What You Want in a Birthday

Linnea had reached a milestone for Missouri teenagers. A driving permit was just tickling in reach. But she had a cold, and didn’t stay for Sunday School. I think my neck burned from 10:30-11:30, backed up against the window, despite cool breezes in the 40’s.

We had plans to drive downtown. And of course any downtown birthday excursion required the accompaniment of Grandma Combs. And…

The Big Green Van.

We had surprised Linnea with the – All You Can Eat Fried Chicken Dinner at legendary haunt-out – The Lemp Mansion. To be honest, the entire meal was almost completely scratches, taps, and kicks under the table, passed back and forth down both rows, and accusatory smiles, mostly for Puck’s benefit under ceilings painted in clouds and roses. And the heavy stoneware bowls packed with ham, roast beef, green beens, cole slaw, cucumber salad, baked apples, mashed potatoes with gravy, macaroni and cheese, biscuits with sweet butter, and of course the fried chicken. The bounty retired with a piece of cheesecake on the house for Linnea, which was sent home in a box.

The continued scare-attempts worked about as successfully upstairs as we toured the high ceilings of Victorian rooms – legendary ghostly haunts and other sad tales, plus a white-tiled bathroom the size of my kitchen.

So we do birthdays big around here. Linnea was rolling in wealth from the family. Rose had put together a World Market basket, always interesting – chocolate orange wafer rolls from Greece, honey wafers, baking cocoa, gardenia soap, peacock-printed tea mug and molded yellow plate, hanging Moroccan-style lamp from New Mexico, Hallowe’en slippers, glow sticks, Japanese sodas, and mustache mints and Hello Kitty mints, just for grins, packed into a woven basket, topped off with a large sparkly black spider critter. There was also jewelry – turquoise skulls bracelet, sapphires from Nassau from Grandma, Nagle’s zipper bracelet, cross earrings, etc. blue V.S. Sweatshirt and fluffy-filled white fingerless gloves from Carrie, “Eat My Dust” North Face tee, promise of second ear piercing sponsorship and fur-lined tribal moccasins. Puck was proudest of all to share his gift, though, which he had picked out all on his own opinion at Target. He saw it immediately when he passed the shelving of wallets – a dark red leather one stitched over in a bold leather squirrel holding an acorn. We polished it off with a corkscrew candle stuck in her strawberry cheesecake.

George Aristotle walked in the door right before the singing. He and Joe were driving out to Hannibal to visit a friend. Then Francis began the glazing blaze in the back lawn. A signature bonfire complete with hot cocoa or tea, heavy quilts, and forty year-old white gas.

You could see Dad grin like a Boy Scout after each plastic cupful tossed on the spindling monster. The first one scared Mom enough to spill cocoa down her jeans. But the billowing beasts continued until Carrie confiscated the can.

“Those boys!” she declared, rushing it inside before Dad noticed.

Nothing like birthday fried chicken, ghosts, and bonfires.