Welcome back to Ridin’ Out the Recession. I hope everybody’s doing good this morning! I feel just great myself today thank you! Why don’t you guys come on in and pull up a chair, and let’s get started.
Shelby Lynn and Nana:
Our granddaughter, Shelby spent the night with us last night. She’ll be four in April. We don’t call her Shelby, we call her Shelby Lynn, and I guess she’s hung with that for life, at least in regards to her Nana and Poppa!
That little girl is a mess. She’s red-headed like her Dad Mark was when he was little, but his hair turned much more, brown tinted as he grew older. I still call him Red to this day. I slip up every once in a while and call him Mark, then I get mad when he doesn’t respond. He tells me, “How do I know you were talking to me? You call me Red!” He does have a point.
Anyway, Shelby Lynn absolutely loves it out here with us. She’s about three-quarters Tomboy anyway, so out like this is literally, “her cup of tea!”
She loves us all, but boy, her and Deb have something special. She loves her Nana, and I believe her Nana just might love her back. She calls Deb “her good-girl Nana!”
You oughta’ see those two out in the yard. Good gracious if they ain’t a pair. Tweedle-dee and tweedle- dum, peat and repeat, those two are joined at the hip most times!
She’ll get her little pedal style “three-wheeler,” and make Deb ride her tricycle…what a sight! The four year old in the lead, and her 53-year-old “Nana” peddling like, well let’s just say peddling really, really fast on that dern’ tricycle trying to keep up! Unbelievable!
But you know what? We talk about memories Deb and I experienced growing up, and the good times of doing so. Life was tough back then, just like we’re in some tough times today, but look at the memories Deb’s creating for that little girl. Times she’ll always remember and cherish, of her and her Nana and the times they had!
Who knows, thirty years from now, little Shelby Lynn may be sitting in a chair just like me this morning, writing of her own wonderful “childhood memories,” passing them along to yours and ours, grand and great-grandchildren? Wouldn’t that be something?
Please my friends…love your children and your grandchildren. Pass along memories to them, just as Deb does. They are the future, and we as parents and grandparents have got to start becoming more involved…with our children!
Listen, last night watching those two reminded me of a time when Josh and Mark were little. Josh was probably eight and Mark five or so, and let me tell you times were tough. We’d just started a small business…we cleaned exhaust systems in restaurants. This was years and years ago.
We lived in a small, wooden frame house that we rented. This house was, what they used to call a “shotgun house.” This was on account of, I believe, that they were so narrow, if you was to stick a shotgun in the front door and pull the trigger, why you’d hit everyone in the house…that’s pretty narrow, isn’t it.
Well with that the setup, let me share with you guys this morning one of my early memories of Deb and the boys!
The Sow Grizzly and Her Cub:
I’m sure all of you know, if you happen to be in one of our National Parks, or live out in, or around “bear country,” you never, ever want to put yourself in a position where you’re around a momma bear or her cubs.
Now, if you’re a member of the male species, let me go a step further in this statement…don’t get between any Momma and her kids…of any species! Steer clear of this men, or you’ll be in dire straights, indeed! If you’ve never heard a word I’ve said in the past…you better be hearin’ these! DO NOT JACK WITH A MOMMA AND HER BABIES!
How do I know you ask? Simple, I did it!
Deb and I hadn’t been together too awful long and we were still in the “feeling out stage” of our relationship. I like things this way, she likes things that way, you know…just feeling each other out, trying to see if this relationship would work out or not.
Well, I’m not sure where people come up with such absurdity, but many like to claim, that I like to pick at you, some even going so far as to claim…I’m aggravating. Now how could anyone in their right mind make such statements? I can’t figure people out sometimes, and really don’t know why I try.
As I said, Deb and I hadn’t been together very long and remember we were living in a long, narrow house during this time, a “shotgun house.” I’d get on to Josh and Mark, but was still kinda’ treading water in this regard.
One day Josh and I had gone to town to pick up a few things, one of which being a 50 lb. sack of dog food. If you were coming in the front door of the house, way at the other end, was our kitchen, and off to the right was a laundry and storage room.
Josh and I had put the groceries up, and had taken the sack of dog food and put it on an old table in the laundry room. Deb was all the way up front of the house, doing something constructive, as she always did…watching T.V.
Well, I’d already figgered out Deb was “kinda touchy” in regards to those two boys, and I knew, if pushed, she’d react just like an ole sow grizzly! So, I knew my limits. I could “ruffle up my feathers” to an extent about all things, but deep down I knew, that if I jacked with one of them boys…it’d get real ugly real quick.
Now don’t take what I’m saying as, “Man, them little fellers had it made,” cause let me tell you this right now, if them boys got outta’ line, shoot, she’d tan them hides so quick, it’d make your head swim! When they was around people, Deb and I included…it was “Yes sir, No sir, or Yes ma’am, No ma’am.”
She really had done, and did throughout, raise those kids right. They love her dearly today, but I gotta tell you, they respect her, and she loves them unconditionally too.
Anyway, Josh and I had just got through putting the dog food up when, I don’t know what I was thinkin’, but a dern light bulb come on in my head! It wasn’t but just a few minutes that Josh and I both came to the conclusion, looking back, that in hindsight that bright idea was not too bright after all!
This is a true story, and I really considered changing the names to protect the innocent!
We’d decided that it’d really be funny to mess with Momma. So, I told Josh the game plan. I’d take my belt off and go to whipping that sack a dog food with my belt, loudly and really beating it hard! As I was doing my part of our plan…see after all was said and done, it was now our plan, not just mine! Well again, as I was beating the sack, Josh was to be screaming at the top of his lungs, “Oh Dub please, I won’t do it again, please stop,” and just a fake crying the whole time.
Evidently we were both playing our parts really well, because in just a matter of a few seconds we heard Deb scream, “What the h… is going on back there? She was already mad, and I swear, that is putting it lightly. If either one of us had any sense, we’d a quit right then!
But oh no, Momma screaming out only fueled our enthusiasm, we had it going just like we figured! We heard her feet hit the floor, and we could tell she was coming down that ole’ long narrow hall like a late freight! Man I went to whipping, and Josh went to screaming even louder!
I mean Deb was really mad by now, and not only could you hear her coming…you could feel her coming! She come down that hall so fast, that when she got to where she needed to hang a right, and come into the room Josh and I were in, she was trying her best to stop…but went right on by us!
Oh, and she was fit to be tied! I swear you ought to have seen her face when she went right on by, the whole time trying to get stopped! Her face was the perfect picture of frustration, she knew she wanted to get in there to us so bad, but her momentum just carried her right on by!
Josh and I were both on the floor by now, literally in hysterics, laughing uncontrollably…which we were to find out very, very shortly, was not the right thing to have been doing!
You’ve seen on TV an ole Momma grizzly charging, ears laid back, her whole face contorted by her snarling, foam running from both sides of her mouth, and this deep, terrible noise coming from within her? Well, that was Deb, only she was about twice as intimidating as ANY sow grizzly I’d ever seen on TV before!
At that moment, right when Deb had finally stopped sliding down the hall, trying to stop, and finally had gotten her footing back underneath her, and her head finally come peering into that room…Josh and I both knew the true meaning…of fear!
That woman had us both truly frightened from head to toe! She hollered what in the world’s going on back here, and I went to stuttering, and poor old Josh went to crying! I mean squalling, tears running down his face, for real crying. She was so mad, she scared him half to death.
Finally, we got through to her what we were doing, why we’d done it, and it was all just a joke we were playing on her! Whew, that was one time the joke blew right back up in our face.
From thereafter as well, Josh wasn’t near so quick about playing a joke on someone that was a coming from one of my bright ideas. I really can’t say that I blame him either!
Looking back today, we all laugh and tell this story, and actually tell it quite a bit, but we never tried anything like that again…getting between an ole’ sow grizzly and her cub!
Thank you all for stopping back by to see us. Please, if we reminded any of you of your own old memories, we’d love for you to share them with us too!
God Bless!
Dub