To make things fair, here's "Montages of Mom"...

This first "Mom story" is one that I only know via hearsay. While hearsay is not admissible in court, it sure works for passing stories around from generation to generation.

When my sister and I were little, Mom was a housewife (or as they say now, a "stay-at-home mom"). We lived in the boonies, I guess - you had to drive about a half-mile or so to get to the nearest paved road. Ruth and I are about 4.5 years apart in age, so she was kindergarten-ish and I was probably over a year old when this happened.

Anyway, it was either spring or summer (can't remember which offhand), and Ruth and I were playing outside. Mom was hanging clothes on the line, and she spotted a woodchuck coming close to the house.

Mom had seen "Old Yeller" enough (as well as reading various books about frontier days and wild animals) that a wild animal coming up to a human dwelling meant one thing - RABIES.

Her babies were in the front yard!

So what did she do?

She went in, got one of Dad's guns (I can't remember if it was a shotgun or a pistol of some sort), and shot it. A LOT. Needless to say, that woodchuck wasn't moving by the time Mom was done with it, but that wasn't good enough.

Mom then went to get one of Dad's heavy shovels. She ran over to the (more than likely) dead woodchuck and beat it with the shovel. A LOT. She still didn't want to risk that the woodchuck would somehow RISE from the dead, gimp over to us and swallow us whole, so she did the only other thing she could think of.

She called Grandpa Dawson, and asked him to bring HIS shotgun.

Grandpa came over with his shotgun, went over with mom to this flattened mammal, and shot it a few more times. If it was alive before, it CERTAINLY wasn't now.

And of course, the proper way to commemorate a kill like this?

Take a picture. Which is what they did. Somewhere in the family albums is a picture of Mom holding the woodchuck by the tail, and that woodchuck was FLAT. I can't remember if Ruthie was in the picture or not, but I remember the woodchuck.

Now to some, this might seem more like something rednecks would do for a good time, and even though we gave her a hard time about being a "killing machine", she insisted that her kids were foremost in her mind. She was a lioness defending her cubs.

Granted, lionesses don't have access to guns or shovels, but if they did, WATCH OUT.

The picture at right is by one of my mom's favorite artists, Mary Engelbright. Whenever I see an Engelbright, I think of my mom. Mom is a person who knows a lot about different things, and when I see one of Engelbright's works paired with something like a quote from the Tao, I think of her.

She loves to read, she enjoys many different topics of conversation, and she's a great cook and seamstress. But what she (and all of our family, really) enjoys is collecting trivial information. When we still celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with my uncle's family, it was inevitable that the Trivial Pursuit board was whipped out and we'd enjoy in a cut-throat yet friendly match or two.

One of the arguments every year was who would get my mother.

"No! It's YOUR turn to take Aunt Mary!"

"But we had Aunt Mary LAST year!"

Needless to say, this didn't make Aunt Mary feel too great, but her reputation was EARNED.

Mom did know her trivia, for sure, but she never knew answers when it was helpful to her team. In addition, she couldn't keep answers that she knew to herself. One of the standing jokes was when the opposing team was going for a pie piece, and she knew the answer. It was something about "Gone With the Wind", and she kept saying "ATLANTA! ATLANTA!" But when it came to something for her team, she didn't know.

Also, she came up with answers from a totally unexpected source. Once, she answered a question about what kind of wood was used to make coffins in a certain historical time period. She answered "from the yew tree". She was right, and one of my cousins asked, "How the hell did you know THAT?"

Her reply?

"One of my bodice-buster historical romance books!"

Reading, especially at our house, is fundamental!

Flamingos.

You know, they're pink because of all the shrimp they eat.

They're also a lifetime competition topic between my mother and my aunt Martha.

I guess it started when they were kids - whenever my Grandma DuVall would chew them out, and they decided to stop paying attention, they would say, "Oh, look, the flamingos are flying overhead." Grandma would just kind of stop the chewing and say, "What?" She was so confused.

Mom and Martha would compete with each other about who could find the most obnoxious item with a flamingo on it. Mom had a flamingo toilet plunger, flamingo swizzle sticks, flamingo highball glasses, flamingo earrings, flamingo t-shirts, flamingo figurines, etc. If it had a flamingo on it, Mom had it or wanted it. Martha wasn't far behind. If a package came from Martha, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that upon opening, you would hear a chortle of glee and the word "YES!" come from my mother's mouth.

I guess that's where I get my love of "whimsy" from. Mom encouraged that kind of behavior in us. If you love the tacky stuff, that doesn't make you tacky. Only your actions make you tacky.

After all, she knew someone who collected pictures of people picking his/her nose, and the high point of the collection? A "Bobby's World" poster showing Bobby picking his nose with this caption: "I'm not picking my nose. I'm pointing at my brain."

_________

So there you have it, folks. "Montages of Mom". Mom is human, with faults. But so are we all. I know that Mom had a large part in making me the person I am today. There are many people that want to talk to her about that, and maybe even in a good way, but it's still true.

And I will always look for flamingos flying overhead, but I won't volunteer trivia answers for the other team.

As for woodchucks, I can't promise a damn thing.

Happy Mother's Day, Momma.