Trucks, Mice and Other Misadventures

 

I suppose the Thanksgiving season started with my truck.  At least it was the harbinger of what November was going to be like.  First were the headlights.  I was reading in my chair by the window when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but headlights.  “Who on earth is coming to my house at this time of night?” I asked the dogs, who were sprawled on the living room rug and offered no answer.  The lights went off, came back on, and after further inspection, I realized it was my truck.  My first thought was that someone was out there.  Surely not.  If they were trying to steal it, they would not want to advertise their presence.  After a few minutes of on again, off again, I summoned my courage and the four dogs and went out to investigate.  The dogs were only too happy for a nighttime adventure, even though they had no idea what it was all about.  No one was there. 

I asked around about what might be causing it and got a few suggestions and a lot of strange looks.  The electrical system was the consensus, varying from a short to a more serious and therefore, more expensive, malfunction.  Then, on Halloween night, of all times, the truck added a new trick.  I was in town for Halloween night and as I returned to my truck, the lights came on.  Okay, I was sort of getting used to that.  I unlocked the door, opened it, and the windows rolled down.  I wasn’t used to that.  The next week, the doors started locking at random, usually in tandem with the windows rolling down.  I promise, I don't make these things up. When the turn signal started coming on by itself, I decided enough was enough.  I made an appointment at the Dodge dealership for an assessment.  My friend Bill, upon hearing the story, asked if they had an exorcist on staff.  His sister was excited.  “I hope they don’t find anything wrong,” she said, with her eyes sparkling.  “Have you read Christine?”  I had read it, as a matter of fact, and I did not share her enthusiasm.  The week before Thanksgiving, I dropped the truck off and they discovered that the problem was in the key fob, not the truck itself.  Several hundred dollars later, my problem was solved.

In the meantime, Stuart Little and all his relatives had moved into my house.  Apparently they got word that there would be a big Thanksgiving dinner and that my dogs spent most of their indoor time asleep in the living room, leaving them free reign in the kitchen, laundry room and back hall. 

In his former life, Bear was a mighty mouse hunter.  He once tore the handle off the desk drawer trying to get to a mouse he suspected was holed up in the drawer.  On that same night, he completely emptied out the bottom section of a bookcase and almost succeeded in upending the couch.  These days, he heads directly for my bed when he comes inside – making sure the other dogs don’t get his spot when it’s time to turn in.

I sent Clay to the hardware store for ten mousetraps.  I already had cheese.  He baited the traps, scattered them around the likely mouse routes and left.  Before he got out of sight, I heard the snap of the first trap.  Moments later, the puppy trotted into the living room carrying a dead mouse still attached to the trap.  She was as proud as if she set the trap herself.  Other than that, the dogs’ main response to the mouse hunt was to raise their heads when they heard a trap snap shut.

The traps were effective, and I started to relax.  We would not have to share the kitchen and dining room with mice for Thanksgiving dinner.  Did I mention that I volunteered again to have Thanksgiving for my family?

I had practiced making Mama’s rolls enough that I was confident that they would be edible and since I had cooked my first turkey last Thanksgiving, I considered myself an old hand at that.  The only nagging worry was the size of the turkey.  I had bought a nine-pound breast and then was alarmed when Google informed me that I needed a pound and a half of turkey for every person at the meal.  Surely that was not correct – I can’t imagine one person eating a pound of turkey in one sitting!  I was expecting about 20 folks.  That would be 30 pounds of turkey!  I toyed with the idea of buying a second bird but decided against it.  A good decision, as it turned out.

I didn’t worry much about the partial deer carcass that the dogs brought to the house the day before Thanksgiving, because I had another emergency.  I woke up that morning with no heat.  I called the repairman and started praying for a quick cure.  My aunt called mid-morning.  “Is there anything else you need me to bring?” she asked.  “You might need to bring a heater,” I replied.  But my wonderful repair guy came through and I thought surely nothing else could go wrong.  I hoped not, because the truck repair and the furnace repair had just about wiped out my bank account. 

While waiting for furnace repairs, I mixed up the rolls, made the cornbread and chopped onion and celery for the dressing and got the turkey ready for the oven.  By my calculation, it needed to go in the oven about four thirty in the morning.  I set my alarm, went to bed and congratulated myself on how organized I was this year.

I woke up before the alarm went off and I stumbled into the kitchen to put the turkey in.  I was so proud that I had it already prepared and that I could go back to bed for a couple more hours.  The dogs didn’t even stir – it was too early even for them.  When I wakened again and looked at the clock, it showed 6:00.  I could smell the turkey already.  I reached for my tablet, thinking I would check the weather, and to my surprise, the clock on it said 5:00.  I looked again at my clock, which still said 6:00.   What time was it?  And what time did I really put the turkey in the oven?  I jumped up and hurried to the kitchen, where that clock also said 5:00.  The turkey was fine – browning nicely and smelling good.  I waited another hour and checked it with the meat thermometer.  It was at that point that I realized I had placed the bird in the pan upside down.  I still don’t know how long it cooked, but it was done. 

I learned a few things this Thanksgiving.  I learned that a nine-pound turkey breast is plenty for 20 people, especially if you have a lot of other food to go with it.  I learned to double check the correct time when putting the turkey in the oven.  I also learned that it doesn’t seem to matter too much if you put the turkey in the pan upside down.  I learned that I need a few more chairs.  I never learned how my clock got an hour ahead or why furnaces always break down at the worst possible times.  But I did learn again that even crises and near catastrophes don’t matter much as long as family is together for the day.

 

 

Paradise, with Thorns

 

Every now and then, a melancholy demon finds its way to my shoulder.  I look around my messy house, usually after I have spent a morning searching for something I know is in this place somewhere, or after the dogs have come back half covered with mud and burrs and I think about all the work that needs to be done on this farm.  The great thing about a big rambling farmhouse is that you have lots of room.  The terrible thing about my big rambling farmhouse is that I never know where anything is.  I still have a room filled with boxes of things I haven’t made a place for yet, in spite of being in this house for two years now.  I have two other rooms I haven’t “got to” yet, which is one of the reasons I have that other room still full of stuff I haven’t made a place for yet.  I also have a character flaw in that I do not put things back where they belong, or if I do put them back where they belong, I forget where that was.  Occasionally I am astonished when I search for some item all over the house and then find it right where it should be.  I spent two days looking for my fall wreath only to find it in a plastic bag, with the other fall decorations, right where it made sense for it to be.

Usually, I turn on the music and sit in the porch swing when the doom and gloom hits.  One mid-morning last week I was engaged in a pity party when my friend Clay arrived.  He barely got seated on the porch before I was reciting my list of reasons to be depressed.  As usual, he took out his invisible violin and pantomimed a sad song.  “You have a sad life,” he said before spreading his arms out to indicate the surroundings.  “Look where you are!” 

I was reminded of that conversation again this morning as I stepped out into the early morning to call the dogs and turn the horses out.  Last night I walked under an almost full moon with no sound of traffic or sirens to wait for the dogs to finish their last minutes duties.  I woke up to a golden sunrise and the smiling face of Sophie, waiting beside my bed for her morning hugs.  The last couple of weeks have been filled with those perfect days that usually occur in October – bright blue skies, fresh breezes, and trees of red and gold.  Gratitude fills my heart when I look around.  I have an embarrassment of riches, even with the thorns and burrs, the broken fences, and the chaos in my house.

Next month we will celebrate Thanksgiving.  My house will be filled with people and we will gather around a crowded table to laugh and remember.  The dogs will be uncontrollable, the food will be bountiful, and we will commune with those we love, not only in this world but in the unseen world.  It’s a good way to begin the final prelude to winter – a memory to keep us warm when the cold rains fall and the snow flies. 

The Piano, a Homecoming

 

We moved the piano back home this week.  I say, “we”, although my main contribution was to worry, watch and take pictures of the proceeding.  I’ve been back in my childhood home for about 2 years now, and we’ve been talking about moving the piano ever since.  If you have ever moved a century old upright piano, you will understand why it has taken so long to do more than talk about it.  It is not something to take lightly.  But my friend David, the most expert piano mover in the country, agreed with me that the time had come.  My friend Clay was put in charge of gathering a crew of strong men, and Thursday was chosen as the day.

This is not just any old piano.  It belonged to my great-grandmother and my first memory of it was in her house on West End Avenue.  I can barely remember her playing it, but I do remember where it sat in her living room.  The piano came to our house after she died and stayed there until Robert and I built our house just up the hill from where I grew up.  I have no recollection of how it got moved to our house, or who moved it.  Robert probably planned it that way. 

I was afraid that I would have a tragedy to write, of a piano crushing a hapless volunteer or rolling down the hill into a gully on the way over.  But with David in charge, things could not have gone smoother and, in no time, it rolled off the trailer, across the porch, into the living room to the spot that 

If this piano could talk, what tales it could tell! It might first tell of its journey to Centerville, a few years before 1900 when my great grandfather, Tom Colley, built a beautiful home for his young bride, Fannie Tate, on a hill overlooking the Duck River.  Tom was 17 years older than his wife – he had to wait several years for her to grow up before he could formally court her.  She attended Dr. Price’s College for Young Ladies in Nashville, where she majored in piano, organ and voice.  Soon after she arrived in Centerville, she became the pianist for the Methodist Church and continued as long as her health allowed.

A succession of little girls joined the family, and each of them took piano lessons, practicing on this piano.  As their competence grew, they were asked to play for “company,” and played for their friends and at family gatherings.  They practiced for recitals on these very keys, and when a little blonde-haired girl unexpectedly arrived, seven years after my grandmother, who the couple thought was their last child, she too learned to play on this piano.  Ophelia Colley  was first taught to play by her older sisters, standing on tiptoe in front of the keyboard, picking out songs and singing at the top of her lungs.  It was at this piano that the seed of Minnie Pearl was planted, the need to perform that became her life’s work.  It was at this piano that she played for her mother’s friends, even when she pretended to be shy and say that she couldn’t play that well.  Her mother would say, “Don’t say you can’t play; go over there and show them that you can’t play!”

The girls remembered their mother playing the piano in the evenings for her husband, romantic tunes that he loved.  As my grandmother, Dixie, grew into her teens, she became a piano player for a local combo, a group that went by the unlikely name of Hard Tater and the Syncopaters.  This piano was where she learned the tunes that were popular dance numbers of the early 1920’s.  Her love for those old songs continued and were some of the first songs I remember her playing as I was growing up.  A young farmer from just west of town heard her play that piano at high school parties and fell in love, marrying her and raising two boys who also loved her music.

The piano was an imposing presence in the small house where my great grandmother lived by the time I came along.  It was the focal point of the living room, the first thing you saw from the entry door.  I was allowed to pick out songs on the keys when I visited, and when I started taking lessons, I was encouraged to show my MawMaw what I was learning.  I remember taking the sheet music to White Christmas out of the piano bench one day and stumbling my way through the melody and occasional chords.  My grandmother thought it was wonderful; I’m sure MawMaw was reminded of her statement to her daughters long ago about showing people you couldn’t play!

When Fannie Tate Colley died, the piano came to live in our farmhouse.  Some of my happiest memories are of my grandmother and me playing and singing.  I remember learning Mr. Sandman and Last Date and Sentimental Journey and all the old classics, and I remember friends coming by to practice singing with my grandmother’s accompaniment for various community events.  One in particular, Steve Turner, was a regular until he learned to play the guitar and accompany himself.  He still talks about those times; his eyes light up when her name comes up in conversation.

When I married and we built a house just across the way, the piano came to live at my house.  My playing skills were never anywhere near those of my great grandmother or grandmother, but I enjoyed plunking away on it.  When we had parties, my more talented friends would play and we would gather around and sing.  I, who eventually took my grandmother’s place as pianist for our little country church, practiced the week’s hymns on that piano and I’m sure the story it would tell about that would have been a sad tale, when compared to that of the past.  The playing by ear gene passed me by altogether and I did well to stumble along with both eyes focused on the printed notes in front of me.

So now, I have moved back to my childhood home and the piano has settled in again, in the same spot it occupied for all those years.  I pulled out some old music today and played a little bit of White Christmas.  I would like to say that the stuck keys and long past-due tuning were responsible for how it sounded, but I’m afraid I don’t play any better than that long-ago little girl who played from that same worn sheet music.  But, it’s a fine thing to just look at that old piano and run my fingers over the keys again.  I didn’t realize how much the living room needed it to be complete.