That Ain’t Right It’s Just So Wrong

It's not good  for  a person to live so long                                                                                   Everyday I sing this sorrowful song                                                                                                    From late at night to the early dawn                                                                                                       My brother and sister have long been gone                                                                                That ain't right,  it's just so wrong

They were both much younger then me                                                                                        Can someone put me out of my misery                                                                                           Life is too short, that's what people say                                                                                         Not mine, looks like I'm here to stay                                                                                                  That ain't right,  it's just so wrong
The other day I heard a motorcycle go by                                                                                      The sound of that engine made me cry                                                                                                           I rode a Harley Davidson, candy apple red                                                                                        Ma yelling, get off that thing or you'll end up dead                                                                    She was wrong,  she was just so wrong

In this wheelchair I sit still hanging on                                                                                      Even though I'm old I feel very strong                                                                                          What a crying shame what a pitiful pity                                                                                 Nothing but wrinkled skin that sure ain't pretty                                                                     That ain't right,  it's just so wrong         
Guess by now your tired of  listening to me
Well out of this body I too would like to be free
A paradise is at the end just waiting for me
I know for a fact because I've been given the key
That is right,  it's just so right

Author Eileen Clark  2023

Image: chopperexchange.com

Boots In The Snow

When I was eight I walked to school in the city of Hartford Connecticut every day with my two older brothers Bernie and Dick. We walked on the cement sidewalks and the rule was, never  step on the long crack that separated each sidewalk square. Some of the large cement squares had many cracks in them so it was a real difficult task to keep moving and not step on one of them. You had to keep moving along fast, you couldn’t take your time checking ahead before you put your foot down. You just could not step on one because you would really hurt your mother, that’s what we honestly believed. Quite silly don’t you think, well maybe not all the kids my age played this game.

Our winter boots were always black and for a girl I considered them to be very ugly. We all had them, black up past your ankle rubber boots. Little girls did not have red blue or pink boots back then like they sell today, or possibly it was the not so financially well off  kids that didn’t have boots in colors. Thing is, I don’t even remember seeing them in the big department stores. We did most of our shopping in the Sears & Roebucks catalogues and I never saw any pretty boots for kids in them either.

The boots had snap type clamps from the middle to the top and often because it was too much trouble or we were just lazy, we never buckled them up just slipped them on and off we’d go.

I loved to walk on the huge high snow banks along the side of the road where the plow’s piled it up after clearing off the roads. It was fun trudging along on those banks pushing one foot after the other down, my whole leg would be swallowed up into the snow. I had to work hard to pull my leg up and out of the snow wiggling my leg back and forth to pull it up only to clump the other foot and leg down almost to my hips into the snow bank again.

We never gave a thought about the fact that walking on these snow banks was very dangerous and any time we could slip off falling towards the road and oncoming cars would run over us, we would have been killed!

Sure enough it was bound to happen, one day up came my foot with no boot!  I quickly looked down the hole that my foot was buried in only to see snow. Of course snow will fall back into the hole as my foot comes up. I frantically searched, pulling snow away with my freezing red numb fingers. I was in a terrified state by now, still pulling snow away from where I thought the hole might have been to where my boot still just might be, all the time knowing I was as good as dead, I couldn’t find my boot. 

Yes, my father would kill me when he got home from work. In matters like this, my mother would not kill me, she just got sick. Here’s how it would go, ” I’m sick, you have made me sick over this, I just can’t take any more, now I am sick.” It was right after the second world war and we were poor, everyone was poor for a while in that period of time, so I was not going to get a new pair of boots this winter.

My feet were going to freeze every day back and forth to school, and in the play yard, and in my backyard, and at my girlfriends back yard, all winter long, frozen feet, and of course I did get the spanking from my father that night when he got home from work. He had a brown leather strap hanging on a nail behind the kitchen stove. He made it at his workplace.

My spanking, my mother reminding me that I was indeed killing her, and my feet getting wet and very cold every day, I feel I was duly punished and never walked on snow banks ever again, ever.

On the school shoes the soles would separate because in time the rubber would wear down to the thread and the thick thread holding the two pieces together got exposed and would disintegrate. With every step I took it was flop flop flop, it was embarrassing!  My father would glue them together, put a clamp on them, holding them very tight over night so they would be ready to wear the next day. That glue job lasted about a month then came unglued. Mom would say live with it.

Author Eileen Clark

IMAGE:google.com

My Little Girl

My Little Girl has an infection in one of her eyes. It’s red all around the eye and watery and she struggles to keep it open which tells me it might be quite sore, my heart hurts to see her suffering. She has been to the vet, got a shot and is given eye drops twice a day. Two days have passed and the eye looks much better. I wrote her a poem about the actual events.

My Little Girl is a very old and sweet cat                                                                                                                           Unlike her sister Dixie who is a total brat                                                                                                                                When LG walks by, Dixie gives her a swipe                                                                                                                             It happens daily yet LG never does gripe

Dixie walks around with a strut in her step                                                                                                                        Little Girl waddles and has lost all her pep                                                                                                                                  This morning she woke up with a red eye                                                                                                                                       It looked so awfully bad that I begin to cry

It's under control now with meds from our vet                                                                                                                    Dixie's bad behavior she hopes we might forget                                                                                                                               She walked up to Little Girl and sniffed her face                                                                                                                         Then lowering her head closer as if  to embrace      
 Author Eileen Clark 2022                    

Dixie

My Brothers Were Paper Boys

The Paper Boy

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. My brothers delivered the newspapers six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which they got to keep 2 cents. They had to get up at 6 AM every morning.
On Saturday, they had to collect the 42 cents from their customers. The favorite customers were the ones who gave the boys 50 cents and told them to keep the change. The least favorite customers were the ones that seemed to never be home on collection day.
Rain, snow, and summer heat never stopped the paper boys from getting the papers to every customers home.

At My House

My brothers were paper boys in the early forties, they were in third and fourth grade, let’s see, I guess that would have made them about 9 and 10 years old. It was in the city of Hartford Connecticut. They delivered them after school and used a red wagon instead of bikes, we couldn’t afford bikes.
We were Irish Catholics living in an Italian neighborhood and that meant trouble for the boys, especially my younger brother because he had bright red curly hair and big freckles all over his pale white face.

You may wonder why that would be trouble for the boys.

The Irish and Italian’s did not mix together in those days. The Italian boy’s named Joey, Rocky, and I don’t remember the other boys names would be on the corner when the bundle of papers were dropped off, then folded and placed in the red wagon by my brothers.
Rocky and friends showed up just to make trouble for my brothers. They would scatter the papers all over the streets and passing cars would carry them off on their hoods, roofs and trunks never to be seen again. Other times Rocky and friends would wait until the papers were all folded and stacked neatly and ready to be delivered, then the bully’s would push my brothers aside and throw the papers all over the streets. No one could do anything about it and the boys just took it. Well it did escalate to the point where Rocky and friends were waiting on the corner along with, this time untouched papers.

They had other plans this particular afternoon.

They wrapped white adhesive tape all over the boys heads and my brothers went about there job delivering all the papers wearing this horrid tape looking like they had white caps on their heads. My mother had to cut most of there hair off and they went to school the next day almost bald. The following day my mom, dragging my reluctant brothers along went directly to the principle’s office to give Father O’Malley a “Show and Tell” complaint. The Father questioned my brothers, asking for names until he was blue in the face because my brothers would not tell, “squeal” on Rocky, Joey and friends. The very next evening the Italian boys were waiting on the corner for my brothers. The news papers were all folded and stacked in a neat pile. As soon as the boys appeared, Rocky and friends placed the folded papers nicely in the red wagon and walked away.

That was it, not a word was spoken, they just walked away!

My brothers were never bothered again by Rocky, Joey, and the other friends of theirs or anyone else. An interesting observation, every now and then when my brothers got to the corner where the bundles of papers were left off for them, they would find a nicely folded stack of news papers ready for the boys wagon and they knew they were safe from not just Rocky and friends but from any other bullies that might be around. I’m guessing the word got out, don’t nobody mess with the Irish paper boys because the Italian boys were watching over them.

Author Eileen Clark

Image: fulcrumgallery.com

The First Robin

Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
    Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
We are glad to see you here,
    For you sing, “Sweet Spring is near.”

Now the white snow melts away;
    Now the flowers blossom gay:
Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
    For we love our robin best.

Poem by Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was one of four daughters born to Bronson and May Alcott. Louisa worked from an early age to help with expenses. She worked as a governess, a seamstress, a laundress, and a nurse but, at heart, she was always a writer. Her first book was published at the age of 23. Louisa’s best known work is Little Women, which has never been out of print since it was first published in 1868; it has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Beautiful Painting by

Proud Vigil American Robin with Baby Birds

I painted this portrait of an American Robin perched on her intricately woven nest, filled with her baby birds. I posed the mamma bird so her… more\

by Cindy Day

google.com

AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY

Image Found on Pinterest

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a Harvard scholar versed in several European languages. He was heavily influenced by Romanticism and made a name as a poet and novelist with works like Hyperion, Evangeline, Poems on Slavery and The Song of Hiawatha. He was also known for his translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. 

https://www.biography.com/writer/henry-wadsworth-longfello

Rain

It’s pouring down rain, big puddles on the street,

School is out, at the bus stop the kids all meet.

The girls have red capes and carry umbrella’s,

Black boots and raincoats are worn by the fella’s.

At home I’ll change into my PJ’s made of silk,

Then Mom will give me some warm cookies and milk.

by Eileen Clark

Image found on Pinterest

A Happy Time For Cows

The Cow in Apple Time

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble  and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry

Robert Frost

Saving Fall Leaves

Did any of you do this ? Every fall my mom would have my brothers and I get a paper bag and go for a walk in the woods and collect colored leaves. When we got them home we would pick out the very best leaves, perfect shape and colors counted. We would then place them on a sheet of wax paper placing another sheet on the top and then go over it with a slightly warm iron. Mom would tape them to the glass on our windows.

It reminded me of stained glass windows when the sun shown directly on the glass, awesome. The nice thing was that they lasted for a long time right through the winter if you like. It’s such a little thing but I loved the time we spent doing this and I did the same with my children on down to my grandchildren and we all  loved it and every fall looked forward doing it.

I was thinking about it yesterday and wondered, do they even make wax paper anymore ? So I would try to find some pictures of pressing leaves by doing a google search and wow! I was quite surprised and delighted to see how many people still do this. Interesting thing is folks have found new ways to preserve their beautiful leaves and display them in very interesting ways and yes, they still do make wax paper! We kids called it pressing leaves, today some call them Suncatchers. It’s the little things that kids remember.

How To Preserve Leaves (6 Methods)

https://www.the-modern-dad.com/fall-learning-mrs-dunnigan/

http://www.thecraftycrow.net/2014/09/fall-crafts-for-toddlers.html

http://riverblissed.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-quest-of-light-lf-lantern-tutorials.html

To Autumn

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

*

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

*

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats, 1795 – 1821

Born in 1795, John Keats was an English Romantic poet and author of three poems considered to be among the finest in the English language.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/autumn

Image:https://www.pexels.com/search/nature%20wallpaper/