Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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

November 18, 2007

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Today?s Announcement

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Hi to all my cherished friends.? Many of you know that my father has cancer and I?am sending this on his behalf, along with a request for your prayers at this time.? He is not doing so well, and he?needs much intervention through prayer.?Sandra Hoynaki: sandylh@cox.net

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The voting for the poets now closed. By now you have received the rules for voting for the writers. Voting for the writers starts Nov 16^th and ends November 20^th.? I will announce our wonderful winners for both the writing contest and poetry contest on the very same day.? Stay tuned for the results.

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Important notice: Storytime Tapestry is a free e-zine, however donations are always needed to help with the operating expenses of running the newsletter and to keep Storytime Tapestry the quality newsletter you are so accustomed to.? ?You can make your donations to paypal at: winterose@videotron.ca, or if you would prefer to use the mail system contact the publisher at the same email address: winterose@videotron.ca

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Today?s Stories

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Rainbow Bridge Gang. Ody
Tinker and Poo
tinkerpoo2000@yahoo.com

We were all sitting here fussing over the week end football games, and
the play offs on baseball, when up the lane came this guy, a little
fellow, black and white in color. We barked him over, and he told us his
name was Ody Mazzella. Poo asked what kind of Chinese name is
that. ? Tink had to tell him be careful, that's Italian. He might be
with the Mafia. Anyway Ody, told us he belonged to a fellow and family
name of Joe. Then a bell rang? in our heads, yea, Joe, that wonderful
fellow in West Virginia. That writer of love, and kindness, and good
thoughts.
Well we got Ody set up with a blanket, bed, bowls and all the comforts
of life here. He will be? welcome to our group, as he lived a good
life and has many stories to tell. We hope he can help us on writing
the newsletter, should just fit in real great. Sure be an improvement
over that Ma Bakers gang, all that mob does is always try to change the
wording on something. Confounded proper you know.
Ody said he lived a good life, and had about every thing he wanted. His
last year or so was kind of bad on health. Poo told hm, well that
seems to be the case in lots of us Little People. Health kind of went
to pot. We all said it is nice to have our Big People that cares, and
they try to help us live out our life with them in comfort.
So Joe, and family, never fear. Your Ody is here, and is happy, healthy
once again. Just waiting for the day you come home also. Setting here
and watching your Mansion getting the finishing touches.
Ody had a big welcome, seems like many knows of Ody. There is
CharlieBoy, and Butter Cup for just two, and then all the others that
knew of Joe, and his articles of love, kindness, and well wishes for
all.
What's? the movie tonight? Why it is Ody comes home.

Tinker and Poo; The Boys Write
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-35741-5

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Paula and I

Peggy Ann Doak

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My best friend, was Paula, in my middle teen years. We had always been friends but became close as we discovered that we made great partners in crime. She had a horse named Lady, a small bay mare and I had my horse, Niko, a pinto, with splotches of brown on white and a black main and tail. Very pretty, very coo coo.

One night, not particularly different in it's beginning from any of our other nights, Paula and I had gotten hold of some Colt 45, more muscle per ounce, and we were sitting out of view of her mother's house with our horses. Both of us rode bareback, though how she rode her scrawney bay without a cushion I've no idea. Both mares were eating while we sat drinking. The drunker we got, the more maudlin we got. It wasn't long before we were crying in our beer about how much we loved our horses and that we hoped we could breed them someday to have a foal to keep memories alive. We would kiss our horses noses and weep, then lay back in the tall grass and drink, then forgot why we were there so we mounted up and headed out. I am sure we had scored every beer we had, because neither one of us would ever leave a drop of amber gold un touched.

From Paula's house we headed down toward Bowen's store on route 147, at the corner of the City Point/Head o' Tide road, and the highway into town. After we'd turned left at the corner and instinctively toward the big county seat of Waldo County. Not far down the road, both of us had a nature call, so we stopped at a house and went behind it, horse and all, unmounted and proceeded to water the flower garden. I don't know who the house belonged to, but Paula was right beneath the bedroom window. It had to have been close to ten at night, and two drunk teenagers with horses, in rural Maine, made a racket. Route 147 may have been a highway, but the name was way bigger than reality. Not too many cars out at night at 10 pm.

A voice, a woman's voice yelled from the bedroom," You get outta here right now!" I didn't know who she was talking to, until Paula let go with colourful language that made me twitch, and she was still in the flower patch. I guess she really had to go. I felt embarrassed for my friends response to the woman. After all, we were on her lawn, in the dark, in her flower garden. So as we mounted up, I said, "Thank you so very much for the use of your property." The feed back I got wasn't any prettier than Paula's initial response, but I had been raised with manners. So I did not retort but set my horse into a canter not allowing Paula to make the situation worse with her mouth. She followed suite.

We got to downtown Belfast in maybe forty five minutes or less. Not really speeding, not really sauntering either. The down was dead. Deader than dead. I don't know what we were expecting on a middle of the week on a school night. The time of year was maybe the beginning of May. I decided to spruce things up a bit and had Paula come with me to knock on doors and ask for water for our horses just like in the old days, when horses were the only transportation. At least I thought that was what a weary traveler would do, from what I had viewed on the TV.

Not as many doors got slammed shut on TV as did on us that night. By then it had to have been around 11 or so, and New York City we were not. Belfast was the only place in the entire county of Waldo to have a three coloured street light. For that we were some proud.

We'd gotten bored so about midnight we headed back home up route 147. I could hear sirens in the background of my foggy reverie of being back before cars were invented and how my brother wouldn't beable to survive if he had to depend upon a horse to get him to work. All of a sudden Paula came galloping up behind me and yelled, "Run, I just set off the fire alarm." Our horses went full tilt for home. I remember feeling pissed off at Paula for doing such a stupid prank. Anyone can set off a fire alarm. Where was the creativety in that? We came back to a gallop, then to a canter, to a trot, then walk. Two miles or so out of town, we'd forgotten why we were in such a hurry. That's when I honed in on the Paul's chicken barns. Belfast had been the chicken capitol of the world for quite a few years running, so barns with fifteen thousand chickens were not unusual. My family had them when the barns still had windows and natural light. The new barns had no windows, and the barns stayed lit most if not all of the time, to keep those babies growing. I motioned for Paula to stop and to hold my horse. She did. I don't know if she said anything, or just acquiessed without question. I slid off Niko and headed into the barn the furthest away from the main house.

I was gonna get me a chicken. Well didn't I have a wonderful surprise when I'd discovered that new babies had arrived. It smelled so good in there. All fresh rshavings, thousands of little peepers in their respective pens before the floor became one big pen as they got older. I picked up four little guys and put two in each pocket. I do believe I had on an Army jacket, a Nam jacket, as this was around '68 or '69. I was dating Bobby, Paula's brother's best friend, who would later become my husband after he and Alan,Paula's brother, did a stint in Viet Nam. Bob came back not too worse for the wear, but Alan, Paula's brother came back missing his sanity. At the time we were pulling our stunts, both boys were at boot camp on the buddy plan.

I came out of the barn with my prizes and got back onto Niko. Paula could hear the peeping from my jacket. "Why do you always have to steal an animal?"

"Cause they are there."

And we galloped for a couple or so more miles before I turned into a friends house whose mother I really liked. She'd had a son named Danny, who had a huge crush on me and he was constantly teased about having my picture under his pillow when he slept at night. I liked him, because he though he was kind of geeky, he was truthful, and I always backed the underdogs. I just didn't date them. He had been killed the year before in a police car chase. The tie rod end on the convertable he was in, broke at a speed topping one hundred miles an hour, flipping the car, decapitating Danny. I do remember sitting there watching Ratchel, his mom, lying on the couch, her head resting in her son Randy's lap, with him smoothing her hair away from her forehead, and she looking so lost, but yet present for us kids. My mother had never shown that kind of strength with me and my brother when death hit our home. I really admired Ratchel so I came that night to her house with presents to bear. Knowing where her bedroom was, I went in quietly, pulled the baby chicks out of my pockets, and put them on her bed. All four of them. They were running around and peeping. So cute. I whispered, "Ratchel, wake up." Then I softly shook her shoulder. She lifted her head from the pillow, looked at the chickies running over her prone body, looked at me, and said, "Get them out of here." I was heart broken that she didn't appreciate my offerings. I put them back, two to a pocket and left quietly. Later I was told that her kids had her believing that she had dreamed the whole thing, and she didn't know for truth that I'd actually been there at coming on to one in the morning with chickens. Today I can understand why she thought it was a dream. Then I just felt discounted.

Paula was still holding Niko, and I clambered aboard. After a couple more miles at what speed I had no idea, a car with a man in it had stopped. Both Paula and I talked with him, but me, the mouth, told him about the fire alarm and I showed him what I had in my pockets. He laughed and said 'have a good night.' At just about another mile and a half we turned into Bowen's store to go through the back driveway less than a half-mile from home. All of a sudden blue lights came from every direction. I was kinda stumped as to why they were there. I figured maybe they needed some important information on a crime that we might have seen or something. Paula was alot savvier than I in the land of bad acts. She said, "uhoh."

The fellow that we had talked to a couple of miles back got out of his car and came over to us. I grinned a hello. He didn't. He took hold of each horse by their bridle. Stern; good Lord was he stern. Not at all nice and jovial like he was in the car. There were at least three cop cars plus the car of the guy who had ratted us. He was some proud of himself. Since Belfast couldn't have had three cruisers at once, one or two of the cars were State Troopers. Rat, the guy holding the horses, hollered over to a fellow who looked quite a bit older, with a face that said, 'I've seen about all there is to see,' but not a bitter expression. He actually looked kinda like a big bear. Also he had some clout, because Rat said, "Whaddya thing of this Carl." Carl shrugged his shoulders. At the same time, Paula leaned over to me and urged me to get Niko to rear. She would do it if I gave her the signal. So I buried my heels into her underbelly and pulled back a bit on the reins. Because the guy, Rat, had hold of her headstall on the bridle instead of the reins, she couldn't rear so she would swing her head an clout him right upside his eye trying to get loose. After Carl showed his lack of enthusiasm for rat's in general, Carl got in his car and left.

We must have been a site by now. I don't know that dawn was long coming, and poor Lady was breathing exhaustion. There I sat, with a baseball cap on backwards, long hair going in every direction. Paula had long hair too but I don't think caps were her thing. We both looked as though we ourselves had just rode in from Nam. Paula also had an army jacket on. We both had shorts and sneakers. Carl sauntered over, and had trouble keeping a rogue grin from surfacing on his face. He didn't say why they lwere all there, and I don't know that I knew. I'd forgotten Paula's stunt with the fire alarm as soon as the sirens stopped. Carl looked straight at me, in the eyes, and asked, "Why'd you do it."

"Oh, for the heck of it, I guess."

"Do you know that it is a federal crime." He was talking fire alarms I am thinking chicken stealing.

"No Sir, I didn't know that." I could be so cute when caught red handed. I think some of it was due to the fact that I was clueless ninety percent of the time.

"The minute we call in the men, and start those trucks to head to the fire site, it costs the city..."

"Wait, I didn't do that. I didn't set off the fire alarm. Paula did that." I can imagine the language in her head pointed toward me right then. But I wanted to be clear on what crime I did or did not do.

"I see." He looked over at Paula, but she didn't make eye contact with him. And if she did, it would have been a brazen smoldering look. She just was not polite even if she was wrong. "Where are the chicken's?" I pulled them out of my pockets, still a peepin'. I figured that the Rat must have told him about them. I kinda grinned and ghe kinda had a hard time not grinning back. "You have to return the chickens."

"You mean ride all the way back.."

"Walk. All the way back. Mr. Paul is waiting for you. Looks to me that your horses are done for the night. You take her horse home with you?" He raised his eyebrows at Paula. She nodded. I leapt of of my horse after I'd put the chicks back in my pockets. Paula took the reins over Niko's head.

"I'll see you back at your house." Paula nodded again. I could see she was grinning when her head turned away from the Trooper. I do believe she felt that I got what I had coming to me after stating that she was the hand on the alarm.

The officer said just before we headed out in our afore said directions, "Tomorrow at school the fire chief will be coming to see you. Be there."

Paula rode off without saying anything, and I said, "Sure thing, Sir." and then I headed on down the road with the chicks. It was a good three and a half miles. But I had a way about me even then, to forget about what I couldn't do anything about because I had to go to the Paul's farm. Besides, I wasn't looking forward to Mr. Paul's reception. I wasn't but a few steps from the store when a car stopped and it was a friend of mine. Paula must have got hold of him or maybe one of the cops. He asked me if I needed a ride. I did. He drove me to the chicken farm where out on the front lawn stood Mr. Paul. Talk about stern. He was down right unhappy. My ride waited while I took the chicks out of my pockets one by one and passed them over.

"Ok" was all he said. I still don't remember who it was who gave me a ride, except that he was older than me, probably more my brother's age and he was nice. I got taken to the front door at Paula's, I thanked my ride several times too much, and went into the house.

Sleep came quickly, but wake up time came quicker. I felt like a rusty dollar bill. Bent over the tub washing my hair out, Paula's brother Peter came in. "you guy's bring a pony back with you last night?"

"No." I was getting soap up my nose when I tried to answer.

"Well there is a pony out there in the pasture with your horses."

I ignored him. I felt that if I got my hair and the most of me cleaned up before the bus came I wouldn't smell like I'd died and didn't get resurrected.

"Either you guys brought a pony home, or one got into the pasture, or one of your mares had a baby." I did not want to pull my head out from the faucet, knowing it'd be pounding, just to satisphy Peter's warped humour, but I did just to get rid of him. Standing next to one of Paula's brothers, the saner of the two, but also the most rascally, I looked out from his vantage point. Sure enough there was a little one out there. And it wasn't no pony. Lady had given birth, probably the moment she was let loose into the pasture. So that was why she was breathing so hard. Poor darlin' was in labor.

The baby was a boy. I wanted Paula to name him Probation. She chose Dawn. Funny how things come round full circle. The dad was unkown. But the babe was wicked cunnin'. At that is the first clip of that story, which I swear on Niko's memory, is true.

Peggy Ann Doak

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pdoak333@peoplepc.com

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Poetry Corner

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?Love?s Coffin

Cheryl Williams

This heart beats,

waiting for love's coffin

which will surely come,

for how can anything so beautiful

linger on?

This world cannot contain it

amidst the ugly darkened doors

which slam shut on anything of beauty.

The moon darkens,

flowers wither;

This love hangs on

as I clutch it to my breast,

careful not to clutch? too tightly,

and careful not to let it slip away;

Love's coffin

is a greedy visitor

who will not be denied,

but what about me deserves

this love,

warm like honey,

a shelter to my soul...

Cheryl Williams

Politcalgir04l@aol.com

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Readers Feedback

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Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank?those of you who?chose to be a silent angel and?gave an anonymous donation to keep?Storytime Tapestry up and running.

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Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw, Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Maria Keller

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