Unearthing a life.....

.....I'm coming back as a blonde. I've given the dark hair a good workout. Enough of that. Enough Taurus and steadiness and oldest child. Let's just belay all that the next time.

I think I've caught the Beach Bum effect here. Not having to BE fashionable 'cause I AM fashion. It's a pity beaches are basically boring. They tie their monotonous butts to the geologic time scale. So I would be a Beach Bum in name only. Being munched off a boogie board by a Great White is not my idea of blondes having more fun. Better to live inland. At an elevation. Where it's cool. Throw up a cabana, lean the the various flotation devices against it and dream of the surf while napping.

What else do blue-eyed blondes get to do? I'm drawing a blank here.

When I was a lad 'tending the Christian Church in yon Othello, WA, we had a blonde minister with pale blue eyes. He was intensely spooky and ghostly looking .... eyes of ice. And, it seemed to me, that he had pinned his future claim to heavenly glory on the idea that he was, from the pulpit, going to preach my dark-haired soul forward to a meeting of minds with Christ His Lord somewhere down there near that pulpit. And then it would likely come to pass that he would immerse me, whereupon I would inhale water, choke, and thrash about like the very Devil. [This was the same problem my Dad faced every time he tried to teach me to swim. The victory of fear and the struggle to survive.]

I did accidentally learn to swim when I was thirteen. I was somewhat amorously chasing a young lady around the edges of a swimming pool when I became over-excited and launched myself across a deep corner of the pool .... thinking to intercept her route, I suppose. Rather than silently sink like a stone, I actually swam three or four strokes and that was it. I never did turn out to be a good swimmer. And unfortunately the minister had moved on some years before and was no longer there to issue his weekly summons. Not that I would have ever ventured pulpitward anyways.

I recall, during the latter days of WWII, preachers used to come down to Crab Creek Valley and hold forth in the Smyrna schoolhouse of an evening. I think they were from something called the American Sunday School Union -- something along that order. They were fairly young people. Male and female. Played accordians and sang loudly and kept the beat with vigourous tapping of very large feet.

The preaching was loud and full of righteous bite. Maybe a tad bit too much righteous bite. Folks would come from Corfu (east) and Beverly (west) and there would be a hymn singing storm. By the light of kerosene lamps. One night there was a pretty little girl from Beverly there with her old grandma and a couple siblings. I was in love with that girl all evening ... despite the fact that her granny looked like the witch the house crashed on in Oz. The preaching got pretty hot and heavy and I was just sitting there gawking at the gal in holy adoration, when Granny caught the Spirit of the Lord and was suddenly on her knees between the rows of school desks crying out things in non-English and gathering her grandchildren down there with her.

As I recall, the preaching fetched up short, my Mother pointed at the door and said "GO!" And we went. With swiftness.