The Friday Line-Up

Friday, March 30, 2007

The sky glowed into a rosy lamp that morning, behind the new green buds. And then suddenly, it became robin’s egg blue, fading to gray. There were storms on the way that day. They piled in dark from the west by seven-thirty that morning.

Then the rain poured and the lightening cracked.

The day was relatively quiet, except for the rain. Rose and Georgia Owen came in once again to fold the bulletin.

When Roo McCrae came by to drop off some papers, she looked at Collette and said, “What, do you have fifteen minutes left?”

“About two and a half, three weeks, supposedly,” Collette said.

“Well, then that’s fifteen minutes,” Roo replied.

“Close enough,” Collette said, thinking about how quickly the time was going to pass.

After Rose had hurried through the bulletin with Georgia, she hurried to pull her shoes back on and run down to the car to meet Dad. She had to turn in her old Subway work hat and apron by four o’clock that afternoon. Then it was off to register for classes at the college for the summer – Art Appreciation and World Archeology, although the first class was telecourse, and the second, online. And she had plans to go to the movies that night with Joe, Wallace, and Curly.

OLeif and Augustus also attended the movies after a few hours at home and at Chinese. Collette heard them giggling from the office where they were watching silly clips on the computer for some time.

And before night had fallen, Dad and Francis dropped by to set up the crib while Mom and Linnea were at a tea party. Francis was talking about wanting to watch more of Victory at Sea that night; he was generally enthused about the whole film. Anything involving the army….

But Dad had other plans for Francis that evening.

“I’m going to have you come home and start bucketing the water out of the basement,” Dad told him. “It’s leaking again.”

…as it usually did after heavy rains.

“That’s my fun Friday night,” Francis said mockingly mournfully as he followed Dad to the car.

Dad had also heard from Grandma Snicketts that day that Uncle Clarence had been interviewed on the radio, due to his 28 years of service for the government. And Dad had also found out for the first time that Uncle Balthasar owned a condominium and boat somewhere down in the Ozarks. Grandma Snicketts usually had some interesting news about the family to pass along whenever she called.