Mandolins, Dumpster Diving, & the Ever-Re-Surfacing Unidentified "Ballooga Whale"
Monday, March 6, 2006
Sunday brought a rain… a beautiful gray rain and mist in the fields that night. Collette heard it come during church, the drumming on the roof. It seemed to calm her, though she didn’t really need to be calmed in the first place. There was just something beautiful about that cold rain. Mom recalled humorously at lunch over loaded baked potatoes – the one Sunday morning years before when Pastor Ham had preached a sermon during what they practically mistook to be a hailstorm, as at one point during the sermon, he bellowed from the pulpit:
“Well, I’m glad it’s almost over because I can’t yell any louder!”
And, indeed, he was shouting by that point.
Saturday was spent at the apartment, whereupon at seven o’clock, Augustus, Magnus, Molly, Rose, Joe, Wallace, Curly, and even Izzy trooped over to chat over pizza and criticize Magnus’ film of Legend. At interludes, Joe spun weights on the floor, doing a sort of Mexican Hat Dance around the spinning disc. Wallace taught Joe some cords on the mandolin. Shakespeare was mortified over accidentally seeing a bare backside in an anatomy art book, and continued to cringe throughout the evening. Later, Molly related how her craft corner for the youth fundraiser had gone. Three girls showed up, which included one fifth grader, to glue beads to jars for the centerpieces.
“Yeah, we were going to put some flowers in there later,” Molly was saying. “And so my mom’s like, ‘We’ll just go dumpster diving at the funeral homes, day of.’ They leave flowers out there, yeah. Yeah, she knows all the hot spots?” Molly had a tendency, as Apple and Elazar, to turn statements into questions. “And my dad, when he needs big pieces of cardboard – he just goes to that one place where they sell pool tables. You know, they come in big boxes. So, yeah. My parents are weird… but so cool.”
Carrie’s Saturday evening was spent at the Moolah Cinema by SLU, which included leather couches for seating, bright colors, and a bowling alley. Collette decided it would be an interesting place to check out one weekend in the spring. Perhaps she would accompany it with a visit to Bissengers for marzipan. And then there was the idea of one Saturday introducing Magnus to the joys of spring on a spring “joy” ride – woods and violets, white Bradford pear blossoms, and bunnies and fallen logs over cold springs. That was how she remembered spring from the older days before she grew up… sniff.
And Sunday afternoon brought a parents meeting for those attending the mission trip to New Orleans. Collette played “Old English” with Linnea for awhile in the back of the room (the game in which Linnea gave Collette normal English phrases which Collette translated into ridiculous Old English-sounding paraphrases) as the meeting dragged on. And shortly afterwards, Pepper called a mutinous meeting in the youth room, where there was a tempered brawl – Jimmy and Judah against the younger masses – for the next hour and a half.
Monday morning brought a new washing machine to the Snicketts’ house as the kids scattered to avoid being seen by the workmen – a trademark of the Snicketts clan. (Even when the postman drove by, they all ran away from the windows, (though he could hardly see from the street), and peered at him from behind curtains until he had driven away). Naturally Carrie did not forget to call out to Mom as Mom went to greet the workmen:
“Tell me if they’re cute!”
And during the morning history reading, Joe drew messages on the fruit in the fruit bowl and Rose called out random ridiculous things such as:
“Oh, my eyeballs are wiggling!”
And no doubt, “ballooga whale” or “wickel” escaped from time to time as well.
Rose found herself later preoccupied with drawing a smiley face on the bottom of her big toe. (Magnus would have been genuinely horrified, having an aversion to all things “feet.”) And Frances and Rose ran up and down the basement stairs, continuously, for their customized “workout” of the day. Joe tinkered on OLeif’s mandolin the better part of the day, for whenever he had a spare minute. Mom had just finished painting the living room from over the weekend, the lightest olive.
Later, Rose squished around the house in a fisherman’s hat and Linnea’s rubber galoshes, telling everyone:
“Listen to my boots.”
Odd duck.
In the later afternoon Collette and Linnea made a loaf of Colonial-French soleil-lune (sun-moon) bread, with a hole in the middle. And Linnea ran outside barefooted to shoot Joe with a capgun as he left for work.
“I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us… Why, man, all their dripping pans and their chamber pots are pure gold… and as for rubies and diamonds, they go forth on holy days and gather them by the seashore, to hang on their children’s coats and stick in their caps.” – popular London play, 17th cent. (told of Virginia)