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There's not much news today, or nothing interesting to write about, so as I was organizing photos I came across these pictures I'd never shown before. They are from the Midland Ranch, our neighbors to the south about 15 miles.
It's still raining, snowing, pea-sized hail, misting, thundering, with fields getting greener by the minute. Hardly out of the 30s though. Thankfully not much wind. Judy M. had another bad day at her place in CO, so check her blog again if you're interested in that. Scary times.
This is a little story I wrote some years back for our writer's group:
THE VACUUM CLEANER SALESMAN AND JOE’S MOTHER
(This story reminded me of Wilda's famous tale of the vacuum cleaner salesman. I suppose in those days there were lots of those kinds of stories around. Electricity didn't come to our ranch until sometime in the '50's with the REA, long after vacuum cleaners were common most other places. Oh, yeah. This story goes with today's theme - If It Isn't True It Should Have Been - since this was just a story Cousin Abe made up to tease Joe's Mom Rae with, and he insisted on telling it often.)
On a recent trip to Salt Lake City, a favorite cousin reminded me of a story about Joe's family I'd heard his Dad tell long ago and forgotten. Abe had loved to tell this story about Joe's mother, Rae. Rae and Abe are gone now and the story continues.
In the long ago days when there were still traveling salesmen that came around to the scattered ranch homes, an electric vacuum salesman came to the Thomas ranch. He was quite a salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer. And although Rae told him she was very busy separating milk and with her other chores, he insisted on showing her how wonderful his magnificent vacuum cleaner was. She tried to tell him again she wasn't interested in a vacuum cleaner, but the salesman had brought a scoop shovel of manure from the corral and began to scatter it over the room, and generously threw it onto the spotless carpet. All the time he was making his mess, he talked fast and furiously and Rae couldn't get a word in. He consoled her not to worry that she could put the vacuum cleaner on painless low payments.
Rae kept a spotless home, with everything in it sparkling and in its place, but now it was filthy. He told her how the vacuum cleaner would make her housework much easier. In fact, it was a modem day miracle. And if it didn't clean up the mess he'd made with the manure, he would eat it!
He began to put the machine together with its many attachments and hoses as Rae disappeared into the kitchen. She came out with the sugar bowl and spoon and began to sprinkle sugar on the manure. The salesman thought Rae was just making the test a little harder, and he commented that the vacuum would have no trouble cleaning up the sugar too, so she didn't need to bother doing that. To which Rae replied, "Oh, I'm just sweetening it up for you since you're going to have a big meal here. We don't have any electricity."
(And BTW the refrigerator we just traded in a few years back was the original and only one ever, bought when the power got here. It was over 50 years old when we got the new one and still working, although they say the old ones take a lot more power to run them.
Lynn Thomas
Sublette County Artists' Guild
May, 1999
