When I turned 8, I was given a bigly birthday bash. I don’t remember anything about it, but this snapshot tells me it happened. Evidently, it was an outdoor party, so I don’t have a clue why we’re wearing dresses. More specifically, why was I– of all people– wearing a dress? At least the dress had a Bow Tie o’ the 8th Birthday belt around the waist. I do remember Mom made this particular dress for me, which explains the bow belt I must have begged her to include in the design.
I am amazed my aging brain can still identify almost every person in my party photo. But I’m also amazed to see a couple of faces who don’t look at all familiar to me. It’s not just that I can’t remember their names: I have no memory of their happy faces. Obviously, I must have known these now-unknown-to-me girls at the time. They must have mattered to me. And now I feel guilty I draw a blank when I see their faces– especially since they probably brought me gifts. How rude of me to not remember them– my pals, my birthday gift-givers.
Of course, maybe if any of y’all can help me identify the young gals I can’t place, knowing their names might make my memory of them smarter.
Back row, left to right: Terilyn Anderson, Cynthia Cox, Shelly Brown, ???, Kris Garrett, Darlene Church, Georgia Grayson (?), ???, Sheila MacArthur, Shaunda Morrill.
Front row, left to right: My nephew Jeff, Vicki Farthing, Brenda Lowder, Thelma Tsosie, Shelly Taylor, ME, Fonda Albertson (?), PJ Clayton.
This afternoon, paisley Bow Tie o’ the Day and I were cleaning off my desk, which I’ve needed to conquer for the last year. It resembles a landfill at this point, so I must buckle down. Behind the computer monitor, I found The Stack o’ Magazines. You know The Stack of which I write. You’ve got one too. It’s the pile that results when you don’t have time to read the magazines that show up in your mail, but you are hoping one day life will slow down enough for you to catch up on your mag reading– maybe on a beach. You don’t want to toss the mags yet. You still have hope for free time. Silly you. But eventually, you do give the unread magazines the heave-ho in order to not be turned in to the Health Department for being a hoarder, with mouse-eaten magazines towering to the rafters of every room in your cluttered house. That’s the Stack o’ Magazines I mined from my desk today.
I took them to the garage and threw them in the recycling can, without really paying attention to them. But one VOGUE magazine fell out of the stack and hit the floor. It sort of fanned open. And TA-DA! Look what I found: an advertisement for ballet-style shoes, with Bow Tie o’ the Day bling as ornamentation. And it happened on the same day TIE O’ THE DAY gave you Gracie in a tutu in the early post! Ballet coincidence? Ballet sign? You know me. There’s a meaning here. And even if there’s not, I’ll make one up.
At first, I thought this “tutu/twinkle-toe” coincidence meant I should buy Gracie and me each a pair of these matching ballet flats, but then I found out their price. As I perused the advertisement, I learned the shoes are $1300 per pair. I’m certain the meaning of my ballet-y Coincidence o’ the Day has got to mean something profound which doesn’t cost that much money. Seriously, if you think about it, the things with truly enduring meaning for us rarely come to us with a price tag. Maybe the meaning of today’s coincidence is simply a reminder that money ain’t what makes you leap. Gracie and I can twirl just fine without it. It ain’t the shoes. It’s the love.
Here she is again: Grace Anne Blackwelder o’ the Day, wearing her Bow Tie o’ the Day outfit– complete with Tutu o’ the Day! This little wonder girl has fashion panache!
Trivia Alert! The word “tutu” reminded me that the actor, Rob Morrow named his daughter Tu. She is Tu Morrow, as in “tomorrow.” Evidently, Morrow is a fan of punny names. He married a pun. His wife is the actress, Debbon Ayer– which is pronounced like the word “debonaire.”
Magnetic Bow Tie o’ the Day’s graphics are a bigly FAIL. The lobster design was a good idea, but the actual design etched into the wood doesn’t look lobster-y to me. The little critters look more tentacle-y than claw-y. They even look spider-like. Thus, I’m wearing my “LOBSTER” t-shirt in hopes of clarifying Bow Tie’s etchings.
Bow ties like this one, which attach to clothing with magnets, are perfect for wearing with collarless shirts. They are not, however, abundant. I’ve never found one in a physical store. The ones I own, I found online. And I’ve found only a few. When I see one, I buy it. I ordered this one last week, and it came in a bundle of three, different-graphic bow ties. The total for the bundle was an astounding $4.19 on Amazon Prime. No charge for shipping.
I tell you about the price because I want you to know this bow tie’s design FAIL is not crippling to me in any way. It doesn’t discourage me in my neckwear endeavors. I haven’t gone broke by mindlessly building my collection with cheap neckwear FAILS, although I have inadvertently acquired some less-than-dazzling pieces over the years. I am thrifty and picky in my selections when it is at all possible. No matter its condition or temperament, every piece of neckwear has a speshul place in the various neighborhoods in The Kingdom of The Tie Room.
Speaking o’ The Tie Room… I’m currently reorganizing and rearranging my collection, and so I will be posting pictures of where my neckwear resides– one or two photos at a time. To show a bunch of photos of the entire room, all at once, would be too overwhelming for any human being who is not I. Trust me.
Little ol’ Mom, and little ol’ me. We were tuckered out, and I just figured out why. I am wearing the neckwear we kids wore when we had a sore throat or were congested. As I was filing this pic this morning, it leapt out at me: I was wearing Vick’s Rag o’ the Day. Neckwear! I don’t know what you called it in your house, but in our house it was The Vick’s Rag. It was a clean, white dishtowel, rolled up, slicked with a glob of Vick’s VapoRub against your neck, and fastened around your neck with a bigly safety pin. It most likely had absolutely no medicinal value, but it always helped me feel a tad better when Mom put one on me.
The Vick’s Rag was also a kind of neck tiara or full-on crown. It came with privileges. You had dibs on just about everything. The living room sofa was yours if you were wearing The Vick’s Rag. Mom would anoint the couch with The Tuckin’ in o’ The Sheet down its length, for you to rest on. You could ask for special eats if you wanted to– and that was on top of Mom’s regular family fixin’s. Your cup held endless refills of warm Jell-O water. And.. you could do all of your sick eating and drinking on the couch. You were not required to move your bones one iota, as long as your wore The Vick’s Rag.
The highest prize The Vick’s Rag entitled you to? Television channel selection was all yours. Now, for the benefit of you youngsters, let me assure you: Being the boss of TV channels back in the olden days when I grew up was a bigly deal, like you cannot fathom. We, like most people, had only one television in the house. One. That was it. You were choosing for the whole family what you’d all be watching.
But receiving the television privilege was a somewhat complicated prize, because in those same olden days when I grew up, TV remotes were not a common entity. This meant either you had to get your speshul butt off the couch to change the channel, or you could ask someone else to change it for you.
Each of those two options carried with it a hidden trap. You had to be careful. If you got up to change the channel too often, Mom or Dad would say, “Oh, you seem to be getting around ok. You must be getting better.” That was code for, “You’ll probably be well enough to go to school tomorrow.” Doh!
If you asked someone else to turn the channel for you, you had to be extremely polite. You could not be bossy or constantly asking for the channel to be changed, or Mom or Dad would say something about how they don’t work all day just to come home, and get up and down, to change TV channels. You knew that option would rarely end well, and Dad would be allowed to take over “your” couch before the evening was over– even if everybody knew you wore The Vick’s Rag in the family.
Checkered-flag Bow Tie o’ the Day is protecting the innocent by hiding the identity of some unfortunate DHS boy who actually went on a date with me in 1980. I don’t remember which dance this was, but the brick wall tells me it was held in the old gym of the old DHS. I seem to remember we went 4-wheeling out by DMAD with another couple before AND after the dance. And then something weird happened, which I can’t seem to remember, and we ended up walking to my house, and then I drove my mystery date to his house.
Don’t think for one minute I’m not wearing a bow tie in this photo. If you look closely, you can see the girl on my sweater is wearing a pink bow tie around her collar. I find bow ties even when I didn’t know I had ’em. They’re just little pieces of the real me, showing up in my history. Some people’s souls throw glitter wherever they go. Apparently, I sprinkle a little trail o’ bow ties on my life’s journey.
The 3-D, pigtail-adorned sweater I’m wearing in this photo is one of my fave pieces of clothing ever. But I ended up wearing it only two or three times. You see, I have this stoopid tendency to “save” my best stuff (clothing, dinnerware, etc.) for speshul, bigly deal occasions. I’m afraid I’ll spill, snag, or otherwise ruin them if I wear them on regular occasions. And then, to compound it, I also worry the next speshul occasion will be speshul-er than this speshul occasion, so I should save the best outfit for the upcoming possibly speshul-er event. And so on.
Before I knew it, my pigtail sweater didn’t fit anymore: I had pubertied into a larger shirt size. My sweater was nearly pristine when I finally had to take it to D.I.. While it fit, I didn’t wear it and enjoy it as much as I could have. That means a gaggle o’ spectators couldn’t enjoy it while I wore it too. My decision to “save” it means I held back a bit o’ joy from others and myself.
We forget that every minute we’re alive is a speshul occasion, and we should wear our best stuff every day if that’s what we want to do. Each of us is important enough to deserve to do speshul stuff just for our own tiny selves. We don’t need to be in front of a grand audience before it’s okay to dazzle and shine while we walk across a room.
We don’t need to feed speshul guests at our table, to use the good plates and cups. We– and the folks around us who love us– are speshul too.
TIE O’ THE DAY brings flowery Bow Ties o’ the Day in honor of Peggy Crane’s birthdate. Peggy was amused by my neckwear, even as she told me it was weird.
It has been almost two years since Peggy and I last spoke and razzed each other. I was blessed to be able to sit beside her hospital bed and hold her hand for a long while on the day she passed. Throughout our conversation, she was still showing signs of her wild self, despite her rapidly deepening pain. I miss Peggy, and I think of her daily. She was Mom’s best friend, and she was my second mother.
Bow Tie o’ the Day is helping me make bigly plans. We’ve been flipping through actual, paper pages of two guidebooks about the state of Arkansas. I know! Who’da thunk it? I’ll be on the loose with a suitcase of bow ties in Arkansas. It’s gonna happen in a couple of weeks.
I have nothing against Arkansas. I just never imagined I’d be visiting it. Arkansas, as a destination, is Suzanne’s fault. She took the opportunity to arrange our July vacation completely on her own. She followed our main “rules” for choosing a vacay spot. First, it must be a place tourists don’t flock to, cuz we want to look at the place and its people, not other tourists. Second, the vacation spot needs to have a beach. We’ve done ocean beaches, but this time we’re beaching at a lake in the Ozarks.
When I order guidebooks for our various vacations, I don’t order the ones with fancy maps and facts, facts, facts, dry facts. I order the guidebooks that tell you about the weird, infamous, haunted, tall tale places you might want to visit. For example, I read in one of my Arkansas guidebooks about the chicken in this photo. Its owner named it Boo Boo because it was afraid of everything. And it regularly had seizures. (I’m envisioning Boo Boo, the chicken, as kind of like the fainting goats who get startled, freeze in mid-motion, then fall over. Boo Boo, The Fainting Chicken!))
Apparently, one day Boo Boo had a seizure and she fell beak-first into a pond. Boo Boo’s owner saw her floating there and tried to save her, but she was dead. Well, Boo Boo’s owner’s sister, who was a retired nurse, happened to show up. The sister performed mouth-to-beak resuscitation. Dead Boo Boo came back to life. Somehow, Jay Leno heard about Boo Boo’s life-and-death adventure, so Boo Boo and its owner were guests on The Tonight Show.
Back in Arkansas, a few weeks after Boo Boo’s Hollywood appearance, she had a bigly seizure and really did die. One of Boo Boo’s people erected a memorial shrine to the famous, dearly departed bird. Personally, I think the retired nurse who gave the chicken mouth-to-beak resuscitation deserves a shrine too. But if we find Boo Boo’s final resting spot, it will be enough to keep me jolly.
Some people are BORN TO RUN. Some are BORN TO BE WILD. Some are even BORN TO BUY FABRIC (like Suzanne). I was BORN TO BE BIPOLAR. I probably won’t be making a silly t-shirt or bumper sticker about it though. I joke around about my escapades in lunacy, but I also take my brain’s mood pendulum seriously. While combing through photos, in an effort to learn more about my brain’s life, I made a discovery. In pix of me as a child, I wasn’t usually smiling bigly, animatedly, or even cheesily– the way most kids do. Even as a kid, I carried a hidden darkness. I was around 6 months old in this photo, which shows me wearing an almost-smile. This is a rare snapshot of 1964-baby-HEW coming close to actually showing a happy, bigly smile as a kid.
[NOTE: Not only do I think I was born with my crazy head, I know I was born with my Spock ear. See, it’s there atop my left ear.]
Bow-tied Bow Tie o’ the Day is helping me act out on some infantile ridiculousness this afternoon. I admit it: The 1964-baby-HEW is jealous of the newest baby in the Wright clan, Grace Anne Blackwelder. I’ve been posting so many pix of her, and posts about her, that 1964-baby-HEW has developed a severe case of jealousy. In my family, it’s all about Gracie right now. “Gracie! Gracie! Gracie!” I’m even jealous of all the attention I, myself, pay to Gracie. I childishly believe Gracie has thrown down the pacifier-gauntlet, and now the baby duel is on. 1964-baby-HEW v. Baby Grace Anne. I’m cheering for Gracie. I want her to win.
That’ll make 1964-baby-HEW even more jealous. And thus, the infantile, bitter absurdity of the life of babies goes on. Just kidding. 😁🤣
Tie o’ the Day was given to me by my bro–in-law, Nuk. I think of it as a summer tie, or more specifically, a tie for the water. Tie’s wearer can blow it up on one end, which makes it a safety tie one can wear with a life jacket. Air-filled Tie can also be Skitter’s floatie, as is seen here.
I mentioned Delta’s old outdoor swimming pool in one of yesterday’s posts, and the topic got some of you reminiscing about “old pool love” right along with me.
The long-demolished Delta pool was set on the corner of the property where The Sands is currently located. Its structure was basic: a swimming pool, with a single diving board; an office and dressing rooms. In the office, you could buy chips, sodas, candy, and Popsicles from Arjanna Wood, who ran the joint. I guess you could say Arjanna’s office was Delta’s first convenience store.
The pool was surrounded by tall cinder block walls. I’m just guessing the walls were somewhere in the ballpark of 10-feet tall. I never took time out of the fun I was having to measure the pool wall height.
I remember waiting anxiously every year for the city to get the word the Utah Health Department had once again declared the pool sanitary and safe enough to be opened for at least one more summer. The state’s annual stamp o’ approval quit happening in the mid-70’s. To be honest, the Health Department probably should have closed down the open-air pool we dearly loved long before it did. But I’m glad they didn’t. The slippery, cracked place was a blast. It was a palace to those of us who made it a second home for the summer.
The city’s “cement pond” was also a blast after dark when it wasn’t officially open. Think about it: Outdoor pools can’t really close. It wasn’t difficult to sneak in after dark. Ropes, ladders, milk crates, even backhoes were just a few implements we used to get ourselves inside for a midnight swim. You simply had to make sure you pulled your break-in tools over the wall with you, eliminating your outside-the-wall trail.
I know one doofus and his group of friends who threw a ladder against the outside wall and didn’t pull it in after everyone snuck inside. The cop out on patrol saw that clue right away. Doh! Heck, I watched a herd of at least a dozen kids ride their bikes to the pool around 2 in the morning, and then were dough-headed enough to leave their bikes piled up outside one of the pool walls. Cop noticed the mound o’ bikes. Hey, people, if you’re going to commit a prank, don’t tell on yourselves by leaving bigly clues. Just a thought.
The real trick to not getting caught trespassing in the Delta pool at night was to not emit too much noise. It was best if you didn’t yell or cackle or do a cannonball. Delta is not a loud village. It especially wasn’t loud in the 70’s, and the city cops made their rounds through the town faithfully. If a cop caught you trespassing in the pool, you weren’t in too much trouble if you hadn’t been drinking or smoking or damaging the property. The cop would usually drive you right to your house (like free Uber) and chat with you and your parents. That was as far as your legal concerns went. For better or worse, your fate was up to your parents. 😱 Fortunately for me, Dad had harmlessly trespassed into many an outdoor pool in his youth too. He understood the exuberance of kidhood.
