Category: writings (Page 15 of 66)

Egg painting amid the home-grown bounty du jour

close up of the egg painting by Gigi Hackford
that came home with me from Fairhope, Alabama several years ago
~~~~~~~

There was a mystery about her, the sister who lived with her brother in the white country house up the hill and around the corner from us. Decades later when I learned of Emily Dickinson, I saw the neighbor woman’s face and wished for hidden poems that would stand the test of time. When I became acquainted with Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, I saw the neighbor woman’s face and hoped for a good story . . . and maybe a little something in a knothole (I checked every one between our house and hers). When Nancy Drew and I became friends, I imagined us sleuthing around and digging up the back story on the neighbor woman. I wanted her to be somebody Big and Important, this neighbor woman. But the facts were not promising:

She was a woman who lived in the house with her brother.
She was a woman who, by my calculations, had a vocabulary of about 17 words.
She was a woman who never left the house.
She was a woman who scared me as much as she intrigued me.
She was a woman whose very presence turned my shoes into concrete blocks every time my mother gave me a quarter and told me to run down the road to her house and buy a dozen eggs.

The old white country house smelled like it had long ago given up on personal hygiene, which is probably understandable given that the brother left only to farm his land across the road, and the sister never left for anything. And as far as I know, few people besides me ever went in. It was dark inside the house – even on the sunniest days – like the house had withdrawn from the world a long time ago. When we needed eggs, my plan to stay on the porch and have her deliver the eggs to me there seldom worked.

I knocked (doorbells were for city houses) on the screen door. Without saying anything like “Coming” or “I’m on my way” or “Hold on just a minute”, the neighbor woman would come to the door, flip up the latch, open the door about six inches, and nod her head towards the interior of the house which I translated – correctly, I think – as “Hey Jeanne! Don’t you look adorable? Did your grandmother get you that dress? How’s your mama and them? Come on in the house.”

But I could be wrong cause she never uttered so much as a syllable.

At this point, I stepped inside the dark, smelly house staying as close to the door as possible, holding out my hand up with the quarter in my palm for her to see, and making a mental note to write a note next time saying “My mother would like a dozen eggs, please” so I wouldn’t have to try to find my voice which always hid in my little toe at times like this.

Without so much as a grunt, she’d turn towards the kitchen, throwing her arm around in a half circle that meant “come with me”. Off to the kitchen we’d go, which felt more like going further and further into a cave, and before we reached the kitchen, I couldn’t see a single thing and was following her by the sound of her steps alone. Even in the dark house, she would go right to the white, rounded refrigerator, pull the silver handle out and down, open the door, and get out a bowl of eggs. She counted out 12 eggs, put them in a brown paper bag, folded the top of the bag down once, and handed it to me. Then back to the screen door and out I went. If memory serves, the entire transaction taking about 46 hours and 17 minutes from the time I stepped up on her porch till I left with the bag of eggs, and the word count hung onto zero like it was going out of style.

I made my way back down the red dirt road, walked through our back door into the well-lit kitchen, sat the bag of eggs down on the kitchen table, and went straight back out to my favorite tree to whom I could tell everything that nobody else would tolerate.

I hear she’s dead now, the neighbor woman, and I don’t mind telling you that I felt somewhat vindicated when, as an adult, I heard that she was bad to throw a tantrum over nothing. I’m just glad I always made it home with a sack full of unbroken eggs. Though I guess if they had broken somewhere along the way, a quick-thinking girl like myself might’ve been in for an afternoon’s worth of fun while pretending to be Officer Don and leading a game of ooey-gooey. Without the Hostess Twinkie Cakes for prizes, of course.

~~~~~~~

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Here we see Little Jeanne in her Easter finery with her cousin Stacy in his Easter finery on their way to Grandmother Ballard’s kitchen where we would line up with the other twelve grandchildren and be divided into Hiders and Hunters. We were placed into one of these two groups by Grandmother at her sole discretion. Nobody knew her criteria – shoot, I think she just lined us up and decided on the spot, not bothering with any rules or reasons.

At first, the Hiders hid eggs in places nobody – not even the cousin who grew up to be a detective – would ever think to look. By the time they got to the last few hundred eggs, though, they were running out of steam, so they dropped eggs beside the post that held Grandmother’s clothesline, stuck them in tire wells, and tucked them in the knot holes in the rough seasoned-gray boards of the smokehouse. Even without an admonition, everybody – Hiders and Hunters alike – was respectful of Grandmother’s prized flowers, never putting the colorful blooms in jeopardy by hiding eggs too close or trampling flowers in the frenzied hunting zeal.

We didn’t have prize eggs – it was all about quantity. She who found the most eggs, won The Prize. The non-existent, self-proclaimed Prize. Grandmother could not abide nicknames, and she had nothing for fancy Easter eggs, either. There would be no golden eggs, no silver eggs, no chocolate eggs hidden by or for her grandchildren. We were not that kind of family. No siree. We dyed our eggs, thank you very much, pressing every cup in the house into service, sometimes using white crayons to write secret messages on the shell that became visible when we dropped the egg in the colorful dye solution. Oh yes, we were your basic garden variety all-natural Easter egg decorators, and we wore the vinegar smell to prove it.

Here’s a post-hunt snap of Jeanne and Stacy, and as anybody can see, Stacy is blatantly coveting my bounty. I can’t blame him. Not only did I have a bigger basket, I needed it.

In the years since this photo was snapped, folks have looked at it and let things like “My, my, my. You sure are a bossy little thing.” or “What a bossy little girl you were.” fall out of their mouths. “I’m not bossy,” I tell them, “I just know what y’all ought to be doing.” (Plus I’m pretty sure there were more eggs to be found when this photo was taken, so I kinda’ resented the interruption and needed to get back at out in the hunt. I mean, really, what would Stacy do without me?)

I think you can see why The Engineer and I immediately thought of the so-called bossy photo of me yesterday when I happened upon this photo in the antique store:

It makes me quite sad to come across boxes of old family photos in antique stores, and I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to leave them behind when I exit. Yesterday, though, the lightbulb went off and at last I conjured the justification that cleared the way for me to adopt two photos. What is it, you ask? One word: collecting. You are now reading the words of a proud collector of Bossy Girl photos. I started on the spot yesterday and have two in my collection so far.

Three if you count the one of me.

The Engineer prefers the term “confident” over “bossy”, but I think we’re talking in synonyms.

~~~~~~~

I’m penning 100 stories in 100 days, and if you’d like to read along, be sure to mash the “right this way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen and follow the directions for your free subscription. Starting the first of next week, subscribers will get a back stage pass as I include not only the stories, but contextual info about the stories, writer’s notes, and who knows what else. I sure do thank y’all for being here and reading.

About a year after The Engineer retired . . .
The Artist: I need weekends again.
I need something to look forward to.
I need surprise.
The Engineer: Something to look forward to and surprise are two different things.

We’re still working that out.

Today we had both: something to look forward to and surprise.
How?
On the spur of the moment, we decided to go on a treasure hunt
in search of a birthday present for Our Boy.
So while The Engineer put his shoes on, drank his green tea, took his tablets, let the dog out, used the bathroom, locked the doors, fetched his wallet and the keys, donned his watch, looked for then found his glasses, started the truck, stopped the truck to go back inside and look for his phone, come back and start the truck again,
I got to look forward to the outing
And I tell you what: the entire day was filled with one surprise after another.

There was a seasoned house
A storied house.
An abandoned house.
I have abandonment issues
which is to say that I adore abandoned houses.
I really, really do.
(Note that The Engineer stopped for me to snap photos.
He’s considerate and accommodating and supportive like that.)

There was a barn
with a rusting vintage Ford pickup truck.
I have rust issues, too.
And vintage vehicle issues.
Yep, I love rust and vintage cars and trucks.
A lot.

We saw corn

as high as an elephant’s eye

which annoyed The Engineer

because my beautiful crows
ate every corn seed he planted this year.
Every single one.

We saw generosity

with a cute-as-a-button hand painted sign.

We saw plenty of beautiful mountains
and plenty of beautiful clouds
but no rain, thank goodness.

We saw evidence of nature’s reclamation,
one of my favorite themes ever.

We saw hearts

And one heart impaled on a shadow.
Think about that story for a minute.

I thought this would make a fine stroller for The Engineer.
I offered to tie his feet onto the rails with colorful ribbons
Then attach a rope for me to use as I pulled him around.
The Engineer was not all that amused.

I was smitten with this bride doll.

And for reasons I can’t explain
wedding photos hold my imagination captive.

The Artist, showing The Engineer this photo: Who does this remind you of?
In a rare display of unanimity, The Engineer said “Amy.”
(She’s our niece.)
He got that one right
cause I thought so, too
even though, if the inscription is to be believed,
this is a photo of Joan
taken in 1938
for her Grandpa.

We came upon a Revolving Tree Stand
that rotates via a foot control.
Wonder if fitbit would give me step credit?
It brought back memories of
aluminum Christmas trees
and hand cranked homemade ice cream makers.

Okay, I staged this shot
because I thought it made a nice grouping.
Flashcards + Blockheads.
Get it?

I swooned at the sight of
this yummy door hardware
and I meant to ask about the price before we left
because I have something I want to do with these things,
but alas, I forgot.
Shoot.

We watched a bee eat his lunch

and spent a few minutes admiring this quilt.

Oh, how I wish I had floor space for this.
Why?
Because it would help me with my new plan:
One Thing At A Time.

The Artist: What is she holding?
The Engineer: Moonshine.

I thought these would come in mighty hands
when beckoning The Engineer in from his bees and the garden.

The Artist: I want one. Need a sleeping porch first, though.
The Engineer: You’d break your leg the first time you tried to get out of it.
The Artist: No I wouldn’t ’cause
I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all for fear of rolling over and falling out.
The Engineer: Still want one?
The Artist: Yes. And I still need a sleeping porch first.

This is The Daily Dahlia I posted over on Facebook.
It’s from our garden.

Today was Someday.

~~~~~~~

1. I’m penning 100 stories in 100 days. Thank you for reading along.
2. To leave a comment here on the blog, click on the title of the post. You’ll be whisked to a new page, and there you can scroll down and leave a comment. You don’t have to create an account – you can comment as a guest. Happens all the time.
3. If we’re friends on Facebook, we can talk over there.
4. To receive these stories in your e-mailbox every morning, mash the “right this way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen and follow the directions.
5. Again, thank you for reading.

Back then, when they no longer wanted something, folks around home just wrapped it up, slapped a tag on it, and stuck it up under the Christmas tree. But one fine Saturday, some newcomer hosted a yard sale, and let me tell you: that’s about the most fun I ever had shopping with my mother, something that has everything to do with the fact that she shelled out 25-cents for a set of one and a half maracas. I danced all over that overgrown yard to the rhythm of my own making, and though it might not seem possible, things got even better on the way to the car.

“Y’all want a cat?” the man of the house asked me, nodding in the direction of the fat feline he was holding up under his right arm like a football.

We lived on a dirt road on the outskirts of the county – so far on the outskirts that when zip codes came into being, they gave us the zip code from the neighboring county – and at that particular point in time, our animal census was down considerably. We had only 16 cats, 12 dogs, 3 horses, 27 pigs, and about 228 rabbits (We’d only had the rabbits about a little less than a week.), so I think you can understand why I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at my mother, and asked, “Can we, mama?”

“Can we what?” my mother asked while turning her arm this way and that, admiring the way the sun made her new bracelet sparkle.

“Take the kitty home,” I said.

“Un huh, sure,” she said. From her tone of voice, I could tell she was distracted, but she said Yes, and that’s all that mattered.

“Goodie!” I shouted and started shaking my 1.5 maracas for all they were worth. (Which, as we know, was 25-cents, but that’s not really the point.)

“All righty then,” said the man still holding the cat we were about to adopt. “Y’all go ahead to your car, and I’ll meet you there with the cat direkly.” Looking back on it, we might should’ve picked up on something when he delivered the cat to us with a brown paper bag tied around its head with a piece of string.

He handed me the cat, slammed the car door shut, and the minute – the very minute, I tell you – when Mother cranked that car is when that cat commenced to running laps around the inside of the car windows while making that screeching sound cats are bad to make when they are decidedly not happy. Around and around and around the cat went – at what I would call breakneck speed – while Mother and I sat there kinda’ stunned, for lack of a better word. Mother forgot all about her new bracelet as we watched with our mouths open so wide, it’s a wonder that cat didn’t run right on up into one of ’em. Eventually I had the good idea to roll down my window, and sure enough, the next time the cat came around – whoosh – out he went. I’ll bet he didn’t slow down at all till he hit the state line.

Maybe not even then.

To this day I keep an eye out for feral cats descended from that rather memorable kitty. You know how I’ll know ’em? They’ll be the cats with bags on their heads.

I hear it’s a dominant gene thing.

~~~~~~~

Now listen here, y’all: I’m writing 100 stories in 100 days, and if you want to, you can click on the title of the story, get whisked to a new page, then scroll down to the bottom of the story and drop off a comment. Or maybe you want to say something over on facebook. And hey, if you want to get the stories delivered right to your very e-mailbox for free, just mash the “right this way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen, and follow the directions. One more thing: if you see a cat sporting a paper bag, promise you’ll send me a picture.

As A Child:

When I got in trouble at school, I got in twice as much trouble at home. And to make it even worse, I got in trouble all the way home because Back Then, everybody helped turn out a fine, upstanding member of society. I remembered how embarrassed I was that everybody and their mother knew I’d misbehaved, and I walked the straight and narrow from then on.

When I ate too much ice cream, my stomach hurt, so the next time I went Day’s Drug Store, I only ordered 5 scoops.

When I said something mean to somebody, I couldn’t go to sleep that night, so learned to count to ten.

When I overspent my 50-cents a week allowance, I had to do without until next Allowance Pay Day, so I learned to plan ahead and budget my allowance.

When I didn’t clean my plate, little children in China starved.

When I played close to the lawn mower, I got hit by rocks.

When I crossed my eyes, I ran the risk of them staying like that.

When I ran my hand through the candle flame, I got burned, so I made a point of not doing that again.

When I didn’t study for a test, I made a bad grade, so I learned to keep a calendar – a study schedule – and abide by it.

When I said a bad word, I got my mouth washed out with soap.

When I ate a plate of French fries, my skirts wouldn’t zip up . . . so I learned to eat only half a plate.

When I threw my childhood dirty clothes on the floor and left them there instead of putting them in the laundry hamper, I ran out of clean cloths, and before long, I learned to put the clothes in the hamper.

When I knocked on the hornet’s nest with a stick, I got stung.

As An Adult:

When I didn’t pay the phone bill, my phone was turned off, so I developed a system to make sure that didn’t happen again.

When I washed my car, it rained.

When I didn’t return library books on time, the librarian looked over her glasses at me and announced my fine total on the intercom, so I made sure to return or renew them from then on.

When I didn’t feed the cats, they sat on my face while I slept.

When I left the house without makeup on, I ran into everybody I knew.

Today:

I went in a store to purchase one of those long-necked lighters you used for candles and grills, and I had to show my driver’s license. Yes, really. Shoot, anybody who looks at me can tell I’m old enough to play with fire.

Once upon a time, consequences were our best teachers. Still could be if we’d let them.

“My clock quit working,” our great Aunt Rene tells my brother, Jerry.

“Do you want me to get you a new one?” asks Jerry, knowing she would never ask directly. It’s simply not the Southern Belle way, you know.

“Why yes, Darlin’, that would be nice.”

He buys her one that very night, brings it in, and sets it up on her bedside table. It is one of those new-fangled clocks with half of each number on each of the 2 plastic slates that fall down at the appointed time. He shows it to her, staying a while to listen to her marvel at these new-fangled things and ask a hundred times What will they think of next?

The next morning, Jerry emerges from his apartment headed to work when he nearly stumbles over Aunt Rene who’s seated in a ladder-back chair just outside his door, her hands resting on box the clock came. “Is there a problem, Aunt Rene?” he asks in an amazing display of coherency for that time of the morning.

“Yes, Darlin’, there is. I need you to take this clock back to the store and get my money back ’cause this thing is gonna’ kill me. The funeral is gonna’ cost me enough by itself. No use paying to get there, too. I was sleeping good till about 3:00 this morning when this contraption started singing to me. Nearly scared me right into a heart attack. Why, I thought the angels had come for me.”

He returned that clock, and, since her old clock couldn’t be repaired, she used her watch from then on. The Timex watch, you know. She wound the stem first thing every morning and every night at bedtime. That thing took a licking and it kept on ticking till the day the angels came for real.

~~~~~~~

1. I’m penning 100 stories in 100 days. Since they’re all technically first drafts written around 2 a.m., not all will be Perfect and Polished. Thanks for your understanding and patience.
2. To leave a comment here on the blog, click on the title of the post. You’ll be whisked to a new page, and there you can scroll down and leave a comment. You don’t have to create an account – you can comment as a guest. Happens all the time.
3. If we’re friends on Facebook, we can talk over there.
4. To receive these stories in your e-mailbox every morning, mash the “right this way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen and follow the directions.

There were love letters hand delivered by my friend who had the most adorable little brother who had a crush on me. Larry, biological brother to my friend Valerie sent this card that still tickles me. When we were close enough, Larry would sidle up beside me, reach his arm up, and put it around my waist. His mama said she knew he was a heterosexual from the get-go because he loved me so. In addition to the cards and occasional letter, he made me hand-crafted campaign signs:

(In a scant three weeks, I’ll be acting as toastmaster and standing in for Valerie to deliver the toast as her adorable little brother (now my Other Brother) takes the equally adorable Becky to be his lawfully wedded wife. I wish her notes and love letters on her pillow at night that are so sweet, she’ll find a beautiful box to keep them in.)

The days when a male showed his affection by clubbing a woman on the head and dragging her off to his lair by the hair on her head were (fortunately) long gone by the time I cared if boys liked me or not, but that doesn’t mean that when boys of my own age first began liking girls (and vice versa), there weren’t mating calls and rituals to be had . . .

When we got old enough to take an interest in boys, we’d kick the school year off with a denim-covered three-ring binder with a clip on the inside front cover and, using our new ball point pins, we graffitied the cover with declarations of our love for the boy du jour. Those of us who liked to plan ahead would even practice writing our married name – Mr. and Mrs. The Engineer – and get used to writing our new initials that would eventually appear on luggage and pinky rings. Of course when the inevitable break-up came, well, that was a problem requiring a new notebook or finding a new boyfriend who happened to have the same initials as the old one.

Teddybears and other trinkets were won at county fairs to show a guy’s undying love for his girlfriend. In second grade, Jeff C. was out for a week while his family went on vacation. The day he came back, I took my seat to find a set of wings – you know, the kind the stewardesses flight attendants would give well-behaved children as a reward or badly-behaved children as a bribe – waiting in the pencil trough of my desk. Though he never said a word, I caught him watching me and smiling that big goofy smile of his, so I kinda’ put two and two together and figured this was from him. And who could ever forget that ill-fated box of chocolate covered cherries intended for me as a gift from Allen S. and Kent J.

Speaking of candy, back in Those Days we gave valentines only to those we wanted to give them to, and it was always a thrill to take possession of the white lunch bag bearing your name and the red hearts you’d attached to festoon it and see who all had given you a valentine. Dan W. and I shared a Valentine’s Birthday – in fact, our mothers met in the hospital after giving birth – so every year he gave me a big ole’ heavily-decorated box of candy, and I gave him a model car I bought in Scarbrough’s drugstore. We stopped that practice about 10 years ago when I no longer needed the extra inches around my waist and his eyesight got so bad he couldn’t see the little tiny car parts.

The older we got, the most public we became with our love-interest allegiances. When smitten with Dana in high school, Teevie Lee (a.k.a. Steven S.) declared his love by spray painting their initials on all three 4-way stop signs in the county. (Steven is an artist now. I think we can see where he got his start.) And Gordon K. took up a lot of our time in Mr. Mac’s Advanced Algebra-Trig class ranting about how unfair it was that he and Terry G. couldn’t get married at the ripe old age of 17.

Possessives were fine in those pre-feminist days when a boy could make a girl swoon by calling her “my girl”. “Nobody talks to my girl that way,” he’d say. or “How’s my girl doing?” and yes, to know that you belonged to him would bring on a swoon. At least on the inside.

Boys also showed their love by walking with their arms around their girl’s shoulder. And in the days of bench seats in cars, we girls would slide over and sit real close to our guy who’d rest his arm on the back of the seat behind us. He’d handle the steering and clutch, we’d shift the gears – that’s how we got to where we wanted to go.

One way we’d let a guy know we liked him was to pull the tab off the back of his oxford cloth button-down-the-front shirt. This wasn’t necessarily a declaration of love – especially when the tab came off with shirt attached – but generally a girl didn’t bother to collect tabs of guys she wasn’t interested in.

Of course there were the couples who went to the drive-in theater or parking in certain secluded pastures and woods, but I wouldn’t know much about that. Moving on . . .

In the fall, I always tried to date a football player because, well, there was just something special about waiting by the locker room door for your big hunka hunka burning love to come out with his hair wet from the showers and his clothes clinging to his body from the heat. As The Girls Who Dated Football Players, it was our unspoken duty to monitor their post-game moods. If our team won, we’d give them our biggest smile and run into their arms with all the squeal and delight we could muster. If they lost, we quietly took their hand and squeezed it hard, inviting them to tell us all about it only later in the privacy of the car on our way to the post-game party in somebody’s basement or to Dell’s where we’d celebrate or drown our sorrows, depending on the scoreboard.

For the away games, we paid our buck fifty and rode the student bus, and not that I would ever two-time my boyfriend, but on the rare football season when I wasn’t dating a player, those of us with dates or crushes would leave about mid-way through fourth quarter to get a good seat in the back of the student bus where we could make out talk about the game the whole way home. Whether we were coming back from the north or the south, we had our landmarks that served as our cue to start singing the school’s alma mater – boys and girls alike – and I declare, to this day, I can’t think of a sweeter feeling or sound than when people would release their lip locks, sit up straight, and sing, some of us providing a little harmony on the last line.

Our strong band, can ne’er be broken,
Here at Fayette High,
For surpassing wealth unspoken
Sealed by friendship’s ties.
Alma mater, Alma mater
Loud her praises tell
Hail to thee, our alma mater
Fayette High, all hail.

Warning: this paragraph could be out of place in the chronological order of things, but . . . Eventually the kissing started – the Kiwanis-run skating rink saw many a first kiss, especially on the side where you sat to put your skates on. I didn’t own my own skates, mind you (I never did learn to pick my feet up when skating), but I did own a wicked pretty set of orange and white pom-poms with a bell in the center that I tied onto my rented skates. – and I’m kinda’ proud, in a strange way, to tell you that if the boys are to be believed, my cousin Elender excelled in kissing. Rumor has it that Webb excelled on the guys’ side of things, (but I wouldn’t know because whenever we were together, Webb and I spent our time choreographing dances to the then-popular songs). If practice makes perfect, Chris R> would take home the trophy for kissing. (At our last high school reunion, I asked everybody who’d ever been kissed by Chris to stand up. Every single one of the guys stood as did a few of the girls.)

Our mothers got together and decided that we girls could double date at age 15 and single date when we turned 16. It was a complicated rule book that allowed boys to come visit us at our house from age 14 to 16, and when I dated Joe L. before either of us turned 16, he would come to call behind the hweel of his John Deere tractor. When I turned 16, Joe was still 15, his dadd would chauffeur us around in his big ole’ green Buick, and a couple of times we were lucky enough to get his sister, Dixie, to drop us off to see a movie (the first one we saw together was Bonnie & Clyde, in case you’re wondering) while she shopped.

When it became serious enough, boys gave girls Their Senior Rings. Some girls wore the ring on a chain around their neck. Me, though, I didn’t want to invite back problems, much preferring to wear that honking big thing on my finger so it would hit up against everything I came within 3 feet of. How’d I get it to stay on, you ask? A little kitchen magic did the trick. I boiled some water in one pan, and in a separate pan went a little Gulf Wax clear paraffin that I tinted to the desired color with crayons melted in with the wax. When the wax turned to liquid, I’d pull the pan off the stove and let the wax cool till it was of pliable consistency. Then I took up a blob of it, kneaded it in my hand until it began to get hard, and put it inside the ring. I slid the ring onto my finger to shape the wax to the desired thickness and contour, then removed the ring and used a sharp knife to cut the excess wax off each side. If something went awry and the ring showed knife marks or looked like those Christmas candles we made by pouring hot wax over a milk carton filled with ice cubes, I removed the wax and started over.

To Be Continued . . .

~~~~~~~

Along with the love notes and campaign signs, Jeanne still has the airline wings, the lavalier, the fraternity pin, the engagement ring, and the wedding ring, but alas, she can’t show you pictures cause everything’s atop the mountain while she is not.

Jeanne is conjuring a story a day for 100 days, and while most are technically rough drafts, she hopes you enjoy them around, over, and through the rough spots. If you want them delivered right to your mailbox every morning, mash the button at the top of the screen where it says “right this way” and follow directions. Or you can become friends with Jeanne over in facebook land.

I don’ know how we got the gig, six 7th grade girls as go-go dancers for a band made up of High School Boys, but if we ever once thought that our association with these High School Boys would raise our stock with our classmates in elementary school, we were sorely mistaken.

We wore our little league cheerleader’s uniform – circle skirts made of blue corduroy with white lining, blue bloomers, white short-sleeved shirts with peter pan collars, fold-down socks with saddle oxfords – and lest someone commit a faux pas and mistake us for cheerleaders, I borrowed my teacher’s stencil and made us little tiny tags to tape to our blouses proclaiming us to the world as Go-Go Girls.

The song the boys chose to perform for the local talent show was Louie, Louie, and apparently there were some bad words in it (which is probably why they selected it, although it occurs to me just now that it could be that Louie, Louie was the only song they knew how to play) but since nobody on the Kiwanis Club selection committee could actually pick out the bad words when listening to the song played by the original artist, the band won on a technicality. Members of the band never spoke to us, not even as we waited in the wings for our their name to be called. They prepared the music. We listened to our 45 rpm vinyl and practiced our dancing, without ever considering that Louie, Louie, when performed by this bunch of High School Boys, might not sound exactly the same as it did on our record. We went on stage together, performed as we said we would, then exited and went our own ways. There was no getting to know each other, no hey-could-your-parents-bring-you-to-town-so-we-could-work-some-things-out-over-a-milkshake, no expressions of appreciation, congratulations, or hey-could-your-parents-bring-you-to-town-so-we-could-celebrate-over-a-milkshake afterwards.

I thought about that last night as we danced the night away while The Village People sang Macho Man, In the Navy, and the perennial crowd favorite, YMCA. (Did you know that to make the M by letting your elbows stick up in the air as you put your fingertips on your shoulders is WRONG? It is with a red face that I tell you that I, long-time/hard-core Village People fan that I am, didn’t either till last night.) My daughter, Alison knows The Biker, and tired as he was, he still came over to meet us for a drink at a nearby restaurant last night after the show. We talked and laughed and laughed and talked for a couple of hours that passed in a snap. Eric is so approachable, so attractive, so affable, so easy and fun to be with. All that, and he’s talented to boot. He regaled us with stories from the road, we talked Southern to him, and I declare: he may be a California turned New Jersey boy, but he’s got a streak of Southern in him, too.

You know, next time I see him, I’m gonna’ suggest they get them six go-go-girls as stage dressing. Just picture it: Biker, Construction Worker, GI, Policeman, Indian, Cowboy AND Go-Go Girls – three on each side of the stage. This could work. This could really work.

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Though she can no longer fit into her cheerleading/go-go girl get-up, Jeanne Hewell-Chambers needs only two feet and a floor to dance. Stories are her music now as she waltzes through 100 stories in 100 days. You can add her to your dance card by mashing the button in the orange bar at the top of the screen and becoming friends on facebook.