Category Archives: The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Memorial Day (Decoration Day) 2020

Operation Memorial Day Flower was completed yesterday with a trip down to Kingman. I drove; the geraniums napped. This was the 21st Memorial Day for Daddy; it seems like yesterday we were looking at the just-placed headstone on that first Memorial Day trip.
My cousins met me at the cemetery – one of them lives a quarter mile (or maybe 1 1/4) from the rural cemetery. Their parents are buried there, as are our grandparents and great-grandparents, and who knows whatever relatives.
We had a little lunch at a picnic table at “The Oasis” in Kingman. It’s the type of place that you hear about in the song “Americana.”
There are little factoids that you hear and remember in life. Here’s one: For some reason, I know the man who taught my father to play Euchre, an Indiana tradition before video games, is buried very close to him. When I was at IU, it seems we all played Euchre – a different era, I suppose.
Between two cemeteries visited on Saturday and the one yesterday, more than one era was included. I’m talking horse and buggy times and hundreds of little stories I heard from my grandparents while knee-high. Everything from Grandma coming home from teaching in a horse and buggy and her father waiting at the end of the drive with a lantern to Great Uncle Roy dying at 12 when Grandpa was four to my great-grandfather’s picture in Civil War blue above the bed where I would sleep when in Kingman.
Daddy was born in 1918 in a pandemic (my grandmother was suffering from it when he was born) and in another pandemic we remembered those who have gone before.

Rain and snakes on TV

Today the driveway has been wet all day, but despite that and storm warnings, I have not seen it actually rain. Storms though are predicted tonight. Maybe, maybe not. We watched a series about people who keep dangerous animals. I know it’s not an uplifting topic, but you get sucked in. One lady was bitten by a rattlesnake while jogging; she was not at all interested in snakes until then. But for some reason beyond my understanding, the hospitalization and pain and only triggered a fascination with snakes – venomous ones. She gets a job in a a snake lab where they milk snakes for the venom for medicine. Nothing happens, she goes home and is bitten by a coral snake while gardening. More pain, a lot more pain. But, no problem, she goes back to work. After some time, another snake bites her through a screen on top of the cage and she has a terrible reaction. Then she starts her own venom collection lab. The show didn’t mention that she sued the man who owned the lab where she had been bitten; even though he had been her boyfriend. I looked her up and so far, she’s still alive.

I won’t talk about the lady who committed suicide by snake, and her name was not Cleopatra.

Now, I hope I don’t have nightmares. I did have a dream a few nights ago when I expressed my opinions and everyone agreed with me. Ron said that must have been when I realized I was dreaming. HA. Yes, very funny, Der Bingle.

I can’t figure out the comments; they used to function. I think sometimes I am informed by email that there is a comment and sometimes not. Sort of like the times – uncertain.

Hello, this is AmeliaJake

Hi there,

I’m been here a couple of times in the last few days, peeked in, sat and had a drink or two and then slipped on out. No one really knew I was here; it was restful.

It has been restful again today. I had intended to write some stuff, say something, as it were, but then something distracted me and I wound up going from one thought to another and then I dozed. So I’m going to continue doing that and assuming a true snuggle position with my cow blanket and my fluffy d

I once had a teacher who when he fell asleep as a student was awakened to hear his professor refer to the arms of Morpheus. He told the class that one day; I imagine he told countless classes that over the years. He was pretty much fresh out of college when he taught us English literature. HA, what a laugh on us. We put him in the teacher category and he was not much more than a kid himself.See, that’s how your mind can hop from one thing to another.

I’ve never forgotten Morpheus. Too bad I didn’t have a story about everything I should have remembered to be educated. He didn’t like Sara Teasdale either. Ah, ST: ”“It is strange how often a heart must be broken
Before the years can make it wise.” ”

I should be back tomorrow.

Horrible day, horrible mood

This has been a horrible day and it is not anywhere near being over. I didn’t break my leg or arm and nothing fell off the house or the car. However, everything seems broken, from my spirit to my nerve to my ability to keep myself from kicking the wall. It is as if I have my own private Santa Ana winds driving me, let’s not use the polite word “crazy” when nuts will do. Batshit nuts.

I can’t stand it when people post something about something being bad then don’t spell it out. Like if you’re going to mention it, then for God’s sake spit it out. I would if I could. Oh, it’s not that I’m keeping facts secret; it’s just that I am really angry with just about everything. If it were 1870 and I I had a horse, I’d saddle it up and ride west. Just go. And it is all my mood.

There’s not much detail to be said about mood, but one question comes to me. Why do people preach tolerance and forgiveness and all sorts of goodness and then when someone needs to let off steam, a therapist or coach or whoever will paste a picture of someone to a punching bag and say, “Punch away.”

And, by the way, I have never put Joe Biden’s face on a punching bag; I can’t remember if I made a paper voodoo doll, though.

Not knowing the end

I remember my mother recalling going into the gymnasium on December 8, 1941 to listen to FDR broadcast that the United States was at war. Of course, when she mentioned it, I knew the obvious: the Allies won. We won. But for the parents of sons of her generation, it must have been a time of intense and immediate dread. Boys were going to die and no one could say they would be “other boys”. There were hundreds of other unknown outcomes and unawareness as to what the war years would entail. Everyone had to live it day by day.

When Chernobyl occurred, it took some time for the world to become aware of what had happened. In fact, it took a very long time for some of the dire possibilities of what might have continued to happen to even be acknowledged.

Now we have social media, as well as 24 hour news programs, discussions, opinions, analysis are a dime a dozen. I’m fairly certain the economy will take some hits; it has happened before. The generations after WWII have had it easy and have taken things for granted.

Now, we wait and see. And if one were to know he was to be killed in two days from a brain aneurysm, would it be better to fret or just do what everyone always says to do in good times – live the moments.

Me and Daylight Savings Time

What is this AmeliaJake/DST thing – not to be confused with Joe Biden’s “thing” with the Declaration of Independence – but it kicks my butt in the spring. I don’t use that last phrase too often, it must have suggested itself when I mentioned JB.

Oh, well, after someone remarked about the automatic time update on all our devices, I went all day yesterday and today with the microwave and oven on standard time. Didn’t even notice it.

Now, it is a quarter of ten at night! Do you believe that? It got truly dark about an hour ago. I feel bad about complaining after having watched a show about Chosin in Korea and how cold it was all the hardships, but the complaining, whining gene is so strong, it just comes out.

I know someone who is at The Lone Cabbage Fishing Camp. I think I should have had a job thinking up names for places; I obviously missed my calling.

Lost tooth

I have a false tooth – a spider bridge. It looks like it is described: It is a tooth with four prongs that attach it to adjoining teeth. It is little and I have to be careful to keep track of it, although it is almost always in my mouth since it fits snugly and isn’t a choking problem.

This morning I was brushing my teeth at the kitchen sink and set my tooth down on the counter, close to the edge. I figured that wasn’t safe so I moved it to the middle of the counter. I started brushing my teeth and then reached for my tooth to brush it. It was gone. Absolutely gone.

I looked and looked and to tell you the truth I don’t know how it happened, but apparently because it is very light-weight, it was touched by something and launched onto the floor. And maybe it was a two-step trip to the floor. I don’t know. I was picking up everything and looking, sticking my hand down the garbage disposal, worrying it had caught on my hand and somehow gone in the trash, scanning the floor over and over again and thinking of finding the magnet on a golf club type of thing to see if that would locate it.

I made deals with higher powers; finally, I saw it. Either it had totally blended in from the beginning or, as I said earlier, taken several hits and shoves.

But it is back in my mouth now – cleaned, of course, and I am wondering how binding those “only let me find my tooth” vows are.