Monday, January 25, 2010

"On the Lam" - Senior Trip






Cowtown Life Alone

Cowtown Life Alone
a short story by Diana Weeks

I woke eager to work the newspaper crossword puzzle… to get my ninety year old brain… to wake up. I get up but stand still to let my legs get set for walking… then go to the front door and peep out at the sky. It’s so blue. The paper is barely in the yard.

I miss my kind neighbor who always brought my paper to my door. His mean son put him in a nursing home when his wife died. I returned to my room for house shoes and robe, retrieved my paper and punched the button to start the coffee dripping. I don’t like to drink coffee…but I love to smell it. That’s why I don’t like zapping bacon in my microwave…it changes and contains the tantalizing aroma.

My special morning chair cushion conforms perfectly to my behind. The lamp illuminates my lap. My coffee cup and crossword dictionary sit on the small table in easy reach. Ah …”moved out” seven down…”evicted”…There’s so much of that going on…foreclosures everywhere…and three of my grandsons are out of work. “Early morning food” …”eggs”…over two dollars a dozen…but who won an Oscar in Hud?

The rest of the paper is full of news about the TV stations going to digital broadcasting. What was wrong with the air? My grandson, David, who’s in film school in Denton, came over and connected my government discounted converter…but since June 12th my set is acting up. I can’t afford cable and don’t want a hundred stations. There’s such a thing as too much communication.

My neighbor Anne, had a heart by-pass… can’t garden yet…she loved to work in her yard…especially the front yard… in her shorts. The homes across the street are rented to TCU students who whistle. She’s says “I have great legs. Whistles cheer me up”. She is only seventy.

Everyday when I finish the paper… I walk next door to give it to Anne. I ring the bell…I can hear her TV…her daughter bought her hearing aids …but she won’t wear them. I look in her window and don’t see her. I move to another window and cup my hands around my eyes. I knock on her back door. Nothing.

I hurry back home and get the extra house key I keep for her. I return and knock…unlock the door and go in calling her name. I’m startled to find her at her computer playing poker and listening to music on ear phones. I hug her. “I thought you were knocked out or dead…”

Anne grinned. “Ginny, I’m learning to win; I’ve already won a two-dollar and fifty-seven cent credit. I have a breakfast casserole in the oven that should be ready…stay and eat some. I eagerly agree…and look around.

“Your TV looks good, did you go on cable?” I ask.

Anne laughed…”No, my daughter fixed mine with an old antenna…I’ll bet you still have one too”.

“I think it’s on the top shelf of my hall closet. You know my late husband couldn’t throw anything away”.

“After we eat…we’ll go over and I’ll attach it for you”.

“You can’t be climbing…” I say.

“I’ll hold the step ladder steady for you”…she teases. We giggle like teenagers.

“My niece and her husband are in town “ I brag.…”They’re taking me to supper today…I’ll see if he can get my TV picture right”.

Anne opened her oven and it expelled the fragrance of butter, eggs, cheese…and sausage… foods to risk dying for. We eat with gusto.

THE END
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



Friday, January 22, 2010

Juarez

Juarez
A short story by Diana Weeks

I was flat on my yoga mat doing my downward dog stretches when my phone rang.

My daughter, 30, mother of a boy and two girls was on the phone… hurriedly asking me to let my grand kids visit me next week… so she can take a bus to Juarez to take “crime story” pictures… for the daily paper she strings for… part time.

The Juarez drug war has exploded and murder happens daily.
Four heads had been cut off…I didn’t even have to pause to think. “No!”

“Mother, this could be my Pulitzer prize chance. It’s the photo op of photo ops. Come on it’s my big chance.

“That’s what I thought when I left you kids with a sitter and went to cover Hurricane Carla. What I thought was an afternoon job turned into two days in a flooded out bus with a woman who didn’t speak English… in labor.

It was a bad scary experience. And I didn’t get any good hurricane pictures or get paid for delivering the baby. We all almost drown before help came.

“But what an adventure”! She cried, her voice full of envy. Besides I can’t learn from your experiences. I’ll take my pepper spray”.

If you insist on going to Juarez, you’ll have to take the kids with you.

“I couldn’t do that, Juarez isn’t safe enough for my children.

Mother raised her eyebrows , “Or mine!”

The End
All Rights Reserved


Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Aunt Jes and Grandma Ola

Aunt Jes and Grandma Ola
a short story by Diana Weeks

I didn’t know what the word “kidnapped” meant…until I saw it in huge print on a Chicago times banner headline… on a folded out clipping in one of my aunt Jestine’s scrapbooks of grisly murders… train wrecks… and killer tornadoes.

“Jestine’s Books of Harrow” as our strict mother named them when she put them in the cabinet bookcase under daddy’s built in desk. The scrapbooks were out of bounds…

Until… the afternoons it rained and Aunt Jes… was baby sitting me and my brother Steve… and we sat in front of the forbidden bookcase and cried please, “please, we won’t tell”.

She had four real large scrapbooks covered in fading reddish orange fabric, the most recent still red. All were bigger and thicker than our family bible.

There were several years in each. The real old clippings were yellowed with curling corner edges pulled from the flour mixed in water paste that held the news stories to the cream colored pages. The first scary picture I saw… was of a blood painted scroll on a wall “catch me before I kill more” and a picture of a dingy slum basement and the trash barrel… where an eight year old kidnapped girl’s body was found.

I couldn’t go to sleep that night until daddy got in from his night shift at two. Still there were magnets in those murder books… every rainy afternoon… we were drawn to continue reading about all the things mother deemed to awful for children.

Aunt Jes and Granma Ola came to live with us for a while after granpa had a heart attack and died. Both granma and Aunt Jes liked gossip and were curious about crime and would tell us things learned at their beauty salon.

mother was embarrassed to be related to them because they went to stranger’s funerals, if the person was murdered or died in a terrible way, even car wrecks.

I cried every time I read and re-read the stories about the gas explosion of the elementary school in New London, Texas in 1937. Kids our age died. Blown up in their classrooms. The papers had faded pictures of stacked body parts in a bushel basket… school pictures of the smiling dead children.

Aunt Jestine was a serious newspaper story collector. She enjoyed clipping and waited with sharpened scissors…she listened to radio news programs and read the daily paper. She could smell a big story and get on a downtown bus to buy out-of-town news stand papers to glue in her grim scrapbooks.

What may be on page two of our fort worth star telegram… could be a front page yarn in California where the earthquake happened.

Aunt Jes kept her scrapbook up-to-date... Neighborhood children would arrive with thunder, before the second clap, to visit our tragedy filled library.

It was just after the war. Mother now had a job as a downtown department store buyer. She had to dress nice she explained.

Granma Ola worked nights at the hospital where I was born… sterilizing instruments.
Their hours were not the same. Aunt Jes did housework. Granma cooked and let me help. I learned how to put bread and milk in meat loaf, and make sauces for vegetables Steve didn’t like.

Aunt Jes was a grown-up but small like a twelve year old child. She let me wear her high heels for dress-up. I asked my mother why Aunt Jes didn’t have any tiddies? Mom was putting on her make-up for work. “That’s just the way god made her, now run along.”

Mother started locking her closet when she went to work... “Why do you lock your closet? I inquired? She started applying lipstick with a brush and didn’t pay me any attention.

I knew the reason. One Sunday at supper granma had ask dad if he’d seen mother’s new purple dress”. Mom interrupted “I decided to take it back”. Aunt Jes coughed and had to hold her napkin over her mouth to hide a giggle.

The End
All Rights Reserved


Monday, January 4, 2010

Deluded

Deluded
a short story by Diana Weeks

When I announced I was getting married to a college drop out grocery clerk my mother wailed softly…”What about your education?”

“Don’t worry I comforted. I graduate from high school the last of May and we aren’t getting married until June 12th, a whole two weeks later.

“That’s not enough time to plan a wedding.” Mother sniffed and got a tissue from her pocket. “What about ordering your invitations and wedding dress?”

“I’m going to make my own wedding dress. That’s why I took sewing so I could make my own clothes”.

“Do you …” she put her hands over her face…”have to get married?’ she whispered parting two fingers to peek at me.

“No…”

“Thank heavens, and then you can wait until you finish college”.

“I’ve told you and told you… I don’t want to go to college. I’m in love and I want to get married.”

“But there’s no rush”.

“Not if we get married soon. I want to get married….so I won’t have to get married.”

“How can you say that?”

“To make you understand that I don’t want to wait much longer.”

“Your grandmother was right I shouldn’t have never become your friend…you just say anything to me”.

“We have a great relationship; I just want to be married”.

“Is Wayne going back to college?”

“Mother, he has a good job, he’s produce manager at the new Safeway. He likes the grocery business; he’ll have his own store in a few years”.

“I thought he was majoring in engineering?”
“He’s happier working in a grocery store because it’s not boring.”

“How much does he make?”

“Almost 90 dollars a week.” That brought on her boo hoos. “We can live on that, I learned to budget in general math.”

“The course you took instead of algebra!”

“And what good would algebra do me. You didn’t go to college.”

“That’s why I want you to.”

“Why don’t you go to college for me instead of making me go to college for you?”

“You’re not ever going to move to that little town he’s from are you?” She leaned back in Daddy’s recliner. He was at work or I’d never have brought up the subject.

“Why are you upset? I told you last year I loved him and thought I’d found a great husband. I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”

“Yes, of course, but first go to college. You could join a sorority…” Sniff, sniff.
“Go to lots of parties.”

I was surprised…by mother’s tears. She never cries.

“You’re the one who likes parties not me.”

“You should have taken more dance lessons. You are always reading a book.”

“I’ve had plenty of boyfriends and now I’m in love and want to marry.”

“For life…like a prison sentence.. It’s not all hunky-dory.”

I was elated that I wasn’t like many girls in my graduating class of 1954…who had to go to college to catch a husband. Poor things. My work is done.


THE END
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED