Things are slow here today at the tax office so I just finished reading "Little Altars Everywhere", an excellent take you away novel by Rebecca Wells (She also wrote "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood). One of my favorite paragraphs in the book is a narration by the old negro farm hand, Chaney.
"You don't get no trophies for livin the life you born into. It just be your job, and you lucky if you can do the work set out in front of you and not fret if it seem puny. Maybe the Good Lord ain't give us nothin BUT puny things. Little bitta things sparkin through our days and nights. In the fields and in the mornin air, little bitta things that if you blink your eye, they be gone and ain't never comin back."
After I capture the Ya-Ya book back from my daughter, who loves to borrow and is slow to return, I'm going to send these two books to Katrina because I really think she'll enjoy them as much as I did.
Reading Kat's blog always tends to jog my memory banks about things I'd forgotten about. This morning as I was reading about her father's mumblings over the neighbor's dandelion patch, I recalled little bits about being 5 and living in Duluth, Minnesota while my daddy was stationed there. Image flashes of huge mountains of snow, great hills for sledding, and cool spring air full of the scent of lilacs came to my mind. And dandelions, those things were everywhere. Now we have dandelions down here in Arkansas, but they are nowhere nearly as magnificient as those in the north. Being simple country kids I think we thought they were wildflowers of some sort cause I remember picking them and going door to door selling them for a penny to spend on licorace whips. I'm sure those yankee housewives thought we were out of our minds but nonetheless we gathered quite a few pennies that spring.
Life was great!!
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