The memory occurs when my children were young. For some reason I went out on the front porch in my knee length, ruffled nightgown. We live in the country, so you can get away with things like this.... but when the door slammed shut behind me, I knew I was in big trouble. The door was locked and my ruffled nightgown was caught! Couldn't pull it through and no one else was up to help me. So for a few brief moments I thought about slipping out of the nightgown and making a dash around the house to the back door. My senses came to me when I realized how long I'd be in the open as I made this dash. We don't live that far from the road and farmers (who love to road farm) they often use our road on the way to the local coffee house in Cedarville. I couldn't risk being the morning topic at the coffee shop and I continued to push the doorbell until someone got up and finally let me in the house.
My second memory comes during the same time period, probably early 80's. I was talking to a friend on the phone as I sat at the dining room table, looking out the front window. Along comes a County mower on a big green John Deere tractor. We mow on both sides of the road, our mail box is across the road, so it looks very nice in the summer. In the middle of the mowed, well kept area of our mailbox, grows a big patch of wild tiger lilies. They were green but not blooming.
As I'm talking to my friend, this guy on the mower, lifts the mower up to pass what we mow and go around the mail box. Then he proceeds to drop the mower on the bed of tiger lilies and mow them off. I am off the phone and out the door in a flash! Yelling loud enough to be heard over the tractor and mower!!! The driver probably doesn't hear me, but he sees this wild looking woman, in her knee length ruffled nightgown, that perhaps had be wash to thread bear. He looks like a "deer in headlights", he politely turns the mower off and takes off his ear protection to see what the heck I wanted. I proceed to give him a lecture about the difference between flowers and weeds.
As I recall, he was just a kid, doing his summer job. I expect he learned a little about flowers that day, but he also learned that women in flying nightgowns are not to be messed with! By the way, we have lived here for 34 years and the flowers out there were never mowed down again.
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