Twisted Sisters

I tried not to lean against anything. Leaning, I Feared, would give the wrong impression. It could seem too casual. Sitting was also not an option. I also did my level best not to make eye contact. This was harder than it sounds. When you are surrounded by people with dentition that resembles broken picket fences and forearms adorned with jail house style tattoos (some apparently made by carving shapes into the skin then pouring India ink into the wound) it's very difficult to look anywhere other than their eyes. Fear causes this.

The name of the bar was "Twisted Sisters." I'm serious. I wouldn't lie about something this deep. The place was run by two little old ladies with deeply wrinkled faces and Tom Waits voices. When they handed you a mug of beer the obligatory "Here ya' go hon" came in a voice that sounded like it was sculpted by cheap scotch and cigarillos.

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Wintergreen

As we drove along the dirt road north of our farm one Sunday afternoon, the color of the sky reminded me of Mom's silver cream and sugar servers when they were tarnished and needed to be polished again.

Since morning, the sky had been cloudy, but now at mid-afternoon, the clouds had grown much thicker and darker. Earlier in December we had gotten a little snow. Several forty-degree days had melted most of it, and the landscape was a combination of dun-colored grass, black tree branches and the russet color of certain oak leaves.

Every year in December, Dad and I went on a Christmas tree expedition, and we were on our way now over to what we called our 'other place' to cut a tree. During the summer, I made frequent trips to the other place, a second farm my parents owned that was about a mile away, to help Dad with the haying or just to tag along when he checked on the corn or the oats or the soybeans.

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Indian Summer

It was a warm, sunny October afternoon one day when I was a kid, and as I walked up the hill of our driveway after getting off the school bus at our Wisconsin dairy farm, I wondered how many more nice days we would have before winter came.

I was still wondering about winter when I entered the kitchen a few minutes later.

"What did you learn in school today?" asked my mother, who was in the middle of peeling potatoes for supper.

Every day Mom asked what I had learned in school, although most of the time I didn't know how to answer because it didn't seem like we had really learned anything.

Today, though, I had something to tell her.

"We learned about Indian Summer," I said.

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Ghost Stories

When I started teaching English at Northwestern Military and Naval Academy near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, nobody warned me about the ghosts.

Northwestern -- a beautiful, old granite building -- was a boarding school. A hundred boys lived there, ranging in age from seventh grade through twelfth, although the building could have accommodated maybe twice as many. The school had been in existence for about a century. The hallway leading to the gymnasium was lined with photographs of all the graduating classes

The entrance to the school featured two wrought iron gates and a long driveway that wound through the extensive grounds. Trees, flowers and shrubs added to the park-like atmosphere.

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Walt Disney's Horror Movie

In 1934, when Walt Disney called for a meeting among his artists, a rumor had spread that he was going to shut the studio down and they would all be left unemployed during the great depression. Instead he personally told them in his own spellbinding way the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which he intended to make into his first feature length film. It was a risk unlike any other he had taken before. The film would cost a million and a half dollars at a time Disney was spending anywhere from ten to thirty thousand on his short cartoons. Doubts came from his wife Lillian and his brother and business partner Roy, who were sure they would be in debt for most of the rest of the lives. Also nervous was Walt's backer Bank of America, who at one point interrupted the production by cutting off his credit. Then there were the heads of the other studios like MGM, Universal and Warner Brothers. They would gather for their weekly poker games at the Hillcrest Country Club and speculate that Walt, who they called "the Mickey Mouse Man", would never succeed, no one would sit still for an hour and a half to watch a cartoon. And the press referred to Snow White as "Disney's Folly".

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The One That Got Away

For years I have been listening to those commercials advising me to get my precious "Kodak moments" on film. And they always make it look so easy too.

Well, all right then, if it's so easy, why haven't I been more successful? It's certainly not because I don't have opportunities. In fact, I had a wonderful opportunity one winter day a few years ago.

Throughout the night it had been snowing here in rural west central Wisconsin, and although I knew my bird feeders were almost empty and it's part of my routine to fill them first thing in the morning, I decided to wait until the snow had stopped. The cardinals, chickadees, juncoes, blue jays, pine siskins, goldfinches, chipping sparrows, nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers--and the occasional downy woodpecker--wouldn't want mushy sunflower seeds. And besides, they still had a little bit left.

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Too Good to be True

The whole thing had started about a week earlier when I was paging through a pet catalog and came across a section devoted to dental supplies. "Simply squirt into your pet's mouth and the specially formulated solution goes to work immediately to kill bacteria and improve dental health," said the description.

At that moment, one of my cats -- who was sitting on my lap -- turned his head in my direction and yawned. A few seconds later, a blast of kitty breath which smelled like rotten tuna fish hit my nose.

"Right," I said, as I paged toward the back to find the order form.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the dental solution sounded like an excellent idea. After all, it wasn't just for cats. You could use it on dogs too. And what self-respecting pet owner doesn't want her cats and dogs to have clean teeth and fresh-smelling breath?

A few days later when the box arrived in the mail, I opened it immediately.

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