Those Docile Sunday Afternoons

Sunday, January 22, 2012

After dreaming about the first phase of the “Apocalypse”, Collette was slammed awake by the 6:30 alarm. Something about huddling in an open-air tower in a castle, high winds, uncertain about food stocks, Puck was somehow much smaller, younger… And she still had an eyelash roaming the northern plains of her eyeball after seven and a half hours of respite.
Meanwhile, back in reality… it was a misty Irish morning. Just about right, quiet, with rain and temperatures in the low 50’s to be fully expected.

While OLeif rehearsed at eight o’clock that morning, Collette drove the short distance more to the Silverspoon’s where her young son awaited over a breakfast of three strips of bacon, an egg, banana, glass of milk, and another of juice.

Back on the ranch, the girls were congregating over recent news and activities and projects of life. And Puck was handed the Target box from the mail that had arrived the previous night from his nana. He was very excited to find that the box had revealed a pair of black and blue shoes.
“It fits!” he declared, slamming his foot repeatedly into the ground. “They’re jumping boots, Lila!”
He nearly collided into Rose, who was brushing her teeth as she walked through the living room.
“Wow, he runs like Barney Fife,” Carrie laughed.
“That’s ’cause he pants keep falling down,” OLeif explained.
Rose was already preparing to depart. Benedict had invited her to a sing-along with the Sacred Harp Singers. And the girls egged on Puck to chase Pumpkin around for her exercise.
“With your super shoes,” said Carrie. “As long as he doesn’t step on her…”
“Oh… There would be a splop,” Linnea giggled.
Carrie had made chili and soda bread for lunch. Rose and Francis were fighting over an overly long necessary ice scraper. When Rose started kicking at him, Francis released the stickly giant, laughing.
Ten-pounder honey roasted peanuts.
Homemade cocoa fudge.
Linnea had been painting notebook covers and free sawed-off blocks of wood from Home Depot in dark reds, yellows, greens, and black. She had a very Caribbean style.
While Carrie caught up with Uncle Mo’s highly positive opinion of their business plan with Lucia on the phone, and poor Grewe, still suffering greatly from numerous medical troubles in Nebraska, Earnest was caught snacking on dried rose petals in Linnea’s room.

Shortly before three o’clock, everyone except Linnea, who was experiencing a sinus headache, and Rose, who was somewhere halfway to St. Genevieve, piled into the green slug for a drive through wine country.
Carrie took a seat beside Joe on the first bench with three varieties of drinks.
“Uh, Carrie. Why can’t you carry your drinks in something intelligent, like a thermos? Aah! What’s with this stupid seatbelt? I’m not that fat!”
“Uncle Joe! Remember! Don’t say stupid!”
“Alright, Mr. Policeman.”
Eight hands waves to Linnea all by her lonesome from the dining room window with the bun-buns, her paints, and ukulele.
Out into the wilderness of scrubby hills, possible severe thunderstorms, rising mist from the valleys, and the hush of winter landscapes. Carrie and Joe got busy with weather talk.
Francis had been attempting to reassure Collette of his possible transition to Lindenwood the following year…
“Don’t worry, Collette,” he said. “I’ll get all A’s.”
“Don’t believe his lies,” OLeif joked.
When they reached Augusta, Joe was convinced that he wanted to buy every other house he saw. By the third time they had circled the town, still seeing no signs of life…
“All the townspeople are wondering what that big green van is up too…”
“’They come here about every two months.’”
“’Must be the Al Qaedas.’”
When they stopped at the play grounds of the little public school overlooking rolling hills and woods, all the boys but Dad hopped out, Joe avidly jumping both chain link fences with ease to the rock pits below, headed for the tetherball.
“Either Joe or I are going to lose at this,” said Francis profoundly as he left the van.
“Don’t hurt each other,” Mom called after him.
But instead, they distracted themselves with a blue tilt-a-whirl, which neither boy seemed to be able to master. Dad and Carrie kept self-advising from the van, the mistakes both of them were making.
“Dad, why don’t you go down there and show them how it’s done,” Carrie urged.
“I don’t want to put my own sons to shame,” said Dad.
Finally, Dad couldn’t take it anymore, and joined them, while Mom took a short walk. Dad didn’t seem to be having an easy time of it either though. Then Carrie couldn’t take it any more either, and added her take on the matter. In the end, it was concluded that only Francis was the perfect weight to allow the contraption to work properly.
Meanwhile, Dad and the boys were busy in what appeared to be a chain-link fence hopping competition.
Eventually they all spilled back into the slug and journeyed home. The windows were fogging up and Puck took the opportunity to sketch his own phrases…
“Look, everybody!” he screeched. “The B-L-E! That’s the Word of God!”
“He’s got a Mark Driscoll shout going on back there,” OLeif laughed. “’REPENT!’”
“Oh, Joe…” Carrie turned away. “Can you move your armpit someplace else.”
Joe wriggled his fingers toward her from said region in a whispery voice…
“’Hi… Carrie… How are you?…”
As the Katy Trail continued to flash past, the infamous bike ride with the English children was reminisced from ten years ago…
“It was horrible,” said Carrie. “All the English kids had bad bikes. So the chain came off Eve’s and she ran me over.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that,” said Collette. “The seat on Diana’s was so bad that she traded bikes with me for awhile and I’ve never been that sore before.”
“Then Bing got a terrible nose bleed.”
“And OLeif tore pages out of the back of his Bible to stem it.”
“And we get to New Melle and have ice cream, which was great. But then Bing gets Charlie horses on both legs and he’s rolling around on the ground, screaming in pain. And Diana and Eve act like it happened all the time and didn’t even notice.”
“And all these big thunderstorms were coming in…”
“But Diana was mad at everyone because she still wanted us to bike all the way back home.”
Good times…
“That was the only time I biked on the Katy Trail,” said OLeif.
“The one and only,” Collette and Carrie told him.
Joe was still contemplating the perfect house as they blazed past country cottages…
“Not that one. It’s too farmy. Probably has a ghost…”
They passed a long-time-lived hut in the woods, abandoned, hollow…
I’m always intrigued by that one. It was once lived in by a midget family crossing the prairie…”
“Joe. Your armpit is facing me again.”
As they continued over the beautiful bluffs above river country, Carrie and Joe had a Mom-phrase-fest…
“’Oh! I hope one of my children gets married on this bluff! I hope it’s a pretty day! And they can wear bonnets!’”
“’And they can go on their honeymoon in a prairie wagon!’”
“’I just love Missouri! I love it in the wintertime! And in the springtime! And in the summertime!…’”
“’Everything is just so charming this time of year!’ Look at that telephone pole. It’s just a little crooked. Poor thing!’”
“Awww…” said Mom.
“Francis?” Dad called from the front of the van, “would you drive up to the store for some hot dogs when we get back?”
“Uh oh…”
“You can get some ice cream too, if you want.”
“Ok.”
“And, Francis?” Carrie razzed. “Don’t think about the price at all. Just get whatever looks good.”
“Yeah, he comes back with limited edition Wienermobile hot dogs, signed by Mr. Wienermobile himself,” Joe teased.
“Made up from pure ground bacon.”
“With extra salt.”
“Uh huh…” was Francis’ usual come-back.
All the kids discussed life while, instead, Mom and Dad hit up the grocery store for dinner and they all remembered the pizza cake that Mom had painstakingly created for Collette’s 10th birthday so long ago. The cake that Carrie and Eve thought they would ever so slyly comb over for frosting licks and ended up gouging a sizable hole on the one side…
“We tried to cover it up by evening it out,” said Carrie. “Didn’t work.”
The expensive doll furniture that Collette had owned when a child and all “somehow” got destroyed…
“They would have all been collector’s items today,” said Collette. “Until Carrie sat on one of the chairs and smashed it.”
“Oh, yes. That was for the Mr. Funny Show.”
And somehow the matter of Joe’s old slumber parties also emerged…
“Yeah, we’d just get together and talk about sweet babes,” he said.
“When I spent the night with my friends, we’d listen to the Beach Boys,” said OLeif.
“We forced Wally to tell us who he liked,” Joe continued.
“We’d shoot guns,” OLeif added.
As they thundered back into the neighborhood of Explorers, Joe’s phone dinged.
“Ope. Yup. We’re in a watch.”
“Flood?” Francis asked.
“Tornado.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Southeast side though…”

The hot dogs were prepared by the ladies while Dad switched on National News in the basement. Collette couldn’t really recall when this had become a pastime. At some point after she had left home, at least. And there were bags of popcorn. Vanilla ice cream for dessert. As everyone gathered in the living room, Mom related the details of her worst job ever. Newly married. 22. Arizona. Daycare in the bad part of town. 6:00AM. She had dropped off Dad at work at 5:30AM, then called him from the daycare and left the phone off the hook while she walked around and turned on all the lights, pepper mace in hand. 25 kids. Single-handed. No assistance whatsoever. Had them hold on to two jump ropes when crossing from one block to the next. Planned their lessons, taught them, changed them, cooked their lunches, set up all their cots, put them down for naps. All for the extravagant fee of $2.48/hr. Now those were some good old days.
“And then the dinosaurs attacked,” OLeif added, to complete the awfulness.