Have You Had This?

I thought I would escape this winter without it. But no.

It. I have it. The dreaded split thumb of winter.

It hurts. It makes most things difficult, because it hurts.

Tamales

Last night I ate two tamales for dinner. Two homemade tamales, a gift from Benny Garcia--he made them.

Benny and his wife Evelyn are friends of ours from Caldwell. Wayne spoke Spanish with Benny. A nice connection. Besides, Benny is one of those easy-to-like people. We liked him a lot.

Benny's wife Betty died. I sang at her funeral. He and Evelyn married a couple of years later--her third marriage. It was one of those things. He's a widower; she recovering from her second husband (enigmatic of me to leave it at that, but hey). And when they started being seen together, I said, "Yeah. That seems right."

I'm not sure, but they may have been married about twenty years now. She says they are crazy about each other. I believe it.

When I call there, Benny usually tries to put something over on me, and usually it works because I'm just not expecting it. Next time I will.

Evelyn gives me jalapeno (I've tried four times to get the tilde on that n) jelly. It's good, let me tell you. Now he has given me tamales. They're good, too.

So this is not terribly important. I just think of Wayne when I think of them.

So when don't I think of Wayne?

A Little History, Part 4

Sold

They didn't live long in Bramwell, only a few years. Grandpa sold the place and moved his family back to eastern Idaho, not to Bloomington but to Preston, because it was a town. Probably he farmed there, too, though Mama never mentioned it.

Eventually, they moved to a bigger town, Salt Lake City. Grandpa got a job as a night watchman in a mattress factory, and Mama said it broke his heart. That's the way she saw it. Always counted it a sacrifice her dad made and said it was all for her, so she could have the advantages of a city.

That is what Mama told me.