Just About The Best Dog There Ever Was...And Other Pets We Loved

Every kid should know a dog like Lucky.

A rerun from a couple of years back...

The very earliest memory that I can recall today was a memory of Lucky.  My sister Janet and I were about three years old, so it must have been Christmas of 1959 or 1960.  I was sitting in the chair next to our coal-burning pot-bellied stove, and I was holding this little ball of fur that was licking me on the nose.  I don't know which family member gave him the name of Lucky, but it fit him perfectly.

Lucky was mostly collie, but he also had a healthy mix of other breeds as well.  He was a sweet, gentle soul who would have protected any of us with his very life if the occasion had ever arisen.  His bark was ferocious, but I don't think he ever bit anyone.  But, should a stranger come up on the porch, Lucky announced his presence with a bark that brought the family running.  Lucky would become particularly alarmed when M.C. Maxell would deliver the groceries we had ordered from Robert Davis' grocery store.  M.C. made a lasting friend of Lucky, however, by always bringing along a bone from the store's butcher.

Lucky's favorite activity was to chase rocks.  If you went out on the street and picked up a rock and threw it, Lucky would chase it down, pick it up and drop it, and then turn back to be ready to chase the next one.  He was also very intelligent.  Mama used to laugh when she would tell the story of the time that she had a letter that she needed to get to my Grandmother who lived down the street, so she clipped the letter to Lucky's collar and called my Grandmother on the phone, telling her to call for Lucky.  My Grandmother stepped out on her porch and called Lucky's name, and off he went to deliver the letter.

Lucky, Scooter, and Tom

Another early addition to our lineup of pets was our cat Tom.  My brothers brought Tom home after catching him in some lady's yard.  I remember she had a bunch of cats running wild, and Phil and Gene went up there and came back with Tom.  When we got Tom, he had an open wound on his neck that we referred to as a "wolf."  I've never seen that word used in that context anywhere else, but it was some sort of a parasitic infection, or as my brother Phil refers to it, an "alien life form" living in Tom's neck.  Well, Tom was able to overcome his "wolf" and became a gentle, sweet cat who would rapidly sweep into the house anytime you were too slow in closing the back door.  Tom used to love to sit in the living room and watch TV with us.  Bonanza was a particular favorite of his, I believe.  Tom was afflicted with seizures, however, and it may have been a result of his "wolf."

My Uncle Joe got me my dog Scooter when I was about ten.  I've mentioned Scooter in a couple of earlier posts.  This picture of Lucky, Scooter, and Tom on our front porch is a good one; you can see the sweet nature that Scooter had just by looking at his face.  As I mentioned before, Scooter was killed by a thoughtless man in the neighborhood.  A sad ending to a sweet little dog.

Lucky, Janet, and Puff

Somewhere along about this time, we got an additional cat.  I don't even remember where we got him, but my sister named him Puff.  I always thought it was from the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" that was popular about that time, but I also seem to recall that there was a cat named Puff in the Dick and Jane books that we read at school.  Puff was yellow and white and had absolutely no interest in coming into the house, not even to watch Bonanza.  He got along great with Tom; they were great friends and never fought. 

Skipper was a bit ornery and was known to cause
trouble, but I loved him nonetheless.

And then, Uncle Joe found me another dog.  Skipper was at times a bit of a handful, such as when he would chase motorcycles (his favorite pastime), bite my sister, fight with Lucky, or break his leg (see my post Skipper Breaks His Leg!)  But skipper was my pal, and when I needed time to lie on my back and stare up at the clouds, Skipper was right there with me.  As I've mentioned before, it was generally assumed that Skipper had some emotional problems, but he and I got along just fine.  Not the case with Skipper and Lucky, though.  If they happened to get into an altercation that escalated into a fight, Skipper would not give up.  Even though he was small, he would keep on fighting long after Lucky was ready to quit.  The only solution would be to tie up both Lucky and Skipper to the clothesline, where Skipper would continue to bark at Lucky until he finally got tired of it.  I have a vivid memory of a near tragedy involving Skipper.  One day when I had just walked home from school, I saw Skipper in the yard across the street.  I called his name, and no sooner had I gotten the words out that I realized that there was a speeding pick-up coming up Pine Street.  Skipper, upon hearing my voice, immediately started running to me, unaware of the speeding truck.  I watched in horror as Skipper ran in front of the truck, and as if in slow motion, he turned his head just as the truck was about to hit him and managed to somehow run sideways for a fraction of a second, literally inches away from the front tire.  Needless to say, when he got up to my arms, he got an extra hug from me.

Time out.

By the time my sister and I left for college, the only pet left was Lucky.  His front legs were hobbled by arthritis, so that he ran with a stilted gait, but he would still try to chase rocks.  Even after his eyesight was almost gone, he would listen to the sound of the rocks and try to give chase.  But, his health continued to deteriorate.  One day, when he seemed to having a particular amount of trouble, Mama realized that keeping Lucky alive would be unfair to that great dog.  So, with a heavy heart, she called the vet, and Lucky, at age 17, got to rest.

The story is told of a rainbow bridge, where dogs and cats that have left this life run and play all day.  But they keep one eye on the bridge, and when they hear a familiar voice, they come running to meet the one they love.  I'd like to think that's true.  But even if it's not, I'm sure glad God made dogs and cats.

Snow Day!

Skipper and I enjoying a Snow Day, 1969

Cold winter mornings, with a blanket of snow covering the ground, were moments of great excitement when I was a kid. We knew we would be getting a day off from school; the only problem was, we had to wait for the official announcement. That meant sticking close to the TV in the living room, the little gas stove turned up as high as it would go, watching Frank Blair on the Today Show and waiting for Channel 5 to cut in with their 5-minute newscast at 7:25. There was no such thing as a “crawl” across the bottom of the screen in those days; the technology didn’t exist. No, we had to wait for an actual human to read a list of the schools that were going to be closed. Sure enough, near the end of the list, the newsman would say “Waldron,” and shouts of glee would ring out in living rooms across the city. Snow Day!


With what seemed like the weight of the world unexpectedly lifted off our shoulders, my sister and I would plan the day. The first order of business: a little celebratory hot chocolate. Mama made it with milk heated in a pan over the stove and some Hershey’s Cocoa from the can in the cabinet. Then maybe some pancakes, since we had time for a leisurely breakfast. Sufficiently fueled, it was time for our first excursion outdoors. This was primarily a walk-around, just to see how deep the snow was and how slick the street was (already considering the potential of another day off tomorrow). This was also the first opportunity to taste the snow. This was always done with some reluctance, because there was strong support among some kids for the theory that the first snow of the year was potentially radioactive. But, pushing our fears aside, we would make huge snowballs, not for throwing, but for eating. In the back yard, we had a storage building that we called the Smokehouse, which had a low enough roof that we could break off an icicle for an additional treat. Eventually, our feet would get cold, and we knew it was time to go back inside for a bit.

As we warmed around our little gas stove, the house was filled with the aroma of the beans and cornbread that Mama was cooking in the kitchen. A second cup of hot chocolate, and it was time to enjoy a little daytime TV while we waited to go outside again. At our house, we got only one channel, Channel 5 from Fort Smith. In those days, it was known as KFSA, the call letters standing for Fort Smith Arkansas. But, since Channel 5 was the only station in town, it wasn’t limited to one network. As John Candler used to say every morning during the station sign-on, “KFSA is affiliated with both the NBC and the CBS television networks, and is authorized, under contract, to transmit some ABC programs.” Which was actually a pretty sweet deal, because Channel 5 could pick the most popular programs from each network and broadcast them.

After the Today Show went off at 8:00, Channel 5 switched over to CBS and broadcast Captain Kangaroo. Although aimed at kids younger than us, we still liked to hear The Captain tell stories and visit with Grandfather Clock, whose eyes and mouth moved in a moderately frightening manner, and Mr. Green Jeans, and of course Mr. Moose, a puppet who invariable tricked The Captain into standing there talking while a cascade of ping pong balls fell around him. There was a particularly good block of programming beginning at 9:00, with reruns of I Love Lucy, and at 9:30, reruns of The Real McCoys, and at 10:00, reruns of The Andy Griffith Show which had been renamed Andy of Mayberry (to avoid confusion with current versions of The Andy Griffith Show which still aired on Monday nights) and at 10:30 The Dick Van Dyke Morning Show (again, reruns of the still currently running Dick Van Dyke Show). It took a really great snow to pull me away from the latter half of that programming block. At 11:00, it was time for Love of Life, which was my signal to return to the outdoors.

If the snow was ok for building, I would usually build a snow fort. Others could build their snowmen, but I took a more practical approach. In the event that a spontaneous snowball fight should develop, it was always good to have a snow fort to retreat to. We didn’t really have any good sledding hills nearby, other than the sloped bank in front of our house, which was steep enough to slide down, but you couldn’t go very far. We usually just tromped around in the snow with no particular destination in mind. Lucky, our faithful dog, was content to follow us around. Tom, our cat, had usually managed to sneak into the house and was lying low somewhere by the fire.

At noon, it was back indoors to warm up and have lunch. The beans would have cooked several hours in the Presto-cooker, and the cornbread had just come out of the oven, cooked in the iron skillet that was a wedding present for Mama and Daddy many years before. I would crumble the cornbread on my plate and pile the beans on top. It was never too cold for iced tea, which completed the feast. I don’t know what Mama ate for lunch when it wasn’t a snow day, but on an occasion like this she really outdid herself. For dessert, she might cut the center out of some canned biscuits and fry them in hot oil to make donuts, which she glazed with icing made from powdered sugar. And of course, sometime that afternoon we would have snow ice cream. Mama would go outside and find some clean snow, and bring it back inside and mix it with Pet milk and sugar. Delicious!

Even Mama had a little fun on Snow Days

After lunch, another little TV session was in order. This time, it was game shows. At 1:00, Password came on, with Allen Ludden as host. At 1:30, it was Art Linkletter’s House Party, which featured a hugely popular segment in which Art interviewed four kids sitting in tall chairs, producing hilarious responses to seemingly innocent questions. At 2:00, Gary Moore hosted To Tell the Truth, a show in which celebrity panelists had to guess which of three guests was in fact who or what he claimed to be. At 2:30, it was soap opera time again, with The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm coming on, so it was time to go back outside. This was reality check time, because you could get a sense of whether or not the streets were beginning to clear and whether or not the snow was melting, so you sort of begin to get an idea whether or not your impromptu vacation was likely to be extended or not.

At about 3:30, a new show came on ABC called Where the Action Is. This show later changed its name to The Happening, and actually only lasted for a couple of years or so. The show was produced by Dick Clark, producer of the wildly popular American Bandstand show on Saturday afternoons. This show was on every day at 3:30, and featured pop music acts performing their songs in various locations around Southern California. Every show featured different artists, but regular performers included one of our most popular singing groups, Paul Revere and the Raiders. Their lead singer, Mark Lindsey, was very popular with the girls, and the keyboard player, who I guess was Paul Revere, had the grill of a Ford Mustang in front of his keyboard, which I thought was really cool. They all dressed like Patriots from the 1700’s, and I remember some sort of contest that required Mark Lindsey to cut off his ponytail, which I believe was then awarded to some young swooning female. Between 4:00 and 5:00, Channel 5 showed reruns of two great westerns, Maverick and Sugarfoot.

By that time, it didn’t really feel like a snow day anymore; the normal routine had pretty much returned. But sometimes, when you watched the 6:00 news, you got the advance word that tomorrow, again, would be…a SNOW DAY!

Weekend Special: Be My Valentine

This is a Valentines Day card that I made in 1965, when I was in third grade.  It's an intricate little piece of art, with a paper band around the outside featuring a triple layered heart (one of the most difficult kind of hearts to construct) discretely stapled to the band.  Inside, the verse...

You may marvel justifiably at the penmanship.  I'm sure that the poem itself is not original, at least I recall no other instances when I included the word "twas" in my vocabulary...

 And, it only took me 40 years to find the one I was supposed to give it to.  But that, as they say, is a story for another day...

With love to all,

Bill

Beautiful Beulah Belle and Other Tales - Now Available!

I'm happy to announce the publication of my new book, "Beautiful Beulah Belle and Other Tales." This book contains 34 new stories about growing up in Waldron in the 1960s and 1970s. Included are some of my favorite stories, such as Bill Yates, President; The Freddie Rush Murder Trial; and The Week That Changed Waldron. The book will be available at Nook and Cranny Gifts and More in downtown Waldron, or is available by mail for those outside of Waldron by sending a check for $12 for each book ordered to Bill Yates, 1025 Riverview Drive, Alma AR  72921.The book is also available during the month of December on Ebay.  I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did putting it together!

Mama and Daddy

 People always thought it was kind of funny that their names were so similar:  Albert and Alberta.  Albert was never called that; everyone who knew him called him Abb.  In her younger days, Alberta was known to her friends as "Peaches," but by the time I came along, everyone called her Alberta, except for her closest friend, Florene Douglas, who called her "Berta."  But I and my siblings were fortunate enough to get to call them Mama and Daddy.

Daddy worked for the phone company, which over time had gone from the Waldron Telephone Company to the Interstate Telephone Company to the Continental Telephone Company and possibly a few other names that I have forgotten.  It was probably one of the best jobs available in Scott County; not that we ever got rich, but it was a company that offered lots of benefits.  Because of the nature of his work, Daddy was friends with almost everybody in town.  He was also very handy at repairing things, and lots of people called him to work on their appliances.  He never said no.

Mama was mostly a housewife, except for a brief period of time in the 1960's when she worked as a waitress at the Rock Cafe, and again briefly when she worked at Judy's Drive In.  Her main focus in life was her five children; my older brothers Gary, Gene, and Phil, and my twin sister Janet and I.  She cooked, cleaned, worked in the garden, provided medical attention when necessary, while never missing a church service at the Assembly of God Church, and making sure that we kids likewise never missed a service.  As she went about her unrelenting chores, she could almost always be heard singing a gospel song.  I believe, in all sincerity, that Alberta Yates was incapable of thinking a negative thought about anyone. 

Their life together was full of both happiness and trials.  Daddy fought an ongoing battle against alcoholism, which consumed a large part of his salary and severely damaged his relationships with his wife and children.  He was never abusive, but his addiction to alcohol prevented any semblance of normalcy in his family life.  For most of his life, he was able to separate his drinking from his work life, but eventually, he had to retire from the phone company due to his alcoholism.  Mama was patient and loving throughout the difficult years, as was her nature.  She was a devout Christian, and her faith sustained her.  She was somehow able to pass this faith on to her children.  Her insistence that we go with her to church undoubtedly saved us from lives as alcoholics ourselves, since the disease is often passed down through the generations.  Watching her life made us want to have a relationship with Christ; if she could be that happy in spite of her surroundings, so could we!


We knew that Mama and Daddy loved each other, although we never heard Daddy say it.  He was doing the best he could; he was just fighting something that was bigger than him.  And it was a fight that lasted a long time. 

When Mama was around 70, she developed lymphoma.  When she first got the diagnosis, we were terrified.  But we learned that it was a disease that could be managed, and in true form, Mama managed it.  When a tumor would develop, she would go in for treatment, which usually required radiation, and when that was done, she would go on about her life.  Meanwhile, Daddy was not doing so great either.  His drinking was causing him to fall and injure himself, and on more than one occasion we had to get an ambulance to take him to the emergency room.  He broke his upper leg one time, and that required an extended hospital stay.  After that, when he was away from alcohol for a couple of months, he was able to finally stop drinking when he got to come back home.  I couldn't believe it; he had finally managed to win against an enemy that I was convinced couldn't be defeated.

In late September of 2007, Mama had to go into the hospital again for treatment for her lymphoma.  Everything seemed to be going well until she experienced a spinal hematoma, in which she had bleeding into her spinal column.  In addition to the excruciating pain this caused, it also left her legs paralyzed.  But she rallied, and we brought Daddy up to the hospital one Saturday to see her.  They shared the most pleasant of days together, with Daddy sitting beside her bed holding her hand, talking and visiting with their children.  A few days later, Mama told me, "I hope today is the day I get to go home..  I said that to that nurse, and she didn't know I meant my Heavenly home."  Later that night, that's exactly where Mama went. 

We all drove down to Waldron early the next morning to tell Daddy.  We had to wake him up, and my sister Janet gently told him what had happened.  He was quiet as we made sure he understood what we had said.  "I just wasn't expecting that," he said.

Later, I found a post card that Daddy had sent Mama when he was in the Navy.  He was in Basic Training at the Great Lakes Naval Station, and he must have been missing Mama quite a bit.  In the card, Daddy writes, "Hello Sweet.  How are you feeling today?  How is Memaw (Mama's mother) and all?  I just finished writing you a letter and I'm all out of things to write.  I haven't got your letter yet.  Maybe tomorrow.  Bye, Abb"

I'd never heard Daddy speak so tenderly to Mama.  That must have been the guy she fell in love with, and that was the man she always saw.  I didn't understand that until I found that post card.  He called her Sweet. 

Be patient, Sweet.  It won't be too long now.  You'll be holding his hand again soon.

Skipper Breaks His Leg!

Love Always, Skipper

The rest of the family always said that Skipper was emotionally disturbed, and there’s a better than even chance that they were right. I got Skipper when I was about eleven years old, after the tragic death of my dog Scooter (more on that later). My Uncle Joe found Skipper for me, and we were best friends right from the start. He was a mixed-breed puppy (actually, Mutt) with a lot of Fiest in him, which made him a little high-energy. He was black and tan with mid-length hair and a tail that curved up over his backside. As far as the emotionally disturbed part of it goes, he did have a tendency to annoy our great dog Lucky quite a bit, which occasionally resulted in a fight between the two. Lucky would fight until he was ready to quit, but there was no quit in Skipper. Eventually, Mama would have to tie both of them to the clothesline to get them to stop fighting. Now, those fights were rare, but they did happen on occasion.


For some unknown reason, Skipper took a particular dislike to a specific pair of pants belonging to my sister. They were a bright, checkered pattern, as was the style back in the 1960’s, and they reminded me of a pair that I often saw one of our neighbors wearing, so I euphemistically referred to them as Janet’s “Kay Bray Britches.” Skipper evidently picked up on my disdain for this particular article of clothing, because every time Janet wore them, he bit her. No, EVERY time. So, among those questioning Skipper’s mental state, Janet was at the forefront.

Skipper, being a young, unaltered male, often went on what we might call group dates with some of the other dogs in the neighborhood. One evening, when I went out to feed Skipper, I found him in obvious pain, his right foreleg hanging limply. He had gotten into a fight with a bigger dog, and it was obvious that his leg had been broken. I quickly summoned Daddy, who looked Skipper’s leg over and constructed a crude splint which he placed on the damaged leg. After a sleepless night, I hurried outside the next morning to check on Skipper, and found his leg swollen to more than twice its normal size.

We loaded Skipper into our 1967 Ford Custom 500 and headed downtown to the office of Dr. Stubbs, the local vet. It was a Saturday morning, but Dr. Stubbs was there. He examined Skipper and told us we would have to leave him there for the rest of the weekend. When we returned to his office the next Monday, he had me call for Skipper from the lobby, and when he heard my voice, Skipper came trotting out with a clean white cast on his front leg. He was overjoyed to see us, as we were to see him.

We took him home with the instructions to keep him inside the house. Skipper quickly recognized two things: One, he was not an inside dog, and Two, this weird thing on his leg didn’t belong there. We were in school, and Mama was working at the Rock Café, so Skipper was going to have to stay by himself. So, we left him in the house and headed out to school and work.

You can imagine our surprise when we got home from school and found Skipper waiting for us on the porch, his curly tail wagging. He had somehow managed to find his way outside. A quick inspection inside the house revealed how he had done it. There was a bed next to a window in the back bedroom, and the window didn’t have a screen, so Skipper had managed to break the glass and jump through.

The next day, with a piece of plywood over the window, Skipper decided to work on getting the foreign object off his leg. We had gone to school, and Mama was hurrying around getting ready to go to work at the Rock Café, when she entered the living room and saw what she believed to be Skipper’s leg lying in the middle of the living room floor. Taken aback, she examined the object more closely and realized that it was in fact only Skipper’s cast, which he had somehow managed to get off his leg. Hurriedly, she loaded Skipper in the car and hauled him back to Dr. Stubbs, who replaced the cast. Mama brought him back home and went on to work, arriving uncharacteristically late. That evening, we decided to go ahead and let Skipper stay outside, broken leg and all.

Well, Skipper was completely happy outside. As an added bonus, he discovered that he could wind his way through the hedge next to the driveway and remove his cast with only minimal effort. By now, we were used to it, so we would just pull the empty cast out of the hedge and stick it back on his leg. After a few weeks, the leg was healed up and we just left the cast off permanently.

Skipper’s leg didn’t seem to bother him much after that. However, when my Aunt Lola would come down, she would get a kick out of giving Skipper sympathy over his leg, talking to him and repeatedly mentioning his leg until he would invariably raise his “injured” leg off the ground, holding it in mid-air which sent Lola into peals of laughter that could be heard all over the neighborhood. Lola knew how to laugh, and she didn’t hold back. She had the kind of laugh that just made you feel good, and she always got a good laugh over Skipper and his pitiful leg routine.

Skipper, my good and faithful dog, lost his life on December 5, 1973. He was run over up on Featherston Street. I took it hard, but we’d had lots of good days together. As I said earlier, I got Skipper after my previous dog Scooter died. When Scooter was killed it was a tragedy, but it was almost a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. But that's a story for another day.

Addie and Joe

Addie was Mama’s older sister. She was always kind of like our second Mama; I guess that got started when Mama was in the hospital for over a week in the early 1960’s, and Addie took care of us. She lived on a farm seven miles east of Waldron with her husband Joe Carmack. Joe’s real name was Ira, but he was known in the family as Joe. They used to live in Wichita, Kansas, and Joe worked for Boeing Aircraft. But he was seriously injured one time when he fell while working on a plane, and Boeing settled with him for his injuries in the amount of $3,000. So, he and Addie headed back to Waldron in about 1961 and used the $3,000 to buy their farm.

Joe was actually Addie’s second husband. She was first married to Herman Cameron, an inveterate gambler and womanizer, who broke her heart. This was well before my time, during World War II. They divorced a few years after the war. My older brother Gary has a vague recollection of Herman coming by the house to say goodbye, and Gary recalls that he refused to go out on the porch to see Herman, because he knew that Herman had done something to hurt Addie. The years eased the pain, I have no doubt, but I’m not sure Addie ever completely got over the hurt.

For a big portion of the 1960’s, Addie and Joe were our primary means of transportation. We didn’t have a car; Daddy got to bring home the telephone truck from work, but with our family of seven, that wasn’t too conducive to dignified travel. Of course, most of the places we needed to go were within walking distance anyway, but we did catch a ride to church with Addie and Joe.

Joe was a man of few words. He had a deep, gravelly voice to go with his long, lanky frame. Sometimes at church, when the testimony service was dragging, whoever was leading it would call on people to testify. On those times when Joe was called upon, it always amazed me to hear him speak up in church. It was just rare to hear him put that many words together. He was a kind, patient man who would do anything in his power to help out someone who needed it.

One cold winter morning, Addie and Joe were on their way to Sunday Morning services when they encountered a man walking along the highway. The man was without a coat on that frigid morning, just walking along the road. Addie and Joe stopped and talked to him, and he told them he was just trying to get into town. They insisted that he climb into the back seat, which he did, and Addie and Joe brought him into town. Later on at church, someone asked Addie if she had heard about the men who had been caught stealing cattle out their way the previous night, or had seen anything of the one who managed to get away. “I guess we gave him a ride into town,” she replied.

Addie was a gifted artist, poet, and writer. She loved to draw pictures and write poetry during the long winter days on the farm. She was deeply religious, and her writings reflected her faith. She was also a fountain of knowledge about the history of Mama’s side of the family, the Waganers. She kept copious writings detailing the family lineage and history. She also had many, many photographs, on the backs of which she had detailed information about the subject of the picture.

Addie and Joe lived a very simple life. The farmhouse they lived in hadn’t changed much from the time it was built. I think Addie longed for some of the modern conveniences that living in town offered, but at the same time she loved the farm. When I was little, they had some chickens that they kept for eggs, and Joe had a few head of cattle. They also had three or four horses, in addition to some hunting dogs that Joe kept out behind the barn and an untold number of stray cats that Addie just couldn’t stand to see go hungry. Of course, Addie gave them all names and made pets out of them. Farming was just a sideline for Joe; he got up at the crack of dawn every morning to go to his job at the feed mill at AVI. We always looked forward to getting to go out to the farm, particularly at Christmas time when Joe would lead us up into the woods to find a Christmas tree.

Addie and Joe didn’t ask for much. They enjoyed the simple pleasures. When you sat down at Addie’s kitchen table, you could be sure that she would bring out a box of Little Debbie’s. Usually it would be the snack cakes with white icing. Around Christmas, she would make what she called an “unbaked” fruit cake that Joe dearly loved. On Wednesday afternoons, they would come into town early for church so that they could go by Owen’s Drug Store and have ice cream. They were content with what they had, which really wasn’t all that much, but they found joy in life’s quiet moments.

They finally did get to live in town, after Joe’s health got bad. Addie was proud of her house in town and the conveniences that it offered. And, she even managed to find a stray cat to take care of.

Addie and Joe are both gone now. But in the spring, there will be blooms in my sister’s yard, and my yard, and in the yard at Mama and Daddy’s house, blooms from plants that were lovingly tended by Addie, who could get a start of just about any plant by breaking off a twig. Blooms from plants that were shared out of a mutual love of God’s beautiful creation, and admired by a gracious lady who saw life as a poem.