Throw Back Thor's Day

It’s Throw Back Thor’s Day (aka Throwback Thursday on Facebook & #TBT on Twitter, I don’t post consistently every Thursday, but on the days when I’m in scanning mode, I take the time.

I started posting because I started scanning all the photos we rescued that the firemen thoroughly doused in putting out the fire that took my home in 2011.  I’m still scanning sporadically.  It was much too overwhelming to do all at once and there are hundreds of them still to go.  I keep going

though, hoping to get them all into digital before they’ve faded beyond recall. 

It’s kind of fun to put some of them into PowerPoint framed and prettied up a bit along with a bit of history – my version of scrapbooking.

Having been an Air Force Brat through all of my school years, we moved every three years.  I made and lost more friends than many people will ever have.  I find pictures of past friends and am amazed that I remember their first names.  Fortunately, in 1962 Mom let me buy the school annual for the Pyote Panthers, so I could look up the two fellow brats I’m with in this photo. The Pyote School was an old brick building that contained grades 1-12.  There were 10 seniors and 7 juniors, etc...

Mom had chopped my hair again and I hated it, but beauty shop was not in Mom’s lexicon.  I was into can-cans and circle skirts which made my 22 inch waist look even smaller.  I kept a 23” waist into my 40’s which cost a lot in alterations as nothing off the rack ever  fit me.

So here’s my throw back for this week from Pyote, Texas 1962.  

WalkAbout Wednesdays - The Hill

Thanks to the interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything. - Charles Kuralt

Hoda and KLG have ‘wines day Wednesday’ and although there will be some wine a little later in my Wednesday, this one is and has been walkabout Wednesday for me for the past few weeks.  In my walkabout, I find I'm seeing things I ordinarily miss along my way.

I’ve been parking on Southside by the post office at some of the free curbside spaces and walking the 3-1/2 blocks to the Lister Hill Library for their 2-hour 10-week WriteNow sessions.  Lister Hill has no parking lot; the nearest lots are 2 and 3 blocks away and cost $4; the closest meter I found was 2 blocks away and I’d have to dash back before the 2 hours is up or be ticketed. 

Free parking is better, but as 18^th Street is one steep hill (feels like 45 degree angle), I don’t walk mindwalking downhill to the sessions, but all the way back up that same hill, in this summer heat, is out of the question.  I’ve opted for the local transit trolley which is only a quarter for under 62 and 10 cents for seniors (yay, one more perk of being 65).

I signed up for WriteNow in late May, and I have been merrily walking to every session, and arriving by and usually before noon every Wednesday since, hence walkabout Wednesday.  Most of the sessions are on the 4^th floor in the Edge of Chaos.  I love that name and the room, which is a huge sprawling space with two walls of soaring almost floor to ceiling windows and murals on all exposed wall space and columns. 

With the exception of me and one other participant, the group is comprised of academics from the sciences here at UAB working on various theses, article reviews, and dissertations. 

Dr. Jennifer Greer, seen here behind a column helping a student, is available for quick critiques, direction, opinion, help with organizing tools and more.  Once each month, she conducts a luncheon lecture with food catered by Newks (pretty good sandwiches).  She hands out some rather handy tools to help organize our writing, many of which I’ve revised to suit my non-academic writing projects.  One in particular, has helped me immensely to set deadlines for essays that are done on spec and hence have no ‘real’ deadline other than mine

I’m confident, I’ll have most of my essays submitted to various publications by the end of the sessions and hope more than a few of them finds a home.

What Are You Thankful For?

“Thank you is the best prayer that anyone can say…” – Alice Walker

 

It’s the only one I ever say.  Just before I turn the bedside lamp off at midnight every night, I write at least 5 things in my gratitude journal that I am grateful for.

Last Tuesday evening’s list lead with two items that are often repeated in my journal as well as out loud on any given day.

1. Thank you for the strong healthy body and mind that are mine.
2. Thank you for my mother’s continued excellent health.

I am thankful that at 65, I am healthy and strong as is my 81 year-old mother.  Once a week on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, I pick her up around 9 or 10 a.m., and we’re off. 

My gift to her and, truth be told, to me is a day of doing whatever she wants to do, going wherever she wants to go.  I know for sure, that we will:

1. Shop. The stores and malls may vary, but she is a consummate ‘Mallee’ who loves to go ‘saleing’.
2. Eat & Drink.  We’ll stop for lunch and a beer or two at whatever restaurant strikes her fancy.
1. China Buffet for a Tsing Tao beer and  all you can eat, and boy can she eat.  At 5’2” and size 8 you’d never know.
2. Jim ‘n’ Nicks for Taco Tuesdays’ fried catfish tacos and Modelo or Acapulco for Fajitas and Dos Equis.
3. Shop some more – Birmingham has a plethora of large and small malls and then there are the vintage stores and Salvation Army stores, etc.
4. Party. We invariable stop for a happy hour which includes bar food or appetizer and something good and wet.
1. Bonefish grill is a favorite for Whiskey n Soda tall and an order or two of Bang-Bang Shrimp.
2. Dodiyo’s for Wine or a Stella Artois and pizzette and hummus.
3. Brio’s for a Peroni, bread and olive oil and shrimp cocktail.
5. Shop.  We always stop at Publix grocery store up the block from her house for miscellaneous grocery items on the way home.  She buys a six pack and I a bottle of wine to take home.

We’ll unload our treasures from the car, turn on a rerun of some show we both like and sit and sip and chat a bit before I go home. 

What are you Thankful for?

The Brat - Enrolling Myself In First Grade

I was scared, but only I knew it. Momma combed my hair into long curls with a comb dipped in cold water – think Shirley Temple.  A quick breakfast in the kitchen, and then I walked to the bus stop with the kids I’d just met and barely knew, and took a bus to the first school I’d ever attended.

Once there, my new friends left me to go to their classes saying just ask for the principal, so I asked the first grown up I saw. 

I was determined not to cry, but the butterflies in my stomach made me feel like throwing up my breakfast.  I swallowed hard before answering this kind and smiling lady’s question of why my parents weren’t with me.  “Momma doesn’t drive and she’s home with my little brother.  Daddy went to work at 5 this morning.

I have all my papers and stuff, and I’m supposed to give them to the principal.”  I handed her the envelope full of information I could not yet read.

She took me in hand, and I eventually found myself in a first grade classroom with another young woman introducing me to a class of yet more strangers.

Sitting at a desk in a classroom listening to the teacher talk felt somehow right, and at lunch, everyone wanted to know me because I was from Texas.  They all seemed to think that all Texans carried guns, rode horses and knew John Wayne personally.

The ride home that first day was reflective as I looked out the window at the verdant countryside.  I knew that my entire world had changed, and I would never be the same.  Some of my new friends were sorry for me, for in their eyes no one cared enough to go with me.  Some of my friends thought it was cool that I could go out into the world alone and unafraid.

I was a little sad for myself, too, but I was also little bit proud; I knew I was okay alone among strangers.  It would stand me in good stead as time and again, I walked into a brand new school and enrolled myself.

Although I enrolled in February, with the teacher’s help, I caught up to the rest of the class before school let out for the summer in June.