Apr. 22, 2002 - 21:10 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Kaleidoscope

We were young and we had the good fortune to be neighbors to a couple with kids about the same ages as ours. A friendship blessed us and many happy hours were spent, visiting, picnicing and playing 500 rummy in the evenings.

I had the feeling through some of those years of being captive in a rotating madhouse, though. I don't know if I have the name right, I think it was Kem-tone, one of those fancy dancy paints and patterned rollers for being artistic in wall decor. Heather and the next door lady jumped whole hog into decorating with the paint. I never knew what I would see when I got home from work. Most of it was nice, not wild, just different. Well at least they weren't out drinking and chasing men.

Finally, tired out or tired of the painting and letting it go as was they came up with various other schemes to beautify and complicate life. Our floor plan was identical with the one next door and the ladies decided they wanted a planter just inside the door, extending out into the room. To put it diplomatically, I was drafted. They got two pieces of heavy tar paper, which I cut as per instruction, then using some kind of plastic mastic I stuck flat rocks onto the tar paper and proceeded to lay the rocks similar to bricks up to the height they wanted. The planters looked good, and held water without leaking, so they were bailed out and filled with planting soil and the ladies planted green stuff in them. A thing to be admired and it did add to the decor.

Strange thing though, the plants kept dying at both houses. After a while the plants didn't survive hardly a day before going into the big sleep. The ladies fretted, changed soil -- which helped for a little time but soon mortality hit the planters. Great gloom among the ladies.

One night as I was half asleep and half watching a late night show I noticed our cat using the planter for a purpose not intended. On digging a bit I found that she must have been making night deposits in the bank of Planter. Lady next door investigated and sure enough it was the same thing over there.

We had with painstaking precision made pretty litter boxes with the disguise of short lived plants.

My next job at home was to break the damn thing up without scarring the tile and disposing of the chunks of rock. But I was happy evenso, it had been a stumbling block to me and a cause of painfully stubbed toes ever since constructed.

Then the scene shifted somewhat, the ladies had taken up sewing projects and I was glad. I could saw and shape wood and metal to a true line but with cloth, it wouldn't hold still long enough for me to do anything sensible with it. I was home free !

Things smoothed out but the curtains and bedspreads had a weird habit of changing pattern and color frequently. So for the rest of the time there I was outside looking through the Kaleidoscope . . . . . .

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