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The Garage Sale: A Tale of Procrastination

Garage saleThe Garage Sale: A Tale of Procrastination

by Angie Brown, Guest Author

My house on “The Haskell” in Portville had sold, and I was preparing to move out and begin a new phase of life… at 92 years of age! The contrast between the cluttered garage next to the neat kitchen was very noticeable, so, labeling it an emergency, I started to sort the contents of the garage. This puttery work is time-consuming and boring, but by the afternoon, one corner of the garage had been transformed into something more presentable. I was contemplating having a garage sale in a few weeks when I happened to remember a commitment I had made. So, I stopped my work on the garage to fulfill my promise. This seemingly innocent detour turned into a parade of more fun and interesting interruptions that occupied my time and energy for more than a week; would I ever get back to preparing for the garage sale?

First, I received an invitation to go on a short trip, which I happily accepted. Returning full of energy and high spirits from the trip, I realized it was blueberry season. The blueberry farm was in the neighborhood, so I trotted over there and picked a good-sized basketful. On the way home, I decided to make some blueberry jam, something I hadn’t done in several years. So of course, I proceeded to make the preserves and stood admiring the full glasses on the counter.  “Home-made bread would be good with that,” I said to myself.

So, the next day I mixed up some dough and baked two loaves of bread. By that time, the jam was cool and set. I cut a thick slice from the heel of warm bread and smeared it generously with the freshly made jam. While standing at the kitchen window, I wolfed down the bread and jam and relished every delicious crumb. From the window I could see that the lawn needed raking. The grass had gotten rather long, and, when cut, had left clumps of dried grass, which were unsightly. Postponing the garage work again, I took a rake, and, expending some of the energy from the bread and jam, I raked up six bushels of grass clippings and piled them up on the compost pile.

The following day, I had a call from my sister in Rochester telling me she would visit soon. So after she arrived, we had a week on the town, shopping, eating out, and visiting relatives. The garage would have to wait!

Finally returning to the clutter in the garage, I began, reluctantly, moving and organizing things at a slow pace when I saw the mailman stop out front. I hurried out to the mailbox and picked out a letter from my daughter, who lived 160 miles away in Ithaca. Tearing it open and reading the contents, I found that they were short and to the point. “Mother,” it read, “I am coming Saturday to help you with the garage sale.” Uh-oh, I’d better get busy, now!

So, with a new-found sense of urgency, I sprang into action and sensed a powerful surge of energy. By the end of that day, I had everything under control. Only the signs had to be made and posted. I must say that I had a splendid feeling of accomplishment. Reflecting on the events of that day, I reckoned that the crime of procrastination can be solved by a little motivation!

(For more articles by Angie Brown, click HERE)

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Plumpin’ the Puppies

Beagle de 60 dias

Plumpin’ the Puppies

James R. Aist

[DISCLAIMER: I meant no harm, no one really got hurt bad, I am opposed to cruelty to animals and I provide the answer to the big “research” question at the end (so that you will have no excuse for trying this at home; shame on you, in advance, for even thinking of it!)]

When I was growing up in central Arkansas, we had Beagle dogs for rabbit hunting and, of course, for instant affection and validation anytime, whether we wanted it or not. When I was 10 years old, my family re-located from our dairy farm in Cypress Valley to an equally rural area in the vicinity of Naylor, where we moved into a parsonage, located at the end of a dirt road off a dirt road; Daddy had received his very first assignment as a newly ordained Methodist minister. During our first Spring there, one of our Beagles gave birth to a litter of puppies, and we kept two of them for ourselves. I luuuuuv Beagle puppies! They are so soft, so cute and so affectionate; and, so much fun to play with.

Every school-day afternoon while the puppies were still quite small, I could hardly wait for the school bus to get to the end of our dirt road. I would spring off of the school bus and run all the way to our house so that I could spend the next half hour or so just playing with “my” precious little puppies. Of course, these little darlings seemed to always be hungry when I got home, and I liked nothing more than to bring out a small pitcher of milk and a couple of cereal bowls and settle down with the puppies in a patch of fresh green lawn beside the house. They would eagerly lap up all the milk in the bowl, and I would just as eagerly give them “seconds” just to watch them do it all over again. What fun!

Well, one day I got an idea for what would turn out to be the very first of many biological experiments I would conduct over a long and successful career in biological research. I was pondering the gusto with which these innocent little biological units would scarf down all the milk in their bowls, including the “seconds”, and it occurred to me that it would be interesting to find out just how much milk they would drink if I provided an unending supply of it. Would they drink only until they were full, or would they just keep on drinking until they just couldn’t keep any more milk down? With an innocent curiosity and no malicious intent whatsoever (keep in mind that I was just an 11 year old boy and I really loved those little puppies), I resolved to find the answer to this monumental question.

So, the next day I filled up the milk bowls once and then twice, and then I went where no boy had gone before (at least not to my knowledge); I filled the bowls yet a third time! To my surprise, these valiant troopers just kept on lapping up the milk and wagging their tails for more. After the third round of refills, I began to get a little worried, because now, the puppies were visibly swollen in the middle. Yet, they weren’t whining or whimpering yet, so I filled their bowls for a fourth time, determined to get the final answer to my seemingly innocent research question, but without inflicting any harm on the little guys. This time, I noticed that they were slowing down but still lapping and swallowing eagerly, and so I decided to take some additional, preliminary data on the progress of the experiment. With no little trepidation, I reached down and very gently squeezed their swollen bellies between my thumb and index finger to assess the degree of danger I might just possibly be exposing the thoroughly plumped puppies to. Their bellies were now tight as a drum, and this put a serious scare into me. Had I gone too far, already? Will they bust open right before my eyes? If they do bust open, how can I explain it to my parents so as to escape the punishment I so richly deserve for heartlessly murdering these tiny little helpless bundles of life just to conduct a silly scientific experiment? So, like a flash, I jerked away the milk bowls to minimize any further potential damage, and I was not prepared at all for what happened next.

I observed that these two little puppies turned, in unison, to walk away, still lapping and swallowing as fast as they could, but now just to try and keep down the last of the milk that was dribbling out of their mouths. I observed also that they were breathing heavily and with great difficulty, because there was no room left in their little bodies for a lungful of air, thanks to their excessive intake of cow’s milk. And finally, I observed that their now-bloated bellies were actually dragging along the ground as they waddled slowly away. In some sort of sick way I suppose, this scene was to me both humorous to watch and scary to contemplate, at one and the same time. But, as I continued to keep my eye on them, it became apparent that they were, indeed, way too full, but not to the point of bodily harm. This realization enabled me to take a deep sigh of relief and get an, albeit somewhat sinister, little chuckle out of the entire affair, especially the ending.

So, what is the answer to the big question: how much milk will Beagle puppies drink if they are given an unending supply? The answer is… just as much as they can possibly keep down with constant lapping and swallowing, once it starts to come back out as fast as it goes back in! Oh, and by the way, my parents never found out about this experiment. Hey, what they don’t know won’t hurt me, right?

(For more articles on TRUE TALES, click HERE)

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And the Winner Is…

Raffle ticketsAnd the Winner Is…

by James R. Aist

“The Lord works in mysterious ways!”

When I was ten years old, my family was living on a dairy farm in rural, central Arkansas. Daddy had been studying to become a Methodist minister for some time, and he finally was ordained, making him eligible to become a Pastor. So, for the next eight years of my life, my family moved from little town to little town in Arkansas, staying in one place for only 2-3 years (that was the custom in the Methodist church back then). The second move was to a very small little village in North Central Arkansas called Evening Shade, population exactly 315. Now in Evening Shade, everyone knew almost everyone else, and everyone for sure knew the Preacher’s family. Becoming a Preacher’s kid had made me even more self-conscience than I was before, because it seemed that everyone now expected me to be a perfect specimen of holy living, especially since I had just reached the age of accountability. So I made doubly sure that my public behavior was stellar. Didn’t want to embarrass the family, you know.

As you might well imagine, small churches in rural Arkansas back then could not afford to pay their preachers very well, so we were, in effect, a financially challenged family, to put it in contemporary, politically correct lingo. Now, to help the local, financially challenged families keep food on the table, the village grocer, Mr. Shaver, would extend credit to them as needed. To reward and encourage their efforts to reduce their tabs, the grocer would award one raffle ticket for every dollar owed and would hold a drawing each month to determine who would walk away with a free bag of groceries that month. Well, the time had come for the month’s drawing, and we happened to have paid off our entire debt that month and had a very large number of tickets. So, Mama sent me down to the store with tickets in hand to represent our family and witness the drawing, thinking that we had a pretty good chance of winning the prize this time, and I would be there to carry it home to her. I was already beginning to feel some apprehension about this developing scenario, but I didn’t yet know why.

A large (for Evening Shade, that is) crowd had already gathered in the store by the time I got there, so I weaved my way through to the front of the store and put our family tickets into the bucket with all the other tickets. It looked to me like we must have had about 25% of the tickets, and suddenly I, too, became excited about our chances of winning; that would really be something! Mr. Shaver stirred the tickets and announced that the drawing was about to begin. A hush came over the eager onlookers. And that’s when things began to go south for me.

To my shock and chagrin, Mr. Shaver picked me to select the winning ticket out of the bucket! Already I was beginning to feel a major public embarrassment coming on. Why did he choose me, of all people, to pick the winner? Didn’t he know that we had a huge number of tickets and, therefore, a good chance of winning? Wouldn’t it at least look better if someone else drew my winning ticket? Nonetheless, the die was cast, and I approached the bucket with great trepidation, saying to myself, “I know we could use the free groceries, but please, Lord, let me draw someone else’s ticket!” I thrust my sweaty, trembling hand into the mass of tickets, all the way down to the bottom of the bucket, somehow hoping that this strategy would spare me, the Preacher’s kid, the embarrassment of drawing my own winning ticket.

Well, I don’t know if it was because I had unwittingly committed some unpardonable sin, or God just didn’t like me for some reason, but, alas, the winning ticket belonged to the Aist family, sure enough! It was one of those moments where you dream — nay, you hope desperately — that you are in some sort of nightmare, from which you will awaken shortly to realize that none of it is real. But alack, no dream; it was really real, and I felt humiliated in front of “the whole town.” In a flash, a series of thoughts raced through my mind: “Now everyone will think that the whole thing was rigged. They’ll think this Preacher’s kid must have been in on it! How can I ever live this down?” Of course everyone cheered when the winner was announced, pretending to be happy for us because they knew we could surely use the free food, but I knew what they were really thinking: “Well, isn’t that just peachy; and he’s the Preacher’s kid!”

As humiliated as I was, I was still eager to get home with a bag of free food to show Mama. My older sister spent most of the afternoon trying to convince me to not be embarrassed, but I was only 12.

(For more articles on TRUE TALES, click HERE)

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The Cat and the Collar

The Cat and the Collar

by James R. Aist

We have been cat people for many years now. Cats are a most entertaining animal form, if you just pay attention to them. Quite some time ago we had two cats, Bonnie and Clyde; Clyde because he had large feet and looked like a Clydesdale (horse) when he walked toward you, and Bonnie because, well, it goes with Clyde.

Now Bonnie had, somehow, learned to play “fetch.” One evening I was sitting in the dining room trying to write a letter, and I had a hard time getting the letter off on the right foot, so to speak. I had just tossed my third paper wad to the floor on my way to yet another fresh start, when I noticed that Bonnie had walked up to me with the last paper wad in her mouth. She looked up at me with that excited “Let’s play fetch!” look in her eyes. Now, how could I resist that?! So I retrieved the paper wad from her mouth, showed it to her and gave it a good fling through the doorway and across the kitchen floor. Now the kitchen floor was linoleum and very slick, whereas the dining room floor was carpeted and had really good traction. So Bonnie got off to a rapid sprint in a split second as she raced through the doorway in pursuit of the paper wad. Just then my daughter, Liesel, opened the refrigerator door to get a snack, not seeing Bonnie racing toward her. Bonnie, intent on retrieving the paper wad in record time, failed to notice Liesel opening the refrigerator door, which was square in her path. Seeing all of this unfold before my eyes, I was already getting ready for a really big laugh (don’t ask me why; maybe it’s a guy thing) upon her inevitable collision with the refrigerator door. Well, into the bottom of the refrigerator door she slammed at full bore — BAM — and then bounced back violently, from the impact. At first, this seemed hilariously funny to me, but then I noticed that Bonnie was flailing around on the kitchen floor “like a chicken with its head cut off.” That threw me into a panic, as I thought “Oh no, she must have broken her neck… I killed the cat!” So I sprang from my chair and rushed into the kitchen to see if there was anything I could possibly do to save her. She was still retching and flailing when I finally managed to get her into my grasp to see how badly she was hurt. Then I saw it. Her neck wasn’t broken at all. Instead, her lower jaw had gotten caught in her flea collar when the impact with the refrigerator door forced her head suddenly downward, and she was just struggling violently, in sheer panic, to free her jaw from the flea collar!

Whew, I didn’t kill the cat after all. Then the hilarity of the whole scenario struck me, and I began laughing so hard it took me a while to free her from that demon flea collar and send her on her way, relatively unscathed. Needless to say, that was the first, and the last, “fetch” of that evening!

(For more articles on TRUE TALES, click HERE)