Category: Stories

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It Is Not A Dashboard Camera, But It Might As Well Be

It’s that time of year when stores of all ilks are getting way too people-y for my enjoyment. I generally like human beings, but I prefer them when they are not in crowds—particularly in the midst of a pandemic.

I always do my shopping early, but I inevitably think of things at the last minute, as well. This morning I realized Suzanne was down to one bottle of wine and zero bottles of Bailey’s, and I can assure you that is just not a sufficient supply to keep her jolly over her Christmas break and into the first days of the New Year. I had to get to the liquor store ASAP. Every hour longer I put it off, I will have to wait in a biglier line of more and more people. So off I drove in my Pontiac sleigh to the Bountiful liquor store, where I filled a small basket with a few bottles of Suzanne-pleasing libations. Triumphantly, I survived the throngs of spirited shoppers-for-spirits. I can cross that errand off my list.

But when I got in my car, what to my wondering eyes did appear? That dang Elf on the Bowtie on the Dashboard. I’m not stoopid. I knew why it showed up. Heck, we all know why it was there, don’t we? I swore off ye olde alcoholic drinks years ago. I spent twenty minutes in my parked car explaining to the Elf on the Bow Tie on the Dashboard that the potations I had purchased in the liquor store were not intended for my gullet. They were strictly for Suzanne and any masked, thirsty guests who might show up at our house during the holidays. I begged him to keep my name off the “naughty” list. The Elf on the Bow Tie on the Dashboard looked at me with a lifted eyebrow of suspicion. And then he abruptly winked at me and said, in a dastardly elf voice, “I know it’s not for you. I just wanted to give you a scare.” I breathed a very loud sigh o’ relief. But the whole drive home, I kept repeating to myself, “Man, I picked the wrong lifetime to quit drinking.”😜🍸

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Somebody Has To Be One

I will always honor the bright strain of redneck that runs deep in my soul. I nurture that part of me. Have I put a tattered couch out on my front porch? Yes, more than once. Have I had an old mattress on my front porch? Yup, also more than once. The neighborhood dogs, cats, goats, and roosters love to jump and nap on my beat-up furniture. The way I see it, animals have a right to have “patio” furniture too—at least until you decide it’s time to load the old furniture bones off the porch and into the rusty truck bed, to drive it to the dump for a fond farewell. That makes perfect sense to me. Trust me—between all the folks and animals hanging around my place, I have always gotten more than my money’s worth out of the furniture I’ve owned. That’s part of the redneck home furnishing ethic.

Someone I met at a fancy party in Baltimore in the early-90’s once said to me, condescendingly, “For being a redneck from nowhere, you seem amazingly well educated.” I wanted to say in return, “For being an Ivy League-educated snooty boy, you sure seem like more of a stereotypical redneck than most rednecks I know.” But I didn’t say that to him. You see, I was raised to be a polite redneck who loves her neighbor instead of judging them by what they put on their porch, or by the population of their hometown. “Gee, thanks,” is all I said to the patronizing gentleman before I moved on to more interesting partygoers with open minds.

Sometimes now, I wish I could remember that guy’s name so I could contact him. I want to inform him—politely—that not only did I come from that “redneck nowhere” called Delta, UT, but Chrissy Teigen was born there too. He most certainly wouldn’t remember me by now, but he’d be impressed with the rednecks o’ Delta, if he knew Chrissy Teigen was born one there. I know I’m more impressed.

Holiday Tie Tally: 134 Neckties. 64 Bow Ties.

#wearthedangmaskbutpullitupbeforeyouspityourchew #realredneckswearthedangmasks

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The Thong Remains The Same

Rudolph Tie and Bow Tie o’ the Day are pleased to present the body thong an anonymous gift-giver sent me last year. Y’all are so good to me, and you know me so well. I’ve got to go to the deli this morning, and I’m so hoping I forget to take off the red-nosed thong before I go. It would be wrong of me to wear it to the grocery store intentionally. That’s over-the-top. But to “accidentally” give my fellow shoppers a show…that’s not inappropriate at all. I am free entertainment at Dick’s Market. Suzanne says I should sell tickets. 🤡 🎡 🎄 🦌

Holiday Tie Tally: 129 Neckties. 40 Bow Ties.

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A Man Of Few Bad Words And Many Christmas Balls

I rarely heard my dad use profanity around the family. The swear-y word I recall hearing him say on occasion was “balls.” It always made me laugh. I’ve never heard anyone else use it as a “swear.” These 9 Ties and 4 Bow Ties o’ the Day are for Dad. I’m missing him extra bunches today for some reason, and so I’m wearing my striped overalls—as was daily his custom.

There is a Christmas story that lives in my family lore, which I have heard many times, from many of the actual participants. I have never heard the story told the same way twice, by anyone who was present when it came to pass. I had not yet been born when the event occurred, so I am only figuring as to the “truth” of what happened. I have listened to all the versions of the story, and this is what I have settled on. The gist is true. Some details may or may not be. But this is how the story sits in my as-told-to mind.

Mom wanted a flocked Christmas tree one year, probably sometime in the late-50’s. Dad invoked his belief in the principle of “happy wife, happy life”—and swiftly brought home, not just a Christmas tree, but some flock-goo and a hand-pump flocking gadget. With the bare tree on the sidewalk, just off the front porch, Dad began to spray flock onto its branches.

Mom watched. The kids watched. I’m sure Lyman’s peered out their windows from across the street to watch. Let me just say this: This was back before any real tree-flocking technology had been perfected to even the teensiest degree. The gooey flock kept getting gummed up in the pump. As Dad pumped the gadget, the flocking spit at the tree in streaks and glops and splotches. This was not the pretty tree Mom or Dad had envisioned.

Dad’s patience with the project was thinning. And even as Mom could see it unfolding, she was powerless to stop the inevitable. The frigid air on the entire street was getting prickly, as Dad became—how shall I say it—”vocal” about the clogged flocking gadget. At some point, Momo even emerged from her house next door to ours, to investigate the ensuing holiday hullabaloo in our front yard. As the anticipating crowd grew, so did Dad’s irritability. Dad said some bigly bad words as he tried to complete his flocking mission. I am fairly certain, based on the many retellings of the story, the bigly bad f-word finally flew out of Dad’s mouth at some point. And I don’t mean the word “flock.” I heard that Momo scurried back to her house to find Popo. Mom made sure my siblings made a bee-line into our house.

I am sure Mom and Dad had a brief, tense two-person family meeting out there in the cold, after which Dad likely went coyote hunting for a couple of hours to re-set his blood pressure, and to think of how to make proper apologies to his mother—and to mine.

How did this story end? I have heard that my dad finally managed to passably complete the flocking o’ the tree, and all was made right with the world. (I highly doubt that version.) I have also heard that my parents used the tree in its as-was imperfection. (I don’t think that is believable either.) In the most Ron-and-Helen-Wright-esque version of the story I can imagine, after Dad took off in his truck, Mom dragged the half-flocked pine behind the house and set it on fire—and later, Dad showed up with a freshly cut, naked, better-than-the-first-one X-mas tree. Now, that’s the kind of home I was born into, give or take a fact or two—and I’m proud of it.

Holiday Tie Tally: 128 Neckties. 39 Bow Ties.

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The Amalgamation O’ Skitter

I’m sure Skitter has learned it from me. She likes to mix her holidays into a Mulligan Stew of celebration. Here she is, wearing her McDonald’s French fries Halloween costume and a Christmas tree Tie o’ the Day. You might have noticed that many of Skitter’s X-mas ties have been made with their print patterns upside down. I suppose that is the reason I was able to procure her a bulk batch of thirty or so doggie neckties for the enormous cost of $9.95 on amazon.

In the second photo, you can see Skitter later fell asleep on her bed on the couch last night, surrounded by two of her blankets and covered in 9 of my jolly Bow Ties o’ the Evening. I guess, sometimes bow ties feel warmer than fleece blankets. At least, according to Skitter.

Holiday Tie Tally: 119 Neckties. 35 Bow Ties.

Skitter’s Holiday Tie Tally: 15 Neckties.

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When Shampoo Gets In Your Eyes

I like that TIE O’ THE DAY has been around long enough to have post topics people expect to see annually. My grandma’s early-70’s homemade milkweed pod Christmas ornament is one such holiday topic. It is a crafty artifact worth taking a moment to gaze upon. It’s a clever use for a milkweed pod, and it also shows off my beautiful grandmother, Zola Walker Wright—who our family has always called Momo (pronounced Mom’-o). I usually display the ornament with my “Santa, Baby” Ties o’ the Day, because Momo was a looker.

Momo was an elegant, well-spoken woman of manners and culture. She belonged to book clubs and garden clubs and whatever fine arts clubs existed in town. Despite her grace, she could not spell, and my dad’s lack of spelling ability came directly from her genes, I’m sure. They spelled words wrong, the same way.

Since we lived next door to Momo and Popo, I was the recipient of many Momo confections. She could bake up a storm, and I was a willing guinea pig for new recipes she tried out. But my fondest childhood memory of Momo is of her washing my hair every Sunday morning in her kitchen sink, to help out Mom while she got my siblings ready for church. Momo or Popo would lift me onto the kitchen counter, where I would lie down on a towel, with my head over the sink’s edge. Momo washed my hair with her sink sprayer. It felt exotic to me. She then towel-dried and combed out my hair and sent me off towards home where someone would assist me in getting into my church clothes.

I can still feel the kitchen counter, straight, beneath my stretched out kid’s body. I can feel the strangeness of lying there. And I can still feel the warmth of the water through my hair, the sting of shampoo in my eyes when I got too fidgety. I recall feeling entirely safe and loved and cared for as I lay on my back on the kitchen counter with my head over the sink. I felt wonderful because I knew this was something extra I got from my grandparents, simply because I lived next door and was the baby of my family.Thirty years later, when I bought my grandparents’ home, I repainted the kitchen and had the kitchen flooring replaced. The sink and the kitchen counters needed to be replaced, but I could not bring myself to do it. That was the Sunday morning hair-washing sink of my early childhood. That was “my” kitchen counter. I didn’t want them to be different than they had always been. When I sold the house in 2017, saying goodbye to the beat up sink and counter top was the hardest part of leaving the house for the last time.

Holiday Tie Tally: 108 Neckties. 24 Bow Ties.

#wearthedangmask #whistlewhileyoumask #getyourdangflushot #scienceisyourfriend #evensasquatchknowsthecoronavirusisnotahoax #criticalthinkingsisacriticalsuperpower #hashtagtreeohashtagtree #harmonyandhopearehardtocomebysogeneratesome #iloveyoumomo

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Santa’s Spare Time

I was thinking about how Santa spends his downtime. Of course, I went to the Tie Room to do research. Bow Tie o’ the Day tells me Santa likes to ice skate. The six Ties o’ the Day give evidence that Santa enjoys playing football with his reindeer, golfing in his sleigh, snow skiing, and snowboarding. But when Santa’s done playing, he checks Facebook to find how many friend requests he’s got—WHOA! That’s when he knows it’s time to get himself and his reindeer into tip-top shape for their bigly night. Sounds about right, to me.

Holiday Tie Tally: 106 Neckties. 24 Bow Ties.

#wearthedangmask #maskthismaskthat

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Reindeer For Dad

I decided to honor Dad—master hunter o’ all critters—by displaying six of my reindeer Christmas Ties o’ the Day, but I chose to actually wear the tie showing Santa and a reindeer fishing for Santa-hatted green fish. I got to go deer hunting with Dad on opening day long before I was old enough to do the required trekking. For the first few years I accompanied him and my brothers on opening day, I tuckered out early and ended up riding on Dad’s shoulders for most of the day’s hunt. I can still see the view of various mountain ranges from atop Dad’s shoulders, and I distinctly recall once laying my head on his head and falling asleep on his shoulders while he walked to find a deer he had shot.

As for fishing with Dad, I have vivid memories of packing up the camper he built himself to house us on camping trips. I recall driving with Dad and his dad, Popo, to lakes to fish, always intending to stay overnight. I recall that I always asked Dad or Popo to put the worm on my hook. I recall catching the fish, cooking the fish, and eating the fish that we cooked over the campfire. But I do not recall ever leaving a lake or driving home after a fishing adventure. Magically, I always fell asleep in the camper at the end of a day o’ fishing, and opened the camper door the next morning to find the camper was parked on our own front lawn, right outside the picture window. I recall always fussing at Dad at the breakfast table for not letting us stay overnight at the lake. Dad had to be away so often to work his bees that he really, really, really liked to sleep in his own bed whenever he could. He always said he couldn’t sleep well without his personal mattress and his personal pillow. Honestly, I think it was Mom he couldn’t sleep well without. Miss you, Dad.

Holiday Tie Tally: 99 Neckties. 22 Bow Ties.

Holiday Face Mask Tally: 7.

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No-tie O’ The Day

Today marks 13 years since Dad left us to go to The Painless Place. I still miss kissing his bald head. The coyotes he loved to hunt continue to howl in the raw cold of dawn. The bees are dancing their various jigs in their winter playgrounds. And we’re all still down here just holding up the sky, and missing the old man who taught us how to work with joy, and how to love each other with laughter.

This pic of my beekeeper dad was snapped long before I was born. I’ve titled it, ST. RON OF THE BEES. I don’t remember what I was being punished for as a wee kid once, but Dad kicked my butt with his work boots. He did it so softly that only my pride felt it.

#dadwouldwearthedangmask #dadwouldgripeaboutitbuthewouldwearit #daddidnotseeconspiraciesundereveryrock

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A X-mas Gift For Mom

[Enjoy this repeat of a “Christmas balls” post from 2017.]

Tie o’ the Day is covered in holiday greenery and classic ornaments: Christmas tree balls. I love these classic ornaments most of all. I mean—I like balls, in general. Sports balls, of course. And there’s Cinderella’s ball. And cotton balls. And cheese balls. And disco balls. When Mom reigned over the porch at my Delta house, her favorite balls belonged to our mini-dachsie, Vincent D’OGnofrio (R.I.P., Vin!). They amused her to no end. Whenever Vinnie sped across the lawn, she’d say, “His balls are so cute!” I should have painted them red and green one year for her for Christmas.