Guess who Tom & I are meeting with!

CHEERS!!

Dee

Hint:  We are going over to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Gulfport.

P.S.  We’ll get pictures to share here, hopefully.

I’m off to see one of my doctors for a checkup.j

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee
GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:

1) No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats..
2) When your Mum is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can’t trust dogs to watch your food..
6) Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandma’s lap.

GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:

1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don’t hurt.
3) Families are like fudge…mostly sweet, with a few nuts
4) Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground…
5) Laughing is good exercise. It’s like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy..

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD

1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional..
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.
4) You’re getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It’s frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don’t believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.

SUCCESS:

At age 4 success is . . . . Not piddling in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . Having friends.
At age 17 success is . . . Having a driver’s license.
At age 35 success is . . . Having money.
At age 50 success is . . . Having money..
At age 70 success is . . . Having a drivers license..
At age 75 success is . . . Having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . Not piddling in your pants.

Bless his heart, Tom tells me he thinks I look great, even for women much younger than me.  (Would that be 64 1/2, perhaps?)  Watching the Academy Awards last night with all of the gorgeous (although some not so) older women in beautiful gowns didn’t help.  Of course, plastic surgery and botox would do wonders for me, too, I’m sure.  But, I suppose “reality” is where it’s at with God, right.  He knows and it is what’s inside that matters, not the outside.  This earthly body is rapidly shutting down I think some days.

I’ll try to remember all of this as I go get my picture taken in a few minutes at the Department of Motor Vehicles, where the cameras are not known to be flattering to begin with.

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3:30 p.m. Monday

Didn’t finish here.  Had to go.  Got my new driver’s license.  The picture isn’t nearly as good as last time.  But, hey – I smiled!  Don’t look like a 10 most wanted criminal, anyway.

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I didn’t finish answering all of the questions from Friday.  Here are the rest.

To Wendy:  There are several Dodd families in Picayune and I know some of them, but not Irene Dodd.  I even looked in the phone book.  I’ll ask Tom to see if he knows her.  Interesting question!

To Janice (Garrison):  I stopped practicing law in 2002 after losing my last full time job in 2000.  I free lanced after that, but my health, due to my diabetes, took its toll, so I went on a “leave of absence” from the Louisiana Bar Association, during which I had 5 years to be re-instated.  I couldn’t afford to keep up the bar license fees or continuing education.

All in all I practiced law about 10 years, plus 2 1/2 years in school as a law clerk for a solo practitioner in New Orleans.  Those years were full of challenge and sometimes were very rewarding.

The case that means the most to me was one I took on in a post-divorce situation to get a 30’s something young black mother of 3 child support.  I blogged about it here on Jan. 7, 2009.  There were other several memorable cases, but that one meant the most to me in feeling like I helped that young woman come into her own after years of being down-trodden and emotionally abused.

Thanks for the great questions, Janice!

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I got the following in an email from a good school friend and was very touched.  I’m feeling not only very protective, myself, today for my daughter and for my Mom, I feel sorrowful over my mom, who at 88 is rapidly losing her short term memory.  I am making plans to go out to see my mom in about 3 weeks and to stay for a while.  At the moment I’m feeling like I’m  mothering both my sweet children and my sweet mom.  I’ve become the mother to the world in some senses and ask you to pray that God may grant me the graces I need, wisdom, strength and fortitude to carry on in the face of many obstacles.

May I be the kind of mother portrayed below.

GOD’S WINGS

After a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, forest rangers
began their trek up a mountain to assess the inferno’s damage.

One ranger found a bird literally petrified in ashes, perched
statuesquely on the ground at the base of a tree. Somewhat
sickened by the eerie sight, he knocked over the bird with a stick.

When he gently struck it, three tiny chicks scurried from under
their dead mother’s wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of
impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the
tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing
that the toxic smoke would rise.

She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her
babies. Then the blaze had arrived and the heat had scorched her
small body, the mother had remained steadfast …because she had
been willing to die, so those under the cover of her wings would live.

‘He will cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you will find refuge.’
(Psalm 91:4)

Being loved this much should make a difference in your life.
Remember the One who loves you, and then be different because of it.

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May God bless us all.  Dee

Tell you what – if I don’t have, can’t find an answer for you, I’ll do some research to try to do so or pass your question along to someone who does have an answer for you, how about that?

In exchange (to be fair here, you understand), I’ll ask y’all a question.  Just one.  Okay, more than one.  Y’all know I can’t stop at one  question, after all.  There’s too much of a journalist left in me.  I always want to know the who, what, where, when and how (and/or why).

So, enlighten me a bit.  I could use some enlightening this morning, I’m telling ya.

Where are you coming by here from, i.e., what state, town, country, place?  I’m just curious about how you’ve ended up here at Finding Direction, how long you’ve been dropping by and for what reasons.  In other words, tell me a bit about yourself, even if you wish to remain anonymous.

That’s it!

So, let the commenting begin.  If you’ve never commented before, all you have to do is fill in the first box with your name, or pseudonym, or “Anonymous,” and the second box with your email address (which will not show on here, but only verifies to me alone that you’re a “real” person.   The third box, which says URL, is only for those of you who have a website address you wish to post.  If you don’t have a website or don’t wish to reveal it, to comment just leave your/a name and your email address, which comes only to me.  That’s it!  It’s simple.

Can’t wait to hear from you with your questions and revelations about yourselves.

Cheers!  And many blessings to you today!  Dee

We are NOT stuck in London, but here in South Mississippi. 

And, while we could use all the cash we can get, if you have some extra around you’d like to send me, email me (I don’t think my email account has been compromised) and I’ll give you my phone number to then call me, where you’ll instantly recognize my unique Texan/Virginian/Mississippi/Louisianan southern drawl and cheery voice, and I’ll give you explicit instructions about how to get money to the “real” us.  ha!

That way, we’ll get to talk and get better acquainted, which will be fun, you’ll get the joy of being of great service to me, i.e., giving generously from your heart . . . and pocket book/wallet . . . while I will be overjoyed to have such a loving, giving, caring best friend forever (BFF), which seems to be the really “in” thing to have these days.

So, all of this will hopefully work out well – eventually.  Assuming you haven’t already forwarded money.  If you have, then call me anyway and we’ll commiserate about your financial loss and what a great friend you already tried to prove to be to me.  Hey – that would be tops in my books in a friend whom I only knew/know by internet in the first place.  (Although some of you I do know, and quite well.  I figure that those of you I know quite well wouldn’t begin to even think about giving me cash, so that is one less worry in my mind.  )

Seriously, if you got a message from me like that, email me (use the email address here on my blog if you have no other) and let me know.  I don’t have everyone of y’all’s email addresses and would like to reply to apologize for the inconvenience, even though it was through no fault of my own.  I’m just glad it wasn’t worse.  Although I DO really miss all of those minute details of your lives I read through way too many hours of the day.  In fact, that, so far, has been my biggest loss.  I cannot get to my facebook page to keep up with you.

So, email me & comment here periodically as you would on FB, so that I can better keep track of you and your goings on.  We’ll start a brand new social network here of our own.  Plus, there is no paid advertising here to bug you.

That’s it for now.

Oh . . . yeah . . . to let you know what’s going on right now this moment in my life – it’s a cold, but sunny bright Monday morning, March 1, and I’m “fixin’ to” go get a shower and get dressed here at  10:30 a.m.  I know.  I’m being really lazy this morning.  But we had a big weekend on the Mississippi gulf coast I’m recovering from.  You see – news alert – tomorrow is my birthday and 19th wedding anniversary and Texas Independence Day!!!  I mean, you’ve GOT to celebrate three big events like that all on one day, ya know?!  We spent the weekend away to start some serious celebrating and brought home a wonderful gift to ourselves I’ll have to photograph to show you here, maybe for tomorrow, whata ya think?  Would you like to see it?!  It’s incredibly neat!

Cheers! Remember to comment and email me so you can get my phone number (or give me yours) so we can talk!!!  I’d LOVE that!!  That would be the most wonderful birthday gift of all.  Truly.  To talk with each of you.

Dee

You will note, when you squeeze your eyes really hard to read the sign, that you are not only “welcome,” but that they want you to drive safely.  You will also note in the photo, if you look hard enough, that there is a green sign to the left of the welcome sign that says “Shawnee Town Branch.”  That is (so you’ll be in the know) the town branch of the Shawnee River.  I suppose, although there were no tour guidebooks to inform us, that the “other” or the rest of the branches of the Shawnee River are out in the country around, rather in town.  Although, I would imagine that in the beginning when (again I suppose not having a guidebook) the Shawnee Indians named the creek/river, there was no town, so alas, I know not whence the name came.  From a bunch of white men wanting to settle the area, I imagine, and saying, “Look.  Here’s a nice creek we can put our town around and not have to worry about where our sewage runs off to,” or some such.  Just imagining.

Uh – back to our trip.

The photo above was taken from the front yard of the aforementioned Legion Hall, which is a log cabin, you’ll note.  (I’ll post it again here.)

Looking straight on at this photo, the Town Branch of the Shawnee River/Creek is to the left.  We stopped here and spent some time because (1) there was a nice big area for parking, (2) the “boys” all wanted to go down by the creek next to the cabin and pick up rocks as souvenirs of their trip back to this place (some people are more easily satisfied with simple remembrances than others and they all thought rocks might be just the thing to bring home), (3) they wanted to throw some rocks, as well, and (4) the main reason we stopped here – this is where their dad’s movie theater was.  I know.  The rest of us were really surprised.  And, it was even the Legion Hall back then.  Mr. Andrews leased the building to run his theater/movies two nights a week there in town.

There is a small “add on” at the back of the building (about the size of the “throne room” in the back of the Flippin jail, but a bit deeper) where the projection booth was.  They sold concessions and everything there.  This part of Yellville I thought was most quaint.

The next photo I’m going to show you (and the next story) has to do with the little cafe right across the creek on the other side of where the log cabin was and the town sign.

The cafe was in that building behind the H&R Block sign on the “town” side of the Shawnee Creek with the theater in the background.  Dickie told us there was a big scuffle and shoot out there one time in which the police chief intervened.  Several people were shot, including the police chief, and he never was the same again.  Messed him up in the head, Dickie said.  I don’t know whether that was from being shot in the head or from the trauma of having a shoot out in the local cafe in such a small place as Yellville.  Hard to say.

Another big story Dickie & Jimmy both told had to do with either the bank or the post office over on the other side of the big courthouse (look back up at the Welcome to Yellville sign photo and you will see the tall courthouse through the trees in the background.  Either Bonnie & Clyde robbed the bank – or the post office – or the film “Bonnie & Clyde” was filmed in one of those buildings portraying their “real” robbery years before at either/or establishment.  As usual, Dickie & Jimmy had vastly different “facts” to support their individual stories and the rest of us (nor you, I would imagine) could ever get it all straight.

But the two old, historic buildings were very interesting and beautiful, actually, and if you tried hard enough, you could imagine Bonnie & Clyde on the sideboards of their fast car making an even faster getaway from whichever one they robbed, the bank or the post office.  Or, you might even imagine a movie set being there in downtown Yellville.  Made me want to go back and watch Bonnie & Clyde the movie again just to see if I could recognize Yellville in it.  Or not.

Moving on – we drove around to where the boys thought they “might have” lived there.  It was either a duplex or like one, with the Andrews family living on one side and the Jollys (Tom’s mother’s sister & husband & son, Oliver) living on the other.  Times had obviously gotten hard by then as the place looked really run down, except for some bright blue paint.

We had now been to the four little towns the boys had most wanted to visit.  Gassville, Cotter, Flippin and Yellville.  Now we went in search of more touristy things to see.  We couldn’t go anywhere around, though, without seeing references to trains, as they were such a large part of the communities there back then.  On our way back over to the Bull Shoals Lake and Dam we passed these train cars and the guys just had to stop.

Oliver especially loves trains and just had to explore these old cars.  He & Tom went over to see all they could while we sat in the van with the doors open enjoying a little quiet time.  Oliver has a huge train track/trains set up in his home, or at least did at one time.  He loves trains.  Here he is thinking back to how it used to be in those days when people rode the train a lot.

Tom talks a lot about raining trains when he was a little boy, starting as young as five, by himself.  He apparently wasn’t scared or afraid at all to ride the trains from where they lived here and later in south Arkansas over to Memphis to see and stay with his dad.  Amazes me.  Completely.  Scares me to death to even think about putting a five year old little boy on a train by himself to ride several hours to Memphis from whatever little Arkansas town he started in.  But, that would have been 1949 or 1950 and times were way different.

Sometimes, Tom says, his dad was late to pick him up at the train station, so little Tommy would go inside and find someone nice there who worked there (traveler’s aid, or something) to give him something to drink and/or eat while he waited for his dad.  I wonder if I would have been so grown up feeling and so brave.  Do you think you would have been?

That’s it for today.  Next time we’ll take a scenic tour of the Bull Shoals Dam/Lake area and see exactly how the dam was built back then beginning in 1947.  Interesting stuff and gorgeous country.

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve been experiencing the blahs and not feeling well, either.  Everything is a chore.

Plus, I gained weight over the holidays and am having trouble getting that back off.  So, this photo pretty much sums up ME today.  Well, sans the cupcakes, but they sure look tempting!  I have more “chores” to do in town this afternoon, but think I may have to just hit the sofa instead like my mirror image above, what’a ya think?

I promise I’ll be back tomorrow with the latest offering from the Andrews’ Family Arkansas Memories Tour of 2009 to see what the Yellville, Arkansas Legion Hall has to do with the Andrews boys.  In the meantime, it’s cold out and I’m “veggin’,” or maybe “cupcakin’” nearby.

Dee

Tom sent me this touching, sad story from a friend of his this morning and I have to share it with you.  The Arkansas Memories Tour of 2009 next post can wait another day.

I was especially thinking about Greg in his ministry as a funeral director as I read it, for reasons you’ll see as you begin to read it.  I was also especially thinking about Patrick as he grew up in Appalachia and the hollers and backwoods of Kentucky, among other places.

Here it is:

As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave side service for a homeless man.

He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery in the Kentucky back country.  As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost; and  being a typical man I didn’t stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight.  There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.

I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I’ve never played before for this homeless man. And as I played ‘Amazing Grace,’ the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together.

When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and  started for my car.  Though my head hung low, my heart was full.

As I was  opening the door to my car, I heard one of the worker  say, “I never seen nothing’ like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.”

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Did I say that I also especially thought of Greg & Patrick because they both have such grand senses of humor?  I really was thinking of both of them as I read through the story Tom sent, thinking it was a “real” one.  When I finished, I was so surprised that I started laughing out loud and could not stop.  I was just on my first cup of coffee and still half asleep and it woke me up in a hurry in the best way there is.  With unexpected humor.  Funniness.  I called Tom, still laughing, to tell him how he’d just made my morning better.  As he does my day, each day.  And my life, each and every day of my life.

Hope you’ll share this story with someone today and make them laugh, too.

Cheers & many blessings to each of you today.  Dee

Dickie, Jimmy, “Tommy,” Debbie and cousin, Oliver looked bright and happy.  The day was gorgeous and they were ready to go.

We had had such a great buffet brunch the morning before nearby that we decided to go there again to take Oliver.  However, fate had other plans because when we arrived at the Gaston Resort near Bull Shoals Lake on the White River, the electricity had been out for 45 minutes.  We were totally bummed out and tried to figure out where we could get a good breakfast on a Monday morning among the small towns around.  Turned out to be nowhere, so we headed back over to Mountain Home, the largest town around, to see what was cookin’.

Found a great little local cafe and chowed down, one of our favorite things to do, although somehow the whole four days we managed only two meals a day, the days being so full of sightseeing with no places around at all to eat.

(Left to right, Steve (Debbie’s husband), Oliver, Tom, me, Jimmy, Arlinda, Dickie, Joyce and Debbie.)

Now we were on our way, once again.  And, once again, we had to take the “old highway” over to Flippin, which meant going through Cotter again.  When we got there it was late morning but not much was going on.  It looked rather deserted.

It also didn’t look like much of a town.  It lacked the quaintness and charm of Cotter and we’d been to so many of these small places in search of old theaters and houses that I decided all of these Flippin towns looked alike.    In fact, we couldn’t find where the theater had been in Flippin, so went in search of where the boys had lived.  This was the only little house they remembered there and Oliver couldn’t remember where he had lived, although he knew it was nearby.

We were about ready to go on through town when we saw an interesting sign, so turned down the street there to see what it was.  This is what we found.  What’a ya think?

We couldn’t believe it, but Dickie & Jimmy said that the city jail in Cotter had been nearly identical in size and construction.  It was tiny, y’all.  And really intimidating to me, who is terribly claustrophobic.  It was creepy and scary.  Then Dickie told us that when they lived in Cotter, a feeble minded man who worked for their dad at the Paradise Theater was jailed one night in the Cotter jail, down near the White River, after some kind of altercation.  During the night a fire broke out and the man was killed in the jail.

All of this, of course, prompted Tom & Oliver & Steve to get out of the van to go peek in the barred door of the jail.  They nearly had heart attacks on the spot when they peered into the inky blackness inside.  Literally.

Here’s what they saw, except this was taken with a flash on the camera and not in the pitch black.

They thought it was a real man in there when they peeked in.  Scared them all three.  Pretty grim jail, if you ask me!  And, right in the middle of a neighborhood, not “downtown,” such as it was.  Although, back in 1928 when it was built, there probably wasn’t anything around it at all for a long ways.  (If you look closely, you can see the “throne” seat at the back.  From the outside back you see where it just would have drained down on the ground.  Not very sanitary to say the least, but then, I suppose it was the “modern” thing at the time.  Indoors, anyway.  Of a sort.  My goodness!

That stop abruptly ended our Flippin tour, so we headed on over to Yellville, where we’ll pick up next time.  I leave you with one more photo to ponder and a question (of course) to think about and comment on.  What was the deal with the Legion Hall below in Yellville and the Andrews/Jolly clan do you suppose?  Let’s hear it.

Be back Monday!  Cheers & have a great and blessed weekend y’all!  Dee

Cheers!  Dee