Cop Cam U.S.A. Driver vs. ME

 Pulled over enroute to VVH one cold frosty day , officer approaches, asks, "Do you know why I pulled you over?"  

   CopCam:   No. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Don't you have anything better to do than harass law-abiding citizens like me, you wanna-be cop.

ME:  No, was I speeding?

Officer:  Your registration is expired.

CopCam:   So let me go and I'll renew it. My family is important in this town, so keep that in mind. I have connections.

ME:   Oh, I hadn't noticed.

Officer:  Can I see your license, registation and insurance?

CopCam:  I don't have to show you that. You can't ask me that. I haven't done anything wrong. Don't touch me. Get off me. I can't breathe. I don't have to talk to you. Get a sergeant out here. I want my lawyer here right now.

ME: Here's my registration and insurance, but my license is in my purse on the floor behind me, so I'll have to get out to reach it. 

Officer: Never mind, I'll just take your registration and insurance to my vehicle to check it. 

CopCam:  I'm not showing you anything, you b*%ch. Arrest me if you have to. But you can't arrest me if you haven't read me my Miranda rights. Go ahead, and it's obvious you can't please your wife in bed. And you just lost your badge!

Two Dressers +

 The house on State Street is for sale now, but if memory serves, the house was once owned by Paul McGraw, and after his death the contents of the house were up for sale at what was called an auction, but really meant to make an offer on any items of interest. 

  I believe Sara may have alerted my mother to the sale. This would have been not too long after we moved to Valley Falls and about a year or so after "Jack's" store was relocated to what had once been Peter Barrett's bar. Sara may have been related to Paul, though I'm not sure.

 At the time, we had very little furniture, only that which was transported by car from our last home past the curve going out from the village. Dorothy and I shared a bedroom and a bed, and the remains of an old pink dresser probably a leftover in some house or other. The drawers were so badly broken that our clothes were just put on top of the dresser. When my mother learned that there were dressers in the house, she made sure to attend on sale day. She ended up buying 2 dressers for $6.  One was a brown wooden dresser, probably oak, which was designated for my brother. The other was of blonde wood  with a curved mirror and 4 drawers. Since we girls were to share, we each had an upper and a lower drawer. 

   But most remarkable to me, probably aged 6 or 7 or so, was that after the sale, the auctioneer, or the man handling the sale, leaned down to me and handed me a key--the key to the dresser, of which all 4 drawers locked. That was probably the first piece of property I'd ever owned, and at home I looped a green ribbon, probably from an old candy box, through the hole in the key, and hid it away. I don't remember where, but possibly in an old sock which was under the other socks. Later, this key would be the basis of squabbles with my sister, when she would accuse me of locking up the last pair of clean socks, but I never surrendered that key which  granted me some measure of independence or authority or something like that, not until I ceded ownership of the dresser many years later. 

  Even more memorable to me was that the man who handed me the key, or maybe it was another man that same day, also gave me a Crucifix with a Holy Water Font. I still have it on my bedroom wall.

Who Goes There?

 

What??!!

 

This Old House

 In all the time I've lived here, since May of 1969, today marks the first day there is no other breathing organism in the house. 

Waiting for GODOT or God's Own Time

 Battery---soonest is Monday

Cat-------soonest is Sunday

Furnace ----1 Postponement, 1 No Show, Who knows?

10/15/ 24 Fails

 

Lifetime Compliments Received

 Not counting academic or professional awards and acknowledgments, here, in chronological order, are the compliments I've received:

1) My father taught me to play checkers, and when I was 10 years old or so, he said I was as good a player as the men who used to meet and play checkers at the Valley Falls Train station.

2) There was a large number of lectors at our parish , and one day after Sunday Mass, Father Ellis whispered to me that I was the best lector of all. 

3) My former gasteroenterologist Dr. G. said he thought I was very smart.

    That's about it, but I just remembered that in the last year or so the neurologist I'd visited said he knew I was smart because I understood the sarcasm he used. If that counts.

 Furnace