The Rainbow (Hollis)

The Rainbow by D H Lawrence
Three generations of the Brangwen family - Nottingham - coal - Tom - polish widow for his wife - her daughter, Anna - weds William - Ursula, their daughter - infatuation with female teacher - Skrebensky, Ursula's lover - declines marriage - last sentence: She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in the living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.
Much of Lawrence's writing focuses on sexual relationships including same-sex encounters. This parallels the lives of many of his friends. Women in Love, Lawrence's next novel continues with the story of Ursula Brangwen and her sister, Gudrun.
Glad I have finished this assignment. Plan to take a long break from the works of D H Lawrence.

Big Ideas

We got this guy here in Harper, Leb Putz, who comes up with new ideas all the time, ideas about how to get rich while improving the lot of his fellow man. Yesterday, he was talking about this new project he was working on, a self-serve pawn shop. Somebody asked him how it would work and he said it would use those scanners like they have down at the Piggly Wiggly for people to check out by themselves. I asked how the scanners would work on things that didn't have the little bars and numbers on them. Leb said the new machines did not require any of that. He gave the example of the lady who accidentally ran her diamond ring across the screen and had $25,000 added to her grocery bill. I reckon y'all have heard that old joke before, but seems Leb took it for real. I started to tell him it wasn't true but thought better. Who knows, maybe he'll figure one of these things out some day and end up as a very rich humanitarian. I ain't gonna be the one who discourages him.

Silence

I was watching this silent movie this morning. It was a jungle picture and the actors, as in all the old silent films, used facial expressions to get the point across. Immediately I thought of my grandpa on my mother's side. He was what you might call a laconic man. I bet he spoke no more than a hundred words a day. When he did say something you remembered it because it wasn't all muddled up with a bunch of inane comments. The way he got his message to us was by the look on his face. There was never a doubt when he was happy and you certainly knew to look out when he was angry. I remember one day when I was coming home with a bad report card and I passed his house. He was sitting on the front porch and called me over. I reckon some of his ability to express himself visually was in my genes, because he read me like a book. Without a word from me he knew something was amiss. His stare pierced my brain until I blurted out the bad news about the "D" in geography. Then he spoke.
"Well, boy. It's time like these you need to think of as a starting over point. I know when you come by here next time with a school card, you're going to have an "A" in that geography."
And I did.

Other People's Skin

This morning I went grocery shopping with Dorothy. There was this little kid there making a scene. It seems he wanted candy or some kind of sweets and his mother was dead set against him having it. He was screaming his head off when this young woman just ahead of us in the checkout line said, "When I have children they will never behave like that." When we were back in my truck I told Dorothy I thought that young woman was all set for a rude awakening. If she did have children there was a better than 50-50 chance she would be dealing was the same sort of situation the mother with the candy craver went through this morning. I said too bad she had never seen Too Kill a Mockingbird or if she had seen it she didn't take to heart one of the most important points Harper Lee laid in front of us.

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." - Harper Lee

Speculation

The missing plane. I have been watching TV off and on for the last week and have heard people dead certain they know what happen to this Asian plane that has disappeared. I sent a lot more time reading my book during all this because I hit the off switch when somebody proudly stated their opinion as fact.

All this reminds of the time a few years ago when Mary Jo Spitz disappeared. I mean like poof she was gone. The first person to notice this was Mable Switch who runs Switch Your Style Beauty Shop. Mary Jo was supposed to be there for a 10 o'clock Saturday appointment and she didn't show up. This was real atypical for her and got Mable to speculating on what happened. She called Marcel Dooze, her Sunday School teacher, who told her she had seen Mary Jo talking to a strange man down in front of the drug store.the night before. Marcel called the police and reported this. The police started making up  Mary Jo's profile by calling various people who knew her. Each of these people came up with a theory on what happened to Mary Jo. Sunday morning preachers in various churches requested prayers to go up for the poor girl who had either been kidnapped or had run off with a stranger. This gave the opportunity to hammer home the need for everyone to examine their moral characters and, of course, this shifted the scale to the side of Mary Jo's slip into the world of inequity. All afternoon there were meetings concerning the disappearance. At least one search party was organized. Parents brought in their teenagers from Sunday afternoon activities to go over the facts of life with them. One old woman was heard to say that if Mary Jo came home pregnant, she would accept her and her unborn child regardless of the reason for its existence. By sundown, the general feeling was that Mary Jo had been confronted by the devil and had succumbed to his temptation.

At 8 o'clock Monday morning, Mary Jo sat at her desk at Harper High School preparing for her ninth grade English class. She told Avis Longwood, a fellow teacher,  that she had been called to New Orleans because her Aunt Portia had taken a turn for the worse and was expected to go any minute. She left a note on the bulletin board in the teacher's lounge because it was too early, in her estimation, to wake up anyone to tell them of her emergency. She said she had tried to call people multiple times but it seemed to her every phone in Harper was busy. Her aunt made a quick recovery so Mary Jo was back and ready to resume her life in Harper. In spite of this the rumors kept going. And finally Mary Jo who seemed to be devoted to her spinsterhood and had no real reason to stay here left Harper to live with her aunt.

Now, I am going to keep reading and only turn the TV on ever so often just in case people give up on all this speculation.

Anna Karenina (Hollis)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Two protagonists:
        Anna - older husband - mother - infatuation with Vronsky - adultery - guilt - doubt - depression - suicide
        Levin - rejection - farmer - brothers - acceptance by Kitty - happy country life - search for faith - resolution of search - happy country life
If the book has a third protagonist it is the Russian people who in the latter part of the nineteenth century were searching for a better life. It is interesting for the reader to consider the journey they took after the events in Anna Karena and how after all the events of the twentieth century this search is still their story.

Love Connection

I read this thing on the interweb where this fellow, Chuck something-or-another, claims that the one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person. This ain't always so. And when it's not it's dynamite. My first wife, Bethel, and me had a great relationship and it would have been close to perfect if it weren't for the drinking and running around I practiced during the middle years of our marriage. Bethel was a strong woman who really loved me and she fixed things up. I can't tell you how but she got me straightened out and we lived the rest of our years together in a happy state of things. After she died from cancer I married Mary Kate, the Catholic, mostly to get somebody to help me with my kids. I don't reckon neither one of us loved the other because there wasn't a lot of closeness in out marriage, that is after the first night when we saw we weren't cut out to be lovers. She got hit by a streetcar in New Orleans so I don't know if we ever would have fit together. I doubt it though. Then I met Trixie. Her name ought to be enough to tell you about her. She's the one who ran off with that tent preacher. She still calls every now and then and claims I was the only one she really loved. But I know that can't be true. Now, Dorothy. Dorothy and me both love each other. Maybe not in the same heated way me and Bethel got on. But me and Bethel were real young and needed different things than me and Dorothy require. Well, I gotta run. I promised Dorothy I would help her cook a pork loin for dinner. When I say help I mean stay in the kitchen with her and chat while she rushes around doing her thing. Yeah, me and Dorothy really do love one another. 

What If?

Hollis was here over the weekend, home from the university. I was amused at him walking around with a book in his hand and earphones on his ears. He said he was reading and listening to Moby Dick. In one of the rare moments when he was disconnected from his literature I got a chance to talk to him. He said things were going well, except in one of his classes where they were assigned to play a game called "What if?" He chose the subject of Billy the Kid. I mean like what would Billy have amounted to if he had survived the Garrett bullet or even if he had chosen to walk a path more akin to the straight and narrow. Hollis found this a little disconcerting because he would wander off into theories (he called them hypotheses) so real to him, he found it difficult to get back to what really happened. I told him this may be a good thing if he could just learn to control it. Now that's advice I just pulled out of the air. I have no idea what all that means.
Willene Smartz came by yesterday afternoon to visit Dorothy. A long time ago Willene and I used to go out together some. When I saw her standing beside Dorothy and saw how well-kept Dorothy was and how Willene had let herself go so bad, the first thing I thought of was this what-if game. I quickly got that out of my mind. The result of that what-if was a condition I did not want to consider.

Figuring Stuff Out

Yesterday, somebody suggested another diet plan for me. It says I can no longer eat a lot of the things I was eating because they were recommended by another plan, things I have grown to like: avocados, almonds, olive oil, etc. I can't eat meat or fish, the way they state it: nothing with a mother or a face. Ugh. The doctor that came up with this idea is well-respected and I am sure he knows what he is talking about. He has pictures of arteries, before and after, and the after shots are definitely better. My problem is the fact that over the years I have been exposed to hundreds of ways to make a fellow live a longer, healthier life. Reader's Digest, during my earlier years, was always sitting on the living room coffee table and almost every month they had an article on a cure for cancer. People have been trying to figure things like this out for years. And I reckon people are living longer and old folks do look younger than say my grandparents looked. I may go on this veggie diet, but I may not. My problem is that all these people who "eat healthy" still die. What I am trying to figure out is what kills them.

Living in the Past

Now I ain't saying everything used to be perfect, but I do miss some of the old ways. Like sitting on the porch at night talking with family and neighbors. And everybody sitting around the table together or gathered around the radio at night listening to Bob Hope or some of those people. I admit a lot of things are better and wouldn't want to adopt all the old ways.
We got this woman here in Harper, Prudence Goodwright, who tries to live in the past in everything she does. You can see her walking to the grocery store or drug store in her 1940's clothes with a parasol (I call 'em umbrellas) over her head to protect her delicate skin. I reckon she must have more than a dozen parasols 'cause every time you see her it seems she has different one. Her house is decorated the same as when she and her late husband moved in all those years ago. After he died she sold his car and has never bought another. They say she never learned how to drive. I saw her in the drug store the other day and she was getting them to order her Lydia E Pinkham Tonic and Carter's Little Liver Pills. I didn't even know those things still existed.
I certainly respect the old ways but change is nice in a lot of circumstances. I am sure thankful we don't have to take a dose of castor oil every Spring to wipe out all the winter toxins. That was not a good thing about the old days.

Waiting For Perfection

Years ago, I was riding into town with my grandpa in his new '46 Ford, when we came upon an old fellow who had a successful farm just next to Grandpa's. This old man was walking toward town. Grandpa picked him up and in a little teasing manner asked the farmer why he didn't spend a little of his money and buy a car. The farmer replied, "I'm gonna do that, but I'm waiting for them to get 'em perfected."
I feel the same way about TV cable service. Yesterday, I switched service for the fourth time. I have had satellites that went out on cloudy days, cables that failed in the middle of ballgames, and periods of weeks with a dead screen. Last October, I was having a big problem and the company I was using came out, inspected, and said they had connected my cable improperly. They ran a long wire from the street across my yard and to the connection point at the side of my house. A company was supposed to come out and bury the cable post haste. In January I called again and was told it would take a week or so to complete the task. When I called again last week I was told the burial people were so swamped  they would make no promise about coming out. That's when I changed service. Yesterday, the men came out to connect me up and I spend the whole day changing everything around.
This morning, I was telling the guys down at the barbershop about my ordeal. One guy seemed particularly distressed. He said, "Man, I'm glad that burial company don't work for the funeral home."

What Missing Means

Leffords McKinley was in the barbershop yesterday talking about this old mutt that has been hanging around his place for a year or so. It's run off or something. He says he ain't seen it for a week or so. Somebody said, "Do you miss him?" Leffords said, "Yeah, I reckon I do. I reckon I do miss him." And somebody else said, "Well, you can always get another dog." And Leffords said, "That ain't exactly how I miss him. I miss him like I missed that toothache I had till I got that molar extracted by Doc Withroe. I miss him like I miss mowing my yard in the fall and winter. I miss him like I miss the gruel they served for breakfast in that foster home where I grew up. That's how I miss that old mutt who ate my newspaper every day. Why that old dog never learned where or when to poop and I was always having to clean it off my shoes. Yeah, I miss him a lot." I been thinking about that ever since. Now when somebody tells me they are going to miss me, I'll have to think twice about it.

Grits

I reckon y'all remember Dorothy runs a cafe here in Harper. Since we got married she has help and doesn't have to be there all the hours the place is open, but she still runs it. The cafe serves three meals a day, Monday through Saturday. We are closed on Sunday. Our meals are breakfast, dinner (most people call it lunch), and supper (most people call it dinner.) The breakfast menu is available all hours the place is open, so you can come in at six o'clock at night and order bacon, eggs, and grits. A lot of y'all may not know about grits. Grits is made from corn. Here it is a must with any breakfast meal and now people eat grits with shrimp or fish. Even restaurants up North have started to serve shrimp and grits. We have a lot of people passing through town and Dorothy's cafe is often recommended as a place to get good Southern cooking so many of them come by. Just the other day I was taking to a fellow from Wisconsin and he was asking about grits. After I told him all about it, I had Lester, one of the guys who works for Dorothy, bring out a bowl and offered it to Mr. Wisconsin as a free sample. He told me no thanks. He said he just didn't think he could get it down. His attitude sort of made me mad. I asked him, "Do you think you could get it down if I gave him a big hunk of cheese to wash it down with." I reckon I shouldn't have said that but you know what people say about cheese heads.