Last year I cited two articles I had written about local soldiers and their experience at Normandy on D-Day. You can revisit them HERE.

I am letting my hair dry sans brushing or combing or anything- the prospects are not good and perhaps it has something to do with my last post . . . or not. But anyway, yesterday we went down to Fort Wayne – we being Alison, Cameron, Summer and I – and eventually wound up at Glenbrook Mall where I lost my prescription sunglasses (They were turned into Lost & Found), ate at the Food Court (Where I lost my sunglasses), took advantage of a sale at Yankee Candle and spent a lot of time in Barnes and Noble.

I got lucky at the last place in that 1)  I remembered to check the large print books and 2) found Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul for Kathryn Feller.  I was so pleased to see it because it is chockful of short stories which don’t require a big commitment of energy and can be read over and over just for the pleasure of it.

The book was on the top shelf, so I looked around and spotted a gent with long legs sitting in a reading chair; I approached and asked, “Are you tall?” He said it thought somewhat so I had him get it down for me. Customers sitting in bookstores are usually pretty nice – and maybe he was a store detective keeping an eye on things . . .  so maybe he was wondering if while he helped me someone nearby was lifting a book. Or not. I have a devious mind. (My life is filled with so many tangled webs, I need a big trunk to keep them in. But wait, the web thing is about deceit; I’m not quite sure it is fully synonymous with devious. But then again, where did all these webs come from?)

We got home and there was a big brouhaha type argument between me and  the person who got to stay here in peace . . . and didn’t do one bit of picking up. At all. So I stomped around and fed Sydney and then got to thinking 92 is 92 and perhaps I should get in the car and run the book over to Kathryn. So I did. And then I felt better. Not a whole lot, but some.

When I got back, folks kind of took turns peeking at me to see if they needed to set out flares, but apparently I was stable enough that no alerts were issued.

My good friend Maxwoo – Here & Here –

joined me for a snack.

And then I started a sudoku from my new book.

This afternoon, after a couple of weeks of events and having “things” come up, I made it over to the nursing home for a couple of hours to see Emory and Kathryn. Both of them had gone in the facility van to a restaurant for lunch earlier and Emory was pretty tired, so when dinnertime came around, he convinced the staff to let him skip dinner and go to bed. Kathryn went on down to the dining room to get a cup of hot chocolate and after seeing her settled, I headed home.

Somewhere on Rte. 6  – on the bendy section of  the Ind 9 dogleg – I started thinking that I don’t think of myself as looking the way I do in the mirror, and I don’t mean just shape. We’re talking face as well. Now, I recognize myself when I pass a mirror, look at a picture, or catch a glimpse in a window, but it’s not how I see myself in my mind. I have learned what the mirror says I look like, yet I am always thinking, “How can I look like that?” So what do I think I look like? Well, darned if I know.

Even thinking about what I see in my mind when I think of myself doing something comes up with a blur – just an ephemeral poof person.

In The Music Man, the method for learning to play an instrument was thinking; maybe I can think myself into a good look. Yeah, I’ll have to sit here and think.

The house was sleeping – everything as quiet as a mouse – and I, AmeliaJake the Great and Wonderful Grandma of Limitless Talents, awoke in plenty of time to get Summer to the school for the bus to Cedar Point.

See, she is smiling

as she zips herself into my treasured Pacific Beach windbreaker.

It is supposed to be chilly and rainy there with a possibility of thunderstorms. I think, however, she is going for the “I’m on my own” feeling more than the rides. Last year, we looked up all the ride videos on the Cedar Point site and rode the virtual front seat . . . and oooohed and ahhhhed and fake screamed. This year that was old, dontcha know. She’s a veteran.

When Der Bingle was in Georgia, he introduced me to BC Powder – a pain reliever that came in powdered form (obviously) inside a package that resembled a stick of gum. For some reason, it tickled my fancy – made me think of Driving Miss Daisy, perhaps. Besides the package looked so retro and bland, it gave you a feeling of being young and having your grandma take care of an ache for you. And being powdered, it had a head start on working, especially when I washed it down with half-Coke, half-Diet Coke.

Included on the BC Powder website are interesting little links:

And then they pose the question: How do you take your BC Powder –  Straight Shooter, Tough Guy, Mixer.

Last night, after a long, trying day for me, Der Bingle called to let me know about a commercial he had just seen about Bayer Aspirin going crystal, so I took myself over to CVS and looked to see if Kendallville was up on the times. YES!!! So I bought a package.

And I came home and opened it up and took out one of the little gum-like stick things and poured it in my mouth and it didn’t taste bad, It was a little hard to get into, though. The instructions said to pinch at the arrow and tear. I wound up ripping it open with my teeth.

It tasted not bad at all. But it’s expensive and it is kind of a challenge to BC Powder myself.

Following a period of quiet on the Indiana front, we were surprised by the drone of low-flying plane . . . and then the propaganda came from the sky:

This picture and on the back this message: SURRENDER BEFORE YOU ARE DESTROYED. THE DANDELION WILL PREVAIL. YOU CANNOT WIN.

Well, we have rallied the Home Guard and are refilling our tank sprayers – with super concentrated AmeliaJake Fire.

This morning, driving the kids to school and taking Sydney to the fairground, I was bemoaning the overcast damp morning and the lawn (yard) that needs mowing. And then – over the course of half an hour – the sky became blue and my spirits are raised: I will at least make the front look better and then shower and scoot over to enter the adventure ride of hair coloration. Sounds like what they do to B&W movies.

I received a questioning (literally – ??) comment on the post Dagmar below. I suppose it is not immediately apparent what is going on to someone who does not know the trails my mind can take. Sunday I wandered into the mid-part of a showing of “I Remember Mama” on cable TV and I watched it while doing other things through to the end. I had seen it several times before and knew the plot quite well. And, of course, I am old enough that when I was young the references to the radio show “I Remember Mama” were numerous.

Later while lounging on the old north porch with the early evening’s western sunlight filtering in the windows, I thought of the cozy and welcoming place I feel when I think of  the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse. It simply came to me to have a nice Norwegian young woman come to stay.  Dagmar was a young girl in the book – I Remember Mama – sister to the main character who was played by a young Barbara Bel Geddes (Think Miss Ellie of Dallas if you are old enough).

And then I just thought about characters in general . . .  Well, those characters don’t sit static in the unopened books – I’ll bet they do all sorts of things and grow older and whatever while their nature stays the same. Then, when they sense the book being opened, they scurry back to their assigned roles and look as if they have not been doing anything else at all.

So, when that book fell off the train, and Dagmar fell free of the destruction, I chose to make her more of her oldest sister’s age. You see, she would have those years that were not already outlined  by the book. She could come here a blank slate fashioned by the atmosphere of the book.

I can see the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse in my mind’s eye; I can smell the woodsmoke soaked in the beams; I know it is a place where screen doors slam in the summer ann where people hurry into the warmth in winter. A place where we adapt – another table? Well, run and bring down that one from the attic and  drag in those caned chairs we have been storing in the basement. A place where we put’s today’s gadgets and yesterday’s keepsakes on wide window sills – the blue glass insulators from old telephone poles next to the charger for the ipod. The Depression China catch-all dish next to the acrylic seasonal glass.

But you can’t call it quaint, because the air we breathe in the cafe  is fresh and of the 21st century. It is now in the memories of back then. It is a place where butter can catapault out of  the side-by-side refrigerator that I often call the icebox and hit the floor with a major splatter – eliciting a response common to The Sopranos and never heard in B&W movies.

And sometimes I toy with my mind, playing with the idea that I am just a figment of someone’s imagination myself, maybe a wandering character from a book.  But it is just a game and I know who I am. Why, I’m AmeliaJake.

Remember I mentioned how we were located close to the railroad tracks? Well, last evening, just after it got dark, I heard a knock on the door in the back vestibule. I was fairly certain someone was there because the only people who ring the doorbell in back are the kids, whose purpose it to get the dog barking and me to come to the door. I have learned to ignore the rapidly repeated rings; the dog has not.

There was someone standing there – a young woman in a longish coat with a headscarf and a dated-looking satchel. In fact, I was surprised to hear myself think satchel. She said she was from “the old country” – when was the last time you heard that phrase? probably in an old movie – and had apparently fallen off the train and had nowhere to go. Could I put her up for awhile? She said she would work to pay for her keep and she looked as if I were her last hope . . . but that if I turned her down, she would dig deep in her satchel for a hint of more hope. Oh, and her name was Dagmar.

So, when I said all my rooms were full, I also said that maybe we could move the jigsaw puzzle table out of the furnace room and put a cot in its place. “It’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” I said. This morning, I am wondering why I added that since we were only talking about a short layover of a stay – a catch your breath and regroup stay.

While we were getting her settled in, I remembered the surprise I had felt earlier and asked, “You  APPARENTLY fell off the train?” She said that yes, she figured  the car had jolted and some books being shipped slipped out. “And you, too,” I added, half-statement half-question. While tucking in the blanket at her end of the cot, she nodded and told me yes, and explained that most parts of the  books had been  torn apart but she was on had floated off into the grass of the right-of-way.

I expressed amazement that she wasn’t hurt and suggested that she be checked out. She said she was fine and wasn’t really aware the accident had happened until she found herself on the ground with torn books nearby. Actually, she didn’t remember the accident; she surmised it.

You remember nothing? I asked . . . and she thought about it and said, “Well, I remember Mama.”

In the middle of this past night, I awoke and thought about that, and then I thought of some of the other regulars who have shown up at the vestibule door, stayed a while and either continued to stay or moved someplace and returned to stop in daily. I thought for some time and then I turned the light on and Googled some of their names. I found references to “A River Runs Through It” and “The Grapes of Wrath” and  “The Prince of Tides” and so forth.

With hesitation, I Googled “AmeliaJake.”