Home and Family, The Family Vacation in 1970 in My Mother's Words

The Journey Begins: June 29, 1970 2

July 24, 2012 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

As God is willing we are finally on the road. It is 3:45 and our mileage shows 51,518. The air is clear and warm. With all the shifting and tussling to get things in the camper and car I could use a shower. I never thought we’d leave. It took every ounce of forbearance to keep from screaming at the kids. They were forever getting packed and in the car. The pop-up camper is crammed to the gills (though I guess campers don’t have gills), so let’s say there isn’t an inch to spare inside the camper. Robbie spent $6.40 filling the tank at the Gulf station.

The worst thing – there was a terrible accident. A car went clean off the road and up into a house trailer sitting hundreds of yards off the highway. Fire trucks, police and ambulances, with wreckers fighting for space between them. It must have just happened. I check the kids in the back seat. Their eyes are wild. I tell them to look away. I must learn to be thankful for the things that slow us down in life.

Robbie tried to take a wrong turn but connected in time to get on the East-Tex freeway. The traffic is fast and furious. After our accident last year I still tense up in heavy traffic if R tailgates. I loosen my grip on the seat. R says there is a fierce tailwind so that is why the car is swaying so much. It couldn’t be because of the boat on top or the heavy loaded camper trailing behind. (!)

It is 40 minutes from our house to Baytown (Mileage 51,558). The air is heavy with the smell from the paper plant. We are going 70 MPH on the Freeway when some colored men in an old green car pull out in front of us doing 20 MPH. R swings around them just in time and he honks at them. We are back in the right lane again when the green car honks and speeds around us. I look at R. He looks angry. I tell him best not get upset, we’re just starting out.

We stop at Stuckey’s at 5:15. I get a sandwich as I had no lunch to speak of. Cold apple cider for everyone. Nut butter crunch is so good.

Becky dropped stuff out of her purse all over the floor. Her hairbrush went into the toilet. I tell her I left the Lysol spray in the trailer and just throw that nasty thing away. It only cost 69 cents.

Got gas before entering Louisiana as gas has a 12 cent tax there. Gas (Gulf) $4.39 for 11.6 gallons

On the road R keeps pushing up his dark glasses every minute. Why does he do that?

I glance back and see that Jon and Jeff have added dark glasses and a hat to my wig holder. Very funny.

Cross the line between Texas and LA – the Sabine River that is. The kids all holler “Leaving America and entering Louisiana!”

Home and Family, The Family Vacation in 1970 in My Mother's Words

For My Mother 1

July 22, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 3 Comments

I’ve moved my mother to a nursing home. It is a gorgeous situation where she has an almost private room with her own shower. This is an unusual thing. Most of the nursing homes have semi-private rooms with a curtain between residents and a shower down the hall. She has spent the last three months in a tiny room with the shower down the hall, so we know. Now, her room has a wooden divider between her roommate and herself and a shower in the room. She is one fortunate woman.

I’m going through her things, which is no trouble because though she saved every little thing from 1939 on, this is only a quarter of what we went through trying to clear her house out.

But here is a sample of what I found in one box: Old rubber bands, old worn dog tags from every dog we ever owned, hat pins (a treasure!), human teeth with fillings, old lead bullets dug from our ditch in South Houston, broken paste jewelry, name tags from the Houston Fat Stock Show 1973, Amway reward pins (I used to sell Amway, too. Don’t get me started.), her diploma from Secretarial School, her rejection from the Civil Service during WWII, Canadian money, her saving account book dated 1942 in which she spent five months saving up pennies to $5.95, several lace mantillas that she wore to church, dozens of tiny old perfume bottles, and ancient salt and pepper shakers.

The most interesting find of all may be the letters from the German POW in France. He had found her address in an address book on her dead cousin’s body. MORE on this later.

I had never seen any of it before. After my father died suddenly, I squeezed a vast amount of her personal belongings from their large four bedroom ranch house into her one bedroom apartment. I did not spend a lot of time poking around. It was toss and go, her house was in foreclosure. It was a tough time for all of us. There wasn’t any time to peruse things. Also, it was horrid enough for my mother to lose her husband and her home at the same time, I needed to give her a bit of privacy with her personal things as much as possible. I would go through drawers, see her handwriting and toss the notebook or scrap of paper into a box while I was clearing her house. So most of her personal writing, poems, and photos were salvaged.

I never looked at them until now.

My mom was an aspiring writer. In those days there wasn’t much in the way of information about publishing but she sent her poems and short stories to Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s Day, and Saturday Evening Post from 1959 until the mid 1960’s. She was never published. I look at what she has and know that with a bit of editing and some serious cutting she has some golden kernels.

I’m sad for her. If someone had taken the time with her, she could have been a contender.

So…I’m going to be publishing her poems and short stories on my blog. In honor of her, my mom, the writer.

I will do it within the jacket of an idea, a casing if you will, of the vacation notes she made of our trip to Canada and back to Texas in 1970. I found that she not only journaled everything we did, she included the mileage and the amount of money spent for everything. This trip was amazing. We left (I know this from the extensive notes that she made) on June 29 and returned on August 25. Who does that? Two months of vacation? Wow.

Also, she says some things that might seem shocking and controversial in our new politically charged environment, but these are real things that she said. The date is 1970, a very politically charged time indeed. So bear with the things she says, take them for being said at that time, and realize that something shocking and related to my mother’s controversial statements took place the day we returned from our vacation. You’ll have to keep reading to discover what happened.

I know that for so many years she tried and tried to get her efforts published. Now they will be, albeit not in the format she was hoping for. But I think that if she had ever learned how to get on the internet, I know that she would be pleased. It would be especially exciting for her to know that you will read what she had written.

Respect for the Old Man! (justmureithi.wordpress.com)

reviews

Ian Rankin Did It Again

July 21, 2012 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

I love the character of Inspector Rebus in Ian Rankin’s novels set in Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland; in the Lothian Region on the south side of the Firth of Forth. Don’t you love it? Firth of Forth. The novels with Rebus span a few decades and end with Rebus retiring from the police department. Let us hope he will come out and play again soon.

I think if you want to get to know a country do it through stories set in that country. I want to know more about Scotland and reading Ian Rankin’s books with the characters loving their world and noticing it, helps the reader appreciate that world, too.

I want to visit Scotland the land of my ancestors. I want to meet my cousins, and generally immerse myself in the culture when I get there. So I’m preparing myself by reading series set in Scotland. For starters, I recommend Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith (44 Scotland Street series) to help catch and absorb the flavor of the land.

Now Ian Rankin has done it again. He’s created a completely new and fascinating character called Malcolm Fox (Fox to his fellow inmates in the Complaint’s Department) in two fairly new books. The first is called appropriately The Complaints and the second is called The Impossible Dead.

Malcolm Fox is a fully fleshed out creation who leaps off the page from the first. He is sympathetic to the reader because he works in an environment that is hostile in nature. No other police officer likes him except those in his own department. Why? Because he investigates corruption within the police force in Scotland. Sometimes rumors are just that – rumors. Some officers are not guilty. But if that were the case here there wouldn’t be a story.

The Writing Life

Something of Mine That’s Been Published

July 10, 2012 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Here’s a little free fiction just for you.

A Woman’s Prerogative

He never wanted to but he went ahead and opened the purse. There were compartments. He didn’t have a clue what the use of so many sections could be.

He’d heard on a TV show that it was a woman’s prerogative to keep her personal life bound up in her purse.

Slowly, like pulling a hot filter out of one of those newer model cars, he managed to remove her wallet from the purse without disturbing too much.

There were the two snaps on the wallet. One. Two. A threefold contraption. He laid the entire thing flat on the table next to his empty coffee mug. He took a deep breath. Mildew. Another scent. I’ve got Windsong on my mind. That brought pain with it.

The first fold of the wallet, a clear plastic window, revealed her face on her Club Membership card. Taken years ago when big glasses were the rage. Made her face look small, petite, so very pretty.

The next fold held her credit card. She had only one stuck in the slit. She believed in that, one credit card. Put everything on it, she told him. Pay one bill at the end of the month. He didn’t cotton to that much. Then there were the library cards stuck in the other slots. One library card for each of the kids. Funny. The kids were in college now.

The last fold held a plastic packet. The driver’s license. The kids’ pictures. A family picture, the last one they had taken. Years old. Her insurance card long expired. The video store card, checking account card, beauty store discount card and membership card to the book club. (He’d been working for months to get that canceled.) He pulled and tugged the last shred of paper sticking out of an obscure slot.

The paper fell like an errant autumn leaf at his feet. He stooped to pick it up. He unfolded the scrap, soft with much handling, and laid it flat on the table next to the wallet.

It had been a year. One whole entire stupid year.

Energy had gone with her passing. Couldn’t work. Couldn’t go anywhere. Could only sit and watch the news, flipping channels.

He had only recently gotten around to clearing the closet. Had Goodwill in to haul the stuff away from the garage. The only thing left, besides that little piece of purple ‘n white paper for income tax purposes, was the purse. And the wallet.

Good memories? He’d been a good husband. Came home every night. Not like some. He’d paid the bills. Bought a big house, five bedrooms for cryin’-out-loud! A king could live in a house like that. Or a queen.

Five bedrooms.

He worked long hours. Worked like the dickens, in fact. And to top it off she’d complained. Made him mad. He bent over backwards to scrape together what they had.

She’d told him she wasn’t happy. She wanted more.

“More what?” He demanded to know.

“I don’t know.” She replied with tears in her eyes, muttering something about living.

Didn’t catch her exact words.

“What do you call this?” he asked her. “Dying?”

He smiled at the thought of how he’d won that argument before it had even started.

But he still hadn’t found a note. A reason. Dammit … Why?

With the contents of her wallet strewn on the kitchen table with last weeks’ dishes and stacked pizza boxes, he knew as certain as certain that she had left him long before she actually had.

He stared at the photo that she had hidden in her wallet. The man in the photo stared back at him from atop the table. Didn’t know him. No movie star. Just a basic looking guy. Basic. Nothing special.

He stared at the photo.

A woman’s prerogative.

———————-

Suddenly V, Prose Poetry & Sudden Fiction is edited by Jackie Pelham and published by Stone River Press.

Home and Family

Good, Nice, ‘n Kind

July 9, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

“Be nice!” is always the catch phrase around the playground as your child is interacting with other children, right? I used to say it. I think kids do understand what it might mean but if asked to put what it means into words? Impossible.

Being nice is a crazy, illogical concept to try to teach a child. “Nice” is a nonsense word. There is no real-life model of “nice.” Not unless your child overhears a teen talking about someone of the opposite sex. At that point the word is drawn out and emphasized and one hopes the infant doesn’t understand the nuance.

When I was in middle school (we called it junior high during the ice ages), some boys at the back of the bus asked me if I was a nice girl or a good girl. I was puzzled at their curiosity. I thought about it for all of one second and replied that I was “nice”. Their response was laughter. It wasn’t until I was much older and wiser (possibly high school) that I got it. I would have explained the question’s answer of “nice” as in being virtuous, but that wasn’t part of their definition.

Do you understand what those nasty, back-of-the-bus boys meant?

Here it is: A “nice” girl gives in to a boy’s demand for sex, and a “good” girl is good at it. So there was no correct answer to their question. The clue was their ages. I mean, what else do boys of that age think about?

All of which leads me back to the question of – what actual real-life model do we have for the definition of being nice that has to do with inner qualities instead of looks?

Good is easier to understand. We know that in doing positive things for others we are doing good, such as in doing “good works.” Good might even mean correct. “Good” is never the answer to “How are you?” Good attached to other words gives them a positive spin – words such as: night, bye, egg, book, enough, and lots of other words.

Anything with positive qualities, and moral excellence is a good thing. Thank you, Martha Stewart. But how to explain it to a child? Ummmm.

Nice is that much more difficult to define for a child.

Face it, people. “Nice” doesn’t cut it on the playground.

The only way to explain nice, or being nice, is to turn the concept on the negative. For example: When Tim shoves Sam – it is highly probable that someone will tell Tim he wasn’t playing “nice.”

As a grandparent of a nine-month old these are things I think about. What I mean to say is that we need to re-evaluate our language and perhaps use the word – “kind” more often.

I’m not a revolutionary. People are writing and blogging on this at this moment. There is the “kindness counts” movement afoot. Big Bird has a kindness counter where kids can write in and tell what they did for someone else. (Usually moms tell it, which is highly appropriate.) Big Bird adds another point to the big counter thingy. There is a section on the Sprout morning show where kids are acknowledged for their acts of kindness, especially to baby brothers and sisters. It’s so cute! I applaud these programs for their emphasis on this. Kindness should be acknowledged and rewarded.

How many terrible things could be averted by small acts of kindness?

Kind when used to demonstrate a behavior can be defined as showing tenderness, being helpful, thinking about the other person first as in being considerate. Kindness is a good thing. Kindness can be agreeable. Kindness can offer comfort. Kindness can be tolerant and forgiving during a dispute. Kindness can be gentle, can offer sympathy, and be generous when sharing.

Kindness is something that can be taught to children in a way that they can understand and implement in every aspect of their young lives. A child naturally is attracted to agreement in a group in order to fit in. Practicing kindness will speed them on their way.

The Biblical admonition “Be ye kind to one another…” is not out of place here. You see, kindness engenders kindness. In Proverbs it is written, “A gentle answer turns away wrath”. Can we teach that? How many fights would finish before they were begun?

So …

Be kind, always. Do good everywhere.

And remember … Nice is for suckers.

Home and Family

The Carrot Lobby

May 7, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

I was feeding the Grand-Girl something called Chicken and Rice, which should have been tan. It was orange. Should have been called chicken and carrots. But what baby would eat that, right? I tasted it. Yes. Predominate flavor – Baby carrots.Baby food carrots taste different compared to any other type of cooked carrot. They aren’t too awful. I hate cooked carrots. In fact, I detest cooked carrots but baby carrots are acceptable. It’s really in the carrot-plan.

The carrot plan. Have you noticed? Carrots are everywhere. They show up in every dish, every frozen food box, pot pie, or chinese take-out. Carrots must have one heck of a strong lobby in Washington. Can you picture it? Lobbyist whispers sweet nothings into congressman’s ear – something like -“I will grant your every wish if you tax every vegetable known to mankind except carrots!”Must be it. Else why are they everywhere???

Carrots are good for you. Really? What proof is there that carrots make your eyes healthier? On real people. Seriously, have the old folks been asked? My mother’s eyes are pretty good for an 86-year-old. She doesn’t like carrots either. Last week I was at my mother’s nursing home for lunch and the plate had fish, macaroni and cheese, and carrots. It’s like a punishment. If I live to be 80+ I want jelly beans in place of those carrots, people!

Years ago I was at a children’s book conference and ended up sitting near literary agent Erin Murphy. Carrots were on the menu. A long discussion ensued about out mutual disdain for carrots. I don’t remember anything else about the conference. See what I mean? Carrots – 1. Conference – 0.

I pick them out. Eat around them.

I’m very discreet.

But the baby food carrots taste okay. Here is the CARROT PLAN. First: Make babies love carrots. If carrots are added to everything, they will grow up liking carrots. Carrots! Carrots! All your life, carrots! Heh! Heh! Second: Children will learn how important carrots are in their diet in Elementary School. Important! Healthy! Heh! Heh!

I like baby food carrots and don’t like grown-up real food carrots. The plan failed with me. But then I think – wait – I cook with them. They give a certain sweet edge to a beef stew that can’t be created any other way. Aurrgh! You win, carrot! This time.

Spoiler alert: Ground carrots gives cheese soup its orange coloration.

Carrots DON’T Have Kids (fedupfood.com)

Home and Family

The Printer Had Reached It’s Time

April 28, 2012 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Finally got rid of the million dollar printer. I bought it about ten years ago when wide-format printers were really expensive and there was only one available. I didn’t know ten years ago that a printer like that would not only go down in price but there would be a lot more to choose from, all with better features.

When one ink cartridge would run out of ink the printer wouldn’t print. So if the magenta cartridge was empty, I couldn’t print a thing, not even with black ink. And the cartridges were tiny. The amount of ink inside them had to be minuscule. So I was forever running to Office Depot for more ink cartridges. And while there would inevitably decide that “while I’m there I should stock up on the ink cartridges.” The bill would top $100. For ink.

Today I was going to a birthday party for a friend who just turned 80. She was a neighbor in the old “hood”. A few childhood friends would be there. I scrambled through some old photo albums and came up with a great print that I knew one of my friends would love to have. It was a picture of my family standing next to her grandfather, in Pennsylvania, in 1970. We were neighbors here in Texas. So the photo is a little unusual. I scanned it. Printed it. Ink smears all over the paper. Globs of ink smears. So I cleaned the cartridge heads, and ran a cartridge check, etc. Everything looked good. I printed again. White lines through the faces. This time the printer sends me a message that there are parts that need to be services inside the machine. That’s nice, I thought, and proceeded to go through the head-cleaning process again. This time all the lights were blinking and it was frozen. Nothing.

That was it. I will not spend another dime on this printer. However, it was full of cartridges (there are nine) that if I return them to Office Depot, they will credit my account two dollars a piece. The machine was frozen. I couldn’t get to the cartridges. So I tossed it off the balcony.

No really. I did.

The neighbor took pictures.

Printer Ink – Why Does It Cost So Much? (12345dotcom1.wordpress.com)

The Writing Life

Houston Writer’s Guild 2012 Conference Goes Without a Hitch

April 14, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

Today’s writing conference with the Houston Writer’s Guild was very well organized (Thank you, Roger Paulding) and well attended. The guest speakers were excellent.

Chitra Divakaruni, author of many books including Mistress of Spices, told us that not one word we ever write is truly wasted. Even if we toss it away, that word led us to another word or another way to phrase something so it is a stepping stone to being better. So keep writing.

Nikki Loftin was hilarious, positive, and thought provoking. She used parts of fairy tales as analogies. For instance, there are witches in our lives who want to keep us from writing. Sometimes the biggest witch is our inner voice telling us to “quit writing and get on with your life!” (that one’s my own personal witch just now popping out of the dungeon) Or she talked about keeping our bread crumbs so we can find our way out of the woods (a scary dark place where we can forget why we keep writing). A bread crumb might be remembering that first time I realized a sentence that I created was wonderful. Or the feeling of finally completing a novel. Yes. I’m keeping my bread crumbs, Nikki. I’m going to put a big poster on the wall with all my bread crumbs on it.

Ken Atchity talked about the changing book marketplace, the film industry, and then he left us with an encouraging poem about being on the first step of a writing career. In other words if we could make it past all the discouragement and rejections into a place where we have completed a writing project is huge step. His story merchant companies http://www.aeionline.com and http://www.thewriterslifeline.com provide a one-stop full-service development and management machine for commercial and literary writers who wish to launch their storytelling in all media.

The break-out sessions with the editors and agents went smoothly this year. I say that because I heard no grumbling or complaining. And some compliments. So … well done you people!

I thought the Panera Bread sandwiches at lunch were great – we could grab one and eat and talk to people and mingle. So that was so much nicer than a sit down lunch.

And here is a little something that has nothing to do with the conference.

Home and Family, The Writing Life

Bad Boys Are Never Good

February 5, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 3 Comments

My daughter is a brilliant microbiologist. But she was reminding me the other day that she blames Disney for her bad taste in men.

Three movies in particular, she pointed out, make bad boys look good to get. She said it seemed reasonable when seen from a very early age. For instance, take Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.

In each one, the good guy is a wreck.

In Lady and the Tramp the male dog is a not only a tramp (bum, ne’er-do-well, street-person) but he thinks he’s God’s gift to the female of the species. Look out, Lady. She sets out to change him so he can be her beau. In Beauty and the Beast you have a guy who is a mess both physically and emotionally. The Beauty sets out to change him, and voila – you’ve got a brilliant dance with the talking dishes. In Aladdin you have a handsome guy who is a thief and a liar.

Even West Side Story plays this up with the bad guy trying to get the good girl. It is supposed to be patterned after Romeo and Juliet but really the guy is a switch-blade carrying, grease-ball. The Pirates of Penzance was one of my children’s favorite musicals when they were very small. It’s about a pirate who wants to change and the girl who tries to change him.

These days the big rage in children’s lit and movies is often about the vacuous gorgeous girl finding a handsome vampire to marry and have little vamplets…i.e. “Breaking Dawn.” I suppose a whole race of blood-sucking super babies will engender another round of novels.

Perhaps we have never broken free of Victorian ideals of what a woman is. Women, the fragile species, can’t think. Can’t plan. Can’t make important decisions about the future. And for goodness sakes aren’t they hopeless with money?

Having spent the years my children attended public school (14 years) as a paraprofessional working with special education or as an inclusion teacher, I know firsthand the “self-esteem thing” was drilled into all students from preschool onward. Especially aimed at girls. No good came of it. Not a bit of difference did “education” make in how a child felt about themselves. If anything it made children aware of their own shortcomings.

Let us reflect on the many classic examples of the weak woman and the strong, yet heartless man. Take Charles Dickens‘s portrayals of the heroine – she is a weak, almost brainless, classic beauty with no personal or future expectations save to worship some man and reflect in his glory. (Exception note: In Great Expectations the heroine struggles out of her brainwashing by Ms. Haversham and discovers a few thought of her own. This was an anti-heroine for Mr. Dickens.)

Girls. Bad boys don’t change. You can’t make them change. They like their unchangeableness. Don’t waste your breath. It won’t work.

Parents beware. There are wonderful movies out there that have nothing to do with gender classification.

Here are a few examples: “The Sandlot“. “Beethoven Lives Upstairs“, wow, if you haven’t seen this movie you must do so. “Shrek” turns the tables on the good girl meets bad boy when we discover at the end that the good girl is a troll, too. “Toy Story” – and of the three, “Toy Story 3” is the best. There are so many good movies for kids that don’t make a big deal of THE STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER but instead have a simple story – the brilliance is often in the simplicity of reason.

And by the way, I have stumbled upon a wonderful heroine (Thursday Next) who upsets the apple cart of reason as she stumbles through her story as a litera-tec who works for Spec Ops 27. She “fixes” the ending of Jane Eyre. Loved this book – it’s called The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Good read.

Steer your child, boy or girl, away from movies that depict a character who thinks they have to change the person they love to make the world a better place. Or a character who decides to change their life to capture the one they think they love (see the movie “Zookeeper” cute – okay for older children like me).

No one can change another person. We can influence other people. We can lead by example. Children know without being told that – Actions speak louder than words.

When my daughter was a child I accepted the popular view that Disney movies were child-tested and parent approved. Silly me.

D.I.Y. House and Home

On Almost Being Arrested, and other things to do on Wednesday night

January 18, 2012 Rebecca Nolen 1 Comment

As if nothing else in the world was happening at the Nolen household.

Today the house framers were hard at work on the garage apartment in the back yard. They completed the second floor. The roof was framed. I got an almost frantic call from the contractor. The engineer had called him and told him that on re-calculating the plans he discovered a mistake. This is after everything has been inspected and passed. He had a fit of conscious of something. He explained that they should use two by eight boards for the ceiling on the second floor instead of the two by six.

The contractor told me, no, insisted to me that it was their mistake and I wasn’t to be concerned. But they were going to have a slight delay with taking part of the framing down. I asked what the difference in price for the materials was and I insisted on paying for that.

After all, the house plans had passed city inspection on all counts. And they were willing to stop construction, deconstruct and start over again on their dime. That is integrity.

The air conditioning man showed up around this time. Our air conditioner worked part of the time and the furnace worked part of the time. We’d been spending a lot of time and money having parts and pieces fixed. With a lot of pounding and grating the air conditioner man removed the old electric furnace and air conditioner from our downstairs utility room.

The grand baby slept through it all.

At one point I heard some yelling and high-pitched man-screams and went outside to investigate. The air conditioning man had been under the house (we are on pier and beam so there is a crawl space beneath us for easy access to pipes), he was wiping his brow. His shirt was muddy. All work on the garage apartment in the back yard was suspended as the guys crowded around. Apparently from what I could understand Victor thought there was a bear, or a monkey, or a chupacabra under the house. It had frightened him. He couldn’t get out from under fast enough.

I calmed them all down and told them that my cats were serious hunters of dangerous under-the-house creatures.

Turns out when the other guys used flash lights and investigated, it was our Siamese cat (they called her the “kitty-kitty”). Of course Peanut can look like a bear, or a monkey, or a chupacabra, depending on her mood.

The process of removing and replacing the old rotten air condition and furnace took all day. He and his two workers stayed late, finally leaving after dark. The only thing left undone was hooking everything up.

Immediately, I mean minutes after they left, my daughter said, “Oh look! The police have pulled someone over right in front of our house.”

I looked and it was our air conditioning man. I thought perhaps he had run the stop sign. But while I watched the situation didn’t LOOK like a simple traffic stop.

There must be some mistake.

I went outside and stood inside the fence. I called out to the air conditioning man, “Victor, is everything all right?”

A policeman on the other side of the car (I didn’t see him before this) came around the car and yelled at me that I was interfering with a police investigation. Yelled at me.

What? I stood there, shaking my head. “These guys were just at my house. Did they run the stop sign?”

“No ma’am.” The officer approached me. “You need to leave this alone. It is none of your business.”

“I’m just asking if they are okay.”

“No you were NOT! You are interfering! You need to get back! You are making this a dangerous situation! This vehicle came up as a suspicious vehicle. It has nothing to do with a stop sign. You are being disrespectful.” He was angry. Incensed even.

Disrespectful? I felt like reminding him that he was the one standing in the middle of a busy street. Dangerous situation indeed.

I turned around and went in the house and got a piece of paper and came back out and took the plate number of the police car. (from a respectful distance) I then went and stood far enough away but near enough that the officer could see me. I caught his eye and smiled at him. (How’s that for respect?) I asked him what his name was.

He called to me, that I was to come across the street to him and talk to him. (Now, this is always a safe move in a traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle where the suspicious vehicle’s occupants could be killers escaping from the long arm of the law.) I joined him and he told me that he and his partner felt the occupants of the vehicle were suspicious characters who could have guns and that my interference was clearly wrong and I could be killed.

These guys just spent the entire day in the mud under my house fighting chupacabras why would they shoot me?

I stared through the front windshield of their van. Our a/c man had already been hand-cuffed and put in the police car. The other two guys looked frightened and defeated.

I want you to know that I did apologize for interfering with what the officers were doing. Normally, I would never get involved with a traffic stop in my neighborhood. I’ve seen officers pull a car over and draw guns just like you see on “Cops”. I live a mile from downtown Houston. It’s more of a “duck and run” kind of area than an area where you would pop over to the officer and say “hey, what’s going on?” during a traffic stop. But I had just bid these guys a good evening. I felt like defending them.

Thankfully the officer and I parted on speaking terms. He apologized for getting angry at me. He gave me his card so that I can call him if I see crack smokers or miscreants hanging about.

This is good.

Sometimes it’s hard getting through on the non-emergency line to report misdeeders. The last time I tried the woman kept asking me to “back up and repeat my description of the guys”. By the time I’d finished my descriptions so that she could get it down, the bad guys were long gone, and I’m talking about fifteen minutes of backing up and repeating, honey. Two police cars passed by during that time and she wouldn’t let me get a word in without backing up and repeating it several times.

Here is a side note: The “suspicious vehicle” thing couldn’t have happened quite the way they explained it.

First, they pulled them over as soon as the van pulled away from the curb beside our house. They couldn’t have run plates in that amount of time. Which means they had to have spotted the vehicle before this and run the plates. Second, the vehicle was not the problem. Turns out our a/c man had a warrant for his arrest. Before you get all excited about that – it only means that he missed a court date. Third, if the vehicle had been a problem they would have taken it and they didn’t. They asked our permission to leave it on the curb beside our house so that one of the guy’s wives could come drive it home.

And Fourth, (only because one must have a “fourth” if there is a “third”) I’m without an air-conditioner and furnace downstairs at the moment so excuse me while I go pile on some blankets and enjoy the Wednesday night line-up on television.