I think I was about 4 or 5 years old in this picture, so it was probably taken circa 1979. All of these photos seem to be from around the same time. These are the cute ones, if you're really good maybe I'll dig out some embarrassing ones later. This one was taken in my parents front yard. In the background behind the trees you can just make out our crazy neighbor's house across the road (I didn't say street because it was a road. We lived in the kun-tree.) Crazy as in give your wife $25 a week to buy groceries for your family with three kids, then yell at her when there's no food. When she finally leaves you, follow her around town and "accidentally" rear end her. Stockpile the house with guns and refuse to let her get her belongings without the sheriff in tow. I was always careful to be extremely friendly to him, waving nicely any time I saw him. Hi, John! Please don't shoot in our direction! You scare the crap out of me! Wave, wave.
I'm certain my mom made me wear the dress (It's pink! And it has lace AND bows! The evil trifecta!) and my sister somehow coaxed me into the barettes. Sometimes when I look really closely at these pictures I see Arwyn's little face in mine. It makes me feel strange. Good in a way, to know that I was ever really that cute. Dreadful in other ways, such as God I hope she doesn't have my skin. But everyone says she looks like her Daddy anyway.
There is now a fence where the grass ends and those tall weeds begin. Looks like somebody needed to bush hog the field. That field is now home to my dad's pet cows. He recently told me he's been building fence since February. That sounds like a lot of fence, but maybe he's just taking his time. Or he's slow. The fence was a pain when we were playing ball in the yard and it went over the fence, as it invariably always did. Time to climb the fence, and did I mention the barbed wire at the top? My brother could jump over the fence without climbing it. If I tried that, I'd end up eating a faceful of grass with a bloody stump where my leg used to be.
Now this is a good picture. I am wearing some horrific monstronsity of a patchwork dress and I think it's even velvet (What is that? VELVET???). It looks like it may have been two sizes too big. And I am rockin' the knee socks.
There are so many things to tell about the background, I don't know where to start. I am sitting on top of the woodbox. My dad built their house and it used to be heated with a woodburning stove (before the attic caught on fire, but that's a whole 'nother story.). There was a little door cut into the side of the house. The wood was kept on the other side of the fence. So first you had to throw it over the fence, then carry it to the house, then throw it through the little door where it landed in the woodbox. Filling up the woodbox was bad, but the worst part was the actual procuring of the truckloads of wood we needed to heat the house all winter. We would spend a whole Saturday driving back and forth to the lumberyard, getting load after load of wood. It was torture. I would do anything, ANYTHING AT ALL to get out of this. The best year was when I got contacts and the debris kept blowing into my eyes and I had to stop every five seconds to rub them.
The piece of wood directly above the woodbox was the contraption that kept the lid open while you got wood out of the box. What is with the electrical outlet up there? If you can't tell from this photo, my dad is a lover of all things wood. He used to have a shop behind our house and at one time attempted to make a living selling things he made. He woodburned the sign? plaque? piece of wood with the longhorn and his initials. Everything he made had his initials on it somewhere. To my left is the chimney and beyond that is where the woodburning stove was. My brothers used to love to torture me by threatening or actually putting me in the woodbox and shutting the lid, sitting on top so I couldn't get out, etc. while I screamed my head off. Good times, good times.
Several years ago my dad converted the woodbox into a built-in couch. Don't ask me how, but he did. I can't say I was sorry to see it go. The stove is still there but no longer in use. Now they have fancy-schmancy electric heat.
I've been making some changes to the ole blog. There could be more to come, so stay tuned!
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