Halloween Costumes

This time of year when I see all the ads for Halloween costumes, I remember back to my own childhood when we wore those rigid plastic masks with the rubber band across the back, two eye holes, and a mouth hole.  We're lucky we all didn't suffocate.  We had the obligatory black cat, Mickey Mouse, and a devil mask.  We would just rotate them each year, so every three years we were the same thing.

However.

Later on when we were more middle school age, we had the BEST costumes because Mom was crazy brilliant and creative.  If you gave her some chicken wire, paper mache, twine string, and paint...I'm pretty sure she could build the Taj Mahal for you.

Oh my gosh the costumes she made!  One of them was for herself.  It was an outhouse, and she wore it over her shoulders (suspended by twine string) so that when she opened the doors of the outhouse, it looked like someone was sitting in there.  She won first place in the Viola Halloween costume contest that year.

She also made, at various points in time, a slice of cheddar cheese, a witch's hat, a headless horseman, and a set of dice.  Every one of them made out of chicken wire and papier mache and built with twine string to wear over the shoulders.

This is me under the hat at our church Halloween party

This is Baby Brother as the Headless Horseman at the church Halloween party

If she had been in Hollywood or on Broadway, she could have made a fortune as a set designer and/or costume designer because she could not only come up with the brilliant ideas, she could create them also.  She could sew, she could swing a hammer, and she could run a drill.  The only thing she couldn't build with was metal and welding, and she had to go to Big Brother for help there.

One year she came up with the idea for a spook house for our church Halloween party.  She wrote the script because it was going to be a guided tour.  She sewed the costumes and pulled a Scarlett O'Hara thing and made monk's robes for the guides out of our old living room curtains.

She had dry ice, she had props, she supervised the set up of everything.  She had it all timed down to the millisecond because she had sound effects that she had recorded earlier that were triggered by motion.  It was freaking awesome! She made an alligator head out of a pair of salad tongs, some baling wire, and heavy duty plastic garbage bags.

She made a knight's armor out of I don't remember what, but I do remember that the boots were a pair of plain old rubber knee-high barn boots painted silver.

It wasn't just Halloween where her creative talents shined.  She was in charge of our church's Christmas play for several years, and she made most of the costumes for that as well.  Good old chicken wire, etc., and gold paint with some twine string and we had a set of four-foot angel wings.  The crowns for the three kings--cardboard, baling wire, and gold paint.  Mary's head scarf that would never stay on anyone's head no matter how many bobby pins were used--yep, she fixed that by wrapping the fabric several times around a wire hanger bent in a half circle that acted as a headband.  That thing would actually give you a headache if you wore it long enough.  Our shepherd's had beards, canes, and those wool vest things.

I wish I had a fraction of her talent.  The best I can do is throw on one of Captain's flannel shirts and a pair of jeans and say I'm a lumber Jack.  Or would that be a lumber Jill?  Either way, no one that I know is in a class with my mom for making costumes!

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Letters Home

I was listening to my Pandora playlist the other day and the song "Letters From Home" by John Michael Montgomery played.  It reminded me that I have a whole stack of letters that my dad wrote home during his time in the Army.  I dug them out and found this one that I'd like to share with you.

April 14, 1956 (Saturday)

Hi,

We have all just come back from breakfast.  It is 6:00.

Well here I am again; now it is 3:00.  We arrived here about midnite last night.  By the time we got our bedding and got assigned to our barracks, it was 2:00, and they got us up at 4:00 this morning.  

We have been pretty busy doing a lot of nothing and don't get much time to write.  We haven't got our uniforms yet.  They are pretty rough on us and most of us don't like this place very well.  We have heard that some of us are going to Colorado about Tuesday or Wednesday for basic in the 8th infantry division.  I guess I'm in that bunch.  It's all right with me.  Everybody wants to go.  I think all that go there will get sent to Germany.  

My address is:
Pvt. Herbert F. Brehmer
Co B and G 4071st SU
Reception Center
Camp Chaffee, AK

Don't write me now as we'll be leaving right away.  The B&G stands for Baker and George Company.

We sure haven't been getting much sleep the last two nites.  There are about 100 guys in our company from all over the states.

We just came back from the PX.  I got Hank Mueller a card and looked around.

Boy there sure is a lot of different kinds of guys here.  Some play poker, some play dice, and some just run around trying to act smart.  

We had a good trip here from Minneapolis.  It took us about 17 hours to get here.  It sure got tiresome riding the bus.  The guy that bunks beside me is from Missouri and can't read or write.  

Well I better close for now.  I think they're going to call us out again.

So long,
Pvt Bigfoot

PS Tell the girls and Cactus that I haven't had much time to write lately.  

How different times were then!  The postage was 6 cents for airmail; nowadays you can't even buy a gumball for 6 cents.  There was no street address or even a zip code, just the name and city/state information.  Wow!

Another reason the song I heard triggered a response is because we have a nephew who is deploying overseas soon.  I realize that most communication these days is electronic, but I really want to send an old fashioned hand-written letter (or two or five or twenty) to him while he is deployed.  Maybe he'll roll his eyes at his out-of-touch aunt, but I don't really care.  He's going to get the letters anyway.  Then someday when his daughter has a blog, she can pull them out and splash them all over cyberspace for everybody to read!

I also have to rat out Big Brother for not writing home while he was stationed in Germany.  We didn't hear from him for so long that Mom contacted the Red Cross to check up on him.  It wasn't 24 hours later, and there was a telegram delivered to our door:

Soldier okay.  Soldier sorry mother worried.  Soldier will write soon.  

Within a week we got a multiple-page written letter from PFC J. G. Brehmer, and I got a vision in my head of his Sargent standing over him in the mess hall just screaming at him to keep writing.  I kind of felt sorry for him but kind of not because I'd been worried too.

Where has the art of letter writing gone?  If I get a handwritten card, note, letter...anything in the mail it gets stuck to our bulletin board where it stays for at least six months.  On the other hand, I shouldn't be Judgey McJudgemuffin because a friend of ours had back surgery recently, and I have meant to get a card in the mail to him--even asked Captain several times to remind me--and I haven't done it yet.

The song also reminded me, again, of what sacrifices our soldiers make and how grateful we need to be to them for their service.  Don't ever let an opportunity slip away to thank a soldier for his or her contribution to our country.  Ever.

Pick up a pen.  Write a note to someone and mail it.  I guarantee you will make their day!!

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Conversations

Of all the conversations I have every day, most of the time I'm doing good to remember (1) who I am, (2) who I am talking to, and (3) what we are talking about.  Then again, some days I am on fire!

Like the other night at my part-time job I was talking to a young male coworker who was lamenting that he just couldn't find "the one" in his life.  I told him all those relationships that didn't work out were preparing him to know what true love was when it happened because you can't know what something is if you don't know what it isn't.  He gave me genius marks for that.

However, a different young man whom I work with wasn't so appreciative of my wisdom.  He was complaining because his parents gave him a curfew even though he was almost 19 years old.  I asked him if he was living in their house?  Yes, ma'am.  Were they giving him any kind of financial support?  Yes, ma'am.  Then, my fine young man, you need to zip it and stop complaining because they are well within their rights to set a curfew. 

Some days my conversations are those where I do more listening than talking.  Like when Cubby said to me in the car last week when something caught her eye out the window.  "Gramma, that is SO cute!  Like me!"  We really need to work on bringing her out of her shell and boosting her self-esteem, don't we?!

Then there are conversations that go sideways in a hurry.  Let me give you some background on this one.

2013:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!
2014:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!
2015:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!

... (years pass in the same way)

2018:
Captain to me:  I was thinking about this, and I think I need to drink more water in the winter so I don't itch so bad.
Me:  Not able to print due to the adult content of the language.

Ladies, would you agree with me that a jury of my peers would never have convicted me if I had resorted to fatal violence?!?!

We have had some odd conversations happen in this house over the years.  One of the more memorable ones was when Molly's high school boyfriend was coming to our house for the first time.  Molly was giving Captain the rules of conduct for the encounter, as follows:

"Dad, you have to remember these three things when he gets here:  Number one, you can't sing.  Number two, you can't fart.  And number three, you have to wear pants."  I am nearly 100% certain nothing even close to this conversation has happened in other households.  We do love to be unique around here!

Is anyone else like me and has entire conversations with themselves?  No?  Okay, that's just me I guess. 

When I think about having conversations, I try to remember what my mama told me way back in the day.  "God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.  Listen more, talk less."  Smart lady, my mama!

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