Now, I know How Snow White Felt

I love the woods and lakes and anywhere the wild things live and play. Our next door neighbors have a beautiful patio that one service guy calls "Narnia". Squirrels drip from the trees and squadrons of birds hang from Dan and Suzanne's feeders. He buys peanuts in 50 pound bags for the squirrels. I've seen chickadees eat bird seed from Dan's hand. Squirrels climb up into his lap. He's like a hairy-chested Snow White.

He's left me in charge of the squirrels on occasions when they go off on vacation. The squirrels have come to accept my presence, but not to quite trust me close up. Imagine my disappointment when I went next door to find Suzanne and Sheila (my wife) sitting on the patio with a table full of squirrels next to them begging for peanuts. Sheila had one on her shoulder. It kept coming back, climbing up in her lap and plucking peanuts from her fingers. I wanted a squirrel to jump up in my lap too, but while she was there, they preferred her lap to mine. She won't let me post videos of her, so I have been waiting to talk Little Red into climbing up so I could show it to my grandson - perhaps to lure him to come visit us in Washington State with the promise of feeding wild squirrels.

Today, after Dan and Suzanne left for Idaho, I went over to feed the squirrels. The red squirrel I call "Little Red" approached me with a puzzled look. Deciding I was the only one around, he took a leap of faith and landed on my knee. After that he ran back and forth stashing peanuts and leaping up on my leg for another one for the rest of the afternoon. 

 The squirrels all have personalities. Little Red won't take cracked or dirty peanuts. He prefers perfect peanuts.  Two-fer, a gray squirrel won't leave without two peanuts tucked under his chin. If you're slow with that second one, he'll snatch it out of your hand. Cressie has a crescent shaped scar on her back and Lightning runs at full tilt wherever he goes.

I was able to video Little Red's first jump onto my leg. It may seem stupid but that has been the highlight of my week. Another little peek at heaven for me.

© 2021 by Tom King

To Drink From a Trough - A 48 Year-Old Promise

The pictures, sadly, came out kind of dark, but
this is us 48 years ago in the PFA chapel.

It's been 48 years since the Saturday night that I picked an azalea off the bush by the Pine Forest Academy chapel door, pinned it to my lapel and stepped inside for the ceremony in which I joined forces with the love of my life "for better or worse." It was a moment that would certainly change our lives forever.

 

True story, Sheila was so nervous that day that she had trouble reciting the vows. She's always suffered with stage fright, but was doing okay repeating the vows after Pastor Reiber*, who was using an older traditional set of wedding vows. However, when he prompted her to repeat, "Unto thee I plide my troth," my Sweet Baboo, who has trouble with English accents and archaic words had no idea what he was saying and did the best she could.

"I promise to drink from a trough...." she mumbled. She tried to deny she'd said it later, but I had proof. This was 1974, well before the advent of VHS recorders, but someone had thoughtfully caught it all on a cassette audiotape. I played it for her several times over the years and it's undeniable that that's what she said. I no longer possess the evidence because, somehow, the tape mysteriously disappeared during one of our moves.

Headed back down the aisle. Sheila looks a
little green around the gills. Me? I look like
the cat that swallowed the canary. But then
I hadn't just promised to drink from a trough.

At any rate she's never kept that part of her vows. I've asked her about it and all she'll say is, "I don't see any trough here!" Those horse (or cow) troughs are expensive and there's no way I'd hold her to it if all I could muster was a pig trough. A cow trough seems unnecessarily demeaning. The least I could do was provide something suitable for a beloved filly. Said trough would, of course, have to be clean and previously unused in any case. There's no way the woman is going to drink after farm animals. I wouldn't expect her to.

 

In the 48 years since, I have not been able to provide an appropriate trough, I've let her off the hook for all these years. To this day, however, when we get into a fight and I'm losing, I comfort myself by visualizing a big old Farm and Ranch Supply delivery truck rolling up and offloading one of those big round steel horse troughs.

I figure after she's completed her last vow, we could use the trough as an above-ground swimming pool. It is, however, quite unlikely that in this world we'll ever own horses or that I'll ever have enough extra money to waste hundreds of dollars on an appropriate drinking vessel, so I suppose I'll let that vow slide. She's done quite well by all the other vows she's made. I can't complain.

She's a keeper and I intend to keep her around for billions of years after Jesus comes (with time off for good behavior). And, since I do like horses, I may even come up with some sort of trough one day. Just to make her laugh. I'll drink from it first, of course.

 

© 2022 by Tom King

*Interesting note: Pastor Milton Reiber, who married us that day in the Academy chapel in Chunky, Mississippi, was pastor of the Meridian SDA church. He also served as pastor for the Pine Forest Academy Church where I was going to serve a year as boy's dean and Sheila was going to be a nurse. When I told her who the pastor was, my Mom recognized his name. It turns out that, decades before in Tucumcari, New Mexico, Elder Reiber, was also the pastor who baptized young Clara Bell (Mom) and her sister, Tilitha. It's funny how Adventists can go almost anywhere and find connections to other Adventists.