The first picture I took showed my stockinged feet sticking out so I bent my knees and took another one.

I’m comfy.

I saw this article on the internet today and immediately thought, “Boy, would these guys like to live in The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse.” Why? Well, because we are located very, very close to a railroad, double track. and have trains go by all the time. It is a big house, with lots of room for family, BUT it is close to the tracks. After we moved here, one lady mentioned to me that the house had been for sale before and she and her husband had looked at it and really liked it and then remarked to themselves, “But look where it is.”  Well, okay.

Sometimes I think of railroad tracks in a great number of places being abandoned and here I live so close to a really active one. Sigh. It is interesting however that my Great-Great Aunt Anna and her husband Ed were killed in 1941 at this very crossing just down from this house. They had one of the first automatic shift cars and somehow at the crossing, Ed must have made a mistake and they went right into the train. He died at once; Anna lived for several hours. Maybe today she would have made it – she was tough.

Grandma was supposed to go with them that day because they were going to visit a minister down here in Kendallville, haveing driven down from Scott. But, for some reason, she did not. My mother says she remembers Grandma going out to the car to tell them she couldn’t go after all. Lots of people later assumed my grandmother had also been killed.

Auntie Annie, as Mother called her, was only a few years older than my grandmother, her niece. Wesley Wisler, Grandma’s father was Anna’s oldest brother. Anna didn’t have a child until she was 42 or so and then, five years later, the little girl, Lucinda Jane, died of menningitis. They brought a doctor up from Fort Wayne, but there was nothing to be done. Later, they adopted a daughter – a five year old- stopping by Grandma’s to exclaim, “Look what we’ve got.”

All those years later, when my mother helped  that now woman clean out the house after the deaths, they found an old built-in medicine chest that still held the prescriptions Lucinda Jane had been given.

Didn’t this start out to be a reference to living near the tracks? I believe it did. Well, that’s what happens when you let your mind wander.

At this moment, I am speechless.

The other day I was digging through boxes and I pulled out an incredibly ugly piece of material – polyester. It looked familiar, but I had my mind on something else and forgot about it. And yesterday I found the material where I had tossed it and tossed it somewhere else, out of my sight. Today I came upon it again and, feeling irritated, I thought where DID this come from. I looked at it more closely and guess what? The material was actually made into a pair of ugly shorts . . . big shorts. Slowly I saw them in my memory. On Quentin’s head while we were playing Monopoly in the den.

I believe Alison had purchased them before she lost weight at the Goodwill and we had all exclaimed, “My Heavens, those are ugly.” So she tossed them on a chair or table or whatever and on impulse Quentin put them on his head as some sort of weird headdress . . . and kept them on. I can see him now – that wide grin, those crazy shorts on his head. Unfortunately I did not get a picture, so I guess I’ll have to just take a picture of the shorts . . . or I could use photoshop techniques. Or not. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

We found this update. Oh, they think they are so bold.

lonzopolooza // May 7, 2009 at 10:05 am

As you read this we are in position in the “underground” poised to pounce. We have made an alliance with the snappy snapdragons and crabby crabgrass. The gnomes are double agents due to their longstanding pact with the fairies and munchkins. Just waiting for the rain signal form the commander in chief Willard Scott.
shazbot

And then ther was this picture with the caption “We are watching.”

We here at the Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse were going to title this post “G.I. Joe” but we think he is probably tired of that joke – and, anyway, he’s in the Air Force. He is my husband’s nephew, LZP’s older son, and I only put it that way because I can’t take a whit of genetic relativity here . . . Darn. Joe can carry a tune and won state contests. Joe entered the Air Force after graduating last year and performed so well on every test and in every class, he has time and time again been moved up all sorts of training notches. I’ll have to get Der Bingle or LZP to explain what it is he is doing, exactly. I’ll just reiterate: He is doing very well. Super well. Great.

He was named after LZP’s and Der Bingle’s Great Uncle Joe on their dad’s side. There are quite a few “Uncle Joe” stories – I think one of them is about how he kept shotgun shells so long that when they went pheasant hunting one year, the shot crawled to the end of the barrel and fell out.

He’s one to be proud of.

**I just got home and saw this and previous remarks about the Dandelion Situation. I couldn’t wait to post the picture, but now I am turning my attention the stragglers talking big out in the grass.

This may not be suitable for some people.

Yes, I found this comment from LZP in response to the post below about teaching Cameron the art of Dandelion Warfare:

Stop the oppression of our little yellow friends. We are planning the great Crabgrass War and enrolling the help of all garden gnomes, elves, but no Fairies… Everone meet at 4:30 at the Kohlrabi patch. Wear a yellow hat and the password is swordfish.

Well, let me point out, oh Weed Expeditionary Force potential enlistees, that when you don the jaunty little yellow hat of  the Dandelion Brigade, you make yourself a REALLY PRIME TARGET. Think Redcoats. Did they tell you to come dressed as commandos? They did not. You are being sacrificed for the dandelions . . . what spray goes on you, does not hit them . . . and they think maybe the mighty AmeliaJake warrior will run out of the stuff. Well, Wal-Mart and I say, HA!

They want you to gird your loins for them. The Great AmeliaJake is putting lions on the grid. Think about it.

Cameron has it in his head he wants to grow some potatoes, so he and Der Bingle went to Baker’s and got sets to plant.

They came home with two other things as well: jalapeno pepper plants and kohlrabi thingies. We have very little sun in the backyard so I let them plant in the tomato space – I guess I’ll have a cherry tomato plant and plant others at Mother’s. I forgot to take a picture of the kohlrabi, probably some sort of shock reaction.

I also trained Cameron in the art of Dandelion Warfare and he started out on this one that had established itself under the outgrown tire swing.

Ah, this will be a scrambled entry because I need to back up and mention Cameron and Der Bingle  were in the back waiting for me when I pulled into the driveway – they wanted to know where they should plant their booty. Cameron first convinced me I had run over his foot when I backed up the car a little; then while I was recovering from my horrified response, he ran in the kitchen and came out with a treat he and Der Bingle had picked up at Baker’s: a cold bottle of Sioux City Sarsparilla. I guess we will be stocking it in the Foo Bar from now on.

It’s sitting here – empty – on the clubhouse, but I brought it in to sit on the kitchen windowsill and take us through the summer with some sort of Peanut Butter Cafe panache.* I am saving the bottle cap to attach to one side of an antique alphabet block for a Christmas ornament; it will join the blocks that have lids from exotic brews from the county fair about four years ago. On that day, we got our old-fashioned root beers and also got the idea to save the caps for ornaments; I put them in my pocket and then we actually remembered our plans and nailed them on blocks in December. We put them up every year. And remember the fair. Now I suppose I will remember the run-over foot gag as well.

*Yes, Foo, I know; the sarsparilla will be have to be ordered into the cafe from the Foo Bar

I gathered my equipment together yesterday at 10:30 am, stood on the driveway looking at the apparently hardy dandelions, and then made my move. They were foamed with Ortho Max from my little green tank. I watched the mixture drip down the leaves and pool at the center; sometimes I came back and gave them a double dose.

Then, toward the end, I went even more crazy – when I was mixing more formula, I  . . . well, maybe I put in a little more of the concentrate than the directions called for. Is there a war crimes tribunal relating to dandelions?

Today we will see if the mission was successful. Results in 24 hours, the green label said. I wonder if I am like General Patton, having fought weed battles in my previous lives. That sentence seems out of place at first, but it was generated by the vision of me, wearing flared out cavalry pants,  standing on the field of battle and surveying the carnage, swizzle stick in hand . . . No, not swizzle stick, swagger stick.

Maybe I breathed in some concentrated fumes yesterday?