going to other cities to try to find work.

The tramps didn't want a handout. They asked for food and water, but they wanted to work for it. Sometimes, they asked if they could rest under the tree by the garage. Mom gave the tramps a heaped-up plate of food and coffee or water. I think she was afraid because she was alone with us. Anyway, she rushed outside and put their food on something close to the porch. Then she hurried back in and locked the door. The tramps stayed under the tree by the garage until she went back in, and then they got their food and ate it under the tree. When Daddy and Uncle Doc came home, the tramps offered to chop wood or do any other chore that was needed. Daddy and Uncle Doc let them help, then gave them supper and told them they could sleep in the hay in the barn loft if they wanted to do so. They did if the nights were cool, otherwise they slept under the tree.

Only one tramp came by at a time. We had quite a few stop. I read somewhere years later that if a tramp was given food and allowed to stay and rest, he made a mark on a tree or something so others would know to stop there.

During that time we never had anything stolen or any problems with them. Imagine handing a stranger an axe today!

The new doll

When I was little, Daddy used to bring me home little dresses with matching purse and underpants when he went to Moberly after something. Jean was a baby.

One time when we all went, Daddy told me he would buy me a doll. He took me into the basement of Montgomery Wards. There were so many dolls and toys. I picked one that was almost as big as I could carry. Daddy tried to talk me into a small one. He said the large one was too big for me, but I insisted and kept picking it back up, so he smiled and I went home with "The Big Brand New," as I called it.

I had a lot of toys -- plush bears, dogs, a cat I called a skunk and others. I also had a lot of dolls. I had two doll buggies and at least three or four rocking chairs. We had green metal cook stoves, metal pans and several sets of dishes -- breakable ones. When Jean was a baby but old enough to walk, I came in as she stood breaking one of my dishes by dropping it. She was laughing at the noise it made as it joined one or two others on the floor.

I loved shoes, so I had several. I had a maroon colored coat with a curly gray fur collar, matching cuffs, a matching muff of maroon with gray fur, and a matching cap also.

We were luckier than a lot of people were because Daddy and Uncle Doc never bought things they couldn't pay for at the time of purchase, so they didn't owe on anything. The farm, the house, other buildings, animals, machinery, and crops were all theirs. Of course, farmers need to sell some of the animals and crops they raise in order to have an income. They also need to buy seed.

Daddy and Uncle Doc owned the farm together. Daddy owned more of it because while Uncle Doc was off teaching school for 18 years he bought more land. They got along surprisingly well. They never argued. In fact, no one argued or raised their voices at home. Sometimes, I heard someone grumbling to himself or herself about something someone had done, but it was unusual. They didn't complain to each other. The farm was large enough for everyone to be at peace.

Starting the day

Mom and Daddy both had happy, upbeat personalities. I used to wake up to the smell of coffee and breakfast. I loved the early morning. The sunlight through the living room window looked so pretty on the ivory wall behind the console radio. If I happened to wake up before Mom was through fixing breakfast, I went out in the front yard and admired the drops of dew on the grass and flowers. I got to swing awhile under the Mulberry tree. Everyone got up at 4:00 or 4:30 a.m. during the summer. Before breakfast, Daddy, Charley and Uncle Doc had already done all the chores at the barn. Mom always made biscuits, fried meat, cooked eggs and had some kind of cereal. There was always home made butter plus several kinds of preserves that Mom had canned. Usually molasses and/or honey, also. I almost forgot the gravy.

Everyone at the table used to laugh and talk. Daddy put about four teaspoons of sugar in his coffee. One time he wanted to put some in Mom's. I remember her laughing and saying "Ernest" while she moved her cup. She only put milk in hers. Uncle Doc drank tea instead. It was a happy start to the day.

Daddy had a unique way of fixing his cereal. If it was a dry cereal like Wheaties, he put a few teaspoons of his sweetened coffee on it. If it was something like oats, he just put sugar. I followed his example with only a few teaspoons of his sweetened coffee or only sugar on oats.

The back porch, the carpenter and the bananas

The house had no back porch to begin with. A carpenter came and added it on when I was very young. He screened it in. In spite of Mom trying to keep me away, I followed him around and talked to him about what he was doing. He told her it didn't bother him. He found out I liked bananas, so every day he brought me a banana. A really nice man. I think his name was Vanskike. I just realized -- do you suppose he was trying to shut me up for a while?

The small porch and the hall door faced the road. There was a concrete walk to the road and two or three steps down from the porch to the walk. More steps on the end by the road.

The hall had an unusual and pretty thing hanging on the wall. It was a large, thick gathering of Peacock feathers. It was fastened around the base. The feathers were beautiful and soft.

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.

National Novel Writing Month 2012 - Winner!

I was a winner for National Novel Writing Month 2012, meaning that I managed to write a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month (November). I completed it, at least the rough draft, on November 20, 2012, but didn't validate it at the website until November 26, 2012. The Open Office word processor, which I wrote it in, put the word count at 50,147, much less than last year's 60,973, and the website put the word count at apparently the same, which is unusual since there has normally been at least some difference. The book for 2012 was a sequel of the 2011, 2010 and 2009 ones. I joined National Novel Writing Month [ nanowrimo.org ] on March 20, 2009, as user Stephen_M_99.

The novels' word counts, mine and the website's, and the date the novel was finished:

2012: 50,147 and 50,147, November 20, 2012
2011: 60,973 and 60,977, November 21, 2011
2010: 53,076 and 53,077, November 26, 2010
2009: 52,110 and 52,111, November 28, 2009

Below are the winner web badge images for this year. If forced to make a choice, I would probably choose one of the bigger ones, without the brains.

My novel is science fiction, and though I did not put a synopsis or excerpt in the Novel Info section this time, here they are for this post:

Synopsis:
The time traveler-in-training finds himself in another dimension where reality is more pliable, and thoughts can sometimes become real, even hidden thoughts, and even good intentions can have unforeseen consquences.


Excerpt:
"Maybe nobody's here," she said. "Maybe it's abandoned."

"Maybe. But even if that's true, there should be something interesting here." Jack reached out to the door to knock on it, but as he touched it it swung open a little. He paused, and they looked at each other. Then Jack pushed slowly at the door, and it swung open the rest of the way, revealing a young man sitting at a desk across the small room from them, reading a magazine. He looked up from it in surprise.

"Hello," Jack said. "Do you have a room?"

The young man looked at them blankly, then said, "Oh, a room. You want a room. Of course. Of course I have a room." He glanced down at the magazine and hastily closed it, then stuck it in one of the desk drawers. He got up and looked at Jack, and said, "You're pretty tall, but I think I have a bed that'll fit you. Yes, I'm sure you'll fit." He turned to a line of keys on hooks on the wall behind him. "Yes, room 6, that's it. Room 6. That one has the bed." He took the key down and tossed it to Jack, who caught it

Jack looked it over numbly, then looked back up and said, "The tag says 666. You said room 6."

"Yes, that's it. The stamper kind of stuttered on it. Pay it no mind." He started to walk around from behind the desk. "I'll show you to it."

"Do you get many people here?" she said, from beside Jack, her voice sounding artificially bright.

"People? No not really. In fact, I can't remember the last person who was here." He paused in his walking. "Strange, isn't it? You'd think I'd remember a thing like that. Strange. Oh well, at least you're here!" he finished brightly. He started walking forward again, and went past them, heading for the door, when he suddenly seemed to turn, twist around, and Jack felt a sharp pain on the back of his lower leg, just below the knee...



The previous years' novels:

National Novel Writing Month 2011 - Winner!
National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Winner!
National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner!

Dream - I drive back to Nevada, then through town behind things, a woman's voice worries that the military might object, I see dead patients and the skins of faces in the windows of a hospital, I go inside but people try to capture me, I go out with my car following, and a woman also, and my car and I get into a fight with people sent after us

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went back to Fallon, Nevada. It was late at night. I was driving the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile. I went just outside of town along behind it, and then started going down an alley thickly paved with dust and gravel, going west, running parallel to the main road through town. I went all the way back to the end. It seemed I had done it before, maybe on an earlier trip. Early on someone was commenting on it, someone outside the car, who I somehow clearly heard, maybe a woman, worrying about it, about whether the military might be upset about it. I discounted it some, mainly on the basis that I probably wouldn't be noticed.

At the west end of town there was a big building, one story probably. It seemed to be a hospital as well as other things. The dream seemed to replay that segment a few times. Finally I was driving along it looking at huge windows facing the alley, lined with patients in beds, tilted up some to face the window. I was slowly driving along looking at them, then their faces were near the window, and as I went along looking at them I suddenly realized they were all dead. Then I went by a series of smaller windows, though still picture window size, that had a series of almost flat, collapsed, almost featureless pale leather skins, and I realized it was the skin of faces of people. The voice had still been worrying, but was not as loud, though it still seemed close.

At the end of the building I went inside, as I had done before in some earlier replays. I think the car may have come in too, a little ways, but then I was on foot and going down a corridor, lined with pictures, watercolors perhaps. An occasional person went by, dressed in hospital/laboratory white.

Then there was a bit of a commotion. I had been noticed. Some military officer, maybe a general, was after me, wanted me captured. I quickly retreated, going back and turning at the end to go down the other short corridors, winding. I came across my car, which was somewhat smaller, and it followed me. A woman, maybe in her thirties, started tagging along, at a distance.

I got outside, and the car was still following along, hovering in the air. I didn't have time to get in it. I got a ways out, going along some gravel roads, without buildings, not very far. Then I got into a fight with people who had either been following me or whom I had come across here, maybe partly both. The woman was worrying about things, about the fight. I was fighting one of them and a little ways off the car was fighting the other. The car was much smaller now, maybe six feet long. It got on top the person and was beating at him with its front wheels. He was on his back on the ground and seemed to be getting the worst of it, though he tried to fight back. One time when it seemed he was beaten he suddenly started throwing a lot of hard punches at the car's front, seeming to cause some damage, though I couldn't see it from the angle I was looking as a disembodied presence. My physical body was busy fighting with the other person, successfully so it seemed. My attention was almost entirely on the car and the fight there. The car itself was a little flexible, like a cartoon car. It started fighting back hard then, coming down on the man over and over with its wheels, punching him with them.

The car finally got off him. The woman was worried about the man and went to him, saying that they needed to get him to the hospital. He had been through such things before and come out alright. Then she poked at his chest while he lay there still, and the chest went in some with the sound of breaking glass, but came back out. She paused, staring at it, and said, "Well, maybe not this bad...."


Note: Late that night, maybe around 1:30 AM, June 22, 2010 (I originally wrote 13:30 AM, which would be incorrect; it must have been 1:30 or 12:30), when my mother got up off the couch she knocked her glass off the little table and it fell on the floor and shattered, with the sound of breaking glass, similar in sound probably to what was in my dream, though my dream happened first.

Dream - I go to a bookstore in a small town and meet an author, then go back again when his book is out, but they are having a mystery game and I have trouble finding the book, and then a man rides through the sky on a bicycle with a parasol, and floats down on an inflatable mattress beside a woman

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went to a little bookstore in a small town outside of Phoenix, maybe Wickenburg, though it felt like it was more to the north rather than northeast. I was at the counter talking to someone, telling the person about a book I had bought by one author, and then another book by another author, I think Robert Heinlein. I was holding the books in my hands, first one then the other, then a person to the side suddenly perked up and said it was him. I was surprised he was there, and glad to meet him [in real life he has been dead for quite a while, but I didn't think of it in the dream]. He had another book that was going to be out soon, "The Green [something or other]" I think, and I was going to come back then and get it.

Then it was a few days later, and I was going to go to the radiator shop. My father had already left. He looked a lot younger, like he was in his early forties. My mother looked younger too, by a similar amount. I decided to stop by the bookstore first, and drove out to the little town. I got there before 8:00 AM, maybe around 7:45. I parked in the street beside it, alongside the sidewalk, parallel parking. I thought it was too early, that it probably wasn't open yet, and I would have to wait awhile. I thought about sleeping a little in the car, and worried some about being told to leave by a policeman if I did that, or even sat too long in my car. Then I looked over at the window of the store, peering at it, and saw its hours, and it was open already after all, or seemed to be.

I got out and went in and looked around. It was different than it had been, with a lot more rooms, and a lot less books. They were doing some kind of game now too, evidently for the special occasion of the book coming out, though it was evidently something they did periodically anyway. It was some kind of mystery story thing, where the participants were supposed to solve a crime. A series of fake murders were going to happen among the guests, or apparent guests. I wandered around through the various rooms, sometimes going outside too. Some of the rooms had books along one side, others didn't have much in the way of books, sometimes some back in cabinets or on little tables, or small open shelves, or displays of other things. Sometimes another body was found, sometimes inside and sometimes outside. There was some worry too over whether it was a real murder or whether the person was just pretending. I know there was talk about waiting for the sheriff to come, but it might have been part of the game, even if it was the real sheriff.

The place had an upstairs now too, with more rooms to look through. In one room, I'm not sure if it was upstairs or downstairs, one of the owners was cooking something in a kitchen area that was set along one wall. I think I talked to her a bit. In one of the rooms I looked through, a small room, I saw some children talking to each other. They paused when I opened the door. I also found some in a closet that had a floor a couple or so feet higher than the floor of the room.

This was taking a long time, and I worried about getting back to the radiator shop, that I would be needed for something and not be there. It got later and later, getting into the afternoon. I was having trouble finding the book, and wondered if they had actually gotten any copies of it yet.

At one point, late in the afternoon I think, I stepped out on the wooden railing of a balcony that overlooked the first floor, actually floating up to it as I reached my legs up to it, and floated just over it and then stepped off, floating over the balcony and down to the first floor, and I think even then to the outside, to some landscaping against the building. I was happy and amused. I wanted to impress the people around me, and it felt enjoyable to float like that, but they were initially concerned about it, afraid I was going to go over the balcony and fall and get hurt.

I might have gone back inside then, but I'm not sure. It seems I wandered around a bit outside then, but it's possible I went back in later. The outside was not as it had been earlier, even earlier that day. There was a lot more room around the building, which was a lot bigger than it had been. I'm not sure I ever found a copy of the book, though it seems I might have.

It got later, getting toward night. A person went up in the sky, sailing with fireworks going off around him, right next to him, and riding a bicycle and carrying a parasol I think. Then he was coming down very slowly, to cheers from the watching crowd. The man, who had originally been dressed, was now laying on his back naked on an inflatable mattress, a smiling naked women beside him, completely revealed, turned slightly to the side, her legs up slightly. The man was also smiling, like the woman. They almost seemed like animated ink drawings at this point. They drifted in the air on the inflatable mattress, like a leaf, the crowd cheering. They finally got to the ground, and I think then wrapped something at least partly around themselves, still smiling, the crowd still cheering.

I had been watching it with someone, a small group of people actually. We had been commenting on it. It was almost dark now. We left, on bicycles I think, and went toward the edge of town, which was not far away. There was a railroad yard there, with some tanker cars. Someone was also there, maybe more then one person, and it felt more sinister now, like they were plotting against us, planning to get us. I think they ran though, not wanting to confront us directly.

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 - A hand comes from behind my computer, pointing at the screen

On Saturday, June 19, 2010, around 4:00-4:30 PM, I was sleeping at the computer with the radio off. I dreamed I was waiting for the Yahoo email page to update itself, as the computer was running really slow and near the end of its resources (as it was in real life before I fell asleep), and after a while a hand came from around the computer screen and was pointing at where I had been moving the cursor, though it was now off more to the side. The hand seemed to be saying it knew what I had been doing and maybe even suggesting I move the cursor over there again. I wondered how it could know what I was doing. I think I had just been moving my own hand over there on the screen, looking at some items in the list, pointing at them with my fingers. How could the computer know what I had been doing with my hand? With the mouse pointer I could understand, but my hand was not part of the computer.

Then I swiveled my chest around to the right so I was facing toward the street and the computer on the other desk/table (I had two computers in the dream), and was looking at that one. It also had my email list on the screen, with some items cheeked, for possible deletion. I had forgotten that I had it on and the email on the screen on that one too. It had apparently been on since yesterday, tying up the phone line. I had forgotten all about it. I looked at the email there for a while, including moving the mouse to hover over the addresses and subjects, to cause them to expand into little windows, so I could see what they really were. I didn't want to actually do anything to it on this computer now, though, since I was also in the email on the other computer, and it would probably confuse the system, with undesirable results. It seems something odd was happening there too, something strange, but I don't remember what.

I went back to the first computer and started working there again, maybe calling up something else instead of the email, I'm not sure. After a while the hand came around the screen again. I moved my head back, staring at it. It seemed confusing. Could it be my hand? No, there were three hands.

I finally grabbed it and was pulling on it. After a bit of a struggle I pulled a short skinny man out from behind the computer, maybe five to five and a half feet tall, hippie looking, long brown hair parted in the middle and a short beard. He walked quickly out of the room, looking a little scared. I wondered if I should have held onto to him, should maybe go after him and try to catch him, but it seemed too much trouble. I was too tired, could hardly keep my eyes open.

I woke up then, and things were normal. When I closed my eyes a little while later though, I could see, on a background of lesser red, a ball of red particles, not large, turning and swirling, dense in the middle and with wider spaced particles circling it. It seemed almost like some kind of fireworks display. I watched it for a while, sometimes opening my eyes and closing them again, then went back to fiddling with the slow computer.


Note: Prince Charming, the cat, died around a day or so later, and was found in the cat room at my sister's house, wedged behind some things with a paw sticking out, which is reminiscent of the hand sticking out from behind the computer screen.

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 narrow valleys and the steep mountain ridges, and the dark funnel cloud that passed over my home

On Saturday, June 12, 2010, around 6:30-9:30 PM, I dreamed I was at home with my mother, who looked younger, maybe in her forties or fifties, but sometimes I went to the south, across a series of brown dirt mountain ridges, steep but not very tall. Sometimes there were more mountain ridges than at other times. I was going to a place associated with work, the work in Nevada, something to do with secret stuff I think and testing things, and maybe to some extent with bombing from planes. It all took place in a valley between the ridges, at least most of it. The valley was just a narrow crevice between the ridges, as the other valleys between the ridges were.

Then, at home, I was in my bedroom with my mother, talking to her. It was in the afternoon I think, Saturday or Sunday. Going to the window and pulling the curtains aside a bit, I saw outside a tall, black, funnel-shaped cloud not far away, to the north, and heading this way. It was coming fast. I told my mother about it and went back and looked out the window again at it. It was here already, things were falling down on the house in front of the window. I heard the impacts, mostly ash and cinders and things like clumps of gray-white burned charcoal almost the size of my fist.

My mother was trying to contact somebody about it, using a little device like an iPod in appearance. I tried to use a similar thing. I think the radio in the room had been on too. She got somebody but then lost the connection, and was saying something like, "Ohhhhh, they're gone, I've lost the connection," in an irritated manner. I had managed to get somebody on my device, and I wondered if I had interfered with her device, that they used the same phone connection and it wasn't able to keep them both going at once. The radio in the room was on a separate connection, the original phone connection, but the little device used a second one that was somehow set up.

Then my connection was gone and hers was back. The people she was talking to said they didn't have any records of what she was reporting, and so far no one else was reporting it, and gave other possible explanations, ones that didn't really make any sense, and sounded really patronizing. I suggested that maybe she should contact a TV station, that maybe they would have heard some reports. Considering the situation, since the people had said there were no reports, it seemed likely that the source of it might be very close, in the neighborhood, maybe no more than a few streets over, or even the next street over.

I tried to go out and find out more about it, and I went back over the mountain ridges to where I had been, in the very narrow valley, and it was starting to go over the ridge to it, but paused at the top of the ridge for a while, sometimes going partly down the side of the mountain and then retreating and going back up. A plane flew low over it and slightly between the ridges, above me, checking on it apparently, and it seemed the dark funnel cloud might be part of some test that was being done, somewhere over in the next narrow valley to the north, a valley that I had passed over to get here. It seemed confusing, though. I didn't know how the dark cloud could have passed over my house that way, if it had originated out here, well to the south of it, and it was going south as it passed over the house.

There was also something brief then about scientists in white working in laboratories, just a few of them, and hearing them talk about it a little, apparently working on it, and I was looking in from way above them, apparently viewing them, directed to them by someone else, but not actually physically being there.


Note: The dream was probably influenced by seeing on the CBS News at 6:00 PM, which I saw part of, the burning of part of the oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, which produced a tall slanted funnel-shaped cloud, very black.

Dream - The house with the narrow bridge, running from the Air Force, who thinks I'm an alien, then aliens are in my backyard and then in the kitchen

On Tuesday, June 8, 2010, around 10:00 AM-1:00 PM, I dreamed it was night, and I was driving along, though I think sometimes I was also walking. I was going to the far east side of the Phoenix area, deep into Mesa or Chandler probably, through a residential area on a major road. I think that someone else was with me, maybe in a different car. I believe I went through this area more than once in the dream.

Going back and forth, I eventually centered on and went to a house that had a long narrow raised bridge to the mailbox at the sidewalk, just a footpath. I walked up to the house with my mother and one or two other people. We walked around the house and in the doorways. I think it had two or three of them, at different places. The light was pretty dim. There were a few lights around the house, but they seemed almost decorative, and didn't put out much light. We went around the back to go in. I don't think people were there at first, but they came and invited us in. It was a large house with a large front yard, and sometimes looked a bit medieval from the front. It was fairly elaborate though, like something that might be owned by a wealthy person.

Someone may have commented on the narrow bridge to the mailbox out at the sidewalk, perhaps even me. In any case, it somehow got into the discussion. It was a rural style mailbox, on a post. The yard was several feet under the bridge, maybe as much as six feet or more in some areas, but the ground was irregular and rocky, with some water in some places I think, and partly covered by either an extremely low grass or a low moss. I guess I volunteered to go check the mail, to use the bridge going out to it. I guess I was just trying to show that I could do it, but I was a little uncertain about it, actually. I managed to walk out to the mailbox, with some hesitations along the way, but it seemed much narrower going back and I ended up hugging the bridge, not even sure I could proceed. The owner of the house kept encouraging me, and I did eventually make it back, though it was a long process. I may have done this more than once, I'm not sure.

I came back later, in the daytime, to have my legs and feet examined, to see if they were alright because of a past problem. The dog had scratched them earlier, but my legs and feet had looked alright. Now I found they had long massive open splits, gouges. The doctor, who both evidently lived at the house and had offices there, looked at my mother first. My father was also there, I think, and my brother, accompanying us. I tried to get the doctor's attention and show him my legs and feet and explain about the dog, but he looked briefly at them and nodded and said that can happen, and went back to working on my mother. I wandered back out. It was a square building, not overly large, and looked different than it had in the dark. In fact, at night sometimes it had seemed fairly large, though still square in shape. The yard even looked normal now, smaller and more of a normal size, and flat with normal grass, and it had a hedge separating it from its neighbor. We finally left.

Later, I went back to the house with the narrow bridge. It was getting late in the day. I thought it would be the doctor's house, but it had somebody else, a doctor who substitutes for him. I was there for a while. Supper was being fixed and I was offered to stay and have some, but I declined and said I had to leave. I went out, heading for the back, past a room where a couple of men, friends of theirs, were watching TV, and maybe playing cards. They also offered to have me stay, but I went on. They got up then, and started to leave the room, going the way I had come. It was time to have supper.

I continued making my way to the back. It was getting more complicated than before. There were more rooms and it was spread out more, and people were coming and going, through big glass doors, two or three layers of them, with small entryways in between. A woman asked if she could help and took me off to the side, to other rooms to take and exit from them eventually I guess. Some other people came in and passed through I guess, coming from the back. It seemed almost like some kind of business now, maybe part of a shopping center or large store, like a home improvement store. I wasn't sure this was the right way to go, where she had taken me. It might have been better trying to exit the other way. Some doors seemed to lead in that direction, to the back, from the relatively small room I was in, but there seemed to be other rooms in the way, and I wasn't sure I could get to the exit from them. I evidently got out eventually, but I'm not sure how.


Also, somewhere in the dream, I was gliding low over the parking lot of what was apparently a shopping center. I had driven in at night and parked there, going to the right around a long narrow feature. It seemed to be low concrete walls with a gap in the middle with a deep trench, with landscaping below, and some very small narrow arched bridges/footpaths over it. After parking I went up in the air and glided over things, going vaguely in the direction of the shopping center or whatever it was. It was late at night and I think closed. I expected it to be. There were lots of cars in the parking lots though. I may have been just exploring, or going by the shopping center to somewhere else, maybe trying to get home or to someplace I could stay for the night, when I got distracted by it.

I passed by a raised area with a military installation, Air Force I think. It had a big hill on one side that people had to go up, trainees at least, to an office at the top, where they were approved to reenter the base. Instead of going up the steep, paved, one lane road, I glided along it for a bit, then glided over the low concrete wall and went beside it, up the hillside, filled with rock outcroppings and brush, gliding low over it. A soldier with a mounted machine gun was looking out a window in a concrete wall, watching things, guarding the place. He reported what I was doing, and seemed uncertain about what to do. They radioed back to keep watch on me I think, and report on what I was doing, while they sent other people to try and capture me. I got in anyway, in the main building, staying mostly behind some shelves.

While there, I heard them talking about me and asking if they had found me. The soldier that had come in was saying that they had lost sight of me, but believed that I had gotten in the building. The officers seemed to believe I was an alien, from outer space, and had to be captured or killed.

Meanwhile, other soldiers were looking at me funny. They didn't recognize me. I hoped they would assume I was one of the new recruits. I tried to assume that role, and act like I was one. I eventually had to go to the other side of the shelves, where the officers were talking. I tried to be clumsy at things, and not know what I was doing, trying to act the part of an ignorant recruit. They had paused when I came around the shelves, and looked at me, then resumed talking. When I was making mistakes they stopped again, and one of the officers finally tried to correct me, saying, "Soldier, I know you are new..." or something like that, and then giving me advice. They got suspicious of me at some point though, and I had to escape.

I went back again later, gliding up the hill again. They responded faster, though, and I don't think I got back inside, instead going down the other side of the hill and then over things, in a kind of convoluted path, trying to elude them, and finally going back into the parking lot of the shopping center, which looked a little different. It had more cars, too, I think. It was full of them. Some of the details of the lot were different, too. It still had the long narrow trench with its low concrete walls and landscaping, though it didn't look exactly the same. It all looked pretty familiar for the most part though, and I was saying to myself, I remember this and this and this...

The soldiers were quite a ways behind me, back closer to the shopping center or whatever it was, but they were coming my way. I could hear them on their radios, like my mind was tuned into them. Sometimes they saw me and sometimes they didn't. I needed to get to my car, find where I parked it and get away. It was somewhere on the other side of the trench. The parking lot sloped uphill here, away from the shopping center. I needed to get over the trench, glide over it like before, or around it. I think I was getting past the trench but soldiers were starting to appear at different spots around the parking lot, maybe as close as 40 or 50 feet. I might not be able to go directly to my car. I didn't want them to know where it was, or get in the way when I tried to leave. I started to move in more of a curved zigzag, trying to draw them away and also escape from them.


Then, later, I was at home, in the kitchen and dining room area, wandering back and forth, talking to my mother, who was in the dining room standing near the kitchen table I think, working on papers. Looking out back, through the window in the door to the backyard, while standing in the kitchen, I saw an alien in the backyard. It went behind a bunch of things there, mainly a jumbled stack of pale boxes, not very wide, but with some other things around it and mixed in too. It was like a demon sheep, like the political ad featuring a human in a sheep costume. It was behind the things peering out, dark eyes looking at me, talking to me with a strange, high, Mickey Mouse-like voice, sometimes barely audible. It seemed to want to be friendly, and to some extent I tried to be, but it was also frightening, terrifying, especially when I looked at it, and its eyes.

I was in the kitchen talking to my mother about it, who was in the dining room I think. I kept coming back to the window in the door and looking out. Sometimes I could see it and sometimes I couldn't. It seemed to be playing hide and seek with me, peering out now and then, sometimes coming back to the things in the middle of the yard that it was hiding behind, like it repeatedly left and then came back. I wasn't sure if it was just one or if there were several of them out there.

Then the alien was in the kitchen, behind a pile of boxes made of thin cardboard, that hadn't been there before. I told my mother about it and she came in the kitchen and looked. The alien was singing a song, faintly, a popular song. I thought it liked me and was trying to be friendly, but at the same time it was shy and a little scared of me. I tried to look behind the boxes and see it, or them, but though I had initially seen it peering out briefly earlier, it seemed to move around behind them or inside the pile, like the pile was partially hollow, and I couldn't find it. The singing was trailing off and as I looked I came to feel that it or they were gone. I straightened up and told my mother I thought that they were gone.

Then we were warned by a man who was an alien in disguise, to stop calling aliens. He came to the carport door and then into the house. He was tall and skinny and angular and a little stooped I think, and very ominous and threatening, or at least he was trying to be. I wasn't sure how much he could really do, or what connection he had with the earlier aliens, though he seemed to have a connection of some kind, maybe only peripheral. I wasn't sure, too, how the earlier aliens felt about it, or about him, and how much influence he had over them. It might be that they themselves would be scared off by him, though I wasn't sure about that. I wasn't sure how safe it would be for us to continue with it, though, or how wise it would be to do so.

Dream - My grandmother returns, much younger, and is well-liked by people, and some party-goers try to leave babies with us

On Sunday, June 6, 2010, around 5:00-7:00 PM, I dreamed I was at home, with my mother. It was probably sometime in the afternoon. An enormous number of people had gathered outside, on the sidewalk and in the driveway and along the walk that went from the driveway to the front door. Cars were also parked along the street. Somebody, apparently the neighbors to the left of us, to the west, were going to have a party. Some of the people were at our door. When it was opened, probably by my mother, some people wanted to leave two babies with us while they went to the party.

Looking out, I saw along the line of people on the walk to the door, against the railing that ran along the outer side of the walk (the house doesn't have such a railing in real life), a woman in somewhat old fashioned clothes, talking to the others. She was against the railing with the others, with her back to it I think, about halfway along the walk. She was smiling and talking and the people on each side of her were also smiling, and also sometimes talking. She seemed to be the center of attention. She was wearing a soft blouse that had a pink and white flowered pattern, with long puffy sleeves, and I think a light gray-green skirt. I knew immediately that she was my grandmother, although she was much younger than when I knew her and only looked a little like her, because when I had known her she had been much older.

When I went out, she immediately turned and left, walking west to the driveway, then down the driveway to the sidewalk, then turning right and going east, walking past the people there gathered in front of the cars, and seeming to disappear into them after about ten or twelve feet. I walked out onto the walk by the house. Some of the women there were saying what a nice person she was and wondering who she was. Smiling broadly I said, looking out, trying to find her, "She's my grandmother who ... died ... several years ago."

They started to thin out some after that, with a lot of discussion and murmuring. I walked partway down the driveway, most of the way to the sidewalk, looking out at where she had been, hoping to find her. There was just the crowd of people on the sidewalk, though. She seemed to be gone. Turning around, still smiling broadly, I headed back up the driveway. People were talking about it, about her being a ghost. My mother had come out, and was on the walk by the house. I said something about there being other supernatural things going on, and my mother, off to the side on the walk, perhaps eight or ten feet from me, was agreeing, and the people were talking about it with each other, and I said loudly something like, "Yes, and there's also the ghosts of the animals ..." A lot more people were leaving now, and the area was thinning out pretty quickly. I had been heading up the carport now, and considered whether to go in through the carport door, but turned and went back to the front door. There were still perhaps eight or ten people there, most of them around the door, most of them young women. I had hoped that the problem with the babies was taken care of, but they were still trying to leave one of them. I managed to get by the group, which spilled over through the doorway and partway inside the house, talking to them a little as I went.

I found that the baby had already been taken in the house. I was somewhat surprised, as I thought it was still out by the door. A young blond man had evidently been assigned the task, or had taken it upon himself. I saw him sitting cross-legged, holding the baby, up on the wall near the ceiling, on the wall that ran by the carport, near the corner with the front wall. I gently and somewhat maliciously said that sometimes things like this happened in the house, and asked him if he knew where he was. I crept up on the wall several feet away from him, on the other side of the old organ, while saying that most of the time, though, you did it yourself, you could just go up the wall, clinging to things, it didn't matter if your clothes were in the way or not, or if something else was in the way, you just reached out and touched them. I demonstrated, with both my bare fingers and my knee that was covered by my pants clinging when they touched the wall, or even to a heavy cloth that was in the way, something that was covering part of the organ. Meanwhile, he was looking uncertain, and somewhat upset, and managed to make his way down to the floor. I thought he might be scared enough to leave, but he put down the baby, on a chair I think, and went over to the hallway, still looking uncertain and upset, and finally turned and left, going out the front door, but leaving the baby. I went over to it and picked it up. My mother had come in and I think I said something to her about it. She went to the kitchen and we talked back and forth then, from our separate rooms. Two or three other people had also come in I think, but they went out of the living room, to the kitchen or other rooms.

The baby had a little plastic bottle that was mostly empty, that it had been holding to its mouth. I picked the baby up and tried to hold the bottle better for it, tipping it up more to its mouth. It fussed a little and started to cry some, but then quieted down. I walked around with it, sometimes talking to it and sometimes to my mother. I tried to set it down on the couch, but it started to cry again, and I bent down to it, and tried to distract it. I hoped they were coming back for it later, but I wasn't sure and was afraid it might be permanent.


I was gradually awakened, brought to awareness, by continued banging sounds, like someone distantly banging on a door with his fists. I think it was just part of the dream, though.

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.