The Great Roundup

Do you remember the joy of summer, running barefoot every day, and not even thinking about the first day of school? Do you remember how your new shoes hurt on the first day of school after spending the summer shoeless? I am facing the same ‘hurt’ after being unemployed for sixty-plus days, except my time off was spent braless. As a youngster it is a fleeting issue of discomfort, your feet conform quickly to change. When age and gravity become involved, there is no going back. Yes, I am talking about boobs.

Preparing to return to work, I decided I would spend my Monday holiday dressed as I would for the office; I begin my new job on Wednesday. Dragging me behind a horse, over cactus, fire ant beds, and miles of sharp boulders and rocks, could not have been more uncomfortable than putting on my bra!  I have heard people say that their muscles scream in pain after a good workout. Well, my boobs not only screamed; they fought back! 

The great boob roundup started innocently enough. I chose the ‘perfect’ bra and began the process of putting it on. Lifting, separating, and corralling, what has been free range for a couple of months, became a wrestling match, comparable only to catching greased pigs on crack. Plan B led to a ‘less than perfect’ bra and the process began all over. After letting the shoulder straps out, as far as they would adjust, I was able to lasso the right boob, and then, after standing on my head, the left one, and turned to look in the bathroom mirror. I am pretty sure, that when your arms are hanging straight to your side, your boobs are not supposed to hang lower than your elbows! I began to adjust the shoulder straps to lift my boobs to at least be even with the bend of my arms. All of the adjusting just hiked the back of the bra to the base of my neck, which would rule out wearing collarless blouses. The front did not budge. I was hot, sweaty, tired, and afraid to take off the garment from hell. I envisioned getting up at 3 a.m., for the morning roundup, in order to be in the office by 8. I slept in the bra.

I still have one more day to prepare for returning to work. Today, I am attempting pantyhose.

If I am not already on your prayer list, please add me. I could use all the help I can get.

The Wiglet

In the late 1960’s it was popular to wear hair pieces, 'wiglets', to give your hair oomph and style. These were quarter to half size wigs that you pre-styled and pinned onto the top of your head.  I wore a wiglet.

My first job was at the Luby’s Cafeteria in a shopping strip in Hurst, Texas. I started out as the tea cart pusher, moved on to a food server, and then as the pie cutter and bread baker.  The pie cutter and bread baker was a one girl job that included keeping the cakes, pies, and bread supplied to the serving line. The bread items were freshly baked and served hot.  Friday nights, or after church on Sunday, were so busy that it was a struggle to keep up. All of these jobs were hot and being able to pin my hair up, and slap a wiglet into place, was a blessing.

I did not mix the dough for the rolls or the batter for the cornbread, but I did have to set the rolls out to rise before baking. The Mexican cornbread was very popular and the batter was stored in a 30 gallon container. The container sat on a low table beside the oven, for quick dipping, to fill the proper baking pans. The rolls were set upon huge sheet pans and placed on top of the tall oven to rise. In order to see if the rolls were ready to bake I had to jump up and down to see the top of the oven. I was making $1.15 an hour and earned every penny of it.   

One hot, August, Sunday afternoon, after jumping up and down about two hundred times, my wiglet came loose and fell into the cornbread batter container. It sank faster than the Titanic. I was mortified! There was no way I could, or would, bake the cornbread batter containing my drowned wiglet!

The cafeteria kitchen had terra cotta floor tile and the floors sloped toward large drains so that the kitchen could be easily hosed down for cleaning. My corner of the kitchen had such a drain. I lifted the drain cover and proceeded to pour about twenty-five gallons of Mexican corn bread batter, and a wiglet, down the drain.  I really was surprised when the batter rose and stopped up the sewer lines of the strip mall and a portion of the city of Hurst. I did not even have to confess to what I had done; we were the only place in town that baked Mexican cornbread by a wiglet-less blonde.

The cafeteria manager told me he would deduct a little each week from my pay to cover the cost of the plumber. I only cleared about $37 a week and his deduction plan struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. I think that was the first time I ever laughed so hard that I farted and blew a snot bubble out of my nose at the same time.

I escaped from having to pay for the plumber. Another cafeteria chain bought out the Luby’s chain, shortly after the cornbread fiasco, and they brought in their own management team. The outgoing Luby’s manager did not squeal on me.

I never did find a replacement wiglet as good as the one that drowned. I still miss it, and think fondly of it, whenever I butter a slice of Mexican cornbread.

Chasing Cows

Several years ago, the neighbors were putting in a new pipe fence and some cows escaped; deciding they liked my front lawn. I had a garden, close to the house, and my tomato plants were just beginning to produce. If you have ever grown tomatoes you know how protective you get about them!  These were large cows, huge cows, big, black cows and, I admit, I was a little apprehensive about approaching them.

A riding lawn mower does move a wayward bunch of cows however, after five laps around my house I saw one of my neighbors, laughing his ass off, as he watched me herd cows in a circle. Since I did not want him to win any money on Americas Funniest Videos, with me as the butt of the joke, I parked the mower near the plants and guarded them. To prove to the cows, that I was serious, I would occasionally rev the engine. When the school bus dropped off some teenage boys, they shooed the cows back into the proper pasture. I thought the situation was resolved.

A few hours later I heard a horn repeatedly honking. I walked outside to see a truck full of Hispanics driving, in front of some cows, down the street. They had a feed sack hanging over the tailgate and were shaking it to entice the cows to follow them. It seemed to me that they should be honking behind the cows, but all I know about cows is from what I have read in old west romance novels. Only a couple of cows were interested in the feed sack; there were five more that were in my pasture heading toward my tomato garden. Before I could fire up the lawn mower, four guys on horses suddenly rode up, yahooing, and waving their hats. They wore bandanas tied around their necks, boots, belts with large buckles, and had me believing they were the real deal… until I saw their dog. This dog was barking and nipping at the cows’ legs and moving them quickly along, and through, the downed part of the fence. Soon all of the cows were back where they belonged, the fencing replaced, and my plants were safe. The cowboys looked impressive, but it was the dog that caught my attention.

It’s not often that you see yahooing cowboys, on horses, waving their hats, chasing cows, and being led by a little white, shaved poodle.

Now that I think back upon it… the cowboys may have been yoohooing.

My Childhood Treasure

Do you remember the treasured item of your youth, the one that you did not want to let out of your sight? For many kids it might have been a doll, a blanket, teddy bear, or a baseball card. My treasure was more important to me than anything else in my possession. I was a tomboy, so if you guessed a doll as my treasure, you are very, very, wrong.

Remember how we were often devastated if our treasure was lost, or in the case of having brothers or sisters, swiped?  I was the oldest of five and learned early about sibling sticky fingers; I kept my treasure around my neck. By wearing it, I would always know exactly where it was and have it ready for me, or my best friend, Janet, to use.

Janet, and I, lived in a neighborhood that had wonderful sidewalks and we made daily use of them. We rode our bikes, drew hopscotch squares, and played hours of jacks, but, our favorite use of the sidewalk was for roller skating. We were, without a doubt, little roller derby queens!

In those days, the roller skates were metal, even the wheels. An adjustment bar, in the center of a skate, adjusted for foot length; one set of skates could be used by the whole family. The skates were made to wear with hard sole shoes, such as saddle oxfords, loafers, or boots. The front of the skates had an adjustable bar, curved on the end of each side, which would slide into the groove between the sole and the top of the shoe. To adjust this bar, for a good tight fit, you needed a skate key. The back of the skate had a ridge that rested against the heel of your shoe. A leather strap threaded through the back of the skate and buckled around the ankle to hold the skate in place. These skates were a much loved, very important, part of our young lives, but they were useless without a skate key. My treasure was a skate key. I was a very important kid to know; I kept up with the needed key. Janet, and I, put so many miles on our skates it is a wonder that the sidewalks did not have wheel grooves.

The photo I am using, as my blog photo, is of me in the roller skates I have described. If you will look closely, you will find my treasure hanging around my neck. I no longer have the skate key, but I do have the photo, which I now consider the treasure. I wish Janet were in the photo, too. If she were, it would be a priceless treasure.

A few years ago, my sister gave me a pair of these skates; she found them at an antique store. She later took back the skate key. I should have hung it around my neck.

My Aromatic Feet

I have aromatic feet. It is a curse.

I have learned over the years how to control the odor, to some extent; I always wear open toed shoes. The winter months are agonizing; my toes usually do not thaw until around the fourth of July.

Now that you know this much about me, please, allow me to throw in that I used to drive an old Ford pick up truck. The heater on that truck was a really good one and would get very hot about seven miles into the drive to work in the mornings.  One winter, at just about mile seven, with the heater revved up, I would begin to smell my feet. You have no idea how much I fretted that the people who visited my office cubicle would ask, “What stinks?"  I personally could not smell them in the office, but that was possibly because I had received such a strong whiff during my drive in. Heading toward home in the afternoons, at about seven miles into the trip, I would, once again, feel the heater blowing full blast on my feet and would soon need to roll a window down.

I tried creams, powders, deodorants, perfumes, vitamin E capsules and shots of Jim Beam.  I wasted my time and money because at mile seven, every day, to work and home again, I would know that I had failed.  I lost sleep, hair, finances, humor and some motor skills; the odor would not go away.

One afternoon, while just tooling down the road, I dropped an earring and when I arrived home I had to rummage around the floor board searching for it.  

I admit to finding many things under a car seat; melted lipsticks, pacifiers, over due library books, straws, mail, cans of green beans or corn, stray socks, even money, but never, ever, in my wildest dreams did I expect to find what I found that day.  Under the driver seat, under where I sat, where all of that wonderful Ford heat pointed to keep my feet warm, was a single serving beef, bean and cheese burrito that had escaped from a grocery sack. That rotten burrito would get cold when the truck was not running and as soon as the heater kicked in it would heat up enough to get real nasty.

I could not tell the difference between my own smelly feet and a stupid, rotten, beef, bean and cheese burrito!

That’s just not right.

Eyebrow Disaster

I had a bad head cold, was heavily medicated, sleep deprived, and decided to dye my eyebrows.

I am a natural blonde with invisible eyebrows. I do not care for the drawn-on look, so I boost their color with Just For Men / Mustache and Sideburn Dye. I always buy the medium blonde dye which gives the brows just the right natural shade of  light brown. I use an old mascara wand to apply the dye, and although I am a blonde, to fairly bushy eyebrows. When applying the dye, I usually catch some fuzz, above the brows, that is not visible when I am not wearing my glasses. I then, delicately, ‘shape’ the brows after the dying is complete.

I had a bad head cold, was heavily medicated, sleep deprived and applied eyebrow dye at midnight.

Never trust that the contents of a box of dye are what the outside of the box declares. I applied the dye and read a novel, which had me captivated, while waiting for the dye to set. I lost track of time. When I washed the dye off and looked in the mirror…well…let’s just say that crazed wailing began and snot was soon slinging!

The box did not contain the light brown shade I wanted. I now sported a dark brown, almost black, caterpillar, a forehead mustache, a unibrow! Some moron must have thought it would be cute to switch the dye in the boxes. I used hydrogen peroxide, Clorox, 409 and Mean Green to lighten the color. All that did for me was to give me a shiny red forehead. I had to start the shaping process.

In my drugged, sleep deprived, state, I had managed to catch every wild hair and forehead fuzz along with, what I considered, the actual eyebrows. I started plucking at the bottom side of the unibrow and worked my way up. I plucked to the forehead fuzz and through, what I thought, was the center of the unibrow. When I finished I had a shiny red forehead and an off centered look of surprise on my face. The ‘new’ eyebrows sat much higher than the old set and the right brow sat too far to the right. I wailed all night.

The next day at work I kept my head down, as much as possible, and did not fraternize with my co-workers. I attended a meeting and sat in the back of the room, hoping I was invisible. But noooooo, I was called to the podium, to be presented with an award, and had to give an acceptance speech; I don’t even remember what I said. All I can be sure of is that whatever I said, it was with a total look of surprise on my face!

As I left the podium I kept my head down. I noticed, as I walked back to my seat, that my left big toe was sticking, prominently, through the toe of my pantyhose. On the toenail was a large, dark brown splat, of eyebrow dye. I could not have looked more surprised than I already did.  

It’s not easy being me.

Gasp!

A couple of years ago; I had the television turned to the morning news while trying to calculate out how many strawberry Pop Tarts I would have to eat to get my daily recommended amount of fruit. A news story came on about the exorbitant cost of going to a high school prom and how much money parents were shelling out. This brought back the memory of my own prom, where I paid for everything needed, without my parents shelling out a dime. I also paid for the ticket of my date (for which he still owes me – I figure that with interest it’s up to about five grand now).  As one memory rolled into another, I realized that I would soon be out of school for forty years!  My mouth fell open, causing all three chins to quiver, I dropped three jumbo boxes of Pop Tarts, and spilled my coffee. Forty years!  I needed to get into a shape that was not round. I had a year to prepare; I did not want to look like a Weeble at my class reunion! I needed to, gasp, start exercising. 

I grew up with Jack LaLanne, the exercise guru of the fifties and sixties. I think he came on TV right after Romper Room and before Felix the Cat. I remember him doing a lot of jumping jacks so that’s where I would start. I thought it would be easy. I was optimistic, even though, I had not done any jumping jacks since 1967.

I did not own any tennis shoes, but I thought I should put on white socks to look serious. I found one anklet and one crew sock; at least they were both white. Some serious calorie burning took place while trying to put them on. I located my fat sweat pants, and a T shirt, and donned them. It is hard to be optimistic when your fat pants are too tight, but I was ready to jump. I chose a room where the picture frames would not tilt and jumped…well…parts of me jumped. Some of me went up quick and some of me followed at a much slower pace. Parts passed each other. With my feet back on the ground some of me was still in the air. When everything slammed back to the ground I jiggled for a full five minutes. My glasses fogged. Woohoo! I was exercising!!  Exhausted, hot and a little light headed I collapsed in my recliner and took a swill of my Coke.

That one jump made me so sore that a whole week went by before I could do another one.