Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

May 20, 2007

Today’s Announcements

We have a new writer with us today, Tanja Cilia.  This lady quickly became a good friend of mine.  She lives in the beautiful exotic Mediterranean country of Malta.  She is our second writer from Malta. For those of you who remember Victor Buhagiar; he is from Malta as well.  Don’t forget to welcome her to the Storytime Tapestry Family. You can reach her at: tanjachilja@hotmail.com

Looking for a few extra dollars a month?  Do you like to email back and forth to your friends talking about anything and everything.  What you like to make a few dollars joining discussions or starting your own that is as simple as emailing your online friends?  You don’t have to be a writer; just a person who likes to connect on the internet with other like minded people and have a chance to make from 5 – 30 dollars a month doing it.  If this appeals to you then come join me at:  http://www.mylot.com/?ref=winterose

Today’s Stories

~**~**~

As I Recall

Bill Walker

missourisage@yahoo.com

I was doing a little bit of recalling the past with friend Keith yesterday. That gets kind of tricky at times. You know recalling something that happened 20 and more years ago.  Keith has called Beatrice home since about the late 60s,, close to the 70 mark.  So we have a lot to talk about from that time, I was filling him in on the crooks ands turns of before also.  That where it gets tricky.

Now it comes to me why the old timers that I used to talk to always had a saying.  Think it might work for me.  The saying went something like this.  Now if memory serves me right I believe it was on the corner of 4th and Market streets, I think John Smith started up his black smith shop.  I believe he got that old building that belonged to Ed.Black.  I think it was about the year of well 1910 to maybe 1912, can't just remember what year,  but it was one of the two.

Do you get the drift?  There is a lot of I think it was stuff.  And we could be off a bit on all counts here also.  The year you got was a maybe,, and so it might have been before 1910, and it might have been a year in between, or even a year later.  The names is also a maybe. The location of the build is a maybe, it might have been 5th and Market, and which corner of the intersection? We left that out cause memory went total blank.  

You can live in a place all your life, things come and go, There is many things that happens. Things get blurred in the memory bank. I remember George Logan. He had the Olds Cad dealership here. . He sold out about 1964 or 65 to Bill Day.  I remember it was there abouts. George operated on a small scale. He had about 6 to 8 new cars on hand at any given time.  Each of those cars the title was in George's desk, not the bank. When George sold out, a car of his class sold for 3,000 to 7,000 or there abouts. You was shopping for a new car, you took one he had in stock,, or it would be ordered. You might get a better deal on one in stock then a special order.  Anyways George sells the  place there on the back street of Market and it was between 4th and 5th to Bill Day.  I can't remember just if it was the same day, or a day later the ink met up with the paper selling the operation.. But here is five transport loads of new cars.  This many new cars in that place at one time.. The walls was about to cave out.

Now Bill Day had been a used car dealer for years,  I don't recall where his place of operation was, but he was a wheeler dealer, always made a lot of racket selling clunkers.  Bill always carried two things.  A wad of green backs, in two places.  One was on his body, the other was under the seat of car, I found that out by accident.  He also carries a hand gun, two places.  One is on body,, and the other is under the seat with that one wad of green backs.  Before the big buy out of George. Bill had a accident.. He tried beating a train at a crossing.. He lost, and we got the car to pull in.  No more then got it off the wrecker's back, and here is Mrs. Bill.  She waited till we had it on it's four feet,, and got the door open on driver side.. She retrieved the wad of green backs, and the gun. I guess then she went to the hospital to get that wad of green, and that gun. Might have checked on Bill.  There is always the chance that she made it to the hospital first and stripped him of gun and wad of green before some nurse got to it. I do recall she got to the car as we was unloading it,, so she was making the rounds fast.

The thing about recalling history of any town one lives in, there is always that I think it was about such and such a year, and such and such a place it happened at. I was trying to find a place while back, it had been some years since I was there last, and it is right here in this big wide cross roads.  It was gone, what I was looking for.  Someone just carted off the whole works,, Why it was there lets see, I think it was a couple years ago.  Old man Jones had it, why I remember he set out there on a warm afternoon and had a drink or two of the good stuff.  I remember a lawyer that always stopped by and would join him in talking over the good old days. And sip a drink or two of old Jack.

You know there is one thing about being the sage. Might get lucky and out live all them other know it all,, and then you really are in great need of.. Say Bill do you remember what year Roosevelt came thorough on the train ??

Sure I remembers,, why that was about 1941, or 42 I think it was.  I remember it was late at night,, but there he was on the platform of that last car waving to the about 10,000 people here  Back then we was all good Democrats that lived here, all but the Cooks, and Westons and that bunch.

Tinker and Poo; The Boys Write

http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-35741-5

~**~**~

 Living With Ghosts – Part 1

Ina Townsend Young

First of all, let me get one thing straight.  I never believed in ghosts until I ended up living with one.  There's a logical explanation for everything, right?  Unfortunately, I often could not come up with one to explain the happenings in the home that we shared with "Mrs. Greer".

We don't know if it was really Mrs. Greer who was visiting us or not.  We just knew that the previous owner of our house, Mrs. Greer, died in the living room of natural causes about 5 years before we moved in.  She became our scapegoat.

The first time she made her presence known was really quite mild in light of what she did to us in later years.  This is the story of her first visit.

Four of us lived in this house; my three children and myself.  My oldest, Lisa, was about fifteen at the time of this particular incident.  My younger two kids were off staying the weekend with friends.  It was a Friday morning and Lisa was ordered into the task of cleaning her room while I ran some errands.  She greeted me at the door on my return, quite pale.  She then proceeded to tell me how, in the course of cleaning her room, a can of deodorant kept flipping upside down on her dresser.  She'd set it right side up and when she looked back, it would be upside down again.  Yeah.  Right.  I was sure that she was just looking for an excuse not to finish cleaning her room.  Cleaning was not her strong point, after all.  She was adamant that she wasn't doing this.  It was happening on it's own. 

I knew by now that SOMETHING was going on, because I'd never seen her so shook up.  I figured that if what she said was true, it was due to us living in a very old house where the floors settle and things can appear to move when they are actually only shifting due to the natural order of things…in an old house.  She wouldn't go back into her room without me.  I had to prove my point to her, so upstairs we went.  Sure enough, there was a can of deodorant, upside down, on her dresser.  I righted the container and wedged it very tightly between her purse and a pile of school books.  I then locked the door and put the only key to the room in my pocket. 

She followed me downstairs and was almost leech-like with her physical attachment to me.  All I could think was "For God's sake, kid!  You're fifteen!  Get a grip and get off my back!"  I knew something was REALLY up with her when she spent the next several hours cleaning the kitchen with me.  Remember, cleaning wasn't her bag, to put it mildly.

After about two hours of cleaning, I went upstairs to the bathroom and upon seeing her closed bedroom door, remembered the key in my pocket.  I'm glad I'd emptied my bladder before entering that room, because otherwise I would have become incontinent, I'm sure.  I turned the key and just peeked in…and there was the deodorant can, firmly lodged between the purse and the pile of books…and upside down.  No way that happened because the house settled.  Nosiree Bob.  Unh unh.  No chance.  I remember feeling my stomach tighten and finding it hard to breathe.  My heart started pounding.  I locked the door again, without fixing the deodorant this time.  What if it turned over, again, like Lisa said?  I couldn't deal with that.

So, Lisa went off to a girlfriend's house for the weekend and I was left alone in this big, old haunted house for the first time ever.  I remember clutching a crucifix to my chest at night when I was trying to fall asleep.  With "trying" being the operative word,  here.  I couldn't bring myself to go back into Lisa's room all weekend. 

This was really such a mild event compared to some of the things Mrs. Greer put us through over the next fifteen years or so.  I'm glad I couldn't see into the future; to the things that would scare the living daylights out of me and mine and those who hung out at our home.  Stay tuned.  It's time to write Mrs. Greer out of my system.

Ina Townsend Young

mimisuzy127@yahoo.com

~**~**~

Poetry Corner

~**~**~

 Money Talks

Tanja Cilia

Lost amongst their acres of knowledge

Are the scholars

Trying to make sense of life

And love

They own a mellifluous mountain

Of meaningless words and mouth them

When the occasion rises

They cannot tell the difference between

Patois, jargon, dialect, and slang...

Or colloquialism... and claptrap.

But bless them,

They don't think it's important.

Just as long as they get their pay-cheque.

Tanja Cilia 

Malta  Europe

tanjachilja@hotmail.com

~**~**~

About Tanja

I am the television critic of Allied Newspapers, I do features and interviews and also 20 questions type of quizzes, and book reviews...and also poetry (mostly haikus).... occasionally I review plays - I used to be the drama critic but it did not fit in well with my life... I have started on a book of children's stories... I have my own section in the magazine in Maltese (there is only one) for schools, and also I write a story for the children's schools newspaper in Maltese (no payment) every month during scholastic year.... and so on...

Silk-stranded cobwebs
catch our love and hold our dreams
embroidering time

Calm before a storm

Signals trouble right ahead

Worry and heartbreak

Like ducks to water,
Our souls have melded as one
You and I, all time.

 ~**~**~

Readers Feedback

 Bill, I think having faith means to have faith it has happened before you see the evidence of it. That is FAITH brother. Giving thanks that it has happened before you see it happen is pure unadulterated FAITH.

Just my opinion,

Nell

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