Category: Stories

Bow Tie o’ the Day presents me in 1985. This was back in the day when you were required to have your Social Security number visible on your ID. Here’s a noggin’ o’ some hairs I was pleased to have. I liked this cut. And yup, that’s a yellow tail hanging down on my right shoulder. I had that for a couple of years, and I changed the color often. I remember going red, blue, and green at different times with my pet tail.

Mom hated the tail. While I was in Graduate School at the U of U, Sandy Ferrell cut my hair when I was in Delta during school breaks. Mom got more and more apoplectic every time she saw the bright chunk of hairs just dangling there on my shoulder. She threatened to pay Sandy $50 to “accidentally” chop off my colorful tail. No need. About a couple of months after this photo was taken, I shaved my head for the first time. Unfortunately for me, I shaved off my head fur during the winter, and my head froze bigly.

Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my bow ties you have to see up close, in order to fully appreciate it. If you scrutinize these tasty chicken drumsticks, you’ll see a few of them have already had a bite taken out of them. Clever little details like that make an already fine bow tie extraordinary.

Although chicken is not an exotic meat, the exquisite Bow Tie does remind me of menus I encountered in frou-frou restaurants when I lived in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. I lived there eight years, so I ate at a few of the finer establishments on occasion.

I was always surprised to see the most outrageously priced entrees on the menu were things like venison, pheasant, trout, rabbit, duck, elk, etc. I did not know, until I moved to back east, that I had spent most of my life eating exotic meats.(Asparagus was considered an exotic side dish.) And, of course, all those meats were free for us. Apparently, even when we had no money, we ate as if we were rich. We were obviously too stoopid to know it. We were redneck hicks, and I’m still proud to be the white trash I was taught to be.

Did I ever sell my soul to pay for one of these fancy meals? Yes. One time. I was curious, and I ordered duck. It did not compare to the duck Mom prepared. In fact, its taste did not resemble duck at all. Duck fail! The worst part of it was that after I paid for it, I was too broke to eat out for another six months.

Once, when I was a kid, Dad headed to California to hang with his bee family, and he was going to be there longer than usual. It was winter– the time of year when we were usually tight on money. He gave a guy a can of honey in trade for the guy to bring Mom a few rabbits for us to eat while he was gone.

A few days after Dad left for California to babysit his precious bees, the dude brought Mom the skinned rabbits in a bucket. She thanked him, and off he went. But when Mom started to put them in a big Tupperware container to put them in the fridge, something about them just didn’t seem right to her. When Dad called to check in, Mom told him there was something hinky about the critters. Dad told her not to use them and he’d deal with it when he got home. Somehow, Mom managed to feed us while he was gone. Hell, we probably ate honey for every meal.

When Dad got home, he opened up the Tupperware container. He said a word or two that I won’t write here. Those skinned “rabbits” were cats. Dad left the house for a couple of hours, and when he came back he had the can of honey he had bartered for the rabbits. And a couple of hours after that, the rabbit guy showed up with a dozen real rabbits, a sheepish apology to Mom, and looking a bit roughed-up. And I remember he brought authentic rabbits to us every now and then throughout the winter. Dad was a very persuasive guy. It wasn’t about the deal. It was about hurting cats, and feeding his family, and messing with Mom.

Here Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are in my over-stacked, over-messy writing loft. Two desks, a few crates, and two cabinets do not provide enough space for my files. My piles overfloweth.

But at least I’m wearing a flowery bow tie, which I wore to Suzanne’s office to watch her eat lunch. I wanted to take her flowers, but she has allergies. My bloomin’ bow ties solve the problem. If I’m wearing one, Suzanne knows it means I’m metaphorically giving her a bouquet. Bow Tie’s flowers are also more cost-effective than real flowers. That’s an added bonus. No matter the price though, I’d still give her fresh flowers if she wouldn’t sneeze the petals onto the floor.

Dad had horrible allergies, which is beyond inconvenient if you’re a beekeeper. Alfalfa fields and orchards were his offices. One summer evening, after a long day in the bee yards, Dad was reading the newspaper in his chair, which sat just inside the front door by our house’s picture window. The door was open to the screen door, in order to get some air moving through the stuffy house. The house didn’t yet have an air conditioner, so opening the door was absolutely necessary.

Suddenly that evening, Dad got into a prize-winning, allergy-induced sneezing fit. He said nothing. He folded his newspaper closed, got up, and walked out the back door. A few minutes later, he was outside the picture window with a shovel, digging up every marigold in Mom’s flower bed, which was right below the big window. When he was done, he came in through the front door, sat back down in his chair, and opened up his Salt Lake Tribune. He didn’t say a word. And neither did Mom when she saw her marigolds turned over in clumps of dirt. She just shoveled them into the wheelbarrow, hauled them out back, and torched them. That was the end of Mom growing flowers anywhere in our yard. Home should be a place where your allergies can calm down a bit.

This story demonstrates how Mom and Dad understood each other so well that sometimes they didn’t even need to discuss a problem. They simply cut to the result they would have ended up with if they’d had the argument in the first place. It saved them time and energy, and possible hurt feelings. Do not think for one millisecond that their un-argued arguments always went in Dad’s favor. Mom gave as good as she got.