Popeye & Penguin

Monday, September 18, 2006

And so it was back to the old grind at the apartment, now that Nicodemus and Ivy had returned to their cats from Colorado, including snow storms and moose (which Ivy briefly described over the phone Saturday morning).

Earlier, Joe’s party played under the stars to the tune of Leon Redbone while the boys splashed in the pool, all but Ben-Hur who wiled away nearly two hours in the 99 degrees hot tub while Libby served tray after tray of her famous quesadillas, OLeif grilled, and the kids took turns hopping on the trampoline. It was a smaller gathering that year: Mom, OLeif, Collette, Joe, Ben-Hur, Wallace, Curly, Rose, Molly, and Linnea.

While Linnea rafted on the pool, Joe tried bribing her into his traditional throw-Linnea-into-the-pool. Linnea promptly refused. And so Joe picked her up and brought her over to the diving board.

“No! No!” Linnea screamed.

The boys laughed from the hot tub.

“Come on, Linnea. It’ll be fun,” Joe insisted, trying to keep her from squirming off the diving board.

“No, Joe!” Rose latched herself onto his back like a koala, and refused to let go.

No matter how much Joe tried to wriggle her off, the tighter she held on, for dear life.

“It’s ok, Linnea,” Joe laughed, finally managing to pull her off, and lifting her up again. “Ready?”

“No!”

“One!”

“No, no!”

“Two!”

“Joe!”

“Three….!”

SPLASH!

The boys applauded from the hot tub. And Linnea resurfaced, having to giggle herself at the tremendous splash.

Later, Magnus joined some of them after work back at the house after s’mores over the bonfire. And Mom had added new bulbs to the strings of Italian street lights under the trees, replacing the ones which had been cracked by hail earlier in the year. And aside from Curly loosing his wallet somewhere during the evening, all was good.

Saturday was for Kirkwood, before Joe and Rose headed off to the mall to meet Molly, Magnus, Echo-Josue, Augustus, Wally, and Curly. Dad and Frances were on a camp-out in the great expanse of Beaumont. And Carrie had just returned from a brief sojourn to Kansas City. So Mom, OLeif, Collette, Rose, and Linnea visited Kirkwood that afternoon. They spent their day around the mainstreet, watching and listening for trains coming around the bend near the old depot. Linnea tried her best to sneak around the fence for railroad spikes, but was always caught before she went too far. There was lunch at Duffy’s grill (owned by a member of Kirk of the Hills), where Rose spied something she wanted.

“A Popeye doll!” She announced, returning to the table, after checking out the toy-claw machine. “I want him!”

And so, around the delivering of cheeseburgers and fries, Rose worked the machine.

“Fifty cents, please?” She came back sheepishly after the first try.

Mom looked at her skeptically and hunted out another two quarters.

“I’m telling you,” OLeif said for the fifth time, “those things are rigged. It only works every six times or so.”

“I’ll make it work,” Rose said, taking her quarters.

A few moments later, she came back.

“It cheated.”

“Ah ha! What did I tell you?” OLeif said, triumphantly.

“I had him! Just one more try! Please!”

And Rose went back to the machine with her last quarters; Mom refused to supply any more.

Rose returned victorious, the Popeye doll waving happily at them from her hand.

“See? I did it,” she looked smugly at OLeif.

“Only because someone else tried it before you and kept losing.”

But Rose was pleased with her conquest.

“Why, Rose,” Mom laughed, “you look just like Popeye.”

“I do not,” Rose grumped, wrinkling her face.

“Yes, you do when you make that face.”

Rose still harbored no ill feelings towards her new doll and even let OLeif attach it to his hat with a toothpick for awhile.

During the remainder of the afternoon, they checked out two shops with Mom, looking over Halloween decorations, gypsy jewelry, French soaps, and other novelties. They also went by the Farmer’s Market, where pumpkins, straw flowers, eggplants, caramel apples, mums, and all sorts of colorful things were arranged in bins under tents. They bought two bags of kettle corn for Dad, and went into the last shop before a train thundered by. Inside, Mom found an autumn pumpkin cut-out and there was a squishy rainbow bubble light-up stress ball for Carrie. Meanwhile, Collette turned a corner and found Linnea hugging a stuffed penguin nearly as big as herself.

“Oh,” Linnea cuddled him happily. “I want this guy.”

Linnea carried him around the whole shop until Rose told Mom that she would buy it for her for her birthday. And so Linnea blissfully carried her new friend, whom she would call Starlight, at Carrie’s suggestion, down the streets of Kirkwood to the custard stand by the tracks, their last stop of the day.

Sunday saw rainstorms – a perfect way to end the weekend. Collette sat in church listening to the ever-louder pound of the rain begin to drown out Sinai’s sermon. Some Sundays, sitting in her same seat by the window, served a good purpose. Whenever the storms were brewing…