The Empty Cupboard (page 5)

snowbird

Why, thankee, Miz Scully!

Judging from the number of views, I believe there are others out there who feel likewise.

I just love the way CoCo writes!

I can hardly wait to see how he's going to handle a rural Alabama venue.

Syl

compound complex

Thanks, Scully, for stopping by! Your comments are much appreciated!

CoCo

Jinx lay sloth like and shapeless upon his bed of tousled, ragged blankets.

While his hazy pedigree was not something to sneeze at like a sniffler's achoo at cat dander, yet the old cur was content to have given up his brief stint of city life and laze about in the bucolic wildness of the deep, deep woods. Life couldn't get much better, except, of course for that blasted Yellowhammer's nattering away at the barn's galvanized roof. What a pestilential manner of communication, old Jinx mused languidly. He gazed through rheumy slits at the ancient japonica, whose profuse scarlet plumes softened but one corner of the too many rough edges of the disintegrating but still somehow charming cabin. Ah, what a wise move the state fathers made in September of 1927, he pondered, as several blasted blossoms released their tentative grasp upon hundreds of petals, this occasioned by a stiff breeze come careering through the draw, suggesting, sadly, that all beauty will one day fade.

The old boy whimpered through his heavy jowls when he had been recently parted from his junkyard cousin, Jaws, in Mobile, after a visit cut short by his master Jeb's old man, Horace Ray Bottoms. This pair of Bottoms had come to the dismantler to purchase a rebuilt tranny for their jointly owned '56 Apache pickup. In the pooches' too short time together - they were parted as pups (their moms being sisters) - it was a happy reunion accented by deeply conjured groans and sharp yips, this familial interaction taking place while the squirrely bipeds were dickering over something called price. Pop Bottoms was beet-faced and shouting invectives, clearly low-classed deportment, the self-respecting mongrel intoned.

Jaws wasn't so much put out as this sort of crass behavior was part and parcel of life on the wrong side of the Norfolk Southern. He was, after all, a hard-living realist. It goes without saying, however, that canine family loyalty put him in Jinx's doghouse, in a manner of speaking, rather than in the camp of the junkyard man whose hand fed him.

snowbird

LOL.

CoCo!!!

Would you believe I once crossed paths with a Homer LaRay Bottoms?

I kid you not.

Something is at work here ...

Syl

nancy drew

CoCo,

you have such a discriptive style and you always set the mood but what that does to me is "okay now I,m feeling strange and mysterious and I seem to be waiting for something odd to happen".

So thay lady waking up and feeling off and stuff is missing what could it be now death, aliens just a dream or nothing really?

compound complex

Hi Syl and Nancy!

Thanks for replying.

Will get back to your thoughts just a little later, Nancy, but, first of all, Sylvia has to tell us what references point to Alabama [and how so]. Cool on HLB!

See you again soon.

CoCo

snowbird

In 1927, the Yellowhammer was named the official State Bird of Alabama. The goldenrod was named the State Flower at that time, but in 1959, was replaced by the camellia. The camellia japonica l was specifically so designated in 1999..

You are a wonder, CoCo.

Syl

compound complex

Hello Nancy:

Ziddy's post got me to thinking that I should take a detour, so to speak, and bypass the well-traveled Ghost Road.

I can't recall now what got me onto the twist ending; it may have been my visualizing the "gingerbread" [highly ornamented] house as not a literal house but, rather, a doll house. Little Betty's fanciful but precocious imaginings impart complexity to Ruthann and make her seem real. Instead of explaining the referenced yet vague tragedy befalling Dr. and Mrs. Delaney - did the baby die at birth? did Mrs. Delaney die in childbirth? - I thought the reader should be kept guessing.

The outcome of the story has Ruthann, therefore, as a doll: raggedy and old, an adolescent in braids [no development on this], as an "adult" and lovely figurine. We can see the dolls being walked through the doll house or on the street. But how can a simple little girl ascribe such lives and complicated emotions to inanimate dolls? Are the dolls sentient beings in actuality? In the end, Betty, the "puppetmistress," returns the baby surrounded in mystery to the crib. Everyone rejoices.

Little Betty is based squarely on some very imaginative individuals whom I know personally.

Thanks!

CoCo

compound complex

Syl:

Excellent! Thanks for pushing me ...

[also, Mobile and Norfolk Southern]

Peel your eyes for little Bertie Snow and her encounter with Jinx and his boy, Jeb!

CoCo

snowbird

[also, Mobile and Norfolk Southern]

Oh, of course, but I always look for the obscure references.

You're doing good.

Tee hee hee.

Syl

nancy drew

I was thinking about the word cupboard an oddly intriguing word its seems simple just a piece of furniture or type of cabinet but it's possibilities. The king's cupboard or empty ,full, the indian in the cupboard it goes on and on.

It's a mystery item "what's in it what's it's secret"

The Empty Cupboard

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