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A Chipped Tooth of Honor
Gene is teaching me how to play checkers. He lets me be red and I learn about jumping and kinging. I think about Grady’s checkerboard and think that next time I might just ask him for a game. We could sit outside at his checker table and watch the rich people go in and come out the Ghoston Hotel.
“Cono, there’s a new kid in town. He’s got two pairs’a boxing gloves.”
“Who is he?”
“We call him Oklahoma ‘cause that’s where he’s moved from.”
“Can I box with him?”
“He’s a little bigger’n you are.”
“Don’t matter. Everybody’s bigger than me, ‘cept you.” Being small doesn’t seem to bother Gene one iota. He knows how to stand real tall in his shoes.
Gene gets us together at the open lot. Of course, I put on Oklahoma’s old pair, the ones with the black cracked leather and torn laces. It doesn’t matter. They feel good on my hands, strong and powerful, like I could reach down and pick up the whole town.
“Ready to box?” he asks.
“Ready,” I say. I try to remember the punches Aunt Nolie has taught me, the ones my Dad used to clobber the Tombstone.
Oklahoma and me start out in the center of the lot, without any ring this time, but with boxing gloves on our third grade hands. He comes at me full force. I swing my arms like windmills trying to get a hold of something. He circles around me, trying to get my attention. He’s already done it. He’d gotten my attention alright, right on my mouth. A piece of my tooth is missing. The fight lasts a whole minute. He beat the tar outta me.
“Ya okay, Cono?” asks Oklahoma.
“Sure,” I say even though I got dog tired after one minute. “Jes’t lost a piece’a my tooth’s all,” I bend down to try to find it.
Gene looks in my mouth to see my broken tooth and says, “Cono, ye ain’t gonna find that tiny piece of tooth, not in this dirt’n weeds. Why’re’ ye lookin’ fer it anyhow?”
“Ya gonna try to glue it back on or somethin’?” laughs Oklahoma. I just shrug my shoulders and stop looking. I don’t want to tell them that I wanted to save it for my box of specials.
When Oklahoma has his back turned, I tear off a piece of the worn lace from my borrowed glove and stick it in my pocket. That’ll have to do.
I’m not a good boxer yet, that’s for sure. But at least now I can say that I’ve worn real boxing gloves, felt the goodness in them and have a broken tooth to prove it. Getting a beating in checkers in one thing, but getting a real beating is different.
I get home and show Mother my tooth.
“Don’t worry none ‘bout it, Cono. When ye grow, yer tooth’ll grow right along with ye and that little chip won’t even show.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, by C. Dennis-Willingham
The “real” Cono (in the two pictures below) grew up to be a boxer in the Army. And later, he became the man I would lovingly call, “Daddy.”
by C. Dennis-Willingham
via Broken
Do You Like Children?
Not everyone does, you know. Some adults think that those little human “beans” should sprout somewhere else, anywhere but in their close proximity.
Yes, children are loud and can irritate and inflame every nerve to the point where anti-inflamatories don’t work.
Children are curious to a fault – “How come?” “Why do I haf-ta?” “What’s that?” Those questions sometimes makes us grown-ups feel stupid because we don’t always have the internet at hand for research.
But I know that children are magic.
They help us remember what our long-ago years were like.
They remind us of that feeling of satisfaction when the “ah-ha!” moments pop out of nowhere land.
They refill our imagination bucket with all kinds of sweet nuggets of creativity.
Three years ago and four grandchildren later, ribbons of creativity, once hidden in my DNA, have sprouted again. Thanks to those growing “beans,” the product of their influence is now available here.
Thank you for taking a look.
Shepherding a Herd of Bullheads
Let us congregate together
to reach a common goal
of liberty and justice
to make the people whole.
Secure the budding children
the elderly and homeless
the rejected and the lonely
will no longer be an onus.
How hard is it to link our arms
to agree and thus succeed –
to reach solutions with accord?
It’s very hard, indeed.
images credit
via Congregate
Don’t Wear Clothes
Simplify your life. Don’t wear clothes.
No more mall dressing rooms.
No more decisions on style and color
No more grimaces when you don’t like what you see in the mirror
No more confinement
Instead of clothes
wear a smile
wear your heart on your sleeve
wear invisible jewelry that sparkles and shines
wear yourself
and dance knowing everyone is probably watching
That’s okay
They are waiting to grow into their skin so they can be like you
image credit
via Simplify
The Shadow Beast
I dreamt I sat on a low branch of Grandfather tree. It was dark when the man walked toward me, twigs growing out of his head like petrified breadsticks.
I reached down, determined to break off each one so they would not interfere and grow roots to our ancestral tree. Each time I snapped one off, his twigs became thicker and stronger, harder to break off.
Still dreaming, I went to bed and saw the shadow once again- not from my friend the pecan tree lurking outside my window, but from the silhouette of the man I knew him to be.
It was not the Shadow Beast, but a real beast, lurking in the shadows.
In my waking moment, I knew he had to be stopped.
Excerpt from a CD-W novel
photo credit
via Silhouette
The Darkness Within
She downed the last of several shots. A deep hole waited, someone she knew to be placed inside.
She tripped over pebbles and glanced up ahead. Almost there now.
A small gathering stood around the gravesite. Had they started without her?
She took in their glares, their finger points. Tardy like a schoolgirl. Shame on me.
She didn’t see the hole.
Falling, falling, falling. She landed on her side, her dress torn and ruined.
She pushed a palm into the soft dirt but couldn’t sit up. Stuck. Had this grave been dug just for her? Had they been expecting her? Her nails, ruined by the earth’s filth.
“Six feet under and no place to go?” her mother whispered. “You’re a disgrace. Now get up and get to work. Sofie!”
“Sofie? Sofie?”
She turned and found herself in the reflection of her friend’s eyes, her own muddled haze lessening.
But the hallow void beneath her opened its mouth and called to her, threatening to swallow her whole.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” The skinny preacher mumbled.
For the most part, the sky remained clear. The few scattered clouds resembled claw marks as if God, if there was one, was desperately trying to scratch his way in. Or perhaps, out.
(Excerpt from a CD-W novel)
photo credit
via Tardy
I Only Like It Hot
Each time I see the color pink
I blink to clear my eyes
because that hue before me
makes me want to immunize
It’s not that I hate girly things
assigned to that one color
it’s just that if I owned that tint
my closet, it would holler
But any other color always
makes my eyes squint smiles
I wear them any time or place
with flair, in every style
There is one way that’s quite okay
(and nothing is for naught)
in nature pink that sizzles
is the one that I call “hot.”
photo credit
via Blink
INSPIRATION AND MY IM-PERFECT-TION
If you study the words and actions of Dr. Martin Luther King, will you become a better person? (inspiration from Tony Burgess Blog and JohnCOYOTE blog)
If you bring your experiences to the surface, can you be a better actor? (inspired by RIVRVLOGR blog)
If you study another human being, the way they walk, the sparkle in their eyes, will you like what you see? (inspired by fauxcroft)
If we force ourselves to unchain our words, will be become better writers? (inspired by Scribbled to Paper)
If you want to understand colors and shading, can you watch a tutorial for inspiration and create something beautiful? In this case, yes. (inspired by Stoneronarollercoaster)
If you study your image in that reflected glass, do you like what you see? (inspired by Lifelessons)
And, how I could go on with how you all, dear bloggers, inspire me.
I did not study up on how to be a grandmother.
But being one has inspired a new creativity inside my very core.
Explore outside the box and BE PERFECT IN YOUR IMPERFECTIONS!
via Study
Toothless in a Fur Coat
Hardly Saddler’s rolled up his wagon, pitched a tent and started up his Medicine Show. He told us about his elixirs and about how, if we bought them, they could treat most of our ailments. If he had an elixir for meanness, I would have bought a bottle right then and there, mixed it into a Pearl beer and taken it straight home to Dad.
Hardley Saddler had all kinds of shows to see and games to play. One of them was a contest to see who could hammer their one big nail the fastest into the wooden board. This contest was only open to girls, since there were other contests open for boys.
“Hey, look who’s enterin’ the contest,” Dorothy says , spitting a watermelon seed at my face. I spit one back and see Aunt Nolie and Genevieve, Dorothy’s sister, step up to the boards.
Besides Aunt Nolie and Genevieve, there were five other ladies lined up at the board. The whistle blew and there they were, those gals pounding their nails in such a hurry you would have thought they were putting up a church roof to keep Jesus dry before a storm. We were all cheering and a hollering for our favorite girl and wouldn’t you know it? I was still picturing Freezer’s eyeballs twitching and Aunt Nolie hammering something else.
Aunt Nolie got real close to winning, her face just dripping with girl sweat. But Genevieve slammed that nail in quicker than a racehorse coming out the gate.
After Genevieve was declared the winner, I couldn’t believe what the first prize was. Genevieve had won herself a brand new, over-the-knee fur coat. Even the folks who had rooted for someone else to win were hooting and clapping that at least one person in Rotan owned a new fur coat.
The next morning peeked out the window and saw Lottie, Genevieve’s mother, standing outside her cabin, a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip, her bare feet in the snow. She looked over and waved to me like she does every morning. But on this particular day, she waved like she was the Queen of England except she was wearing nothing but a toothless grin and a brand new over-the-knee fur coat.
Ain’t that a pisser?
A true story from No Hill for a Stepper.
photo credit
via Particular
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 