You have one, right? Surely you got a calendar for Christmas. With lighthouses or beaches or things you don't particularly have an affinity for (not you, Blog Buddy Linda, beach-lover extraordinaire) that was, perhaps, given to you by your sister the ex-mayor's wife's husband?
Mark it, I tell you, on the date of May 5, 2017! Because Hick bought a present for Val. Here! Let me waft these smelling salts under your nose. There. You seem to be coming around. If you don't get a knot on your head, you'd better go to the ER for a cat-scan, just in case you have bleeding inside your head. Here. Sit up. Do you have your wits about you again? Listen to this...
Hick bought me a present at Goodwill for $4.00. When he first sent me the text, he said it cost 400. So, remembering The Good Feet Store faux pas, I made sure to clarify the price. Take a gander at THIS:
It's a FIRE TRUCK, by cracky! Okay. It's a REPLICA. Of a TOY fire truck. But it's like the one I had as a kid. Almost.
As a kid, my sister (the little future ex-mayor's wife) and I had a pedal fire truck. I think ours was a bit more squared-off than this one, and I don't remember our windshield being like that. But it had two ladders on the back just like this one has one ladder (should have two, but the other is missing, and Hick says he's going to make one).
We used to ride our fire engine down the sidewalk in front of our house. Which was a 50-foot mobile home, parked on the lot beside our grandpa's house. Let the record show that we grew up in the 1960s, in a small town that still had ditches between the road and sidewalk that may or may not have been used for sewer purposes. Kids were hardier back in those days, I'm sure you all will attest.
Anyhoo...the hill started up past Grandpa's house, and ran down in front of ours, and our neighbor's house, and then crossed over a culvert that was about 6 feet deep where a creek ran under the road. The sidewalk had fallen into disrepair as it flattened out by the neighbors' yard. You know how concrete sidewalks do. The squares get kind of cattywompus to each other. Unlevel. They develop shallow craters that fill with gravel particles. The sidewalkular decay was even worse on the part that crossed over the creek. With NO rails or curb on the side.
Yes. Val's childhood street. A humid summer evening, Grandpa in blue Dickies, lug-soled black work shoes, and a white t-shirt, crouched with the green garden hose to water a tiny tulip tree sectioned off from the yard with a round metal mini-fence. Change in his pocket ready for for the first sounds of the bells of the Tastee Freeze truck.
Picture Li'l Val and her sister (the little future ex-mayor's wife), bludgeoning the bejeebers out of each other with those wooden ladders to see who got to drive, then hanging them back on the fire engine, and barreling down that broken sidewalk, with Val's (in the driver's seat, of course) pixie-cut brunette hair blowing off her forehead, Li'l Sis standing on the back holding the ladder rails, her orangey-red, fine, shoulder-length tresses whipping themselves into a matted mess that would need the silver rat-tailed comb...flying across the culvert onto the better-maintained sidewalk section in front of the last house on the block, that belonging to the spinster Fanny Hugg.
Thanks, Hick, my Sweet Baboo, for buying me a memory.
Val--I've alerted Europe and will also contact Asia, Africa, South America, the rest of North America and Australia.
ReplyDeleteEvery country on every continent will celebrate this holiday next year.
Thank you. It takes a world of villages to raise a Hick. Maybe the extrinsic reward of fame will keep him on the right track.
DeleteVery nice Val, will this holiday come already marked on my new calendar next year, or will I have to write it in?
ReplyDeleteWith this smaller version you know that you girls will have to ride one at a time after the ladder beatings are over.
Thanks to Sioux's tireless efforts, the HICKiday should come already marked on your new calendar!
DeleteYes. We Sis and I are a tiny bit bigger now as well. But I think I can still take her in a ladder beating.
Our calendar is of hummingbirds.
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, only yesterday my SIL sent some old pictures to me that she found while cleaning through stuff from my mom's. One was of me at 4 yo steering a pedal car, I vaguely remembered that car. It was not a firetruck, but it did have handles for a backseat rider.
Maybe next year you can get a calendar of squirrels. In memory of Meryl, the innocent furry guest you kicked to the curb.
DeleteI guess your pedal hotrod didn't have ladders for beatings to decide the order of the drivers...
Beach Buggy on our calendar Val (what else would it be?). That's true love right there isn't it. Not only did Hick remember about the fire truck, he bought it for you AND he's going to make you a replacement ladder. Says more than all the roses and chocolates in the world (although, wouldn't they be nice once in a while ...). Hick's a keeper which is just as well cause I think you're stuck with him.
ReplyDeleteI must say, I am not at all shocked at the revelation of the Beach Buggy calendar.
DeleteYes, this gift says more than all the $3 change purses and boxes of Sno*Caps in the world!
It's easier to get rid of my shadow than to get rid of Hick.
Cute. I don't recall ever seeing a firetruck with whitewalls.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that (now dead) little old lady Hick ran over with the city fire truck saw whitewalls on THAT truck?
DeleteLet the record show that she was still living long enough to sue the city several years later, so Hick was not the instrument of her death.
So Hick does have a warm side!!
ReplyDeleteYes, but it does little toward melting my cold, cold heart.
DeleteAwww, Hick did good!
ReplyDeleteYeah. He's actually been on the lookout for such a truck for years.
Delete