Dressing Room Can-Can Episode 3 in the Bob Chronicles

It's Thursday and time for another installment of the Trooper Bob chronicles. So without further ado- I give you the Adventures of Trooper Bob
(for previous installments go here:http://accidentalhousewife.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=cat%3dDaddy%2bChronicles)

First let me tell you a little something about my mother to get to a story about my daddy. My mother was never wrong. You see even when she was wrong she was right and you did not contradict her that just made you that much more wrong. Also things had to be her way, always. It was just easier not to argue or fuss. It was easier just to do what she wanted when she wanted it done then she would leave you alone to do what you wanted to do.

My mother made plans for her and my daddy to go out somewhere. I don’t remember if it was to a wedding or a bar mitzvah, oh wait we didn’t even know what that was. I think it may have been a party but who knows it was an event and they had to get dressed up. Dressed up in my family was not wearing overall’s, jeans, cut off shorts or polyester pant suits including but not inclusive of leisure suits. She insisted that nothing in his closet was suitable for such an auspicious occasion as the “event”. She made my daddy against his will go shopping with her. They went to the only department store in my home town that was affordable to us, C.R. Anthony’s. I am sure there are some of you out there who not being from my neck of the mesquites doesn’t know what that is so let’s just say it wasn’t as classy as Wal-Mart.

My daddy had just gotten off his shift and was still dressed in full trooper uniform. He had his trooper hat, his trooper grey uniform with the red and blue stripe down the leg and his trooper Sam Brown Belt on complete with his trooper pistol and ammunition, and he even had on his trooper black Tony Lama Cowboy boots on. Now for those of you who have never put on any of this garb his total uniform weighed about forty pounds and was a pain to put on and take off at least that’s what daddy said. So there he was in Anthony’s dee-part-mint store shopping with my mother in her white nurse’s uniform and her bee-hive hair-do for dressed up clothes. My mother picked out some trousers for my daddy and told him “Bob, you go in there and try these pants on.” Now my daddy was really good at pissing my momma off by not doing what she wants but he wanted to go home so he did what she said.

He grabbed the pants and stomped off to the dressing room grumbling something about damn event and damn dress up clothes. The dressing room was just a cubicle with a curtain on the side of the men’s department. It was not down a hallway. It was not in a separate little alcove or niche. It was right there in the main aisle way of the store. He got in the dressing room and hung his hat on the peg, unstrapped his Sam Brown and started to take off his boots. Then in typical man fashion he thought this is bullshit! I’m not taking my boots off! Since this was the beginning of the bell bottom era the pants legs looked more than large enough to put on over his boots. What he didn’t think about was the pants he had on weren’t exactly large enough to get over his boots. He dropped his trousers and started to step out of them but he lost his balance. Then in a whirl of curtain and a couple of hops he was standing in the middle of C.R. Anthony’s with his pants around his ankles doing the Dressing Room Can-Can in his boxer shorts. Just about the time he danced out of the dressing room a woman was walking towards him. He landed ass on the ground Tony Lama’s in the air with a thud. The woman stopped and sucked all the air out of the room then huffily declared “Well, I NEVER!” My daddy not missing a beat looked up at her and said “Lady, Maybe you should! You’ll never forget it.” Then stood up and shuffled pants around his ankles back in the dressing room as my mother and the sales clerk laughed themselves silly in the corner.

Come on In Have A Seat

Hello Lovelies,

If you are here that means you either followed me from my “old” blog, http://www.theaccidentalhousewife.com/, or you were looking for your Great Aunt Gladys and found me instead. Either way, Welcome! Pull up a chair settle in and enjoy the ride.

I started blogging this summer. I have always written little “ditties” to my family about this and that. They kept telling me “Gladys, you need to write a book.” I would love to write a book but I’m not sure how to go about that so I thought I would practice by writing a blog. It took me awhile to acclimate myself to the blogosphere. I’m still not sure I understand it all. I have read some tremendous writings in blogs and I’ve read some real stinkers. I’ll try to keep mine entertaining and less of a stinker.

So I started writing and came up with a name “The Accidental Housewife”. Now being new to the blogging world I didn’t really bother checking it out to see if I was going to be offending anyone or stealing anyone’s name. Well let me tell you, there is someone out there by that name. Guess what. She wrote a book. She wrote a book and it’s called “The Accidental Housewife” by Julia Edelman. Well I’m not near as cute or as young as she is so I figured I had better get a new name. Then my readers all (3) of them told me that it was difficult to comment on my old blog. They said that my post didn’t always appear when they went looking for them. Well, GOD forbid that someone (my Daddy) would have to go a day without being able to read me. So I decided to go to the liquor store get some Jim Beam, um I mean some boxes, pack up and move.

The first thing I had to do was come up with a new name because well no one wants to find a couple of big ugly guys on their front porch with baseball bats in their hands. Well not unless you play baseball and I don’t. So not wanting to get my knee caps crushed, I decided it was time to change the name. Gladys Tells All? Why that name? Why not something more appropriate like “Found Under a Rock” or “Living Here and There”? It could even be something really ethereal like “Writings From Within”. I never thought of those. It actually comes from a joke that my best friend sent me several years ago. About a woman in the nursing home named Gladys. I decided I was Gladys and she, my best friend, had to be Myrtle. Since I can’t keep my mouth shut, well the Tells All just seemed to fit.

Here it is the new name, the new look and of course the new space. Now then dear do you take cream or sugar or both in your coffee? How bout a piece of my chocolate pie, oh wait, I already ate that. I think I may have some peanut butter cookies in the cookie jar. Let me get some.

The Haunted Money Pit

I was reading one of my favorite author’s blogs Deanna Raybourn at http://deannaraybourn.typepad.com/ also known as Blog-a-Go-Go. She was talking today about the ghost that inhabit her house. She lives in an old house that has some well let’s just say has some strange inhabitants. This made me think of the money-pit the old mansion house in which I used to reside. Now in the spirit of the season I will share my story with you.

I purchased a house that was built in 1917. It was labeled a “mansion” house by the real estate flyer but in reality it was just a large old house. It was located in an old part of town in a hot and muggy southern city. I was combining 4 houses into one and at that time in my life was not willing to part with “things”. I had to find something with enough room to accommodate my family, all their toys, clothes and animals. This house was perfect. Everyone could have their own rooms; it had a large living area, a study, a game room, a kitchen that had potential and just enough yard for the dogs but not enough to require a riding lawn mower. So I stepped up to the plate plopped down my money and decided to call it home. (Yes this is the same house that ended up having the Godzilla Rat).

The first week we lived in the money-pit house I was in the study alone putting things away when I heard music coming from upstairs. I thought that the neighbor must have their stereo turned up loud and went about my work without another thought. Then I got a very cold sensation, unusual since the house was not air conditioned and it was May in Louisiana, which meant it was about 90 degrees. The cold lasted only briefly then it was gone but the smell of lilacs lingered. Several days later my daughter who was in high school at the time said something about noises coming from her closet. I asked her if she thought it was mice and she said not unless mice sing Ring Around the Rosie. This was our introduction to the constant inhabitants of the house.

We lived with the usual bumps and groans that happen in old houses and knew that was just the house talking to us. We also lived with the smell of pipe tobacco, no one in the house smoked, and the sound of opera coming from the attic. Maybe the Godzilla Rat was singing opera I mean he was the size of Pavarotti, but I don’t think so since the singing went on long after Godzilla was captured. We just accepted them, the opera singing lady, the pipe smoking man, the little girl in my daughter’s closet without ever actually seeing anything.

Then one night after an especially trying day I was in bed sound a sleep when the door from my bedroom to the sleeping porch opened and shut causing me to sit up in bed. An unnatural cold came into the room and lingered for a few minutes then in the time it would take to walk from my bed to the door leading into the hallway it wafted away. Then the door to the hallway opened and closed and the smell of tobacco and cold was gone. I sat there in my bed confused and a bit frightened. I thought to myself “Someone just walked through my bedroom. Then it dawned on me, it wasn’t somebody, well at least not a living somebody.” A couple of nights later again the door from the sleeping porch opened then closed and the room became clammy and cold. I sat up and at the end of my bed I saw a man dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers smoking a pipe. He smiled then he was gone, gone as in poof gone. He was gone but the smell of tobacco lingered. I sat there not believing what I saw a little frightened and a little confused then the door to the hallway opened up and closed again. I doubted what I saw but trying to be open minded and brave decided to not say anything to anyone.

A few days later as I was driving my daughter to school she said “Momma, I’m going to tell you something a little weird, don’t think I’m crazy or anything ok?” She proceeded to tell me that she had seen the little girl in her closet. She said was about eight years old and she opened the door of the closet and looked out and smiled at my daughter while she was doing her homework. Now I would have totally freaked out if a ghost had smiled at me doing my homework when I was her age, but Tadpole being the wise person she is just told the little girl she wasn’t there to harm her and finished her book report.

I knew some of our neighbors had lived in their houses since the time the original owners had lived there. I asked my oldest neighbor for any information about the original owner of the house. He told me that the man had been in the oil business, just a regular guy who made a bundle in the Elysian Fields and Lake Caddo oil fields. He built the house for his wife, a soprano and founder of the local opera company. They moved from the house after their young daughter died of influenza. Now I did not prompt him on any of these items, it was just his story. I asked him to describe Mr. Snead, the original owner and builder of the house, and he described him as always being in work boots and khaki pants smoking a pipe.

One night while asleep I was awakened by the man sitting on the end of my bed. Startled I sat up in bed and looked at him and then through him. It unnerved me so I could not go back to sleep. About thirty minutes later I heard a commotion at the front door. My daughter also heard it and we met in the hallway and went down the back stairs. Sure enough someone was trying to get in through the front door. Our alarm was on and we knew if they breached the door it would sound but we also called the police. I believe that Mr. Snead, the ghost, woke me up to make sure I saw the intruder before he saw me. There were several other times when Mr. Snead had protected us from harm. Once he kept opening the upstairs bedroom window. I would shut it, he would open it. This went on all night. The next morning I realized I smelled natural gas. I called the gas company and sure enough we had a gas leak in a wall heater in the bathroom.

We had many encounters with our fellow housemates. Over the years we lived there we shared our stories with some of our family and a few of our friends who would always pooh-pooh it or come up with some explanation for our sightings. We would just nod and smile knowing what we knew. We had no doubt that we were living in a genuine haunted house.

Then years later life changed as it does and it was time to move on. My mother was house sitting both the house and the moving company while I was out making some final arrangements. I need to tell you that my mother had always been one of the major nay sayers when we spoke of our spectral house-mates. She was there with Killer, the 4 pound man eater, and the two moving men. They were all downstairs in the dining room packing and wrapping up the bazillions of dishes that I had accumulated, when they heard foot steps coming from upstairs. The two moving men looked at one another then at my mother and said “Who is upstairs?” My mother the, bravest of the three, replied that no one was upstairs that she knew of at which point Killer began to growl lowly and slowly. This frightened the moving men enough to cause them to ask my mother to go upstairs and check. My mother with Killer in tow went up the back stairs to the second floor. She opened every door to every room and walked through each one opening closets, checking under beds and behind shower curtains to find it was empty. Then as she was leaving my bedroom the door to the sleeping porch opened and closed, the room got clammy and cold and she could smell the strong distinct smell of tobacco. Killer began wagging his stump of a tail and then the bedroom door to the hallway which was open slammed shut.

My mother beat feet down the stairs and into the dining room where the moving men were standing eyes the size of pie plates and pale as vanilla ice cream. Now these men were not small men, they were what one pictures when the label “moving men” is mentioned. They both were sorely and visibly frightened. Now whether they saw our ghostly room-mate is a question that will never be answered because they left as swiftly as their four feet would carry them out the front door. They had to be coaxed by my mother to come back into the house. They would not speak to her of it and finished packing my things in record time.

I never got to spend another night in the house and am a little saddened by this. I would have liked to explain to my illusory friend when and why we were leaving. I think he was miffed that we had decided to move in such haste. I also would have liked to thank them for watching over us during our time in the house. I hope whoever is living in that house now has made friends with our specters and that they appreciate their watchful eye.

The Visitors

Once upon a time there was a lovely deeply insane woman who purchased a big decrepit beautiful old house. She was thrilled that she had finally found somewhere to call home and with just millions of dollars of a few repairs it would be her dream home.

The deeply insane woman was terrified of rodents. Oh I don’t mean those cute little chip monks on the cartoons who are always saying “After you.” “Oh, NO! After you” and not the cute little mouse that gets chased by that mean old cat. I am talking about those nasty stinky dirty rodents known as rats and mice. Never fear, for the deeply insane lady had three very brave and also deeply insane Yorkshire Terriers who were bred to find and chase the rodents out of the castles. The only problem was the trio of demented terriers were kept in a kennel while the deeply disturbed lady was toiling away to pay for the millions of dollars of repairs.

The deranged lady came home from work one day and walked into the crumbling laundry room and saw what she thought were the three maniacal terriers running out of the room. Yet when she looked in the kennel she saw her rabid sweet little puppies trying to gnaw their way out of the kennel waiting patiently to be let out. The demented woman thought to herself “If my three little shit heads sweet puppies are in the kennel then what just ran through the laundry room?” Then it dawned on me her that it was those dirty stinky disease ridden rodents. She quickly opened the door to the kennel to let her berserk sweet little doggies out to get the intruders. Only they were unable to reach them before the wily rodents escaped. This took place several days in a row with the cagey rodents would outsmart the frenzied little terriers.

Then my the lady’s father suggested she get some rat poison and place it high up on the furniture so the sweet little puppies couldn’t get it but the rodents could. This particular poison caused the rodents to become very dehydrated and search out water. The very wise father explained to the woman that they would go outside and find a source of water and there they would die. Not being a cruel person she just wanted the rodents to die a slow and painful death go away, but felt she had no other options. So she put out the poison and went to bed with her three little sweet bed-hog terriers.

This very beautiful money-pit house had a downstairs bathroom that was just off of the study and that is where the old crone of a beautiful lady would slather on apply her make-up. Early the next morning at the crack of noon she and the three rabid sweet puppies went downstairs to complete their morning routine. The puppies did their sniffing and snorting outside and came in to pile up on the couch and sleep watch in awe and wonder as the haggard beautiful woman piled lightly applied her make-up. Just as she went to apply her lip gloss she heard a sound coming from the toilet. She looked past the sink and into the open toilet to see a huge rodent, a rodent the size of a Saint Bernard doing the one arm breast stroke in her toilet. The completely crazed calm woman quickly and quietly slammed shut the toilet lid and ran screaming gracefully walked from the room. I the lady then called the exterminator and shrieked incoherently into the phone asked them to come immediately as soon as they had time.

About five minutes later that day the door bell rang. The lady opened the door to find THE exTERMINATOR at the door. Hand to God he said “Ma’am you called for a hired killer?” To which the lady answered “OHMYGAWDWHATTOOKYOUSOLONG??? THERE IS A MONSTER RAT IN MY TOILET KILL IT! KILL IT NOW. Why, yes kind sir. I have a slight rodent problem and if you check my downstairs toilet you will find the first of many I’m afraid”.
The exTerminator went all through the house up and down even under and set out traps. He put them high and low and said that he would come and check them every morning and every afternoon and remove any “kills”.

Late that night the beautiful woman was asleep in her bed when she heard a horrible rustle and tussle up in the attic. Her sweet vigilant sleeping terriers did nothing but sleep
kept a vigil. The commotion went on for sometime in the attic but the woman knew that the ex Terminator would be back in the morning to take care of whatever had caused the noise.

The next morning while the haggard beautiful woman had her morning coffee the exTerminator returned to collect his kill. He ascended the attic stairs and then there was a stream of expletives and stomping around. He descended the attic with an empty trap and a bunch of glue pads stuck all over himself. He looked at me and said “Lady, I don’t know what is in that attic but it’s a monster! It took the bait and tore itself off the glue traps.” Then with an unnatural gleam in his eye he turned to look at me and said “I’ll be back”. Then in a poof he was gone.

He returned some time later with a larger trap and enough peanut butter to feed a small third world country. He baited the trap and reset the glue boards and assured me that he would get the varmint. Again he was gone. When I the crazed woman returned from work to let her little demented terriers out of their kennel she again saw the giant rabid blood sucking rodents (ok maybe they weren’t blood sucking).

The now the exasperated insane woman was beside herself. She had hired a killer and she still had giant rodents. So she called the head exTerminator and asked him to come look at the problem. When he showed up he looked the money pit house over and said he had just the thing. He brought in a large animal trap with jaws like you think of when someone says bear trap. Then he smiled and patted the insane woman on the shoulder and assured her all would be well. He advised her if she heard a loud commotion to call him immediately day or night and handed her a card with his emergency number on it.

The crazed woman went to bed hoping to sleep without being attacked by giant rodents and/or stray meteors. She woke with a start to a horrible catterwailing and commotion above her head. It was as if a thousand screaming screeching banshees had congregated in her attic space just above her head. She jumped up and grabbed the phone and dialed the exTerminator. He sleepily answered the phone but promised he would be right there.

The exTerminator arrived wearing his black jumpsuit and his combat boots with black smudges under his eyes (I really don’t think he had been sleeping well. Maybe he had banshees in his attic too). He took the stairs to the attic two at a time. From her bedroom the crazy woman could hear what sounded like a full fledge battle. There was banging and clanging and even some screaming, but mostly from the woman. Then she heard the exTerminator coming down the stairs and she ran out to meet him. There he stood with the granddaddy of all rats in the bear trap still squirming and twitching. The exTerminator looked at the crazy lady and said “He put up a real good fight. Would you like to have him stuffed?”