Stolen Bacon

It's 9:35 p.m. and 79 degrees, you can walk around in a tank top and shorts. There isn't a more beautiful place than the Pacific Northwest when we're having this kind of weather. Tomorrow the alarm goes off at 5:15 and I can go to work and spend the day in an air conditioned office and freeze, kind of ironic.

The mural I'm painting in the entryway to the driver's lounge is taking shape. I've based in some of the grassy hills and the school bus, painted a barn and silo complete with weather vane and lightening rod, a dirt road leading from the barn out to the main road, fencing, sheep and a few random tree trunks, foilage goes on tomrrow. The mountains are based in and it's starting to look good. Can't wait to get the shading, highlighting and details finished so it can be varnished to enhance the color. Acrylics always look rather dull and uninteresting until you're finished and the varnish is on. The most difficult part is painting on a highly textured wall.

My ideas expand as I progress with the painting, never fails and I always wind up painting twice (or more) as much as I had intended at the outset. I think it would look great after all is varnished to put some Diamond Dust on the 'mountain top' snow, it's colorless, just sparkles, maybe even a little on the pond water. Now we're getting 'crafty.'

I was thinking of my mother today Carolyn Delores (Carlson) O'Neall, she died in 1999. I miss her, I can still hear her voice and sweet laugh. She spent so many years in a wheelchair (47) and resthome (19), she had Multiple Sclerosis from the time I was 12 (and believe me - that was decades ago!) I always told people my mother was 3 feet tall and I liked to push her around!

Because she wasn't capable of doing a lot our roles more or less switched and I was responsible for a lot more than most 12 year olds. She couldn't get up the stairs to check my bedroom and there were times when it was a real 'pit' but something in me would prod me to clean it up. It was an old house so not much looked good no matter how big the effort. To this day I have never liked an un-organized, messy or dirty house so it paid off.

At 14 I painted my room a peach color to match the roll of wallpaper someone had given me that had a peach and cinnamon background with designs of a Japanese lady with her paper parasol crossing a little bridge over a pond. My! I thought that was so lovely. I had only enough to paper one wall that had three large built-in drawers.

It was an old, upstairs, room so the walls were only about four feet from the floor and then slanted inward and up to the ceiling, following the shape of the roof. There was no light switch just a bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling that I had to unscrew to turn off. I hated that, being short I had to stretch to reach it and use a piece of cloth to keep from being burned. Being young, I imagined all sorts of creatures, spiders etc. getting me before I could reach the safety of my bed and of course there was always the monster under the bed waiting to grab one of your ankles.

My father, being alcoholic didn't do many repairs and all the years I lived in that house I had a hole in my window that I had to repeatedly cover with cardboard. I eventually drew pictures on the cardboard so it would look a little nicer.

My 'closet' was a broom handle nailed to each wall in the corner of the room with a plastic clothes bag hung on it. My door didn't have a knob on it and the floor was old wood and linoleum. But....I did paint the Japanese lady, parasol, bridge and pond in the middle of the three drawers to match the wallpaper. Don't remember where I got the paint or brushes but then I remember thinking that it looked pretty darn nice. I hated opening those drawers and never used them for clothing because spiders would harbor there. That's why to this day "I HATE SPIDERS!" Now I know where my character developed, or is that why people say I'm a character?

There were times over the years when I would fall into a funk and feel sorry for myself. It didn't last long because I would think about my mother's situation. Not just MS but an alcoholic husband, a mentally handicapped son to be concerned about, never going anywhere except when we would take her to breakfast, lunch or dinner or home for the holidays. No one visiting because my father would dominate the conversations. She never drove a car, never wrote a check, never went to Hawaaii (wait a minute - neither have I, been to Hawaaii, that is!) I've been to Nordakoda, as the Norwegians say it. My Aunt Trudy, my mother's sister told me that she had wanted to be a dancer, sad isn't it?

Following is one of my silly poems, don't know where the inspiration came from but I had fun writing it.

Later,

God Bless

Carol


STOLEN BACON
By Carol Glitschka 3/97


CHARLES MACON STOLE SOME BACON
FRIED IT WITH AN EGG.

GAVE SOME TO HIS CAT AND DOG
BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS BEG.

ATE THE REST HIMSELF, AND HENCE
CHARLES CONSUMED THE EVIDENCE.

FEELING REMORSEFUL FOR HIS CRIME
THE GREASE, HIS STOMACH ACIDS PRIME.

CHARLES' EYES BULGE, BEGIN TO ROLL
THE BACON GREASE DOES TAKE IT’S TOLL.

CAT AND DOG FILLED, LIE CONTENT
NO GUILTY CONSCIENCE OF THEIR OWN TO VENT.

A LESSON LEARNED BY CHARLES MACON
YOU KNOW – THE ONE WHO STOLE THE BACON!