Buckaroo

Sunday, April 24, 2005

It was the first day of Passover.

The Buckaroo Café Dinner and Auction, had been quite a success. Collette was impressed. The acting was funny, and Collette laughed so hard, the back of her head ached. Dad was in such stitches, that he got his red face and uncontrollable giggle. And Grandma, Mom, and Carrie-Bri were rolling in laughter. It was a fun evening – even the food was good, and the bonfire outside for the auction, Joe and some of the other guys running around in the corn cob being chased by the little kids. Joe was most often the cob, bouncing side to side, from one foot to the other with laughing eyes. And Rose was cast perfectly in a skit during dinner as Bessie-Mae, a down-to-earth snappish farmer.

“Get out of my way you over-grown something or other…” she told off her fellow farmer while attempting to park a tractor in down-town Chicago.

Collette couldn’t quite recall exactly what her lines were, but her performance with Ben-Hur’s, the chicken farmer’s, and Joe’s surfer-dude pizza-boy impression, set the crowd rolling. Judah’s and OLeif’s performance as mini master chefs was also unmistakable ridiculous and hilarious. And the auction brought in enough dough to give everyone a ride on the missions trip. Francis even bid on a very old yellow and brown plaid easy chair, which Dad promptly refused to take home.

“No way are we taking home that dirty old chair,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief, when they were all in the big green slug on the way home. “We’ll donate it to the youth group.”

But Dad was a good sport and bid a good two hundred dollars on several of the guys to do yard-work and cut down trees, and another sixty dollars on a car wash from the chicken farmer, as Joe’s car washing services were already taken.

Taco Bell followed the two dinner sessions for the hungry enthused youth gang. And there, Joe gave Collette a golden box with a pair of Austrian crystal earrings inside, which he had bid for at the silent auction. He was one of the sweetest guys they knew.

“Here, Collette,” he had handed her the box. “I thought you might like these. They’re genuine Austrian crystal.”

He got that cute face that only Joe could have, usually when he gave a gift or when he was a little nervous. And the earrings were beautiful.

It was a good night all in all.