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Purple Cow Stories

Posted on January 19, 2013 by susanrray

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My mother told Purple Cow stories when I was a little girl.  Stories that were inspired by a poem entitled “The Purple Cow.”  Stories she made up as she told them.  Now, I share Purple Cow stories with my Grands, and Ruth, almost 4, never tires of hearing them.  I quote the four-line poem and then tell a story – whatever comes to mind at the time.

To be sure I spelled the name of the poet correctly for this column, I googled The Purple Cow and learned that Ogden Nash, who I’ve always credited with writing the poem, is not the author.  Gelett Burgress wrote “The Purple Cow” and Nash changed one word (anyhow to right now), got it published, and fooled me all these years.  And I learned Burgress gave this poem an interesting subtitle, one I’d never seen before.  Burgress’s poem written in 1895 is the version that Mother taught me.

The Purple Cow
Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.
I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;
I never hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I’d rather See than Be One.

            And I never knew until now that Burgress wrote a second verse two years later in which he regrets penning words about a cow.

Confession: and a Portrait, Too, Upon a Background that I Rue!

Ah yes, I wrote “The Purple Cow”
I’m Sorry now I wrote it.

            I’m thankful Burgress wrote such a silly verse.  My Grand laughs every time she hears it.  She wonders who’d want to be a cow, especially purple.  “Tell me a Purple Cow story,” Ruth will say.  “The one about when she fell in the pond.”  And if I don’t tell it exactly the way my Grand remembers, she joins in the story telling.  (Now I’m writing some of these made-up stories – I wish I had Mother’s.)

“Ruth,” I said to her after I’d told a story of the Purple Cow walking on an icy pond, “it’s your turn to tell a story about Purple Cow.  She rolled her eyes, tilted her head, and said, “Well, the Purple Cow walked and walked and walked and walked.  It walked more.  It saw a dinosaur.”

“A dinosaur?”  I asked.

She nodded her head, grinned, and said, “A dinosaur.  And there was a skunk on the dinosaur.  And the skunk sprayed the Purple Cow.”

“Then what happened?”

Ruth looked out the window which she was sitting beside.  She tilted her head from side to side, and said, “That’s all for today.”

I have a feeling that Burgress, the originator of the Purple Cow, would approve of Ruth’s story.  He founded a humor magazine and published books of whimsical writings and illustrations.  He became known for his humor that was based on substituting the unexpected for the common place.

And who would expect a skunk to sit on a dinosaur and spray a Purple Cow?  Only a little girl who never tires of Purple Cow stories.

 

 

 

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It’s a New Year……What to do?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by susanrray

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I don’t know what to do or where to start.  It’s a new year.  And there are so many things that I want and need to do.  Knit a cap for my Colorado Grand?  Stitch pajama pants for my Grands who live across town?  Finish the quilt that Grandma Gladys started fifty years ago?  Bake bread to take to my sick friend?  Sort and throw away outdated medicines? Finish reading the book I started before Christmas?

I love new beginnings.  Mondays.  New calendars.  When I taught school, I liked the beginning of a Science unit and a new list of spelling words.  So I should welcome 2013.  But I’m frazzled with all the choices.  Clean out the kitchen cabinets?  I put clean dishes in those cabinets so where do all the crumbs come from?  Move the bed and vacuum the dust monsters?  They’re too big to be called bunnies.  If I hadn’t dropped my bookmark behind the bed, I’d never seen the monsters.  Ignorance was bliss.  Take pictures and write stories about the family heirlooms in my house?  I can’t expect my children to remember that five blue glasses belonged to Great-Grandmother Rich and that Daddy mailed the green wooden box to Mother while he was stationed in Germany during WWII.

Four years ago when I retired, I wrote a list of things to do, places to see, and people to spend time with.  I’m too big a coward to even look at that list.  But I remember that I thought I’d get back to playing the piano.  Why have a piano if no one plays it?  I’d sew dresses and rompers for my Grands; skirts for myself.  I’d exercise.  I’d throw dinner parties.  Explore the blue highways in the Upper Cumberland.  Eat lunch with friends.  Learn something new every day.

As I sit with my fingers on my computer, I create a new folder for this year’s columns.  Where We Are 2013.  Should I take time to trash and organize scattered documents in the 2012 folder?  Update my computer?  The loud buzzer on the dryer relieves my indecision.  I hang Husband’s and my shirts.  There’s the raccoon costume lying on the sewing machine by the ironing board.  Right after Halloween, I promised my Grand that I’d mend it.  It’ll only take ten minutes.  I could stitch it now.

Focus.  Make a plan, my brain says.  2013 – a chance to start new.  What should I do for the next 365 days.  Recently, I read a devotion that suggested choosing one word for a New Year’s resolution.  One word to guide each day’s choices.  Each day’s activities.   Suggested words:  courage, faith, patience, simplify, study, action, generous.  What about balance or love?

So here I am.  The beginning of a new year and I’m in a quandary.  Choices.  Lists.  Resolutions.  The phone rings.  “Gran?”  I hear the sweet voice of my seven-year-old Grand.  “Are you coming to see us today?”

Yes.

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Christmas Glimpses

Posted on December 26, 2012 by susanrray

imagesAs I relax with cup of hot tea and homemade fudge, I’m relishing pictures of Christmas.  Husband and I celebrated Christmas with our Grands and their parents for two days.  Six adults and five children – age seven and under.  Lots of food and gifts and squeals and fun.

I’ll print and treasure many photos.  Our eighteen-month-old youngest Grand wore the red vest that I made for his daddy 35 years ago, and  he sat on the windowsill to test-taste a dill pickle.  Elaine, age 19 months, climbed to the top of the spinet piano and found the hidden out-of-reach candy.  Ruth, age 3, hugged her new doll and asked her uncle to help change the doll’s clothes.  Lou, age 5, knelt to the floor to kiss her little cousin good-bye.  Our oldest Grand, David leaped in surprise when he saw his gift – a remote control car.

Some Christmas images can’t be printed.  Some are happenings.  I saw the antlers, fuzzy and worn, stuck onto the roof of the brown compact car.  Who’d do that?  It seemed dorky.  “Look, Momma!  Rudolph!”  I heard a child’s voice.  A little girl tugged at her mother’s hand that held her tightly as they hurried across the shopping mall parking lot.  “Momma, look at his red nose!”  I looked and I chuckled.  A softball size red sponge ball was attached to the grill of the car.  I wish I knew who’d done that.  My hectic shopping day turned into a happier day.

One evening, Husband I stood outside the doors of Spring Street Market ringing a bell for Rescue Mission donations.  The smell of hot donuts floated our way from Ralph’s Donut Shop, just a block away.  As a customer carried her groceries out of the market, we were talking about the wonderful smell.  She agreed the aroma was enticing and waved to us as she drove out of the parking lot.  A few minutes later, her small green car swerved alarmingly close to us and then stopped.  This angel lady rolled down her car window and said, “Merry Christmas!”  She handed us a white bakery bag.  Two hot donut twists straight from Ralph’s.  We shouted, “Thank you!” as she drove away.

My college roommate, Jo Ann, visited me before Christmas for a day of candy making and my five-year-old Grand was also here.  “We need two cups of Chex cereal.  Lou, do you know how to measure?”  Jo Ann asked.  Lou, standing on a chair and on eye-level with Jo Ann answered, “Sure, I help Momma cook all the time.”  I stood aside.  For one thing, we were using Jo Ann’s White Trash candy recipe, but mostly I wanted to watch two people I love.  Jo Ann and Lou knew each other by name, but had never been together for more than a few minutes at a time.  Never stirred with the same spoon.  The next day Lou asked, “When’s Aunt Jo Ann coming back to make more candy?”

Glimpses of Christmas.  Some printed on paper.  Some printed in hearts.

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Under the Christmas Tree

Posted on December 20, 2012 by susanrray

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Under the Christmas Tree

            There’s an electric train under our Christmas tree.  Nothing unusual for most people.  But we never even owned an electric train until December 20th last year when Husband came home with a big box.  “I got something for a little surprise.”  And then he set up the railroad tracks in the bedroom where the Grands sleep when they spend the night.  The train was a hit, but it rarely ran.  Out of sight and away from the action.

This year is different.  “David,” I said to our oldest Grand, “let’s set up Pop’s electric train under the Christmas tree.”  David, age 7, was slow to respond.  He eyed the space between the low tree branches and the floor.  “But then there won’t be room for all the presents,” he said.  His silence questioned if I was suggesting that the train would replace presents.  I assured him that gifts could be stacked near, not under, the tree.

David and I connected the train tracks and hooked the train cars together.  Black engine leading and red caboose at the end.  And the Grands loved it.  When they visited the next time, each took a turn at the controls.  The train zoomed, forward and backward.  And the horn blasted.  Ah, just as I’d envisioned.

And a few days later, Husband went shopping again.  For candy.  Now an open hopper car is full of chocolate candy kisses – wrapped in read and silver and green.  Another hopper hauls peppermint patties.  Chocolate Santas are stacked on the flatcar and held securely with red rubber bands.  And inside the boxcar?  It’s loaded with Pez.  Every flavor made.  “Look at all the special treats!”  said Lou, our five-year-old Grand.  And each Grand ate a special treat, chocolate Santas, after lunch.

“You know, this train is missing something,” David said.  Maybe another car loaded with candy?  “It needs a tunnel.”  Husband and David went on a hunt for a box.  None, in recycling or those saved for wrapping gifts, were the right size.  “I know.  I’ll be right back.”  He rolled our play grocery cart filled with large cardboard building blocks into the living room.  He and Lou built a tunnel that encloses one end of the tracks.  Lou took the controls and both agreed the train wouldn’t knock down the tunnel.  But they’d have to tell Elain, their baby sister, to not take the tunnel apart.

“Now,” said Lou, “where’s the engineer?”  Out came the Legos.  David constructed.  Lou advised.  The engineer sits atop a platform so he can see the train really well.  The platform is attached to an overhead water sprinkler – “just in case there’s a fire on the train,” David told me.  Lou built a small Lego house so the engineer will have a place to sleep when he isn’t working.

Now our electric train is complete, I think.  And I love it.  But there’s still time for Husband to go shopping and hide a little special surprise in the boxcar.

 

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Trash or Treasure

Posted on December 5, 2012 by susanrray

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My Christmas tree is decorated just the way I like it.  Lights, red bead roping, ornaments and an angel on top.  Ornaments handed down from my parents’ Christmas tree. Ornaments that were gifts from family and friends and school children.  Ornaments made or bought for a special memory.  I can tell the story of each one.  But there are more ornaments still in the storage box.  Some not hung for years.  Enough to decorate another tree, and one tree is all I want.

“Here,” I said to Daughter as I handed her a full plastic bag.  “Take these ornaments to your house, please.  And maybe you’ll hang some on your tree.”  She held the bag in her hands.  “Wait, let me look at those again.”  I took the bag from her.  “Maybe some should be thrown away.”

Who could trash Bert and Ernie?  Handmade, from yarn, and Bert is only missing one eye.  The white crocheted snowflake has just a few yellow spots.  The ceramic angel that I painted would look pretty if someone glued her wing back on.  I can’t trash a Nativity –even a miniature plastic one. A blue Smurf probably means something to one of my children.  The shiny red apple is still pretty.  Why do I have three wooden factory-made stockings?  There’s no name or date on the back of any of them, but they’re cute.

I can’t bring myself to throw away the dozens of calico ornaments that I made in the mid-1970s.  I stitched them at night after our children had gone to bed.  Five-inch stockings and candy canes and wreaths.  Cut from yellow and red and green calico.  Two pieces of fabric zigzagged together and stuffed with polyester pillow stuffing.  Unbreakable.  The only kind of ornament that hung from our tree for several Christmases.  The years when little hands took ornaments off the tree.  And those same hands hung them back on.

I wonder where the picture is of our children when they were 3 and 5.  They were standing beside the Christmas tree and pointing to the ornaments they’d just hung.  Twelve calico ornaments hung side-by-side on the electrical wire between two lights.  Calico really isn’t in style now, but there’s a cotton fabric candy cane and wreath hanging on my tree.

Red glittery plastic bells.  I’m not trashing those.  I bought them at the Dime Store and Husband and I hung them on our very first Christmas tree.  What if I tie a narrow green ribbon through the loop of each one and write “Pop and Gran’s tree, 1969” inside the bell?  I’ll attach one to the bow on each of our Grand’s gifts.

So the red glittery bells are on my gift-wrapping table and every other ornament that I thought I might cull is back in the plastic bag.  I’ll give them to Daughter.  Surely she won’t throw any away.

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First Time Hostess

Posted on November 22, 2012 by susanrray

I lay in bed mentally checking my to-do lists.  Tables set.  Were the card table legs fastened?  Cut a lemon for tea.  Put the turkey in the oven at 5:00 a.m.  – just five hours from now.  Bake two pecan pies.  Wipe the bathroom sink.  Would the kids (ages 3 and 5) agree to wear the cute new outfits that my mother had made?

I’d written, checked, and rechecked lists for three days.  It was Husband’s and my firsttime to host a holiday dinner for my family.  And it wasn’t my idea.  Mother and her two sisters had rotated Thanksgiving and Christmas meals in their homes for 35 years, and they’d decided it was time for the younger generation to take over.

“We’ll help,” Mother had said.  “I’ll make the cornbread dressing and you know your Aunt Nell and Aunt Doris and I always make the gravy together.  Save the turkey drippings.  And everybody brings food.  You just put a turkey in the oven and make tea and coffee and maybe a dessert.  It’ll be fine.”  I told myself that these were the people – all 22 of them – who loved me best.  Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, brother, cousins.  If things weren’t perfect, they’d understand.

But I was determined that Husband and I could host the perfect Thanksgiving dinner.  I’d take pecan pies out of the oven just after everyone arrived.  Wouldn’t that make the house smell good?  By tradition, I had covered the tables with white tablecloths, and set them with my best china, crystal goblets, silver, and floral centerpieces.

Thanksgiving morning, 5:00 a.m., I shoved an 18-pound turkey into a 325* oven and climbed back into bed until daylight.  I rolled and turned, but didn’t sleep.  I got up.  The morning passed quickly.  How many times can one adjust plates and forks and napkins?  Our children were cuter than cute in their new clothes.  Bathroom sinks sparkled.  Husband promised that the card tables wouldn’t fall.  I rolled out piecrusts – no store bought crusts for this feast – and used the family recipe for pecan filling.  Turkey out of the oven and pie in, right on schedule.

Our guests arrived carrying sweet potato pudding, corn, asparagus casserole, green beans, pumpkin pies, and more.  Mother and my aunts filled my small kitchen as they stirred and tasted the giblet gravy.  Husband sliced the turkey.  We could’ve been models for Norman Rockwell’s November magazine cover.  The oven buzzer sounded.  “That’s the pecan pies,” I announced.

“You even made pies this morning?”  my cousin asked.  I opened the oven door, grabbed two potholders and carefully set the first pie on a cooling rack.  When I lifted the second one out of the oven, it was a slippery sliding disk.  The hot pie flipped out of hands and landed upside down on the floor and splattered onto my shoes.  Tears ran down my face, and everyone assumed that the hot pie filling had burned my feet.  Not so.  The pecan pie oozing under the refrigerator erased all pretense of a picture-perfect Thanksgiving.

Now, some thirty years later, I make short lists, check them once, and don’t bake pies.  And it’s just fine.  And I’m thinking maybe it’s time for the younger generation to take over.

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Children Just Watch

Posted on November 15, 2012 by susanrray

My Grand was 4 1/2 years old and she beat me in a second game of UNO.  The first game, I’d played to her hand to make sure that she won.  The next game, I played my cards.  Lou had announced, “UNO.  Red,” and laid a Draw Four card on the table.  I drew four cards.  She played her last card and beamed.  “I won again.  Two for me.  None for you.”

“Lou, you’re a really good UNO player.  How did you learn?” I asked.

“I watched Mommy and Daddy and David (her older brother) play and I just learned how.  I just watched.  I do what they do.”  Her answer hit a nerve that’d been burned into my brain many years earlier when I taught fourth grade.

Melody was one of my best-dressed students.  Her mother curled her hair every morning and tied it with ribbons that matched her outfit.  No jeans and t-shirts for her.  Her infectious greeting, “Good morning, everybody!” lit our classroom.  She hurried to my side after hanging her red wool coat on a coat hook.  “Mrs. Ray, will you please roll up my sleeves?”

The long sleeves of her plaid blouse hung unbuttoned.  “Sure.  Didn’t your mom have time to do it this morning?’  I asked.

“She didn’t know how.  I want my sleeves just like yours and she didn’t do it right.”  Just like my button-cuff sleeves that I rolled up because they were three inches too short for my long arms.  What else did Melody do just like me?

My Grand, now 5 1/2, and I agreed last week that some things in her craft box needed replacing.  “Bring it with you when you spend the night and we’ll clean it out and then go shopping,” I told Lou.

She sorted trash and treasures, putting loose stickers in a zip lock plastic bag, while I put a pot of water on the stove to boil pasta.  “I’m ready to make my list.  How do you spell tape?”  Lou stood at the kitchen table, with pencil and paper in hand.  Ten minutes later, she had her list.  Tape, glue, stickers.

“This glue,” she said and put it in our shopping basket.  She laid her list on the store floor and drew a line through the word glue.  A dozen packages of stickers hung at her eye level.  “These two,” she said within ten seconds.  The tape was high, out of her reach.  “Can you get the one in the middle?”  She drew lines through two more words: stickers and tape.  I complimented her on being a fast and good shopper.  “That’s because I do it a lot,” she said.  Lou shops with her mother who writes a grocery list and crosses off items that she puts in her shopping cart.

A hand scribbled sign hangs over my writing desk.  “Children watch.  Children learn.”  A sign that I moved from my school desk to my home desk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Back on Real Time

Posted on November 7, 2012 by susanrray

Papa would be happy.  Now we are back on real time as opposed to new time.  My grandfather, Paul Bertram, was a no nonsense man and somewhat set in his ways.  He was 31 in 1918 when Daylight Savings Time was first introduced in the United States, and now almost one hundred years later, I still think of him every time I move my clocks to spring forward or fall back.

I never heard Papa complain about Daylight Savings Time.  He made his statement by the clock that hung on the wall beside his and Grandma’s kitchen table.  It stayed on real time.  They ate on real time, and they went to bed and got up on real time.  Another clock hung on the living room wall close to the big console television.  Set on new time.

Papa was one of ­­­­six children and lived his whole live in Pickett County.  He built his and Grandma’s home within throwing distance of his parent’s home.  He was a carpenter and some say a self-taught engineer.  No problem was too great.  Solving a problem just took time and thought and work and patience.

Papa worked in Oak Ridge during the building boom, designed a water tank in Byrdstown in the 1950s to equip the new shirt factory with a sprinkler system, built houses to rent, and many by contract.  His houses were high quality, built to the owner’s specifications.  One house had electrical wall sockets three feet above the floor.  When he asked the homeowner where she wanted the plugs, she walked throughout her wood-framed home and pointed her finger at that level.  Papa penciled each place with an x and followed her directions.

One Christmas I didn’t understand why there was money in the pocket of the shirt that Papa and Grandma gave my daddy.  They had three daughters and three sons-in-law, and they treated each the same.  Dad’s shirt cost $2 less than the other two sons-in-law’s.  Papa expected everyone to be fair and honest, but sometimes he double-checked to be sure no one made a mistake.  More than one family member was embarrassed when he stood in the drugstore, poured the pills that the pharmacist has just put into a pill bottle into his hand, and counted.

Papa drove all over Pickett and the surrounding counties looking for good land.  Some he bought and later sold.  Whether his work for the day was building a house or trading land, he was always home by suppertime – five o’clock.  During the summer months, he ate fast so he could see the end of the evening news on TV.  When Daylight Savings Time ended, he could eat supper, take a little nap, and watch all of the 6:00 news.  And both clocks, the one in the kitchen and the one by the TV, were set on real time.

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Halloween Costume, aka The Yellow Dress

Posted on November 1, 2012 by susanrray

When your doorbell rings tonight, expect to find Spiderman or Angry Bird or Izzy Pirate standing on your porch.  Halloween costumes have morphed into the big time.  When I was a kid I carried a bag, knocked on doors, and shouted, “Trick or treat,” every October 31st, but I remember only two costumes that I wore.  A ghost and a princess.

It was a classic ghost costume.  An old white sheet with cut out circles edged in black for eyes and a rope tied around my waist.  My princess dress wasn’t really a Halloween costume.  It was my spring piano recital dress when I was seven years old.  A beautiful dress – yellow satin, with a narrow covered binding at the waistline and spaghetti shoulder straps.  Mother sewed tiny iridescent and white sequins on the top and she gathered yellow net fabric to cover the floor length skirt.  A shawl, made from the same net, covered my bare shoulders and was tied through loops at my waistline.

I wore that same dress in my 3rd grade class play, entitled The Yellow Rose of Texas.  My classmates wore cowboy boots, blue jeans or long full shirts, and shirts with fringe, and they square danced around me while I stood in the middle of the stage, still and smiling.  The only reason I was the Yellow Rose was because I had a long yellow dress.

I don’t know whose idea it was that I dress as a princess for Halloween.  Probably Mother’s – after all, she’d spent many hours stitching my yellow dress and no doubt wanted it worn for every possible occasion.  We made a tiara and magic wand from cardboard covered with aluminum foil.

All the neighborhood kids walked together from house to house to Trick or Treat.  And we tricked, even when we’d been treated with good treats – popcorn balls, caramel apples, full size candy bars.  It was expected that goblins would soap windows.  With slivers of soap, saved just for the occasion, I drew circles and stick people and trees on windows, even at our own house.  Our huge living room picture window got cleaned twice a year – in the spring before Easter and the day after Halloween.  I had to help clean the big window so why not soap it?

Because we walked, the hemline of my long yellow dress got stained and worn –from dirt and the blacktop roads.  Mother must have let the tucks out of the skirt, cut off the hem, re-hemmed it, and let the seams out of the bodice because I wore a yellow dress for another piano recital.

Will a princess ring your doorbell tonight?  I hope so.  She’ll remember the Halloween that she was a princess and stood beside Spiderman and Angry Bird.  But I wonder if she’ll be wearing her handmade yellow piano recital dress.

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Play or Work?

Posted on October 25, 2012 by susanrray

I’ve noticed that adults work and children play – even when they do the same activity.  Ask a child who’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle what he’s doing, and he’ll say, “Playing with a puzzle,” or “Putting a puzzle together.”  Ask an adult the same question and you’ll hear, “Working on a puzzle.”

Several years ago as a student in Leadership Putnam, I toured the Senior Citizen’s Center and observed an art class.  The teacher explained that everyone was working on paintings, using different types of media and different scenes.  “But we all work together here in the same room.”  My five-year-old Grand often asks to paint.  But she’s never worked on her paintings.  Why does she like to paint?  “It’s fun.  You can make anything you want,” she told me as she painted a bright red swirl across paper.  The art students at the Senior Citizen’s Center seemed to be having just as much fun.

Last week, I watched my three-year old Grand, at the Children’s Museum in the kitchen play area.  Her eyes wrinkled in concentration.  She filled a small shopping cart with plastic apples, celery, and green peppers.  She picked up a carrot, laid it down, and chose grapes.  Then she emptied the cart, placing her groceries in a small wooden refrigerator and in pots on a pretend stove.  When I said that we’d have to leave in about five minutes, she responded, “But, Gran, I’m not done playing.”  Somehow, I’ve never considered grocery shopping as play.

When my seven-year-old Grand wants to ride his bike in the woods beside our house, he clears a path.  He spends thirty minutes moving sticks and raking leaves to create a circular trail among the trees – all in the name of play – and another thirty minutes riding.  But he’s catching on.  When I suggest that he helps me pick up sticks in the yard, he’s quick to decide it’s time for him to go home.

Children play.  They arrange furniture, set a dinner table, and cook supper when they play house.  They ‘teach’ their dolls or pets or younger siblings how to say the alphabet.  They hammer and attach a bolt to a screw on kid-size workbenches.  They mold and create bowls and flowers with play dough and clay.  Using connecting blocks, they construct cars and airplanes and build fortresses and houses.

When does play become work?  When do we adults begin to describe what we do as work?  According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, play is the state of being active or relevant and work is an activity in which one exerts strength to perform something.  Being active and exerting strength.  Being relevant and performing something.  Close enough to be the same for me.

I’d rather play than work.  So I’ll play when I cook supper and when I knit a scarf.  But I just don’t think I can play with an iron and ironing board.

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