Small Town, Small World

Rain.

So much rain.

It will lull us all day, and the only place I need to go from here on out, is to pick up Owen from school. Anything else is unnecessary at this point.

That isn’t to say that we haven’t been anywhere else. In fact we’ve been to church, to school and to the DMV this morning.

In the rain.

I was up at 4:00 making a sling-shot for Owen’s “David that killed Goliath” costume for school.

I sewed the costume yesterday in about 5 minutes…you gotta love biblical robes. Found a stick, and some long sleeves and pants to wear underneath it, and you’ve got a little David. Poor Ivan was begging for his own costume but it was sort of after the fact, and I had already packed everything up. The sewing machine was heading out of the house for Amber to borrow. I wish I had thought about it and made him one while I was in the process. It would have been cute to see them both in little shepherd garb.

We were up, oatmeal eaten, dressed and all at church by 5:50 for 6:00 prayer meeting and the boys did pretty well. They were tired and squirmy, Aron especially was twisting and moving non-stop. But they stayed quiet. The turn out was a little lower than previously this month. Can’t imagine why. Oh yeah…RAIN.

Then it was back home for a quick minute while I gathered up Owen’s costume pieces and then we were off to school. How cute were those little Bible characters!? There was another David, some angels and a Miriam, a little boy named Eli was Elijah…how clever…and a host of other representatives from the cloud of witnesses on high. I’d like to see someone come covered in slime and say he’s Jonah. I think some little boy would surely enjoy that costume.

I had to go into the office for a minute while at the school, and as I spoke to the woman at the desk she asked where we were heading out of town next week. I explained we are visiting my dad in Michigan and she asked where, with that expectant tone that told me she is familiar with some area. I explained that no one has ever heard of my hometown, but gave the name anyway and she said she had been there. I figured that she was mistaken but asked her in my most ridiculous tone…”why?” She smirked but told me that she and her late father used to visit a little restaurant there, “a hole in the wall” she said. Her dad lived in Flint, a good two and a half hours from Burr Oak, and she would visit him there. Each visit he would take her to his favorite little dive in Burr Oak for a meal and the best shakes and malts to wash it down. After questioning her several times on her memory, to be sure she had her whereabouts correctly charted I explained that her shakes could only be from a place called “Granny’s Pizza and Cream,” the restaurant my parents owned and ran for 7 or 8 years. We were the only place in town with an ice cream counter. What a small world.

So in honor of shakes and malts and people from far away places, here is this week’s limerick.

A hole in the wall though it were,
It held something for me and for her.
A day trip with dad,
My mom apron clad,
Small towns shiver with memories we stir.

I have foregone all the rules of comedy and entertainment in this limerick but it seemed appropriate today. Must be the rain.