Dream - A visit with a leprechaun

On September 10, 2010, Friday evening/night, or maybe morning, I dreamed there was a skinny little man, maybe four or five feet high, with short dark curly hair, and a very short small beard. He was wearing a pale suit, open, with maybe a small bow tie, and a pale hat, something like a fedora. He was in a room in a house I visited I think. He was standing on something, maybe a low bed, that was unmade and close to the floor, maybe just a pad on the floor that was used as a bed. He tended to be facing to my left. We talked for a bit, from where I was, next to or in the doorway. He was a leprechaun of some kind, I felt. He seemed slightly upset, bothered by something, and kept moving his feet back and forth, in a kind of half pacing motion, while staying basically where he was.

I had come to the place where he was, from somewhere outside. I had been talking to some other people about something. It seemed that I almost expected to see him, but was still a little surprised. Perhaps I hadn't really expected him there, though I think I had expected to see someone, that I had gone there to do so, to check with someone about something, who should know something about what we were trying to find out.

I think I might have seen the leprechaun somewhere in the past years ago, in the past as remembered in the dream. It was not his room or his house, and I think he expected to be gone before the person whose room it was showed up. At least part of his nervousness seemed to be due to that, anxiety over the person coming back.

A lot happened earlier that I don't remember.

400th post

This is the 400th post on this blog. It took a little over three years to put the last hundred posts on, quite a bit longer than the previous hundred. Some major events that happened in the last hundred posts were the posting of a long series of events from my life, mostly early life and mostly involving my grandparent's farm (The house on the highway), and the posting of what I said at my mother's funeral, and other posts about my mother, and I started the posting of my mother's book about her life. I also did three small novels for National Novel Writing Month in that time, and posted short excerpts from them. Regrettably, the Wordzzle posts, the posts with stories made from lists of words, ended partway through 2010, as due to illness I became unable to continue them.


Some of these posts can be found here:

What I said at my mother's funeral (Tuesday, March 01, 2011)

The cat that came back (Tuesday, March 15, 2011)

Dream - My mother and the cat that came back (Tuesday, March 22, 2011)

Dreams and visions of my mother (Saturday, May 07, 2011)


Dream - James Bond and the picture of the rose (Saturday, May 07, 2011)

"Until we meet again" (Saturday, May 07, 2011)

Two, two, two comic books in one! (Monday, June 27, 2011)


The house on the highway, Part 1 (Monday, February 28, 2011)

The house on the highway, Part 2 (Monday, February 28, 2011)

The house on the highway, Part 3 (Monday, February 28, 2011)

The house on the highway, Part 4 (Monday, February 28, 2011)

The house on the highway, Part 5 (Monday, February 28, 2011)

The house on the highway, Part 6 - Some things I missed (Friday, June 24, 2011)


This is Home, Part 1 - My mother's parents, and the rug with the rabbits with the glass eyes (Tuesday, January 15, 2013)

This is Home, Part 2 - Uncle Doc, Charley, the farm house, the log cabin (Saturday, February 02, 2013)

This is Home, Part 3 - Gypsies, hobos and tramps, the new doll, starting the day, the back porch and the carpenter and the bananas (Saturday, February 02, 2013)

This is Home, Part 4 - Fixing the walk, the gardens, getting lost in the corn, the fruit trees, puppies and kittens, the mouse (Sunday, February 10, 2013)

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 (Sunday, February 10, 2013)

This is Home, Part 6 - The Tuley Hill, the Old Home Place, spring, spring cleaning, wallpapering the rooms and Mom, the ice box, the ice house (Sunday, March 03, 2013)

This is Home, Part 7 - Plowing with Japie, Little Tony, Grandpa, Buster and Rowdy, Tony (Sunday, March 03, 2013)

This is Home, Part 8 - The big, big turtle, taking a bath, Charley: tricks and treats, Charley and the doll, cars and tractors, cattle, crops and food (Friday, March 15, 2013)


Wordzzle 97 - Marshmallow threats (Friday, January 29, 2010)

Wordzzle 102 - The mountains and the road (Friday, March 05, 2010)

The story behind "The mountains and the road" (Monday, May 10, 2010)


National Novel Writing Month 2012 - Winner! (Saturday, December 01, 2012)

National Novel Writing Month 2011 - Winner!

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Winner!


Related milestone posts:

300th post (Friday, January 29, 2010)

200th post (Friday, August 21, 2009)

100th post (Saturday, January 31, 2009)

Well, here we are (first post, Monday, August 22, 2005)

This is Home, Part 8 - The big, big turtle, taking a bath, Charley: tricks and treats, Charley and the doll, cars and tractors, cattle, crops and food

This is part 8 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



The big, big turtle

I liked to play tricks on Charley because of the way he reacted. He usually laughed. Daddy and Uncle Doc wouldn't have thought it was funny. Anyway, Daddy and Charley were cleaning out the stalls in the barn one time, and thanks to me, every time they got to the door with a shovel of manure and straw, I had closed the door. After the second or third time, Daddy said in a no-nonsense tone not to do it again. So I looked around for something else to do. I went out of the barn lot into the pasture beside it, where the pond was. I saw a huge turtle walking toward the gate from the direction of the pond. To this day, I have not seen a turtle that large. I looked around and found a stick. I poked it toward its head, trying to make the turtle tuck its head, legs and tail into its shell.

It wouldn't do it. It snapped at the stick and actually grabbed it. So I took it for a walk. When it let go, I repeated the procedure. I did it several times, then I took a good look at him. It had a face that reminded me of a snake, and taller and stronger legs than I thought possible. The shell was up quite a way from the ground and this turtle seemed to be moving pretty fast.

I was mad at Daddy and Charley, and Uncle Doc wasn't around, so there wasn't anyone to tell. I have often wondered where it went, and hoped it was far away and not in the pond across the road that the little lambs ran around in the spring and where Charley usually took a bath.

Charley was the only one of us who knew how to swim. There was a trough over in the pasture that could be used, I suppose. Just like the cowboys in the stories.

Taking a bath

When we were small children, we could take a bath in the rinse tubs, but when we got larger, it meant getting a pan of warm water and soap, setting it on the stove in the bedroom, and standing there washing from head to toe with a washcloth. One of the nurses in the hospital called that type of washing a spit bath.

We washed our hair in a wash pan. That is a pan one washes one's hands in.

Charley: Tricks and treats

I played other tricks on Charley. I used to climb up in Daddy, Uncle Doc, and Charley's lap and listen to them talk. Then I would go to sleep and whoever was holding me would carry me to the bedroom and leave me lying on the bed. Mom came in and covered me up.

Anyway, I decided to play a trick on Charley. I pretended to be asleep. He carried me in and left. I got very quietly off the bed and sneaked down right behind him. He was telling Mom, "Poor little Maudie, dead to the world. I put her on the bed." About that time, I said from behind him, "No, I'm not." He practically jumped out of his skin.

Charley used to bring me arrowheads from different places he worked on our farm. I wasn't really interested then, but now I wish I had kept them. I still have one. It looks as though they made it out of rock. Actually carved it out of rock. It has flat places on it and ridges.

He also described snakes he had killed. One of the hay fields has flat land surrounded by trees and brush. He told me one time about being chased by a blue racer in the hay field. He killed it. Sometimes, he found a rattlesnake in that field. If he killed one close to the house, unfortunately he showed it to me.

Charley bought my first wrist watch for me. It had a leather strap and lasted for years. He also bought Jean something when he bought a gift for me. One time, he went to a carnival and bought me a large red and white cow. It stood about fourteen or fifteen inches from the floor. He bought Jean a big sitting dog -- black and white with a red collar.

He also used to play ball with us. I got dragged into it -- too much action for me.

Charley and the doll

Charley gave me a little doll that his mother had given him when he was little. It had a stuffed body (straw, maybe) and white unbreakable arms and legs. I didn't know what material. It also had a white china head that looked like a cat. It had green eyes and painted ears. It was wearing a red and white striped dress and had black shoes painted on its feet.

I kept it for years, but I only have the head left. I have it in a safe place and always think of Charley when I see it. He felt like family. I miss hem, too.

This was either before school or during grade school.

Cars and tractors

Charley liked cars. He kept trading for a different one. Hood ornaments were a big thing then. So his cars had chrome or chrome-looking ornaments. Ours didn't.

Speaking of cars, I remember when Uncle Doc had to get out of the car to insert a crank in the front of it and crank it to make it start. It must have been the Model T or Model A, or something like that.

Daddy never learned to drive. He did all his farming with horses. In 1948, the Rice Bros. of Randolph County won a De Kalb corn growing contest with 141.48 bushels per acre. They received a plaque with this information on it. The plaque also had a little gold colored ear of corn with wings. There was also a certificate that I took off the wall so it wouldn't fade, and now I can't find it. It is here somewhere, though.

Practically everyone else was using tractors. Daddy and Uncle Doc bought a new tractor -- green and yellow -- only to find out that Uncle Doc couldn't take the jolting. He had nephritis the whole time I knew him and before. It is a kidney disease that causes chronically inflamed kidneys. Charley could drive the tractor, but it was also difficult to start. It was a brand that was and is well known. It was an Allis-Chalmers or a John Deere.

Anyway, they sold it later and bought a smaller one that hugged the ground more. It was a Ford.

Tractors can be hazardous to operate where the land has hills and hollows. Someone Daddy and Uncle Doc knew died when his tractor turned over and fell on him.

This was not that unusual. There were quite a few accidents reported in the paper.

Cattle, crops and food

Daddy and Uncle Doc raised black Angus cattle and sheep for sale. There were also a few hogs and maybe a couple of horses or so.

They raised crops of corn, Timothy hay, soy beans, wheat, winter wheat, oats, and alfalfa. There may have been others. They sold what wasn't needed as food for the animals.

Late each fall when the weather was cold, three of the hogs were butchered for meat. Coarse salt was rubbed into the outside of the meat to preserve it. It was cut into large parts first -- parts such as hams and bacon.

I remember when pieces of meat were fed into a meat grinder to make sausage. Salt, pepper and sage were added. Then the whole thing was mixed in a large galvanized tub. The grinder was fastened onto the side of the tub.

Mom usually cooked liver the first night. Uncle Doc liked it, but Jean and I hated it. Mom started cooking sausage, too, so we would eat some of the meat. There were huge crocks -- bucket shaped -- containing lard. Some meat was packed into large containers.

Daddy and Uncle Doc never smoked the meat. They preserved it with salt, instead. However, during one winter our whole family was sick in bed with the flu. A neighbor, Roscoe Wright, who lived two or three houses above us, came down and butchered, sugar cured and smoked the hogs for us. Every day, he fed all the animals for us, milked the cows, and did anything else that needed doing. I don't know what we would have done without him.

This is Home, Part 7 - Plowing with Japie, Little Tony, Grandpa, Buster and Rowdy, Tony

This is part 7 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Plowing with Japie

The garden near the ice house was the one where I "helped" Daddy plow sometimes when I was little. Daddy had a single plow and was walking behind it with the reins (long ones) fastened around behind his neck. He would have to remove a hand from the plow to pull the reins and try to keep Japie (Jap-ee) off the rows of garden plants. Japie came to us with that name. Daddy always asked the names of horses he bought so they would hopefully respond. I think he had Japie for a long time. I keep thinking she was around thirty. I might be wrong, maybe she was only in her late twenties. She was old, didn't hold her head up very high, and didn't really care where she slowly walked. Daddy was back there yelling "Gee!" (go) and then "Haw!" (stop).

When I asked if I could ride, he put me on her, put the ordinary reins in my hands and said to pull on the opposite rein to keep her off the garden.

I didn't have a lot of luck, but I helped some. After awhile I told him I was hungry, so we both went in for a peanut butter and cracker snack. Then back to the garden.

Little Tony

Daddy bought me a little Shetland pony when I was little, probably around seven. There was a bright red buggy with him and a little saddle. His name was Tony, so we called him Little Tony, because Daddy already had a saddle horse named Tony. Little Tony was so beautiful. He was white with black spots. He had tiny little feet, and white eyelashes. He was also really stubborn. I did better with him when someone was there.

One time I rode him when no one was around. He took me up the road and refused to turn when I tried to turn him. He only turned his head. Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley came home for dinner (lunch) and Charley came running up the road after me. I was almost to the neighbor's house when Charley came and turned him around. I was really worried by then. I was wondering if I would break anything or if the pony would walk on me if I just slid off.

Grandpa

Grandpa must have noticed. He was staying with us for awhile. He was the only grandparent I ever knew. He was Henry Albert, Mom's father. Her mother died when Mom was eleven and Aunt Opal was a young baby. Mom said her mother had to stay in bed for a long time. Her mother died with kidney failure. Mom's older sister had married and moved to Colorado, so Mom took care of her two younger sisters, Edith and Opal. Mom said when she went to school, she had to carry Opal along, because there was no one to watch her. Mom had a hard time. She washed clothes, fixed meals, took care of the house and helped raise her sisters. Aunt Opal always called Mom her "sister mother."

Grandpa had a mustache and was a very kind man. He used to sit on the back porch and talk to us.

Buster and Rowdy

When the pups got larger, Daddy or someone gave part of them away, but Jean kept one and I kept one. We couldn't think of good names. We showed them to Grandpa. He came up with names. Jean's dog was Rowdy (it looked like a police dog) and mine was Buster. Buster looked like Old Yeller in the movies.

Grandpa died when I was in the sixth grade. He didn't survive an operation at Kirksville to restore kidney function.

My Aunt Joann died in her forties from kidney failure, also. She was Daddy and Uncle Doc's sister. She died before I was born. She had not married and lived at home with her parents and brothers. There was another sister, Mollie, who married a Dean and moved to Jacksonville. Mollie also died before I was born.

Tony

Oh, well, back to Tony, the saddle horse. Daddy went walking over in the pasture every night after the milk cows. I wanted to go, too. I was little and it was fun. However, my legs ached every night, and Mom was up rubbing them a good part of the night.

Then Daddy bought Tony, a saddle horse. No more leg aches. Every night we went riding on Tony. He had such a nice gait -- about as easy as a rocking chair. Tony had definite ideas, though. When Daddy put him in the barn and gave him food and water, he tried to kick the barn door down. Daddy turned him loose in the pasture next to the barn lot. That's the pasture where we had cute little colts every spring.

Anyway, it had two or three other horses in it. Tony went over, backed up and kicked them. Daddy had to move the other horses out into the big pasture. There was only a well there with a big wooden trough, while the pasture where Tony was going to be staying in solitary splendor had a nice big pond.

We went along for quite a few weeks riding Tony after the cows.

Then one day, Daddy got a different horse for us to ride. It was not a saddle horse and didn't have the nice gait. I kept asking for Tony, and saying he rode nice and this one didn't.

After about three nights, Daddy and Uncle Doc got in the car to go somewhere. I asked them where they were going. Daddy said, "Down the road a piece." I wanted to go, too, but they wouldn't let me and drove off.

That night when we went after the cows, Tony was back. I was delighted. I found out later that Daddy had sold Tony to the man who frequently bought livestock from us. I think Tony was going to be auctioned off. Anyway, Daddy had gone and bought him back. He had to pay more than he had received when he sold him. Wasn't that nice of him to get him back? I had a really special Daddy.

Years later, after we moved to the farm by the highway, Tony came to the fence one time. Stephen and David wanted to feed him and we didn't have anything with us, so we pulled out some grass and they gave it to him. He died on the farm when he got old. He lived longer than both Daddy and Uncle Doc.

This is Home, Part 6 - The Tuley Hill, the Old Home Place, spring, spring cleaning, wallpapering the rooms and Mom, the ice box, the ice house

This is part 6 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



The Tuley Hill

The Tuley (Tooley) Hill was above our house. It must have been close to Roscoe's or Dutch Andre's. There was a two-story house beside the hill at the top. The house looked deserted and lonesome. The paint was about gone. The Tuley Hill was named after the family who used to live there.

Uncle Doc used to take the Tuley Hill to Jacksonville. It was a very steep hill and I don't know why we were using it. It may have been a shorter road to Jacksonville, a shorter way than the road that went by our hayfield.

Mom would sit in the back seat with Jean and sometimes me. If Daddy went along, he sat in the front. Otherwise, I did. Jean and I were small and not in school yet.

Anyway, when we went up that hill or down it, it was usually covered with ice or mud. It was always bad weather when we drove over the Tuley Hill.

Mom was terrified of it. The car slipped and slid even with the chains on. Mom took a good grip on the front seat back (she always sat in the back) with one hand and held on to Jean with the other. She was back there saying, "Oh! Oh!" Then when it slipped sideways toward the ditch she was frantically saying, "Doc!" in a horrified voice.

Uncle Doc just sat there and grimly kept driving. I don't remember if we ever got in the ditch or not.

It was a difficult task getting out when the weather was bad. I always felt safer with mud than ice. One may bury the car in mud, but there isn't much control over it when there is ice. It was an adventure just getting to town sometimes.

The Old Home Place

The Old Home Place was a single story house and some other buildings. It was across the road from the mailbox and down a ways. It was where Daddy and Uncle Doc were born.

I was only at the Old Home Place twice. One time I was only at the house. I was interested to find out it had a pantry. Aunt Opal (Mom's sister) and her family were moving in for a while.

Another time I went with Daddy and Charley while they worked there. I don't remember what they were doing, but I spent the afternoon watching them work while I sat behind the little building, on the type of moss that is flat and green only and grows along the top of the soil. I think I probably tried to take some home with me. Every time I do this, the top of the soil comes up with the moss and when I get the moss home, it dies after a couple of weeks.

Spring

We -- Jean and I -- were excited to see spring come when we were little. I looked for blades of grass. By the time we were in school, we had a really good reason for wanting it to come. We had to wear long underwear with long cotton stockings over it during the winter. Girls in those days didn't wear any kind of pants to school or out anywhere.

The underwear wasn't heavy. It was thin cotton, but we still hated it. When spring came and we got rid of the underwear and stockings, we kept looking for grass. Finally, the yard was getting green grass and the weather was warmer. We happily took off our knee-high stockings and stood on the grass, and also dirt or mud if we could find any in our yard. The grass felt fresh and green and cool. We walked around a little. Then we put our shoes and knee-highs back on. We never went barefoot outside and I never went barefoot anywhere. I didn't like the feel of the grass or dirt on my feet. Guess Jean didn't like it either. It was something we did every spring. You would think we would remember from one year to another that being barefoot really wasn't fun. But, oh the joyful feeling of anticipation! Spring was really here and school would soon be out.

Spring cleaning

Every spring Mom did her spring house cleaning. She painted, she wallpapered and varnished things, if needed. She rolled up the "room sized" wool rugs and when the men came home for lunch, she got Charley to help her carry out the rug to the clothes line. In those days they had wire clothes lines. Anyway, the rug was hung over the line and beat with a broom to remove any dirt or dust still in it. She cleaned the floor. The rug was put back and the furniture, too. It took her awhile to do everything, but when she finally got through, everything looked really good.

Wallpapering the rooms and Mom

When she papered the rooms, I "helped" her sometimes. She had to boil starch to make glue. The glue was applied to the wallpaper with a paint brush. My job was to keep the wet, sticky wallpaper straight and off her.

The North and South rooms were so tall that she had trouble papering the ceiling. One year when I was in my teens and out of school (we got out in April), she had two straight chairs with several footstools on them and a board running from chair to chair. I can't remember how she got up there. She had a beginning of the paper strip and a brush. I was supposed to stand on the floor and keep the paper from tearing and most of all keep it off of her by supporting it with a broom. I was pretty far from the ceiling. I don't know what happened, but I dropped the paper. Mom had paper and glue on her hair, face and dress. She looked so funny.

I was better at helping put new screen on the front porch if it needed it. Mom and I pried off the quarter rounds. Screens were wire in those days, not plastic. We measured the spaces without the screen and pulled a wire out of the screen so we would know where to cut to make it straight and the right size. Then, after cutting it with scissors, we put it in and nailed the quarter rounds back on. The screen covered an area about half way down on the porch and it was pretty far from post to post.

The ice box

The house was T-shaped and had long porches that ran along each side. Since we didn't have electricity, the ice box was kept on the back porch. The porch had been enclosed into a long room with lots of windows. The ice box always fascinated me. It was much larger than a large trunk, and was made of wood and painted white and blue. It was very thick, maybe eight inches or more. It was lined with some sort of non-rusting metal. The underside of the top was also lined. The boards of the front, sides and back of the top rested on the frame of the ice box, but the middle of the top fit securely into the box. A large block of ice was put in there. Mom put the butter on it and other things she was especially concerned about. Everything else was set around it. It was really cold in there. It was much larger than my cedar chest. I have wondered if there was sawdust inside the space between the outside and inside boards.

The ice house

We had an ice house. It was over by one of the gardens. It was kept locked. Daddy or Uncle Doc let me look in it one time. There was a single room that went down into the ground, like a basement, with saw dust on the floor. The building itself stood up above the ground with the door standing straight up, like a normal door, with the top near the roof. The building wasn't very tall. I think there was a ladder inside it, so they could go down to the floor of the room.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley used to cut ice from the ponds and put large pieces in there for use in the ice box. I remember some of this.

Then we got an ice route through. The man used to bring a large rectangular block in with big ice tongs that stuck into the ice to hold it.

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.