Lemon Drops
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film. I remember watching this movie on T.V. about the year 1960.
I've told my kids on occasion that my life as a child was full, and it was. There never seemed to be a dull moment. My sister told me that her first school year (I don't know if she would have had kindergarten or not) she attended forty different schools.
That may have been just a ball park number, but since my father was a jockey during those years, they would have been moving often from race track to race track.
Indeed, Mom lost a baby during their time at the track in Arizona. Her story was that as she was cooling a horse down after a race, the horse reared up, causing her to go into premature labor.
Three years later I was born. They were going through financial hardships and meals were sparse. With Mother being tall no one at the trailer park where they lived even knew she was pregnant.
Three months later she was a single mother, and our next few years were like confetti in the wind.
Each day, each month and year, the only way to describe them would be like bright smudges of color on a painter's palette.
The smudges don't make sense, it isn't a pretty picture, but it sure is bright. Texas, California, Oregon, Iowa, Texas, Grandparents/Iowa, Mom's/Iowa, and back...
And people. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, even a few neighbors. All mixed together with summer sunshine and freezing winters—and there were horses. And cows...and dogs, cats, chickens and of course, horses.
Most of us grew up, some grew old, but few of us have grown wise. About the time a person thinks they have a bit of knowledge they learn how little they know.
Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we aren't in Kansas anymore, and we're still looking for our way home. We learn to mix a bit of sugar with our lemons and make...
