Happy Monday from wintry white East Texas! My family and I had a truly restful “Sabbath” yesterday, courtesy of the snow.
I’m sure native northerners must get a heckuva kick listening to those of us born and raised in the piney woods talk about the snow storm that was a brewin’! Folks in my city were ransacking the grocery store last week, leaving the shelves bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard as they prepared for the inevitable avalanche of snowfall, three inches in all. Will classes be canceled? Will I have to go to work? I mean, it’s snowing! You’d think the sky was falling, not white fluffy flakes of crystalline water ice.
I was planning on working on a short screenplay yesterday followed by my first genealogical quest on ancestry.com. My brother and his girlfriend were going to play Xbox live; actually, my brother was going to play, she was going to provide moral support. 😉 But our plans were incinerated by an infernal blanket of beautiful snow! No Internet connection.
Now you may be thinking, Can’t you write without being online? The answer is no, I cannot; the Web is my primary research tool! You’d be surprised how often I turn to Google or Wikipedia to research terms such as, “1960s board games,” and “1950’s Hank Williams hits.” I need the ‘net. How did people write informatively before 1994?
So, with no Internet, the next place to turn for entertainment and amusement is…no, not a book…TV, of course! But, as you might have guessed, we weren’t getting a signal thanks to Jack Frost nipping at our satellite dish antenna. My brother and future sister-in-law joined our giant schnauzer out in the snow. Jasmine, the dog, had never seen the white stuff before and was frolicking through it all day while the less-enthused labs slept soundly in their Dogloos.
No Internet, no TV… it was time to read. I decided to visit the musty “treasure chest” of articles and other familial findings I recovered from the abandoned room at the farm on Friday. I pulled out the poems and short story my grandfather and Dad wrote, then opened a forgotten file my mom reminded me of. Inside were plays and even more poetry.
I spent hours reading and transcribing these on Microsoft Word. It was sort of surreal to see the words, written decades ago, transition from their old, delicate states on yellowed paper into Arial font on a crisp, white, electronic screen.
One of my grandpa’s short stories is too wonderful and funny (at least according to my humor) not to share an excerpt. It’s called “Sam’s Letter.”
Thome lunatic hath witten me thith letter. He hath witten it upthide down. I wonder if he thought I wath going to wead it thanding on my head…Oh, yeth. I thee! I had it turned upthide down………”Amewica.” Who do I know in Amewica? I am glad he hath given me hith addwess anyhow. Oh, yeth. I thee it ith fwom Tham. I always know Tham’s handwiting when I thee hith name at the bottom of it.
“My dear Bwother—“ Tham alwayth called me bwother. I thuppose iths because hith mother and my mother wath the thame woman, and we never had any thithters.
You may not find that amusing; one of my grandpa’s favorite writers was Mark Twain, and I think that comes through in that example. 🙂
The TV began showing signs of life again last night, and my family and I gathered around to watch a series called “I Survived…Beyond and Back” about people who have had near death – or actual death – experiences and returned to tell about it. I’ll blog about that another day!
Finding and becoming acquainted with my dad and grandpa’s writings makes me even more excited about the “beyond” – heaven. I didn’t know my grandpa that well; his personality was always a bit askew during my childhood due to beaucoups of pain medications to treat the unpleasant repercussions wrought by two plane crashes and a car wreck in which he was hit by an oncoming train!
My dad went to be with the Lord just over a year ago at age 56. In heaven, I’ll have all of eternity to walk and talk with these great, God-fearing, and creative men, men who touch my life each day with memories and musings written long ago. I’m thankful for the snow and the stillness it brings to us Texans. Sometimes there’s more to be heard in silence than we realize…
Stay fit, stay faithful ~<3 Di
P.S. This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but technology failed me again! 😉
