Congratulations! Miss Lei!
(a
Wedding-engagement celebration-wish)
Just reined-in
exciting news. Wow! You go! Girl!
Saddle an enigma-delicious
“Single-Union”-swirl
Wild-ride sacred
Unicorn: Life-Love’s treasure
Wishing you
happiness in eternal sweet-measure
All good things
soon come to those truly deserving. Of course!
Probably not
much more difficult than dressage-“ing” a horse
My ole friends
Roy and Dale might sing, “Happy trails to you…”
Best wishes to
Miss Lei and beau-Ron on a trek spectacular-anew
Have a great
life! God bless!
Best wishes!
Candy & Carl
(of Miss Becky-fame)
Plus:
Day 72
Pot pies for
lunch. Mom was always home
from school when
we had them. They were
always a treat,
but they took forever to cook.
Nobody
ever missed a “great” meal at our house. Lady Candy is an excellent chef.
Days
off school were the best times for all of us; time together, free to play:
working around our “hobby” farm, fun in the creek, horseback riding, picnics,
building memories, growing in love, swimming, gardening, buying cattle, taking
care of the myriad critters, cutting fire wood, planting trees, farming wheat
and alfalfa crops, road trips, vacations, rough housing, building.
Even---more!
How the collective human affliction can truly be: fear, boredom and loneliness
is a curiosity to myself as an Independent-Individual;
those conclusions are self-imposed exiles.
Being
the I-I that I am, I make my own
decisions; I prefer not to
participate in that evil trinity.
There
is a “secret” ingredient which all great cooks employ in their culinary
efforts: Love!
Success
has nothing to do with the cooking utensils or “classes” utilized in the
process.
Lady
Candice is blessed with a natural gift for Love; it is evident in her persona
and being.
She
“learned” the “secret” from her paternal grandmother, Lady Rose, who could whip
up a fantastic meal with little sundries; her daughter related that story of
her dear mother. Candy and our girls inherited those skills and share the
“secret” of Love; the granddaughters have it, too.
Nanny
saw that days off from school always resulted in “special” culinary treats;
another of her favorites, and, also of the girls, is French toast! Mmm! Mmm!
Yummy!
The
simple things in life are always the
very best---so long as they are bartered in…Love!
Amen!
Ah! Cookie Jar Sweet “Loving” Memories!
Plus:
All
in all, the delicate, perfect petite package pretended a scandalously salacious
suggestion.
“No!
No! Madame. Not at all,” George epitomized the consummate diplomat, quick on
his feet, fleet of mind, able to adapt, to flatter, finesse, finagle---George
was a natural-born liar. She averted her big eyes, instinctively fearful to
look directly at the suave, debonair male specimen.
Quick
to appreciate another pretty face, George abandoned any memory of the French
Monique; as always, directly to the “business” at hand, and this held potential
promise to be quite a hand---full! Luck of the draw! He surmised in a
surreptitious conclusion.
What
he heard himself say next came as a surprise even to himself; often, his mouth
ran faster than his mind. Whatever happened to pop out, George would turn it to
his distinct, and immediate, advantage.
“Please!
Madame. Pardon me.” His fake foreign accent silently slipped away as the New
Jersey northeast colloquial hollow dialect automatically took over. “I can’t
believe that someone as beautiful as you has only three children!” He smiled it
as a query, expecting a reply.
The
willing prey put on a demure composure hinting a coquettish proclivity; George
had played this game many times, the result was nearly a foregone conclusion.
“Four,
Sir,” she corrected, nodding toward the station window where a young girl, her distorted
face pressed tight against the dingy pane, apparently watched for an arriving
train.
“Yes,
I see,” he replied, thinking that perhaps he had been a bit brash, even for one
so impetuous as he where the female persuasion was involved; the Asian beauty
waited.
“Perhaps,
Madam, I shall endeavor to be more careful---around children…that is, in the
future, of course.” Nodding curtly, he added, “I beg your pardon. If you will
please excuse me?”
Diverting
her eyes, she acquiesced to his retreat. “Most certainly, Sir.” She bowed,
slightly.
George
cleared his throat and nervously attempted a reciprocal bow of his own; it came
off stiff and less than formal; he was not so practiced as the fine beauty. She
smiled, slightly, not meaning to add to his embarrassment, but having the same
effect as though she were purposely discourteous. He averted his eyes, grunted,
and turned toward the Station Master. He desperately needed another swallow of
the saving elixir from his silver flask with the golden deer motif.
For
the first time, George surveyed the inhabitants of the station. It was a varied
clientele, a throng of personages resembling a cross section of individuals he
had encountered in his lifetime. But, there were incongruities, also. A
grizzled man in a grey U.S. Civil War era Confederate uniform sat sleeping on a
bench. Other military clad men and a few uniformed women populated the room. He
spied a Roman Catholic priest, a handful of nuns in habit garb, a butcher
donning a bloody, once-white apron, people in suits and dresses, swimsuits,
bikinis, four mountaineers, a bicyclist, a magician, a cowboy, couples and men,
women and children of every description of national origin and ethnic heritage.
None seemed harried or impatient; the attitude was: Just wait your turn. Not at
all like the world George had become accustomed to. He shook his head, trying
to decipher the riddle; this confusion seemed to be becoming a nagging habit.
Then,
behind him, at the very doors through which he had entered came Irish lyrics
suddenly familiar, but the off-key tone became a lovely, clear tenor. George
turned as the vagrant from the street entered, raggedy clothes and all. An aura
around the green derby shone like a golden halo.
The
bum walked right past George, not seeming to notice him and straight to the
ticket cage.
The
Station Master appeared to know the crusty panhandler and ushered him politely
through the right side gate; he entered a door and George lost sight of him.
Moving
away from the dark-eyed temptress, the rushing sound of an arriving train
caught his attention and he focused beyond the window where the little urchin,
the fourth of the woman’s children, distorted her pert nose, smashing it
against the dirty glass pane as she peered outside.
The
child was to the left of the double doors through which he had entered and on
the platform beyond the glass stood a gaggle of people dressed in drab, dingy,
some downright dirty, all raggedy and a few nearly black robes or smocks of
some kind. As the roar of the arriving coach grew, the people looked left and
right and tore at their garments and pulled at their filthy hair, their arms
flailing as though they sought escape from some unseen sinister monster come to
gather a horde of lost souls. Their upper torsos bent as though to run, but
they were frozen in place. The spirit seemed willing enough, but the flesh weak
and unresponsive. And, alas, they could not escape their judgment; for each,
all time had run out. Justice delighted as mercy wept.
Dark
gray tendrils of smoke snaked in corkscrews from the wooden floor amongst the
writhing passengers; the evil wraiths became four foot black midget demons,
hitting, poking and prodding the miserables like pathetic piñatas displayed for
the malevolents’ perverse pleasure. The tenacious tortures elicited horrid
wailing cries like the vacant howling of an injured, cornered wild beast seeking
refuge from the approaching carnage of impending death, but unable to find
relief from the eternal evil torment.
Before
George’s wide eyes, a blur neared at a level which had to approach the speed of
light, itself. He heard the horde’s collective cursing, screaming, pleading, in
a cacophonous escalation until the hollow lost laments joined with the
reverberation of the shrieking train. As
the wild wind passed the station, the gathered people on the platform were
seemingly sucked into the vacuum of the blur. The little girl at the window
flinched. Dapper George blinked his eyes in disbelief as the wraiths vanished.
All was gone and done, vaporized, in an instant. His disbelieving mind said
that he had witnessed a mere suggestion; to that, George shook his head in
utter confusion; the enigma of his thought could not be processed in any
meaningful logic.
As
quick as the roar of the passing train had evaporated, as though it had never
been, he noticed the platform filling with another growing group of passengers
coming from a corner room within the station, this one situated behind and left
of the teller’s cage. There was a door on his side, but no windows; the
gathering would-be commuters seemed to be entering the waiting area of the
platform from outside of the room, out of sight to George’s view.
He
surveyed the station and noticed a similar-sized room on the right side of the
cavernous building, the same one through which his itinerant tenor had entered.
Through the sparkling glass of the windows on the right, a score of wraithlike
passengers, the singing leprechaun among them, each dressed in gleaming, pure
white robes, gathered in groups of two or three and conversed in happy social
discussion. They, too, awaited
transport, but seemed to exude a freedom not evidenced in the group just
departed. Curiosity and a sense of foreboding gripped him. Shaking his head to
rid it of the troubling challenge, he headed toward the Station Master.
A
line of people preceded him to the ticket window. Funny! He hadn’t noticed them
before.
Three
men stood single file followed by an elderly couple, a female Army infantry
soldier, then the attractive Asian temptress and her four offspring and,
finally, George. None carried luggage and that struck George as strange;
suddenly, it dawned on him that he had none, either.
As
he looked down at his feet and around the room in search, he silently cursed
himself for misplacing the expensive alligator briefcase; it contained his
precious order. Damn!
Unable
to hear the conversation between the travelers and the Station Master, George
contented himself with observing the deliberations; people-watching was a
wisely invested practiced trait of any good salesman and George was one of the
best.
Words
were obviously exchanged between the first man and the agent who seemed to be
shuffling papers, out of sight to George. Shortly, the customer raised his
right hand toward the Station Master who peered at the palm, nodded and opened
the right side gate. The gentleman entered and proceeded to the door to the
room which exited to the outside platform. Immediately, George saw that the man
came onto the waiting area of the platform in a pure white garment, reminiscent
of a gown. He joined a group of two women and a man in pleasant conversation.
The
second man approached the Station Master, went through the same routine as the
first, showed his palm and was similarly ushered through the right gate as,
shortly, was the third man and the elderly couple. The girl soldier followed
their lead. Sammy-the-Singer greeted each as they eventually appeared on the
outside rail-side platform where he waited in a splendid gown.
George’s
Asian beauty approached the agent with trepidation and exchanged words with the
avuncular man which could not be overheard. George saw the Station Master place
several white pages from a book and numerous black papers on a scale before the
woman; the children were not so judged. Finally, she and her progeny held their
palms toward the Station Master who nodded and surprising to George, swung open
both the right and left gates to the family.
The
four children rushed through the right side gate, into the room and onto the
platform in gleaming white robes while their overwrought mother reached in vain
for her beloved darlings and reluctantly entered the left side passage. Her wails
were interspersed with curses of the vilest nature. When the woman hesitated in
her advance, a black corkscrew wisp of smoke emenated from the floor of the
station; form it developed a “midget”-sized man dressed in a tuxedo complete
with top hat, a devil’s hellish demon who took hold of her arm and forcefully
escorted her through the awaiting left-side exit from the station leading to
the threatening platform.
As
she passed through the passageway of the left side room, she turned to the
Station Master in one final desperate pleading for mercy. But, as He did not
respond to her request, she passed through the door and onto the platform in a
nearly totally darkened robe; her screams reverberating dreaded hollow sounds
of dead-evil like a tortured, cornered, dying, helpless wild animal’s howling spirit
who senses its eternal lost instant.
A
strange, foreign, nearly perverted thought entered sophisticated George’s
racing mind which had already deduced what reality fickle fate held in store
for him.
Perfect
George, with all the right answers, no matter what the query, even when he did
not know the question, was quick to render judgment, to demand justice, to have
it all his way, on his terms, in his own time. Oh! Yes! Indeed! Alas!
But---Now!?
“Perhaps,
just, perhaps,” he second guessed, even at the final instant of possible
redemption, “he should not seek harsh justice-exacted; rather pray a final plea
for tender mercy protracted.”
Amen!
But,
alas! Too late! And, hapless, helpless George resigned himself to the reality
of it all.
He
dared not chance even a surreptitious glimpse at the palm of his right hand.
He---knew!
George
shuddered, involuntarily, and stepped to the counter to face his eternity and his---
Station
Master !
* * *
For
God so loved the world---For whoever believes in Me shall have eternal life. Amen!
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