I usually post my book reviews under Recent Reads, but for some reason it is not allowing me to post an entry, therefore it is appearing here.


 I got this free for my Kindle.

March 2013 

Like a Flood, by Elizabeth Proske. A pastor and group of young people from area churches go to Colombia to help rebuild a church compound devastated by a flood. A promising premise that didn’t live up to itself. Unknown to them prior to departure, a terrorist gang has targeted Christian churches and individuals. They want to turn all land into coca-growing fields. They made a threat against the compound that the group is going to help out. The first half of the book moved slowly, drudgingly so. Too much time spent on exactly what they did-moving wet, moldy carpet, re-roofing, painting, having lunch under the trees, how hot it was, etc.  The girls acted like love-sick teenagers so I was surprised to find out that all of them were college age. One of the young men is approached by one of the Latino workers, who is part of the terrorist group, and asked to join up with him, spying on the pastors and the group workers. The Latino pastor’s sister is kidnapped by the terrorist group and two of the guys and a girl go off to rescue her. Later another group goes back to rescue the Bibles that were supposed to be delivered to a small village. Serious events happen from this point on so the story gets more exciting. Having said that however, some of the storyline is unrealistic.  One of the guys is fatally injured and the group pastor does not send them all home, but allows them to continue to both work at the compound and to further endanger themselves in other anti-terrorist activity. One of the characters plays no valid role in the book. He is an unknown individual that no one grows close to and the book ends without ever having gotten to know him beyond the brief history he shared with the pastor. I have to say that my favorite part was when one of the girls witnessed to another girl and she eventually accepts Christ. Very moving testimony.  Published 2012 (I would say self-published.)

Snow, -5°, wind, rain, fog, ice, 50°. Yup, it's winter in Maine. My husband and I were born the same year and grew up in the same city. He was raised in a French Catholic family, and I came from a WASP background. But our memories of our childhood winters are very similar. Kids are kids no matter who you are.

     I need to clarify an issue that came up in my critique group after they read my piece. They thought my mother came across as mean. But, you have to remember that these memories are from the point of view of a child. Other kids had cool moms, but not me. Then I grew up and became a mother. Ah...I understand.

Winter

Winter

is cold:     My piano teacher, Dawn Grant, was involved in local music social circles. She occasionally had me and other students play at various venues with her. I was about ten, I performed at the house of a well-to-do local businessman, Frank Winter, who lived on Main Street in Lewiston. When the social time was over I called my mother to come get me, got myself ready, and went outside to wait. I shoved my bare hands in my pockets, hunched up my shoulders against the cold and waited. And waited. And waited, until my hands, feet, ears and nose were frozen. I told myself then that when I grew up I would never be cold again. I lied.

is lonely:  I am the oldest of three children. I suppose if you were to ask them, my younger sister and brother would probably say I was a pain in the neck. But I’m not going to let you ask them. Instead I am going to presume that I was not bothering my brother or sister or even my mother when she made me dress up in boots, scarf, gloves and my gray snow pants and jacket and go out-side. Alone. She told me I couldn’t go back in until I had played outside for a while. Alone. The sky was gray. No other children played in their yards. I lay in the snow and made a snow angel. I may have crossed the small side yard to the stone fireplace and climbed on that for a few minutes. I went back to the door and knocked to go back in. Mother didn’t come. I sat on the stoop to wait. Cold permeated the 1960 snowsuit, not lined with Thinsulate or stuffed with down. Right at that moment I hated winter, and I hated Mother.

hurts:     My dad set up a metal rink on the lawn before winter blew in solid, and filled it with water. Soon, we had our own miniature ice skating surface. I had a friend who was sometimes annoying. Like the day I wore my brand new, pure-white leather figure skates. Neither of us were experts at skating, and that was made very obvious when she couldn’t stop and ran into me. The toe pick of her blade cut into the side of my skate, through the leather, and into my foot. My beautiful skates, made imperfect by one careless move. I’m not sure if I was madder that she damaged my skates and hurt my foot, or that she laughed. I suppose I’ve forgiven her for this indiscretion, but I feel pain whenever I think of this incident.

is fun:     By now, I think you get the point that as a child I was not a fan of winter. I have no memories of doing winter activities with either of my parents, but when it came time for my dad to clean the driveway after a snowstorm, now that was fun. We kids would sit in the snow with our backs to the driveway. Dad would slowly push the snow blower by us and the snow would regurgitate out of the shoot and smack us square in the back We loved the sound and the feel of the snow hitting us. When Dad completed the job, he’d get a shovel and dig out the snow bank at the corner of the driveway and the street and make us a snow house. We’d crawl inside and pretend to be Eskimos, but not for long, because it got cold and boring real soon. 

is the doorway to Spring:     As spring approached–which as a child I never knew when it would happen–I loved the warmer breezes and watching the melting snow trickle down the edge of the streets. I thought I could help spring come sooner if I walked on the snow at the side of the street and break it up by stomping on it. Somehow I still haven’t given up that notion, only now I use the car, and drive along the edges of roads to break up the snow. Must be the same idea my husband has when he goes out at the end of March and shovels snow off the lawn into the street. I think he is crazy when he does that, but I probably should re-evaluate my thinking–he probably has Spring fever, too.

What Do You Remember About Winter When You Were a Kid? (Roger's story)

“I froze my ass off.” He chuckled as he looked guiltily my way for having said a bad word. “Clothing was not as warm as it is today.” He glanced back at the television. “The big thing was our wool mittens collected clumps of snow and ice on them. We wore those black rubber boots with the buckles down the front over our shoes.”

 “We considered the neighborhood to be along Poland Road from where Clover Manor is to Pride Hill Road.”

“We kids in the neighborhood built snow forts in the snow banks. We’d pile up chunks of snow to make the walls. Then, we’d have snowball fights.

“We spent a lot of time sliding down the hill behind Uncle Pete’s. (Pete and Jean Creart lived on top of Pride Hill Road behind the Chabot house on Poland Road.) Mr. Young, an old man who lived on Poland Road, made a sled with a seat on it and nailed it to a set of skis. That’s where I got my idea to make one like it a few years ago.

“Mr. Young had a greenhouse on the side of his garage. In the winter he’d cover the plant boxes with boards and we kids would all sit on those around a wood stove.

“He had a big toboggan that could hold ten kids on it at a time. He also loaned us his long jump skis.  There was a path from his house to the hill. There’d be eight to ten kids at a time playing on the hill.

“Back in those days you could slide from the top of the hill, down where the Auburn Baptist Church gymnasium is now. When it rained on top of the snow, it’d make a nice crust for runner sleds and we could slide all the way to Poland Road.

“Sometimes we’d slide on a car hood we’d taken off some old junk car in the field behind our house. The old hoods had no insulation in them so you sat right on the hood. We’d run and push it down the hill and then jump on it. We had attached a rope to it so we could drag it back up the hill.

“One neighborhood boy, Alan Bouchard, had a store-bought bobsled that two or three kids could ride on at a time. It had four small skis on it, with the front two being moved by handlebars. It didn’t go very good. Neither did aluminum saucers.

          “There were streams in back of our house that would flood, and the whole field would freeze, making a big skating surface, mixed in here and there with tufts of grass sticking up through the ice. When you were little, you’d skate on double runners that you’d strap on to your boots.  I had a pair of brand new hockey skates that I may have gotten from Uncle Bob (his godfather). We played a lot of hockey on that ice. If someone found a broken hockey stick, we’d tape it up and use it.

“At Sacred Heart school we played King of the Mountain on big snow piles, created when the plow pushed the snow from the parking lot into gigantic mountains of snow. A classmate named Bill had polio and walked with crutches. He’d climb up that hill, drop his crutches, and grab onto whoever was “King” at the moment. The force of his body on theirs toppled both of them off the mountain. Someone would get his crutches back down to him and he’d do it over and over again until the end of recess.

“I had to shovel by hand the whole driveway so my father could get into the yard when he came home from work. Once, Dad bought an old tractor that looked kind of like a rototiller. It was tall and square, like the front of a snow blower, with a flat blade in front and you walked behind it. When it ran, I could to do the driveway with that instead of shoveling.

“It broke down a lot, though, so once Dad took it to Marcotte Chevy where he worked (at that time located just beyond the intersection of Minot Avenue and Poland Road) to be repaired. I had to walk all the way up there from home, and then turn around and bring it back to the house. “

He goes back to watching TV, but the little robots in his mind are still hard at work, and in a few minutes, he shares this story:

“This story should be called ‘The Day We Should Have Died.’ I was about twelve or so and my friends, Roger Theberge and Joey Giasson, and I found ourselves on the ice on top of Barker Mill Dam in New Auburn. The ice was nice and clear, but only a few inches thick. I could see right through it. The ice had big air bubbles caught inside. We found a mouse frozen into the ice. As we stood there, though, the ice started to crack, so we all jumped back. We walked across the top of the dam.

“That reminds me of the time I saw a picture at Flanders (a men’s clothing store on Court Street in Auburn) of a cover of Life magazine of three boys jumping off that dam. One boy was still on the dam and two were in mid-air. Many years later when I worked at Gamache and Lessard, the husband of a seamstress who worked for us told me that he was the boy in the picture that was still on the dam. He was still there after the other two boys jumped because he didn’t dare to jump.”

The little robots punched off duty then, and there we no more memories evoked that day.

 

January 2013 Been a blogger for a year now. What high hopes I had for my writing career a year ago! Last year's catch phrase was "publication". This year's is "learn and write". I was enthusiastically naive on January 1st last year. I am enthusiastically realistic this year. Publication is always a possibility, but not a likelihood. I am so pleased that a friend I met through an online writer's group had a short story published and has another story ready for publication. We both started with that group at about the same time. My local group has been so very helpful and they've become friends as well. So, cheers, to all you proven writers and would-be writiers. May your life be filled with stories that need to be written. Fill up the pages.

       

Proverbs 30: 8b, 9 "Give me neither poverty nor riches-feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God."

An Apple for Piggy

Under a late-July sun I stood with three other boys inside the fence, waiting for Mr. Symonds to blow his whistle. I’m thinkin’, how could one little larded piglet evade the four of us tryin’ to catch it? With the countdown finished, the whistle blew, scarin’ the slicked up pig quite near to death. It darted here and there looking for a place to hide. My feet slipped in the mud chasin’ after the thing. Hank grabbed its tail. It squealed and darted off to the corner of the blocked off area that Mr. Symonds had set up for the annual pig chase. The other three of us waved our arms to keep it there.     On the other side of the fence Nell giggled.

Piggy darted out of its corner. I jumped in front of it to block its progress, but it snuck between my  legs.  I slid as I turned to grab it, and down I went, face first. I picked myself up, the mud reluctantly releasing me. Sticky, smelly muck clung to my shirt and pants. Thick globs of it stuck on my sneakers, and my arms and face were smeared with the stuff. Was this pig really worth the trouble? Through semi-blocked-up ears, I heard Nell laughing herself silly at my dilemma. Bet she couldn’t do any better if she wuz in here. I shook my head. Girls. 

Benny and Sandy shouted at the baby porker hopin’ it would be intimidated and stay put. But no, it continued to run around the outer edge of the pen. By this time, I was huffin’ and puffin’ and workin’ to keep my focus on the runt. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw an apple drop on the ground next to where the pink porcine stood. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. Hey! It was an apple. Next thing I knew, piggy gobbled it down, and Nell picked up that squealin’ package, yellin’ that she’d won it.

I grabbed my hat off’n my head, threw it in the mud and stomped on it. The other boys shouted “No fair”, but it didn’t do no good. Mr. Symond said Nell had paid her fee just like the rest of us, and she had indeed won it fair and square. 

 I plucked up my hat and headed out of the pen. I glared at Nell. She just smiled back at me, cuddled the little piggy, and fed it a slice of apple.

Writing prompt: "The four of us were chasing it."

Selling Bessie

Writing Prompt: Tell the story of car deal from the car’s point of view.
            

I dozed in the late afternoon sunlight, feeling the crisp breeze blow over my hood and roof. My owner, Paul, came out of the house and down the steps, the bottom stair creaking as he headed to the driveway. He called to his son. “Dougie, you want to take one last ride in ole’ Bessie?”

I blinked open my headlights and watched tow-headed Dougie run from the sand pile over to his dad. Paul brushed the sand off Dougie’s hands and knees, and then opened my big passenger door and helped his son get inside. Dougie slid across my red leather seat and started pushing the buttons on the shift box connected to my steering column. Take it easy there, little fella’. I’ve got feelings, too.

Paul walked around in front of me, running his big calloused hand across my hood. Yessir, he knows how to love-on me. He then opened my driver’s side door, and slipped in behind my red steering wheel.  “Enough pushing the buttons, Dougie. You’ll get Bessie all mixed up in what she’s supposed to do.” 

 Paul put the key into my ignition, and my 352 cu. in. overhead-valve V-8 engine roared to life. It tickled me every time. I cracked a wide chrome-bumper smile.

“Dougie, find the D on the shift box. Your name starts with the same letter, remember.”

Dougie leaned over toward his dad. His index finger hovered over the D button. “Is this the right one?”

Paul nodded his head. “Push ‘er in and we’ll be off.”

Doug punched his finger down onto my gearbox like a doctor delivering a flu shot. In spite of the indignity of having a four year old dive-bomb me, my transmission effortlessly shifted into drive.

Paul eased me along the dirt driveway that circled around an ancient elm tree, and we headed away from the farmhouse out onto the main road.

Paul keeps my tires filled with air to 32 psi so I roll along the country road without lurching my passengers from side to side. Paul flipped on my left blinker and I turned onto Lakeside Drive, which I know takes us into town.

  Wonder what this trip is for? Maybe the boy’s getting a haircut. Or maybe we’re going for ice cream, though I hope not. Dougie’s not too careful about dripping on my flawless interior. But it’s a beautiful day for a drive whatever the reason.

 Dougie wriggled on my seat, sitting up on his knees to look out my side window, then turning around to look out my big curved rear window, and then plopping himself down facing front. He pushed my automatic button to make his window go down. “Dad, where’re we going?”

Paul glanced in my rear view mirror and then at Dougie. “Goin’ to talk to Lester at Northlake Auto. See what kind of a deal he’ll give me for Bessie. Thought you could help me pick out a new car.”

From my outside mirror molded into the body of the door, I watched Dougie’s eyes grow big as he stared at his dad. “We’re getting rid of Bessie?”

Paul nodded his head. “Yep, might be. She’s been around a long time and your mom and me have been thinking about getting something newer, more modern.”

Dougie’s fidgeting stopped as we continued to town.

 Poor Dougie. I know how he’s feeling in his heart, ‘cause I feel sad in my engine, too. They’re selling me for a newer model.  What’s going to happen to me? I’ve been with Paul, Addie and the family for ten years. I brought Dougie’s older brother, Stan, home from the hospital back in ’57, a year after they bought me from the dentist. When Dougie came along. I got them all safely home in the blizzard of ‘62. And I can fit nearly the whole Little League team in here, as well as all their gear in my trunk.

Paul switched on my right blinker and turned into the car lot. My power brakes slowed me down with no jerking. Paul stopped in front of the office and turned off my engine. “Okay, Son, let’s go see what Lester thinks of our Bess.”

 While they got out of the car, my automatic load-leveler came on to make sure I was even in front and in back. When the motor shut itself off, I settled down to wait.

I watched through the plate glass window as a short, rotund man shook Paul’s hand and offered Dougie a lollipop. Then they all headed for the door and came outside, and stood around me. Dougie slipped his hand into his dad’s. He hadn’t even ripped the cellophane off his lollipop.

“Paul, I can’t believe you’re finally getting rid of this big old monster. ‘Bout time you moved into the 60’s since the decade’s more’n half over. What year’d you say she is?”

“A ’55.”

 “She was a beauty in her time, Paul, but big cars like this, with all the bells and whistles, like those power windows, are a thing of the past.”

 I watched Lester cock his head and walk around me. He kicked my tires. Oh, I’d like to kick him a time or two, myself.

He ran his hand along my rocker panels. “You’ve kept her in great shape, though, I’ll give you that. Not a hint of rust anywhere that I can see.”

Paul rocked on his heels. “Whatdya think you’d be willing to give me toward a trade?”

Lester fiddled with his fedora. “Well, now. Why not take a look around the lot and pick out something you’d like to try out. Then we can talk trade value. You gotta remember this one’s nearly twelve years old, and the problem Packard’s had with its transmissions and the electronics is goin’ to make it hard to re-sell her. I’ll do some figurin’ while you look for a new ride.” He doffed his hat and went back into his office.

 Paul and Dougie headed off to the road edge of the sales lot to look at the cars lined up facing the road, their antennas tied with brightly colored streamers that gently waved in the wind. I could see Dougie hadn’t let go of his dad’s hand. Paul leaned down a time or two to listen to something Dougie said to him.

 Paul opened the door of a red Plymouth Valiant.

 Oh yeah, she’s modern, but she’s too narrow in the wheelbase. She’ll never take you smoothly over the ruts in your road. And those thin tires are no good. They’ll blow out the first hole they hit in your driveway. I bet she has a tinny little beep horn, too. Not like my solid blare to get people to move out of the way. You’ll be tradin’ her in a year or two, and wish you hadn’t gotten rid of me.

Lester came back out of the office and opened my door. He slid into the driver’s seat. He adjusted my rear view mirror, curling his lips back to check his teeth. Then he rubbed his hand around my over-sized steering wheel. “Oh, she’s a beauty all right. Not a crack in this steering wheel or in any of the seat coverings.”

Creep! Get your hands off me.  I set my load-leveler off again, hoping he’d jump out.

Paul and Dougie walked across the tarred yard and stood next to Lester. Lester jumped out of the car and smiled at them. “See anything you like?”

“Depends on what you think you can give me for Bessie here.” Paul put his lower arms on my roof and leaned in on me.

“Best offer I can give you is $500.”

Paul nodded his head. “I see. Hmm.” He turned and picked Dougie up, looking at his face. Then he turned to Lester. “My boy and I have been talking, and we’ve decided we don’t want to sell Bessie after all. She’s more valuable to us than $500 and some shiny new car. She’s carried us through a lot and I know she has plenty of life left in her, so we’re just going to take her back home with us.”

Paul set Dougie back on the ground. “In fact, I told Dougie, we’re stopping at the Dairy Freeze for an ice cream on the way home. We’re goin’ to celebrate keepin’ Bessie.”

I couldn’t help it, but I tooted my horn and flashed my lights. I was going home with Paul and the boy! And it was okay that Dougie would probably drip ice cream on my fine interior. Paul would wipe up the mess and rub my upholstery with Ivory soap. It was good to be going home where I belonged.

                            

Daddy's Girl

     Annie wasn’t her given name, it was her middle name, but it was the name her daddy sometimes called her.
     Annie loved the smell of the chill of October in her daddy’s coat and hair when he came home from work and hugged her to him. How she looked forward to going down the street at the end of the work day and waiting for her daddy on a big rock at the end of the neighbor’s driveway. He would pick her up and together they would ride back home.
     How proud Annie was of her dad. Could anyone else’s daddy be as handsome as hers when he dressed up in his tuxedo with the tails on Lodge night?
     Annie was quite the young lady, too, when she accompanied her daddy to the Father/Daughter Day at his club. Sometimes when they went downtown together, people would tell her how much she looked like her daddy. If she went downtown alone, someone was sure to ask her, "Aren’t you Paul Choate’s daughter?" She held those words close to her heart.
     Annie is grown up now, and she has a husband and family of her own. She doesn’t get to see her daddy as much anymore and Annie misses those times, but he is still her first hero and she will always be her daddy’s girl.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Love you and miss you so much.
     Annie was a daddy’s girl.

My Mommy

     I was 42 years old, a grown and married woman, when Mother died. So, why did I start calling her Mommy again while I held her hand those last couple of weeks? Why was it me reading Bible stories to her instead of her reading them to me?

      When I was little, it was she who rubbed witch hazel on my body to cool me off and put Vicks on my chest so I could sleep without coughing, yet now it was me caressing her face and rubbing her feet to keep her comfortable.
    
     This was the woman who argued with me over whether or not to serve spiked punch at my wedding, but it was also she who climbed into my bed with me one night when I was about 8 and the thunder was so loud.
    
     My mommy sat for hours reading or mending clothes or talking to me when I was sick in bed with the flu, chicken pox or the mumps, but now it was my turn to sit and read to Mommy, talking with her about my day or writing in my journal while she dozed.
    
     It was Mommy’s voice I heard the night she came into my room, and I pretended to be asleep. She knelt by my bed and told me how sorry she was I hadn’t made the cheering squad. Now it was my voice in the night that Mommy heard as I stayed with her into the evening, and was the last of the family to say goodnight to her.

     My voice may have been the last voice of her family she ever heard on this earth. I told her "I love you", and though Mommy couldn’t talk anymore, she wriggled her eyebrows and said, "I love you, too."

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Love you and miss you.
Photo courtesy of corbisimages.com